Challenging processes by innovating, experimenting, and taking risks requires leaders to rely on emotion management skills. The highly anxious manager becomes risk averse, avoiding setbacks and losses at all costs. Conversely, the overly optimistic manager may take on too much risk and fail to consider the impact of various outcomes.
We are taught that we must embrace change, create change, and manage change, but the fact is, change is difficult for many people. Change is not only difficult, but it can face concerted and strong resistance in many corporate environments. Take the example of the Hewlett-Packard Company (HP) and their famed “HP Way.” The HP Way—the corporate culture of ideas and entrepreneurial individualism fostered and nurtured by company founders David Packard and Bill Hewlett—was threatened by the then-new CEO, Carleton (Carly) Fiorina.
Fiorina took the culture of HP head-on. It wasn’t that she devalued ideas, but she believed that the culture had become “a shield against change.” To her, the culture of HP was having the opposite effect from the one initially intended. Fiorina noted, “When culture turns into groupthink, when culture turns into closed minds, when culture turns into ‘act the same, be the same, look the same,’ that is when culture starts to kill a company.” She identified the need for change, and she identified one of the obstacles to change. The question is then, “Now what?”
Identify Emotions
It takes a great deal of courage and self-assuredness to promote change in any organization, but especially in a culture such as HP’s. In order for a change-management effort to be successful, you have to start out with facts and data. This is where your ability to identify emotions comes in handy. As the change agent, you must ask yourself, “What do I think of the current process and methods? How do I feel about the current state of things?” If you sense a problem, you have to follow your lead and next try to ferret out the cause of the problem.
Gain Perspective
With your focus trained on the bigger picture of the area of change, which in the case of HP was the fundamental worldview of HP people, you can begin to see the situation from various perspectives. Now you are tapping into your ability to effectively use emotions.
Unraveling the history of the organization and the process that you’ve identified as needing some sort of change requires a deep understanding of cause and effect and of corporate and emotional history. The ability to understand emotions and generate and play out alternative what-if scenarios provides you with the data you need to solve the problem of change and figure out an action plan.
The best change efforts will fail unless the action plan not only addresses the surface needs for change but considers how those affected by change will react. Now you identify the feelings of the people involved in the change effort, and try to recognize those who will become angry, those who will become terrified by change, and the people who might not be happy but who will take a waitandsee attitude. Managing change next asks you to consider the points of view of these people and to be able to generate a feeling in the organization that the direction of change will result in some pain but, ultimately, in a stronger organization.
For HP, this was not an easy task. As Fiorina noted, “The difficulty comes in communicating not just what a company is trying to do, but how it is trying to do it. Any corporation can sit down and write a high-minded statement of values. But we all know: it is in living those values that is the hard part.” Managing change, like managing emotions, requires that one must live the change and demonstrate the new rules in your every behavior and action.