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Written by: David Dye
Let’s Grow Leaders Q&A
In a recent post we invited you to send us your biggest leadership challenge. We received a great question from a healthcare leader in the United Kingdom. It’s a question we hear all the time from audience members and workshop participants around the world.
(Please, continue to send in your questions and leadership challenges – yours may be the next one featured here).
Dear Karin & David:
I’m an innovation team leader in healthcare and we’re tasked with delivering a new model of care. It has met with some resistance – change is quite challenging in some parts of our industry and I don’t have the power to enforce these changes. How do you challenge and convert mindsets to change? How do you change cultural norms?
Dear Healthcare Leader:
Creating change from within an organization is often challenging.
It can be frustrating when the benefit of a new way seems so obvious to you, but is not obvious to others. Most human beings are “wired” to keep doing what they did yesterday because it costs less energy and is safe (after all, what they did yesterday got them safely to today, so why change?).
You ask two questions. I will take them in reverse order:
How do you change culture norms?
The short answer here is often: slowly.
Particularly if you’re not leading the entire organization.
Both Karin and I have made significant changes in internal cultures, but the work starts with the culture you build within your own team.
When people who interact with your innovation team come out of those interactions saying “Wow – that is an awesome group of people doing amazing work. I want to be treated like that, treat others like that, achieve results like that, and be a part of something fantastic!” – then your culture will start to spread.
We call this a “cultural oasis.” You create a culture within the team for which you are responsible. You may have to coach them to remain positive and to stay focused on results and relationships when others in the organization don’t understand them or minimize their work.
Summary: Changing a culture from the inside takes time and starts with the culture you create within your team.
How do you challenge and covert mindsets to change?
From your description, it sounds like you’re hoping others will accept the changes your innovation team is proposing. If that is your goal, I invite you to think differently about “challenging and converting” mindsets. People almost never change their mind because they were challenged.
The good news is that there are several ways you can make it more likely for change to be adopted:
1. Answer the Question
When we’re asked to change, every human being has one overriding question: “Why should I?”
So answer their question. Before proposing a specific change, take the time to connect-the-dots: What about the current situation isn’t working? How will this change improve their life? Their patients’ lives?
When people buy-in to the “why” moving on to the “what” is much easier.
Know your audience here: one person might care more about that data and research while another is more concerned about the institution’s reputation and a third might be more focused on how changes will affect people.
2. Make Them Partners
People don’t argue with their own input.
After you’ve shared the problem you hope to solve or the results you want to achieve, ask your peers for their ideas about how to make it work. Acknowledge the limitations and competing priorities they face. Ask “How do you think we can do this AND meet your objectives? What might that look like?”
As they share, find ways to incorporate their ideas. Now you’re all implementing a shared solution, not just something you’ve put on them.
3. Demonstrate Success
Related to connecting what-to-why: Can you pilot the change in one area to demonstrate how desirable it would be for others? Can you find people in that test-case who can be ambassadors for the change with their colleagues and talk about what it’s doing for them and their patients?
4. Leverage Leaders
Lateral change is easier to accomplish if your supervisor is supportive and reinforces the message. You may have to ask for exactly what you need. e.g.: “I’m hearing regularly from colleagues that these other initiatives are higher priority. Can you clarify for all of us the order of implementation?”
If your supervisor isn’t supportive, take the time to connect your initiative to their goals. What keeps them up at night? What goals do they need to achieve to be successful? Demonstrate how your changes will help them achieve their goals. Then enlist their aid with colleagues.
Here is an article that discusses these conversations with your supervisor or colleagues in more depth: PERSUADE Model
5. Make Change Easier
People often resist change because they don’t know how to do it. We are more likely to adopt small behaviors than large ones. Is there a way to focus on one or two fundamental behaviors and then build from there?
Related: How to Build a Team of Inspired Followers
6. Make It the Norm
The brain takes two shortcuts to figure out what to do: the environment and what other people are doing. What in your physical environment can make the change the default action? Consistently keep the new way of doing things in front of people. Tell the stories about how different people are implementing. They should see it every day so that it becomes the assumed “this is how we do things.”
7. Share the Score
Find a meaningful way to publicly track progress. It may be a scorecard, a weekly video, or stories from patients. When people look at a score that tells them they’re 70% successful, but their colleagues are 92% successful, they often work to close the gap.
8. Celebrate Success
Acknowledge people who are doing it well, tell the stories of how it’s working for colleagues and patients. Be specific about what people are doing and why it is important. Celebrate in ways that are meaningful to the people you’re acknowledging. This can help win over some of the reluctant people.
Those are a few thoughts to get you started. If I were in your shoes I would start with a conversation with my supervisor about goals and how these changes are supported.
Remember: it takes time to create real change from within an organization. It is also a fantastic way to build your leadership, influence, and credibility.