Once you understand that a specific mindset and its associated behaviors can either facilitate or impede success, you have a level of insight that can be truly invaluable to a sponsor who is less familiar with these kinds of change dynamics.
Mindsets are made up of frames of reference (the ways individuals make sense of situations) that lead to the formation of priorities (the relative importance of various options). Shared mindsets within an organization serve as the foundations of culture and ultimately lead to common patterns of behavior.
Successful change requires a specific mindset that is shared among key players as they perform their respective roles. This “success mindset” reflects the insights and lessons learned from people who have confronted the tough realities of what it really takes to deliver on organizational transitions. It refers to a particular frame of reference and set of priorities that support the accomplishment of important initiatives.
Mindset patterns are translated into actions through behavior patterns. Organizational change, like many things in life that appear to be random or unfathomable, actually has a structure. At the level of observable actions, the structure consists of discernible behavior patterns that reflect how people tend to react during transitions. While most people are unaware of these patterns, they are essential for the practitioner to see because they reveal the likely sequence of events that will transpire. Here are some of the more common behavior patterns that lenses can detect:
- How transformational vs. incremental change unfolds
- How business-imperative changes perform compared to those with less urgency
- How clarity and alignment around an initiative’s intent affects outcomes
- How maintaining the integrity of intent throughout implementation affects success
- How sponsors, agents, targets, and advocates play their roles, and the impact this has on success
- How commitment is created
- How resistance forms and is turned into an asset
- How culture impacts desired outcomes
- How an individual’s or organization’s capacity to absorb change affects success
- How governance and allocation of resources affects outcomes
- How an organization’s record of change implementation affects success
- How courage and frank communications impact change outcomes
- How tolerance for ambiguity, making tough decisions with insufficient data, and learning from failure all play a role in successful change
There are many more, but these are representative of the kind of inherent behavior patterns identified by the various lenses practitioners use.
How to use mindset and behavior patterns
When executing large-scale initiatives, sponsors often feel victimized by what they don’t understand. The more we can demystify the dynamics of change for them by offering relatively simple ways to understand what is happening, the more likely they will feel they can affect the outcome. Practitioners, therefore, should be able to do four things:
- Be familiar with the mindset and behavior patterns that usually play out during significant organizational transformations
- Recognize these patterns when they surface
- Be able to describe their impact in easy-to-understand language
- Know what guidance to offer for each one or any combination that forms
As an example, if your client knows that success requires a commitment is not left to chance mindset, you can work more effectively with the sponsors and change team to plan ways of building strong resolve toward initiative success. As the initiative moves forward, that mindset will lead them to take the actions (behaviors) necessary to foster momentum and a critical mass of commitment throughout the organization.
When you know that certain events will likely occur at predictable points in a transition, you can provide guidance in both the planning and execution of initiatives. For example, if you can predict the emotional reaction people will likely have to a major change, you can recommend specific actions to either encourage or inhibit that response. If you can anticipate why and how strongly a particular group will resist an initiative before it is announced, you may suggest a modification to the communications to avoid or minimize some of their concerns. For those concerns that can’t be mitigated, you can at least help the sponsor anticipate the reaction and prepare a response.
Both mindset and behavior patterns exist and are influential to outcomes, whether clients see them or not. As practitioners, it is our responsibility to adopt a set of reliable lenses through which we can determine the patterns that influence a change initiative at any given time. You may decide to become proficient in one set of lenses (a specific methodology), combine aspects from several different frameworks, augment one with some of your own lens creations, or start from scratch and develop an entire implementation approach on your own. However you get there, it’s imperative that you ground your practice on a reliable set of lenses.
Supporting clients in the development of a successful mindset is a key part of our role as professional change agents. Helping to ensure that behaviors align with that mindset is equally important. While there is a direct relationship between mindset and behaviors, we don’t always act—without fail—in accordance with our mindset. Thus, demonstrating a success mindset pattern is not enough. We must also be able to recognize both success and failure patterns of behavior.
Next, we’ll explore some lenses and patterns associated with change success.
