I had reason earlier this week to dredge up my (infamous) hooper analogy for a certain type of organizational change communication campaign. At work we are embarking on an ambitious initiative that will require a lot of people in leadership roles throughout the entire global organization to change their own behavior regarding aspects of client engagement and inspire similar change in their people. This is much easier said than done. The hooper analogy my handy way of describing the best model for making that happen.
Broadly speaking, there are three main types of change communication initiatives in business organizations.
The first is an awareness campaign. This is where there is a change that everyone in the organization should know about, but which may not require any action from them. This would include new top executive personnel, especially in the C suite, which may not require changing a staffer’s day-to-day activities but they should be aware of. Or a shift in company strategy, where everyone should understand that, for example, there is a big push to increase market share in Asia and employees need to start aligning their thinking.
The second is built around compliance. This is where the change directly impacts everyone in the company and they need to be both aware of it and to adjust to it. One day things are certain way, the next another way, and there is no option not to change. An example is a technology change, such as a new application for internal text messaging or financial reporting. Compliance is 100 percent since the old system is no longer available, but people need to know and often to be trained. Another example is a change to the brand colors, where everyone must start using the new palette in their publications and sales materials by a certain date. Compliance in this situation is compelled (and policed) by the teams that serve as gatekeepers to publication, such as marketing, communications, design, and risk review.
The third type is the trickiest. This is desired, even mandatory, behavioral change where there is no convenient way to assure compliance. This sits sort of in the middle of the previous two, in that it involves far more commitment than just awareness, but falls short of being able to compel or police the change. An example might be that business development and client engagement teams are now asked to monitor and assess certain metrics they didn’t pay attention to previously. Another might be connected to wellness and work-life balance in an attempt to reduce burnout and employee turnover, such as asking everyone to get more sleep, take all their allotted vacation time, and not do work over the weekend.
What makes this type so hard is that the behavioral change being sought is not something that can just be checked off a list. It needs to be embraced and internalized. Even if people say they are keeping an eye on a metric, or trying to get more rest, they may not be. They might be just giving lip service to the goal. Or they are trying in a half-hearted manner just to satisfy their manager. Or they are treating it in such an isolated way there is never a connection to the business, and to business outcomes. It’s just spinning wheels until the executives go away to find some other new idea to push.
What is needed is for key people to understand why those metrics matter to the bottom line, or why wellness makes a difference in personal health as well as business success. And those key people will then make a point of changing their behavior and start seeing results. And, in turn, be evangelists for the change among their peers and their teams, spreading the word and making the change viral. Eventually the new behavior becomes part of the culture, part of how company personnel do their work every day.
This third type is where the hooper analogy comes into play; it is a metaphor for how this works in an organization. It is the name we gave a form of tag when I was in Roosevelt Grade School at the corner of Markley Street and West Sterigere Street in Norristown, Pennsylvania. Why we called this version of tag hooper I have no idea; like all kids playground games, no one ever taught us how to play, or explained what it was called, it was simply there, as if it had always been there, and everyone knew it. I know similar versions are called blob tag. We also played other versions of tag, such as what is typically known as prisoner. But hooper was my favorite and my most fondly remembered, since it was the most fun and chaotic.
Roosevelt was a big grade school with a lot of students, from kindergarten through sixth. And we had a huge playground. In other words, a lot of kids with a lot of space to run around. (Kind of like the modern international business of today.) For a game of tag during recess we might easily have two dozen kids playing, or more. This made hooper ideal.
To play, one person is chosen ‘it’. The others – let’s say the other 23 – are not ‘it’, and they scatter to the far reaches of the playground, hide among other students playing jump rope or whatever, or try to become invisible behind the sycamore tree near the northeast wall. It’s one against 23. The person who is ‘it’ then tries to find one of the other 23 and tag them. When a kid is tagged, they also become ‘it’; now there are two against 22. Then it becomes five or six against 19 or 18, and soon a tipping point is reached, where the advantage is completely with those that are ‘it’, and the rest fall very quickly.
It was madness and a lot of fun. (And not to belabor the point, but it still fascinates me that there is no apparent reason why this game would have been called hooper, but there you are.)
Now, if you were ‘it’, it would not have been a winning strategy to start running around willy-nilly immediately after the other kids scattered, hoping that by chance you might come across one of the fastest not-‘it’ kids and get a lucky tag in. They’ll see you coming a mile away, and you’ll just get exhausted quickly, and run out of time with failure to make everyone ‘it’ before recess was over.
Instead, the best strategy was to be intentional. As quickly as you could, you needed to identify the kids that you had the best chance of turning to your side immediately, whether because you were faster than they were, or they weren’t paying attention to you for a moment.
This may seem counter-intuitive to you. “If they were slower than you,” you might be thinking, “they would be slower than a lot of other kids, so wouldn’t it be better to target the fastest ones?”
The answer is no, because this is a numbers game all the way out. You need to turn people to your side ASAP. And you need a bunch of them so you can widely distribute the ‘it’ activities.
These early converts don’t have to be the all-stars, or the best performers. Keep in mind that the all-stars and best performers will be the hardest ones to tag, since they are the fastest and their ego makes them the most committed to not being turned. Because of this, you probably shouldn’t focus on them until the end. That’s okay, because the tipping point will come, and those all-stars will be overwhelmed. What is more, it is very likely that some all-stars and best performers will be turned organically, in the normal course of things, again because numbers are on your side. When that happens your ‘it’ gang gets a nice boost.
That’s how you dominated Hooper when you were chosen ‘it’.
It is also how you best execute the third type of change communication initiative, the behavioral change. You need to identify the leaders, the influencers, the well-placed individuals, who you know you can convince to embrace the new goals and objectives, the new actions, the new behaviors. Put your energies there, with these selected individuals, and make your engagement with them deeper and more meaningful; you want to add true believers to your team, not just people acquiescing.
In the beginning of the initiative don’t spend any significant amount of energy on awareness, that will just be time and money wasted. And don’t target the biggest cheeses, just because they have the authority, if you have any reason to think they’ll resist the change. You could bang your head against that brick wall for months, trying to get them on board. It doesn’t matter how much authority or influence they have if you can’t convert them. At the beginning of the behavioral change communication campaign you need low-hanging fruit, as much as you can pick.
These true believers will then begin modeling the behavior, and will pass along the message to the teams under their control, or subject to their influence. Inevitably portion of these team members will understand what is going on, will grasp the business value, will “get it,” and become converts and evangelists themselves. And so on. With numbers the influence to change will start to spread more widely, and will connect up with other pockets of change begun by other early adopters.
Eventually, if you keep the pressure on, if you maintain the messaging campaign, and continue targeting the most likely converts among the audiences that remain, you will create enough true believers and evangelists that there will be a tipping point, and the rest will take care of itself. The influence to change will start to work its way up the hierarchy as well as down. Those big cheeses will be overwhelmed and will be turned. It’s a numbers game all the way out.