CHANGE IS HARD, VERY HARD WORK. A Change Agent’s Guide To Success

Presented by

JOE MCMAHON Change Agent

PERCEPTION vs REALITY How does one handle a situation where everyone

is convinced they have the “right” answer?

It’s a fan!

It’s a hose!

It’s a mountain!

It’s a rope!

It’s a tree! The elephant in the room is

CHANGE

CHANGE FOR CHANGES’ SAKE

"Change for change’s sake does not always result in progress.“ • Opportunities and pitfalls • When and why to initiate change • Risk of too little too late, too

much too soon, or just too much

“Failure is not fatal, failing to change might be.” - John Wooden

WHY ORGANIZATIONS DON’T LEARN by Francesca Gino and Bradley Staats, Harvard Business Review (Nov 2015)

• Bias Toward Success

– Fear of failure

– Fixed mindsets

– Overreliance on past performance

– Attrition bias

• Bias Toward Action

– Exhaustion

– Lack of Reflection

• Bias Towards Fitting In

– Believing we need to conform

– Failure to use ones strengths

• Bias Towards Experts

– Overly narrow view of expertise

– Inadequate frontline involvement

LEADING CHANGE BY JOHN P. KOTTER

CREATING A CLIMATE FOR CHANGE

1. Create a sense of urgency 2. Create a coalition 3. Develop a vision and strategy

CREATE A COALITION Team Dynamics - Tuckman Model

• Relationships are well understood

• Committed to team roles

• Begins to work to optimize team processes

•Team committed to performing well

•Focuses on being strategic

•Team runs well without oversight

• Understanding how decisions are made

• Purpose is clear, but relationships are blurry

• Higher degree of guidance required from managers

• Individual roles are unclear

• Process usually not well established

1. FORMING 2. STORMING

3. NORMING 4.

PERFORMING

ENGAGING AND ENABLING THE WHOLE ORGANIZATION

1. Communicate the vision 2. Empower the action 3. Get quick wins

IMPLEMENTING AND SUSTAINING CHANGE

1. Leverage wins to drive change 2. Embed in culture

LESSONS LEARNED • Change is hard, very hard – Equipped yourself as a change agent

• Where there’s no struggle, there’s no progress

• Change leadership is not about position, but impact

• If you don’t like change, you’ll like irrelevance even less

• Opportunities are often disguised as hard work, so most people don’t recognize them

Presenter JOE MCMAHON Mr. McMahon currently serves as the US Navy’s Echelon II Command Information Officer (CIO) for the Naval Safety Center and as the Navy Deputy Logistics Functional Area Manager. He is the principal strategist and advisor on the alignment of IT investments to business priorities/assigned missions and cybersecurity strategies. Mr. McMahon is an accomplished, results oriented leader with a proven track record in developing strategies for enterprise-wide business transformation in the Department of the Navy and Department of the Interior. He has held senior leadership positions in corporate, federal, defense, academic, and non-profit sectors.

joseph.mcmahon@navy.mil