An Open Letter to Change Agents (Transformation of Negative Energy to Positive Energy)

Dear Change Agents,

I write to share with you my own personal experience and insights as a Change Agent. You are reading this letter because in one way or another, you consider yourself to be the Change Agent. Change Agent in the context of an organisation can be the official title like Quality Manager, Management Representative (as per ISO 9000 terminology), Change Champion, or it could be a part time or un-official role as a Quality Representative. You could also be a CEO, General Manager, Supervisor or Foreman, who see yourself to be a Change Agent to effect your ideas or vision into your business concern.

It is possible that in many aspects, you feel the role of a Change Agent a monumental and up-hill task. Many times, you may feel the frustrations, difficulties, hurt emotion in this process of Change. At times, you may feel that it is still challenging and worth the cause. You may begin to accept the situation in a philosophical way that "life , after all, is a mixture of pain and joy". Whatever may be you conclusion, I would like to share with you the handling and the management of the domain of pain. If this domain of pain : the feeling of frustration, difficulties, hurt emotion is viewed as a domain of ENERGY, with a label as negative energy, then a TRANSFORMATION of negative energy to positive energy should then be the FOCUS with opening windows to greater scope for CREATIVITY.

However the breakout from the negative energy is much blocked by many factors - both internal and external. I will like to deal on the internal factors and not the external factors, as internal factors are within our control. These internal factors refer to our own MINDSET and THINKING and our UNDERSTANDING. (Some of us may be fortunate in the sense that the external factors are conducive enough to give us a helping hand. It could be a supportive and understanding boss or management, a guru giving guidance all the way. However, failing which, we still have to rely on ourselves to breakout from the negative energy)

On the internal factors, there are a lot of serious mis-understanding and mind blocks that most Change Agents have built up over time. Some most unshakeable paradigms are discussed below. The source of such mind block very often comes from simplified statements, slogan from management literature, consultant, seminar, conference etc.

"The Top Management must be totally committed (to change initiatives etc.)"

As a Change Agent who operates under a top management, this statement is often viewed with serious mis-understanding. It is true that if the top management has the quality awareness of the change initiatives, implement the necessary policy, structure and system within their executive authority and personally facilitates and guides the quality initiatives throughout the whole change management process, it is a testimony of commitment. However, as a Change Agent who has much more opportunity to be exposed to new ideas, theories, concept, other so call best-in-class management practices, you have developed you own MENTAL MODEL of what type of behaviour from the top management qualifies to be classified as commitment. Failure to see the tally between actual behaviour with that of your own mental model results in conclusion that "top management is not committed". This conclusion is further reinforced by interaction with fellow Change Agents who share the same mental model or management consultant whose seminar you have attended or with other so called quality organisation who has such practices. This sunk-in conclusion with your own acceptance has eventually becomes a mind block that continues to produce more frustration and conflict within yourself.

You see, it is not a matter of who is right, who is wrong : you as Change Agent or they as top management? I am merely pointing out that there is conflict between your own mental model and that of the management / staff behaviour as perceived by you. With no further effort on your part to further UNDERSTAND the conflict, to explore further deeply your own mental model, you are forever in a locked vicious circle of conflict. We will discuss the analysis of our own mental model and strategies for breakout of this negative energy at later stage. We will continue to examine other aspects of general mind blocks.

"Change Agent is to Change People."

Invariably, conscious and subconscious thinking of most Change Agent is that change management is to change people. This will lead to all effort geared to change all levels of people in the organisation, especially the top management or board of directors and the staff under your department or functional responsibility. This again is another erroneous thinking that causes mind block and negative energy in ourselves. Nobody can change nobody, as each individual is unique, having his or her independent private thinking and mental model. As a Change Agent, our role is to change the PROCESS and SYSTEM which involves people and to continuously guide and facilitate and influence the people concerned to share our mental model and VISION to form a SHARED VISION. This requires a great humility on the part of Change Agent to be open to criticisms (negative or positive, destructive or constructive) from the very people we wish to share our vision, so that we can continuously improve our own mental model for an emergent quality process and system for all party concerned to operate.

In this respect, if you are a manager with executive authority, the genuine Change Agent role becomes more difficult. With the authority, it is very easy for you to change the process and system, e.g. re-structuring, set new policy, moving people from one unit to another etc. etc. but a shared vision with the concerned staff is very difficult to achieve as most staff will at most give you a compliance commitment and behaviour or response to some sweetened incentive temporarily, after all you are the boss who holds the trunk card of their future career prospects.

In the case of Change Agent without executive authority, it is natural that you have greater chance to build up the negative energy of frustration as you do not have the executive authority to made changes automatically, that is without the satisfaction that at least some physical changes have taken place. However, even though Change Agent with executive authority may have the satisfaction (hence less frustration) of physical change, there is a danger of living in illusion of accomplishment as genuine shared vision with the concerned staff may never take place, only a shadow motion and action. This is especially true if there is not objective measurement, control charts set up to check the outcome of the changed or so called ReEngineered process.

"Change needs POWER ; Only top Management has the power to Change thing."

This is another entangling confusion that associates change with power. As discussed above, management only has the institutionalised authority to make physical changes like structure, mechanism, policy, system, process, hardware etc. Institutionalised authority is only one aspect of power and authority alone cannot change another person private thinking. The authority can only dictate compliance behaviour from staff, but not shared vision and total and genius commitment. In this respect, it is more difficult for genuine change to take place with respect to management with authority.

In the above light, we can be the prisoners of our own mental model and thinking that continuously lock us in the negative energy or illusive thinking domain.

We will now probe into how this mental model takes place in our mental faculty that most of the time forms a fuzzy and blurred vision in ourselves.

Generally, Change Agents like you and me are exposed to many new ideas, theories, concepts, so called revolutionary and radical management practices etc. In a way, we are bombarded with images. These images take shape which we think is our mental model, our understanding, our awareness, our new knowledge. In reality these are just IMAGES, less a mental model which should be somewhat more crystal clear, certainly not personal vision, which should be a powerful driving force. There are a few evolutionary processes involved from IMAGES to MENTAL MODEL to personal VISION.

These evolutionary processes are the missing gap and broken link for the TRANSFORMATION of negative energy to positive energy. This dislocation reinforces the negative energy in a vicious circle that continuously drive us to in-effective strategies and action.

This missing link calls for two domains in TOOL / TECHNIQUE / METHODOLOGY and in PRACTISING FIELD. A good football team understands and is creative in various techniques and very regular and disciplined in practices, which calls for more improved techniques and strategies. Ignorance of these domains will continue to imprison us in the negative energy.

Let us discussion the above two domain with respect to some of us as Change Agents with executive authority. The tool / methodology used to convert the new images (ideas, new process design, new structure) is the conventional well established mechanisms like procedure, briefing, new organisation chart, policy etc. As far as practising field is concerned, it is the usual and understood command "just do it", or regular follow up meeting, reporting, tasks and target to staff, performance appraisal etc.. As a result there is hardly any creativity and innovation in new tool / technique / methodology and hence hardly any new learning from the same old practising field. It is a one recipe for all meal approach.

The failure to explore and discover new creativity and innovation in tool / techniques / methodology with forever improved conducive environment for practising field to take place, no SKILL and COMPETENCY can ever be developed in us as Change Agent. What remains in us then is only images of new ideas, principles, concepts which are not internalised in us at all. And these become haunting images that put us in the quicksand of the negative energy.

I will give some demonstration on bridging the missing link for some transformation to take place in myself.

Faced with sea of resistance from a circle of people who have been introduced with some new ideas or proposed change from me, I use lateral thinking tool PMI (Plus Minus Interesting) to help them to express their negative sentiments, "destructive / negative criticism", angry accusation under the Minus perspective. In the process, I learned what is skilful facilitation, impartial change agent in the face of their attack. I collected their so called negative and destructive criticism and try to understand and analyse their thinking. This lead to search for more knowledge : SYSTEM THINKING, COMPLEXITY THEORY, PATTERN ANALYSIS etc. etc.

With more knowledge researched, in the form of images like new theories, concept, principle, I design and develop new tool / technique / methodology and try to find opportunity for application for more learning. For example I developed my own model as knowledge and learning capturing device, called QuaSyLaTic. I use Fishbone or Force-Field-Diagram, or SWOT or PDCA to further understand and explore my own environment. I take two hours planning with necessary tools for ten minutes meeting with my potential customers (persons whom I want to share my vision, ideas). I seek opportunity to apply the tool / technique / methodology : for example presentation to management, colleagues, my own children with respect to their home work, conduct workshop or seminar to my friends of business community for their business application. I welcome critiques, especially negative and destructive criticisms. (You may realise that most traditional management and manager always put a caveat to staff thinking that "suggestions" are welcome but not negative or destructive criticism", reflecting high degree of insecurity and great opportunity lost in more creativity and innovation.). I observe that managers with sincere intend seek feedback from staff by asking "Any Problem?", with no question or only some polite remarks from a few, then I design or introduce new thinking tool to get true feedback. (see my previous article "Any Problem? syndrome")

Whenever negative energy surfaces, it is only because I am not skilful and competent enough to effect my SPHERE OF INFLUENCE over my SPHERE OF CONCERN. This thinking will help us to go back to the learning loop of images (ideas) to new tool / technique to more disciplined practises. This process will likely help you and me to conclude that we are dealing with a world of complexity, chaos and the search for orderly pattern becomes more intense. This can only make us more humble in our approach. At the same time, this process sharpen our own thinking towards a more crystal clear mental model of our own paradigm, our own principles and values and our personal vision.

In the above discussion, we can look at negative energy as our own entanglement of images of our own mind. Not until such images are transformed to a clearer mental model and personal vision, that touches our soul and heart and that becomes the driving force, we are either forever buried in the domain of negative energy or illusion that we have accomplishments in physical changes and not mental changes.

Yours sincerely

Andrew Wong.

p/s : Words in capital letter denote emphasis and concepts that entails much more theories. For example : SYSTEM THINKING, MENTAL MODEL, SHARED VISION refer to "5th discipline by Dr. Peter Senge" METHODOLOGY & PATTERN refers to Dr. Deming's Constancy of Methodology and Theory of Variables ; POWER refers to Dr. Alvin Toffler's Powershift ; PMI refers to Dr. Edward de Bono's lateral thinking ; SPHERE OF INFLUENCE & SPHERE OF CONCERN as tool, modified from Dr. Stephen Covey's 7-Habits, etc. etc.

End.