Throughout our careers, it’s almost inevitable that an organization we are a part of undergoes a period of meaningful change. These changes vary in intensity – from small organizational design tweaks (a re-org perhaps) to large-scale modifications to the way an organization works (a cultural transformation).
Lately, it seems we are hearing of more and more companies undergoing a change also announcing that people are being let go. Sometimes the number of people impacted is quite large.
When a change requires a reduction in the number of people working at the company, I consider these deep changes. I call them deep because they cut into the foundation of those left behind and the work of an organization coach or change agent changes dramatically. This post is meant to dig into just what we should do when this happens.
Why?
Organizations can find themselves in a situation of deep change for a variety of reasons.
- Mergers and acquisitions. This may result in a scenario when there are too many people for too few roles.
- Extreme changes to market conditions. Perhaps the organization has lost a big customer or macro-economic conditions have taken a dramatic turn.
- Extreme changes beyond our control. The pandemic is a good example of this. Customer habits change through no fault of our own.
- The culture has become dysfunctional. Bureaucracy has become the normal way work gets done so excess “layers” in the organizational hierarchy need to be removed. Things take forever to complete. Internal tension and stress escalate. Experts are brought in to fix the mess. Repeat.
- Paying for mistakes of the past. Mostly, this means over-hiring because of over-exuberance. We have been hearing of many CEOs taking the blame for guiding their organization into this scenario.
The first three are fairly easy to comprehend why a deep change might be needed. While we can understand it when our colleagues and friends are impacted, it can still hurt deeply.
When the fourth one hits, the question will remain, “Are we doing anything to fix the things that got us here in the first place?” When the fifth one hits, the people who remain are shaken because they are left to ask themselves “If it happened now, when will it happen again?”
While any change can bring challenges for the organizational change coach, deep changes require thoughtful consideration and empathy so regardless of “the why” this happened, we can begin the work of healing and strengthening.
Let’s dig into what we are working with.
What is Lost?
When we find ourselves in the middle of a deep change event, we must recognize what has been lost. I believe the ripple effect of the pain, trauma, loss, and confusion is a powerful force for those still remaining in an organization. But the impact is often glossed over, swept under the rug, or completely ignored.
Depending on the person, those left behind have lost, to various degrees of intensity, a sense of connection (through the loss of close friends and colleagues), of security (my foundation has been rocked), and of hope (do I have a future at this organization?)
Change coaching can be challenging in the best of times but you can imagine the complexities of navigating change during times of loss.
Assessing The Current State
During these times of turmoil, an organizational change coach must be fully aware of the surroundings. Here are a few of the common “current state” themes I have discovered while coaching during times of deep change:
Anxiety and/or Fear
Will I have a job? Will my friends have a job? Will I have a new boss? How will I provide for my family?
Instability
What does this mean for the company? What does this mean for my career path? Will I have to take on more work? Will I have to move to a different role?
Stagnation or Indifference
People may just feel lost and unmotivated, in a state of “quiet quitting,” or just don’t know what to do next. They won’t ruffle any feathers. Wait for the dust to settle. Wait for someone to tell me what to do.
When deep change events occur, while the natural tendency is to jump in and try to help, it’s often best to stop, listen, and assess the current state.
Coaching Through Deep Change
So what should a coach do under these conditions? We want to make a difference and we want to step in and help but our typical approach to coaching will need to take a back seat so we can focus on the people we are serving.
Increase personal conversations.
Our first goal is to reduce or remove the level of anxiety and fear flowing through the workforce. An organization will never return to a state of flow and unity with tension running high.
Here are a couple of things I like to do to reduce anxiety.
- Focus on personal conversations. Just listen. Ask a few questions. Listen some more. Just be there.
- Think proximity, not hierarchy. You won’t be able to interact with everyone but make sure you are engaging with those closest to you. Assume everyone is hurting (at least a little bit) and care for them.
- Reduce or eliminate large distribution or “send to all” emails or posts for a while. While we may need a few broad distribution informational emails or posts, people have questions and emails may not provide the answers they are looking for. Instead, over-index on small group conversations. My personal preference is to AVOID all large-scale town hall meetings.
Meet them where they are.
Our goal here is to bring foundational stability back to the workforce. In a previous post, Meeting Them Where They Are, I talked about the journey people go on to “enter the arena” of change. That is, they are actively engaged in personal growth and are open to fresh thinking and new ways of working. They are healthy and thriving.
I think this model applies more than ever in times of deep change and becomes our roadmap for our personal conversations. Instead of teaching and coaching, we may need to become storytellers and empathy-givers, and sacrifice our time to feed into people more than ever. I would recommend going back and reading that post as those who were healthy and thriving in the arena of change may have fallen back into their old habits in times of stress.
For this post, I added an additional condition to the mental model – those who may feel lost. As coaches, we can address this by providing “next step guidance” to bring them back into the change arena. This could be as simple as words of encouragement or a gentle reminder of how much they are needed as an agent of change. Become a guide and walk with them back to the arena. They may just need someone to say “Here is the way.”
Get busy doing the work of change…with grace.
Our final goals are to remove stagnation and get people moving again. This is where we roll up our sleeves and gently get busy coaching. Tread lightly at first but we do need to get our teams healthy and productive again. Here’s how I like to do it:
1. Re-orient your teams around each other.
Go back to the forming stages – especially if anyone has been let go or been added to the team. Increase human connection in your sessions or meetings. I can’t stress this enough – most teams just go on working as if nothing happened.
2. Re-orient your teams around their purpose.
Re-group the team around why they are here and who they are here to serve. This is important as it begins the process of removing the focus on us (and what we are going through) and shifts the focus away to those who need us (our customers).
3. Figure out how to design systems so this can NEVER happen again.
Once things begin to stabilize we need to figure out how we can never go through this again. The upcoming blog post “Designing Future-Proof Organizations” will address ways to do this by introducing fresh models and paradigms to consider. You may also want to read “A Whole New Solar System” for some ideas on what the future of organizations could look like.
