“Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.”
Nelson Mandela
If you’re like me, and most people for that matter, you love a nice ice-cold beer.
Think back, if you can, to the first time you tasted beer. What’d ya think? Probably didn’t really like it at first and it probably took time to enjoy the taste.
Driving change is a lot like getting comfortable with the taste of beer. It takes time. And repetition.
I recently read a great new book about change, called “The Human Element”, which outlined an interesting way to look at change. In summary, the book beautifully outlines the concept of fuel vs friction.
When it comes to change, most people focus almost all their energy on adding fuel to help sell the change – usually in the form of benefits, features, examples, and case studies, etc. However, as the authors point out, people are generally comfortable with and predisposed to the status quo and, therefore, at least as much effort should be spent on reducing friction – or why people naturally resist change.
One of the core strategies outlined is to acclimate the idea. Acclimate the idea through repetition and repeated exposure, which gives people time to think about, question and, over time, internalize the change. Much like the taste of beer, the sooner people are exposed to the change, the better.
It’s an idea and concept that we wholeheartedly agree with and is foundational to our approach to helping companies embrace, implement, and internalize Flowcasting. We expose people to the taste of Flowcasting through an early, ongoing, and repeated education program.
The education program is designed to help the organization understand and talk themselves into the changes required to enable the Flowcasting process to be instilled – from Executive Leadership throughout the extended organization, including merchandise suppliers since they will also change their thinking and processes to support the new ways of working. The goal of the education program is to not only disseminate knowledge but also, importantly, to build commitment and ownership since the change is driven by the executive team with an executive level of commitment.
Questions are at the heart of the education program and when we can, we always try to have clients embrace and deliver the process education through a model we call cascade education. The model works as follows…
The design team builds and records an educational webinar that explains the new process design and demonstrates it using a series of examples, including the fundamental principles of the process. The cascade works like this: The CEO reviews the online educational course and then requests that their direct reports do the same.
Once complete, the CEO would then lead a session (supported by the design team) with their direct reports, where a series of questions would be asked and discussed – ensuring not only a healthy dialogue ensued, but also, importantly, new questions would emerge that would be answered and potentially added to the list.
At the end of the session, the project team would revise the list of questions and the CEO would outline the expectation of their direct reports; each direct report would be responsible for ensuring their teams took the online course and, more importantly, attended a facilitated session (led by each direct report) where the questions would be discussed, and answers and opinions documented. The cascade would continue down the company hierarchy until everyone had taken the education and attended a principles-and-questions-based session to help people understand, begin to convince themselves and build commitment to the change.
The cascade model of education helps increase understanding of the change and reduce change reactance because the foundation of the approach is based on questions – some are asked but most are surfaced and answered by peers, helping people persuade themselves. Instead of the project team always telling, people are asking, listening, learning, and changing their thinking.
Education does not stop with the initial cascade. Additional sessions are built, tailored to specific teams and business scenarios. They are delivered, refined, and used to help people get comfortable with the changes needed throughout the extended organization, including all merchandise suppliers – which, given the number of suppliers a retail partners with, often requires hundreds of educational sessions to help them prepare and embrace the new ways of working.
Acclimate the idea. Early, often, and ongoing.
It works for giving you the time needed to love the taste of beer.
It’s also foundational for instilling change.