Bas is a really smart and nice guy who asked me some pretty pointed questions about flexible personal development and my compass direction method of planning (or should I say, anti-planning?). A few of the highlights include:

1. Why personal development can make organizational change easier
2. How to “bootstrap” your own personal development
3. Why flexible, frequent planning is the most effective method for most organizations

He recorded our conversation and posted it on YouTube. You can watch it below [note: if you're reading this in a RSS reader, you may have to click through to the blog to see the video], but be sure to visit Bas’ post to join in the discussion on this really cool subject.

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The Big 3 – Shining Examples of Good Change Management Practices

By now we’ve all seen video gems just like the one above, even if we were trying to go on a media fast. The CEOs of the Big 3 U.S. automakers – General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler – showed up in Washington on November 18 begging for $25 billion and had essentially no plan for how they were going to use that money to make their businesses sustainable. Unsurprisingly, they got a big, fat $0, but now they’re back (but will be arriving in hybrid vehicles, not corporate jets) and have “plans” for how they’re going to use $34 billion to shore up their business and hope to survive for another year.

(Note: If you’re not much for rants, skip the next paragraph or two.)

As a native of the Upper Midwest, I’ve been watching the Big 3 flounder for decades now. When I was a kid in the early ’80s the companies all went through their first huge rounds of layoffs, devastating communities like Flint and Detroit, Michigan. I saw them put out garbage products like this. I also saw how the Midwest’s economy is deeply, inextricably linked to the health of those 3 companies.

Essentially, if the Big 3 fail, it will effect everyone in Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, and Ontario, Canada (and lots of people in many other places) directly or indirectly. That is because the Big 3 are the largest direct or indirect (through suppliers and other vendors) employers in many, many communities. They are also the biggest taxpayers to state and local governments. If their pension and health care coverage ceases, hundreds of thousands of retirees will be forced to seek public assistance. Laid off workers will present huge burdens to the public and nonprofit social welfare systems at the state and national levels. Plus, there’s all the ripple effect on the national economy. If all 3 were to go out of business (unlikely, but possible), the U.S. economy could loose 3 million jobs and $250 million in personal income within 3 years. More than likely, my own father would be among the ranks of the unemployed. He’s a tool and die maker and works at a shop that relies on Ford for most of its business.

(Note: Okay, it’s probably safe now.) 

Now that the Big 3 are all on the brink of bankruptcy, I want to share with you some ways that you and your company can grow up to be just like the Big 3. I don’t want these guys to fail, but they only have themselves to blame if it happens. I have combed my memory, the Internet, and little bit of change management material and identified the following 5 ways that you can create a bloated, obsolete dinosaur of a company.

1) Build Protectionist Walls Around Your Business. The Big 3 have worked with Michigan lawmakers for years to put legislation in place that attempted to protect them from competition. They have lobbied for tariffs on imported cars, fought increased fuel efficiency standards, and pursued subsidy after subsidy.

Why this is bad: The Big 3 have been classic change resistors and the lawmakers who helped them haven’t done them any favors. By fighting fuel economy standards, they have been attempting to drive the market, rather than allowing the market to drive their product offerings. Instead of trying to build products that would be more attractive to buyers, they have focused on forcing foreign car makers to price their cars higher, while trying to keep their costs a bit lower through tax breaks. It was inevitable that companies like Toyota and Honda would find ways to out-innovate them and build good cars that people actually want to buy.

2) Take Advantage of Customer Loyalty by Building Lousy Products. In the 1970′s and ’80′s the Big 3 turned out some god-awful heaps of metal. Trust me, my first car was a 1978 Buick LeSabre. I know junk when I drive it.) Coincidently, this was at the same time that they could have capitalized on HUGE customer loyalty from the WWII generation and their Baby Boomer children. Instead, they forced those customers to look elsewhere for well-made products.

Why this is bad: Reputation is everything. It takes a long time to build, and an even longer time to rebuild after its been damaged. Even though the 2008 Consumer Reports most reliable cars list includes many Big 3 products, most people still think of American made cars as less reliable than German or Japanese machines. In fact, Big 3 product quality has been increasing for almost 20 years, but they get very little credit for it.

3) Assume the Future Will Be Just Like the Past. The profit model at all three of the Big 3 seems to be based on the thought that huge trucks and SUVs worked well in 1995, so they’ll work well in 2015. Well, gee. Anyone ever heard of Peak Oil? Even though gas prices have backed off from the $4 gallon of this summer, it seems like people have realized that fuel efficiency matters and is going to matter until a real alternative energy source becomes available. The Big 3 waited WAAAAY to long to start developing appropriate technology to address these issues and now they’re so far behind that it will take MORE government subsidies to get them making competitive hybrid and efficient conventionally powered vehicles to meet market demand.

Why this is bad: Look, it doesn’t take a futurist to figure out that things are going to change. Read some freakin’ newspapers!

4) Wait Until a Crisis Hits to Try to Change. Sure, the Big 3 were slooowly retooling their product lines to produce more attractive products, but they needed to be hustling, not crawling. Now, with the contraction of the consumer credit markets and an all-out recession spreading internationally, they are well and truly screwed. The Big 3 were not prepared to handle any slack in their sales and now they have to try to change rapidly without the money to pull it off.

Why this is bad: The best time to change is when things are going well. Every try to steer a car with a blown tire? That’s pretty much the same situation that the Big 3 are in. Regular processes for surveying market conditions and changing to meet those conditions – or innovate ahead of them – ensure that a company is producing desirable products. Instead, the Big 3 are going to have to scramble to bring something to market that people will want to buy.

5) Blame Others, Beg for Money, and Reject Sound Advice. I would have embedded this video with GM President Fritz Henderson, but CNN won’t let me. In short, he is completely rejecting the idea of GM filing for bankruptcy despite the fact that this move has been suggested by many people who know the auto industry well. Now, no one likes the thought of their company going bankrupt, but in this situation it may be the best option available. What Fritz doesn’t realize is that it isn’t his choice anymore. It’s now up to Congress since another “No” to their funding request could put them under in a matter of months.

Why this is bad: As mom always said, “Beggars can’t be choosers.” It’s way too late for GM (or Chrysler, or Ford) to negotiate from a position of strength. They better just cross their fingers and pray that they get some cash to keep themselves solvent for a while longer. Bankruptcy may or may not be a good option, but that is now up to the people that write the checks. In my view, the current publicity campaign reflects the same insulated thinking that the Big 3 have practiced for decades.

Okay, enough of me ranting. I know many of you have opinions of these issues, and I would LOVE to hear them. Let’s discuss in the comments section.

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1. How to Make Lasting Changes
2. From Unconscious to Conscious
3. Contemplation & Procrastination
4. Preparation & Planning to Act
5. 3, 2, 1… Action!
6. Maintaining the Change
7. Summing it All Up

If you’ve stuck with this series for this long, thank you and congratulations! I hope you’ve learned a lot about what is takes to create real, lasting change. When you think back on changes that you’ve made in the past can you identify the following stages? (Here’s a hint: they don’t always happen in a neat, linear way):

1. Precontemplation. These were the “bad old days” before you realized that change had to happen. For some period of time – maybe your whole life up to that point – you stayed stuck in your pre-change ways and may have even been happy there. Then, you discovered that there was a better way to do things or to live and you advanced to…
2. Contemplation. At this point you started thinking that you needed to make a change. Maybe you started to feel emotional about your situation and saw ways to make it better. Maybe others started pointing out a need for change and you began to agree with them. Eventually you made your mind up that you were going to change and you started…
3. Preparation. When you began making serious plans and doing the background work you needed to begin a change in earnest, you were preparing. You might have done some mental preparation, visualization, and positive thinking. Maybe you enrolled in a class and learned the skills that you needed to change. You could have purchased some supplies or removed some obstacles. When all of this prep work was done you moved to…
4. Action. During action you expended the energy you needed to change the direction in which you were traveling. You got up early, or stayed up late, and started the work to create the change that you desire. Action lasts as long as it takes to get adjusted to the change and progress to…
5. Maintenance. The final stage of change is maintenance, where the change moves from being very active to being just the way you do things. At a minimum, it takes a person at least 21 days to establish a new behavioral habit, but many changes require even longer to become maintenance activities. When you are in maintenance you gradually take steps to ensure that you don’t regress to your previous state. You “burn your bridges” and put new systems and routines in place to make it easier to remain on the new path.

What Next?

There are only three things you can do when you are in the maintenance stage of change. You can:

• Continue to maintain, allowing your new state to become the status quo,
• Regress to your previous state,
• Or, decide to change some more and begin the process all over again.

Most of us want to avoid regressing, but it does happen – especially when trying to change long ingrained habits such as smoking or poor eating habits. If regression happens, the best course of action is to move back to action as quickly as possible, taking some time for better preparation if needed.

Eventually, many of us want to improve on the changes that we’ve made, so we enter into another round of the stages that change. This can be a really positive thing, since much change is iterative – it is best done gradually. For example, I might want to change my diet from an omnivore diet to a vegetarian diet. Once I’ve adjusted to that, I might want to eat more complex carbohydrates and less sugar, or I might give up dairy products. It’s hard to make all of these changes at once, so it can be helpful to make one change at a time, give yourself a chance to adjust, then tackle the next stage of the change.

Finally, it’s perfectly fine to continue to maintain the change you’ve made, assuming that you are getting positive results. In fact, it’s probably a good thing to give yourself a break after making an intense change. Give yourself a chance to reach an equilibrium again, since trying to change too many things in too rapid of succession can lead to change fatigue and ultimately cause resistance to change.

A Promise and a Request

If you’ve found this series valuable, I have good news for you. I am currently working on turning the series into an ebook that I will be giving away for free on this site. I am currently working on creating some additional content for the ebook and plan to include some worksheets and more practically focused suggestions to help you make real, lasting changes in your life – but I need your help!

Is there anything that you would like to see in an expanded version of this series? Are there questions you have that I didn’t answer? Do you feel that I skimmed over some parts of the process and would like to see more details about anything?

Please let me know what you would like to learn either by leaving a comment below, or sending an email to maria (at) neverthesamerivertwice (dot) com.

To make sure you hear about the release of the ebook, sign up to receive automatic updates from this site using an RSS feed reader or in your email.

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1. How to Make Lasting Changes
2. From Unconscious to Conscious
3. Contemplation & Procrastination
4. Preparation & Planning to Act
5. 3, 2, 1… Action!
6. Maintaining the Change
7. Summing it All Up

Congratulations! You have done all of the hard work of creating lasting change. You’ve successfully planned and prepared and you’ve taken action and stuck with it long enough for the change to become a part of daily life. Now you’ve progressed to the final stage of change – maintenance.

The maintenance stage begins at the point where the change becomes a habit or a standard operating procedure and continues until you are ready to make a change to something that will replace your new status quo. For example, you could change from an omnivore to a vegetarian and remain in maintenance with that until you decide to become a vegan or an omnivore again.

During maintenance you will focus your efforts on reinforcing your new status quo and resisting temptations that can lead to relapse.

When Does Maintenance Begin?

Research suggests that it takes a minimum of 21 days of consistently applied effort to form a new habit and reach the maintenance stage. If you haven’t reached a minimum of 21 days of practicing a new behavior without any relapses, you’re not in maintenance yet. Reread the section on action and keep applying those principles until you’ve formed new habits.

For organizations, there are no hard and fast guidelines for how long action needs to last, but it is generally much longer than for individuals. This is because an organizational change is actually a combination of the changes all of the individuals in the organization must go through. Since each individual will progress through all of the stages at different rates, the organization can’t begin maintenance until everyone who needs to be on board with the change has proceeded to maintenance. This can take 6 months, a year, or even more depending on the scale of the change.

How Long Does Maintenance Last?

The maintenance stage of change lasts from the end of the action stage of change until relapse, or until you or your organization decide to create another change. In terms of a timeline, this could be one day or it could be for the rest of your life. For example, someone who has quit smoking could relapse and become re-addicted with just one cigarette, or he or she could remain a nonsmoker for a lifetime.

Relapse happens quite often, especially when trying to change ingrained habits and addictions. The good news is that people rarely relapse all the way to the precontemplation stage where they give up entirely on making a change. Usually, people relapse to either the contemplation (I’ve got to quit smoking again) or preparation (I’ll start my diet again on Monday) stage.

Maintenance can also end when you or your organization decides to make another change that builds upon or compliments the change you’ve already made. For example, you could now be a vegetarian and decide that you want to give up dairy products or processed foods. This is a large enough change that you may have to start the stages of change all over again. Fortunately you’re current diet (vegetarian) is so habitual that you don’t really have to expend any effort maintaining it, so you can concentrate on the new changes.

Ideally, if you seek continuous improvement either in your daily life or in your organization, the change cycle will look something like the diagram to the left. You will go through a process of change, which can be difficult and generally takes a lot of energy. Then you will remain in maintenance for a period of time long enough to create some rest and allow you to recharge your batteries. Then, when you are feeling a little too comfortable you will identify the next area that you wish to change.

In this sense, the change process is never “finished.” Some people find this upsetting or burdensome, but I see it as a way to keep learning and making life more exciting. Imagine if you only had to change each area of your life once. It would be like buying a house, remodeling it to your liking and then living there for the rest of your life without doing any updates. Some people choose to do this, but most of us like a new coat of paint or a few new pieces of furniture from time to time. The good news is that you get to decide the pace of change in your own life. There’s no need to keep up with the Jonses here!

How to Maintain a Change

In a lot of ways, the maintenance stage of change is the most difficult part. It can seem like a long and difficult task to keep up a new habit or an organizational change over the long haul. While it may be true that the action stage and the early part of maintenance require a lot of vigilance and energy, any change gets easier to maintain over time. I have been a vegetarian for over 10 years now and I usually don’t even think about eating meat. Very rarely I’ll still get a craving for bacon (that may never go away!) or some other odd dish, but 99.9% of the time it’s just not part of my life anymore. Any major change will become like that after a while.

Until you get to a place where the change that you’ve made is just your new reality, there are some ways that you can reinforce the change and keep your energy up.

• Review Progress. Do a regular review of the progress you and your colleagues have made. Have a weekly meeting, keep charts and other visual reminders of progress. Keep a daily journal documenting your challenges and successes. Be honest with yourself and identify areas that still need work. See how you’ve changed over time and enjoy the progress that you have made.
• Reward Good Behavior. Humans generally pursue pleasure and avoid pain. One of the reasons that change is often hard is because it causes some short term pain. Make sure to give yourself a pleasurable reward at frequent time intervals if you stick to a change. Be careful not to reward yourself with something related to your old, bad behavior! Don’t reward a successful week of dieting with a slice of chocolate cake. Instead, identify something that you really enjoy that has no relation to the change. Reward good dietary behavior with a manicure or the book you’ve been wanting.
• Burn Your Bridges. Reinforce your new change by taking steps to make it difficult to relapse to your old state. Get rid of your “fat” clothes. Make sure everyone has removed your organization’s old bookeeping software from their computers. Stop talking to friends that you used drugs with. We all dig ruts in our daily lives that keep us locked into old behavior. Do everything you can to fill in the rut you want to escape and then throw away your shovel!

Maintenance is the point at which your change transforms into your life. It is a long process, but in many ways it is the most important stage. Be sure to treat it as a part of the stages of change and make sure that you enjoy all of the gains that you’ve made along the way. Move at a pace that is helpful to you without being overwhelming. Above all else, feel good that you have taken steps that most people don’t consciously take!

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1. How to Make Lasting Changes
2. From Unconscious to Conscious
3. Contemplation & Procrastination
4. Preparation & Planning to Act
5. 3, 2, 1… Action!
6. Maintaining the Change
7. Summing it All Up

You spent some time in contemplation. You’ve prepared your plan. Everything is in place for your change. All you have to do is … Act! Pretty simple, isn’t it? If I wanted to be flippant I could end this post right now.

But, wait. What’s that you say? Action is the hardest part of change?

Right you are.

Human beings are really good at procrastinating. It’s such an issue that there is an entire industry churning out motivational material, affirmations, lifehacks and even ways to outsource all of the things that you’re going to procrastinate anyway! Yet we still continue to avoid taking actions that we truly think will be helpful to us.

As one example, in the time I’ve been working on this post, I’ve managed to check my email (several times), make a big pot of soup, get some laundry done, and watch some bad television. As you can see, I’m not immune to the procrastination bug even though I’m well aware of the psychology that causes it.

By the time you or your organization has reached the action stage of change, you are convinced that you need to make a change and you have confidence in your ability to do so. You’ve made the needed preparations. Now it’s time to enact your plans. So why are you frozen? And how can you break through that feeling and accomplish real change?

Action. Change with a Big “C”

The action stage of change is where activity becomes visible. In the previous stages, most of the work taking place is in the mind of the individual, or is in the form of preliminary planning. The action stage is where all of the observable, measurable results start to take place.

This stage begins at the first concrete action – the first workout, nicotine patch, or policy rewrite – and continues until the desired change is accomplished. For ongoing changes such as lifestyle alterations, action continues until the new behavior becomes a habit or a standard operating procedure. At that point you move into the maintenance stage which lasts anywhere from months to years until the rest of your life, depending on the circumstances.

Because this stage is so visible, action is what we tend to think about when we think of the word change. For most of us change = doing something. So why do we resist taking action with so much energy? There are a few common reasons. Each of these could be a book by itself, but I will try to explain them concisely so that we can all get busy on our changes!

• Fear of Failure. Fear of Success. Completing a change has consequences. Generally, the larger the change, the greater the consequences. Some of these consequences are positive (you get healthier) and some are negative (men start staring at your newly thin body). In either event, you may have a fear of failing and not getting the positives. You could also have a fear of succeeding and having to deal with the negatives. Your internal dialogue about these fears can keep you from taking action.
• This Stuff Seems Hard. Some of the steps you have to take to change effectively may seem very difficult. To loose a significant amount of weight you may have to change your diet completely (no peanut butter cups), and keep it that way for a long time. To really change a company you may have to fire people who don’t fit into your new vision. These unpleasant realities are legitimate parts of a change process. Your motivation to change has to be strong enough to push you past these.
• Moving a Body at Rest. Human behavior has a lot in common with a freight train. It’s hard to get started and even harder to tun, but once it gets going, it gets easier and easier to keep it moving. However, the initial step of getting the train going can be really daunting.

Three Ways to (Temporarily) Overcome Procrastination

Let’s be honest. I cannot stop you from procrastinating. Entire industries of self-help books cannot stop you from procrastinating. You will always procrastinate to one degree or another. However, there are lots of ways to temporarily get past your blocks and start acting.

1. Use Your Momentum. By passing through the contemplation and preparation stages with energy and focus, you have gained some momentum that will help you power through some of the blocks and objections you may have to parts of the change. You’ve already done some of the hard work of getting the freight train rolling. By moving quickly (are you sensing a theme by now) to implement the initial steps of your change you keep your momentum going.
2. Take Mircrosteps. There are many changes that require hard work, but they usually don’t require all the hard work to be done at once. Strategize ways that you can break up the change into very small steps. Then get started one walk, one cigarette, one procedure at a time. I’ve used this technique myself on long runs. If I’m getting tired, I’ll concentrate on just reaching the next telephone pole, then the next, then the next. Do this enough and you will make lots of progress.
3. Keep Your Motivation High. Constantly remind yourself of why you decided to make a change. What are the consequences of not completing the change? What pain will you have to go through? How great will it feel when you have accomplished your goal? Change can be a long road. By keeping yourself focused on your motivation you can keep going until you start to see the benefits of the change.

What’s Next?

Most of us think of change as being done at the action stage. We make our plan, we act on it, end of story. This isn’t actually the case. Think about it this way. Would you buy a car and then never get the oil changed? (If you said yes, this series probably isn’t for you ) Like cars, most changes require some ongoing Maintenance. That’s what we’ll cover in the next part of this series.

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