Change

5. You can't draft people into change. They have to enroll.

Unless you are the CEO and in a position to compel people to perform, change is not a compulsory exercise. In fact, even if you are the CEO, and theoretically in a position to compel people to perform, when it comes to change, you're liable to create your own worst nightmare: people quit, but stay; people say "yes," but do "no"; people go through the motions, but don't perform.

It's a common mistake among people trying to bring change to sleepy corporate settings -- out of zealotry mixed with frustration, they confuse inflicting change with leading it. According to successful change agents, the key to making change happen is to create an environment where people gravitate in the direction you want them to go.

"I call it 'pull, don't push,'" says Arian Ward of Hughes Space and Communications Co. Ward's responsibilities include exploiting new technologies that allow Hughes employees to collaborate and making sure the company gets maximum benefit from their knowledge. In his six years with the company, Ward has tried it both ways. For a while he worked in a part of the organization that led classic reengineering projects. "It was an experience so painful that I didn't want to be in that position again. I went looking for another way."

What he found is an organic approach to change that can sound almost spiritual. "The best pull I know of," says Ward, "is to make people aware of best practices. They'll naturally use a better way if you make one available." Ward has been applying this technique in the reuse of engineering designs and solutions: each time Hughes designs and builds a satellite, it should take advantage of the innovations, mistakes, and solutions of previous satellites. But in the past, reuse has been haphazard at best, in part because old designs weren't easily accessible to engineers, in part because the lessons from those designs had never been made explicit. Reuse also requires a shift in work style for engineers used to sitting down with a clean sheet of paper to attack a given assignment.

There are two approaches to implementing reuse. "One is to tell the engineers they have to," Ward says. "Another way is to make it very appealing. You make it easier for them to reuse designs than to invent new ones from scratch. In fact, the reason a lot of reuse efforts fail is that people are given the opposite situation: we make it harder to reuse than to invent."

The experiment has led Hughes to assemble previous satellite designs into an easy-to-use catalog, accessible and searchable through a computer network browser. And it has made a convert of Ward. "I'm no longer in the mode of trying to change people," he says. "I'm in a mode of finding a way to enable them to change. Because it's going to happen naturally."

6. It's not a calling. It's a job.

Arian Ward's approach to change may sound spiritual. But other change agents believe it's actually a religion. They begin to think they're on a crusade -- and they're not only right, but also righteous. Those who resist are worse than wrong; they're heretics.

The most important thing for change agents to remember is: it's just business. If you're going to get something done, you're going to discomfit people around you. You're going to interrupt routines, reveal problems, make more work on the way to making less work. It's hardly surprising that the organization will push back. It will push back harder if you're sanctimonious. And occasionally it will be forgiving -- if not cooperative -- if you work like a professional.

When it comes to change, sometimes it takes a leap of faith to get things going. Just don't confuse a leap of faith with a religious order.

7. Forget balance. Create tension.

"Most managers are uncomfortable with what they don't know," says Maletz. "Change leaders operate that way all the time. In a world that is changing with incredible speed, ambiguity is a constant." Ambiguity defines the work of the change agent: not a comfortable balance, but a dynamic tension between opposing forces. Change is all about taking people outside of their comfort zones. Change agents find themselves working simultaneously across the borders of conflicts -- and almost always outside their own comfort zones.

Change agents have to be able to lead -- and follow. They operate as insiders, working closely with teams -- and also as outsiders, focused on making change happen. Change agents are simultaneously highly visible, willing to stand up in public to rally the troops, and genuinely invisible: turning the spotlight over to others when handing out credit is the best way to advance the cause. They need to be equally comfortable dealing with senior management and frontline workers -- because a change agent needs the support of both groups. A change agent must always be in two places at once: where the organization is and where it's going.