I need your help
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JWI 556 (1196) Page 1 of 7
JWI 556
Leading Change by Putting People First
Week Eight Lecture Notes
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JWI 556 (1196) Page 2 of 7
SUPPORTING STAKEHOLDERS
What It Means
Supporting stakeholders is about ensuring that those impacted by the change don’t get
marginalized during the process or abandoned when the change is over. A harsh reality of many
change initiatives is that there will be people who struggle to fit into the new way of doing
business. There will be some, through no fault of their own, who will no longer have a job when
the change has been completed. HR professionals have a responsibility to serve both as
advocates for people, and as leaders who will support the changes needed to keep the
company competitive.
Why It Matters
• The change initiative, even if painful, cannot be allowed to undermine the culture of truth
and trust required to take the organization forward after the change.
• Leaders must share as much as they possibly can with the people whose lives are being
affected, all while not compromising confidential information.
• Team members who will be moving on must be helped with generous severance,
retraining, and/or other support as they transition to new careers outside of the
organization.
“HR leaders have an obligation to balance their strong business partnering role
with their employee advocacy role.”
Bill Conaty
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JWI 556 (1196) Page 3 of 7
THE ROLE OF HR PROFESSIONALS IN ADVANCING A CULTURE OF TRUTH
AND TRUST DURING CHANGE INITIATIVES
Building a culture of truth and trust takes a lot of work. It has been an important theme in Jack’s
teachings, and has been addressed in a number of JWMI courses, including JWI 522: Strategic
Partnering with the C-Suite, where we introduced the concept of HR leader as Parent and Pastor.
The pastor is the confidante and trusted advisor. The parent is the guide, the mentor, and the person who
can deliver a kick in the seat of the pants when it’s needed. It’s the person who tells it like it is, whether you
like it or not. While this role remains critical, we want to focus on another tenet that is particularly important
during change initiatives – that truth and trust are also about empowerment.
It’s not just about looping people in and sharing as much information (the good, the bad, and the ugly) as
you can during a change initiative. It’s about trusting your colleagues enough to actually empower them to
guide the transformation. It’s about reframing the idea of leadership from something where the leader
dispenses wisdom from above, to a model where people are engaged as trusted contributors, whose
great ideas can help the organization find “the truth,” the way forward.
This is something Jack understood well. You build trust when employees are engaged, not when they are
simply told what to do.
Nathan Furr and Jeffrey Dyer offer an insightful take on this in their article, “Leading Your Team into the
Unknown” (2014). Their work, like others we have included in this course, provides a counterpoint to
Kotter while still respecting the complexities of change. In their “Innovator’s Method,” they introduce four
key principles to build trust and get every brain in the game:
1. Don’t Dictate a Vision – Set a Grand Challenge
2. Don’t Make Decisions – Design Experiments
3. Don’t Just Ignite Ideas – Prepare the Organization to Accept Them
4. Don’t Just Give People Time – Provide the Resources They Need to Act Quickly
As you read this article, consider how their guidance can foster a people-first approach to leading change.
OPEN SHARING AND THE PROTECTION OF PROPRIETARY INFORMATION
DURING RESTRUCTURING AND DOWNSIZING
As we have previously noted, communication is essential at every stage of a major change effort. No
amount of intellectual rationale for change will make the least bit of difference without a powerful – or as
Jack would say, “relentless” – communications effort behind it. But what about communication when there
are open questions that the change leaders don’t have answers to yet, or where there is confidential
information that can’t be disclosed?
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JWI 556 (1196) Page 4 of 7
Effective communication in an organizational transformation requires leaders who are able and willing to
share tough news. Delivering tough news is not easy when it involves telling people they are being let go,
but at least the messaging in this situation can be clear: “We have had to make changes to ensure that
the company is in a stronger position to go forward. The decision to terminate or change certain
functions/offices/roles was made after assessing all options, and we will work with everyone who has
been impacted to do everything we can to provide support and clarity as we move toward an end date.”
As painful and disruptive as this is, people can generally handle bad news; what is often harder to handle
is evasion or unclear news. Worse yet is an outright lie. The manager or senior leader who says,
“Everyone will be fine,” when they know that their workforce will be radically restructured, destroys the
trust of everyone, not just those who may not be sticking around.
Patty McCord reminds us:
“One of the most important insights anyone in business can have is that it’s not cruel to
tell people the truth respectfully and honestly. To the contrary, being transparent and
telling people what they need to hear is the only way to ensure they both trust you and
understand you.”
“One of the benefits of the leadership communicating clearly to everyone in the company
about where you’re heading and the challenges and opportunities that future will bring is
that it better equips people to evaluate how well their skills fit into that future. They can
also consider whether or not that future is one they want to be a part of and, if it isn’t, can
proactively seek out new opportunities.”
Powerful, pp. 32, 125
The right path forward when faced with restrictions on what you can communicate is to let people know
you will be as open with them as you possibly can. As information becomes available that you can share,
you will do so.
If senior leaders in the organization have built a culture of trust and openness, this is when it will pay off. If
that trust hasn’t been established, it’s going to be much harder to do it in the heat of the reorganization.
Most people “get it” that there will be matters that can be shared and matters that can’t. Leading change
by putting people first is not a call to open the floodgates on all information. It’s a call for HR and other
leaders to do what is morally right and not mislead people about their prospects for a future with the
organization. If you possess proprietary information that cannot be shared, the message has to be, “We
need your help to make this change a success. We’re doing everything we can to create the best
scenario for the greatest number of people and build a strong and sustainable competitive advantage. We
will get every possible communication about the changes out as quickly as we can, and when the
changes are done, we will communicate with clarity about the path forward.”
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JWI 556 (1196) Page 5 of 7
SUPPORTING NEGATIVELY IMPACTED STAKEHOLDERS
IN TIMES OF UNCERTAINTY
Despite our best efforts, change can produce winners and losers.
• Winners are the people who will come out of the change with more visibility, power,
resources, or maybe a bigger role in the organization. They will naturally be early adopters
and project champions.
• Losers will see change as taking visibility, power, or resources away, and it may even
include job losses. As your change initiative evolves, work to understand their concerns,
treat them with dignity and respect, and make sure their actions don’t derail your effort.
We can support those who end up on the losing end of the change initiative by helping them
embrace the change and give it everything they’ve got. But if there is either no role for them after the
change has been made, or if the role is something they don’t want, odds are high that they will
undermine the change. It’s not because they’re bad people, but because they find themselves in a
position where they feel threatened, and they react in (quite natural) ways against the forces
threatening them.
Jack warns us to not let the negative polluters “poison the well.”
“These people usually have to go.
Maybe that sounds harsh, but you are doing no one a favor by keeping resisters in your
organization. They foster an underground resistance and lower the morale of the people
who support change. They waste their own time at a company where they don’t share the
vision, and they should be encouraged to find one where they do.”
Winning, p. 142
This advice is sound because it’s not just about weeding out the bad apples. It’s about the effect that
negativity can have on the success of the change, and on the well-being of other stakeholders whose
future depends on making the required changes to build a more successful and viable enterprise. A
people-first approach to change is not just about watching out for those who come out on the losing end.
It’s about making sure that those who stay, and those who are given more impactful roles, can collectively
make the organization stronger for everyone. In short,
1. When there is cutting to be done, get on with it and do it. Make the call and take action.
2. For those who are left, but whose future is not bright:
a. Make sure you get the best work out of them while they are still around
b. Do not allow them to be poisoners
c. Provide support if they will eventually exit
3. For those stakeholders who will take on critical roles, make sure they know that this is an
important opportunity for them. And last but not least, make sure you give them the support
they need to be successful in their new roles.
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JWI 556 (1196) Page 6 of 7
Supports for Negatively Impacted Stakeholders
• Coach them on the new skills that will be needed, but be realistic about whether there are
roles for employees who do not align with the new direction the company is taking. If there is
nothing there, then delaying a departure may make you feel good, but probably won’t help
the employee. Give them a clear timeline and process for winding down.
• Offer retention bonuses for those you want/need to stick around. Even though their jobs may
be coming to an end, if you have a long enough window, there can be an upside for the
employee. But when you do this, you have to face the reality that some of them will just go
through the motions. Don’t kid yourself that you will get 100% from all of them. However, if
you provide not just a retention bonus, but an incremental one that goes up as key change
targets are hit, you may do better than you think.
• Offer quitting bonuses and “early retirement” packages when reductions are needed, but be
cautious. You may weed out the deadwood, but you may also lose the very people you want
to keep because they can easily find a new job and are happy to take the money and run.
• Advocate for generous severance and provide support services for transition counseling.
• Help people network internally. You can’t afford to lose your best people just because they
are in the wrong role at the wrong time. HR needs to work with managers to develop
assessments of who to keep and where they could be redeployed.
• For people who will be in positions with less power or whose career trajectory will be slowed
because of the change, be honest with them. If opportunities for career growth are likely to
emerge in a year or two, help them understand the timeline and what it will take to prepare.
But don’t expect to retain all of them. Face it head on and say, “We would love to keep you. I
think the future will be better, but I understand that working through this transition may not be
best for you.” Leaving doesn’t mean forever. They may return one day and bring with them a
whole new set of skills they developed with other companies. If they do leave, you want
them to be advocates for the organization. If you treat them honestly and fairly on the way
out, you dramatically increase the odds of that happening.
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be copied, further distributed, or otherwise disclosed in whole or in part, without the expressed written permission of Strayer University.
JWI 556 (1196) Page 7 of 7
GETTING THE MOST OUT OF THIS WEEK’S CLASS
As you read the materials and participate in class activities, stay focused on the key learning outcomes
for the week:
• Explore the role of HR professionals in advancing a culture of truth and trust during
change initiatives
Developing a culture of truth and trust takes years. There are no quick fixes or shortcuts. Further,
it is something that begins at the very top of the organization. If the CEO and executive
leadership team have not demonstrated behaviors that promote truth and trust, it will be
extremely difficult to change that perception during a high-stakes change initiative. HR
professionals can, however, play an important role in this if they have a seat at the table. They
can, in many cases, be the “voice of the people” up to senior management – a voice that provides
feedback on how people are feeling and how messages are being received in the broader
organization. Additionally, the more that change initiatives can be an inclusive undertaking where
everyone is made to feel welcome, the less likelihood there will be of false rumors getting started,
or an “us-versus-them” mentality developing.
• Examine the tensions that exist between open sharing and the protection of proprietary
information during restructuring and downsizing
HR leaders, senior executives, and managers must work together to establish a clear
understanding of what can be shared by whom and with whom, and when that information can be
shared. There will likely be situations, especially during restructuring, when even some members
of the HR team may not have full information, or may not have it as early as they would like.
When you are entrusted with confidential information, and especially when you are charged with
sharing that information with your immediate team, make sure that there are no ambiguities about
what can be shared. Be proactive in your communication, and leave time for questions. Make
sure that people know you will share everything you can, and that they can come to you with
concerns and questions.
• Apply proven change leadership practices to support and engage negatively impacted
stakeholders in times of uncertainty
Be an advocate for generous support. Work with executives to get them engaged in helping
others. Build a case for the positive impact of good severance and retention plans. Be prepared
to explain how the supports you are advocating for will pay off in the long term, and help
everyone understand that the way employees who are leaving the organization are treated will
have an impact (positive or negative) on those that remain.
