Beyond Town Halls

Last month Amazon launched its latest innovation – Amazon Go – a technology-enabled convenience store that is more convenient than ever.

On Amazon Go’s opening night, I found myself right next door for a board meeting and wanted to check out just how game-changing the experience really is. Not to mention I needed to pick up a few snacks to share. There are smart shelves that can tell when something has been grabbed. There are “computer vision” surveillance machines posing as ceiling tiles. There are no cashiers.  As I walked out of the store with what felt like shoplifted snacks, I couldn’t help but think to myself, “This is insane! There’s no way Amazon pulled this off overnight.”

Sure enough, Amazon took roughly five years to make the concept public.

When it comes to leading change, Amazon is no newbie. Time and again they have shown the world that successfully realizing aspired to change requires a fail-fast, iterative approach. Their approach to Amazon Go was no different. The behemoth of a company could have just built the store, declared a new way of doing business, opened the doors, and worked the kinks out on the back end – but Bezos and Amazon don’t work that way.

When facing organization change, we all too often see the negative effects of leaders who choose to simply flip the switch. They misguidedly believe that declaring change and leading it are one in the same. For example, a senior leader wants to use an all-hands meeting to inform BU leaders of his decision to divest its historically sacred, yet underperforming businesses. Executives use a Town Hall as the sole opportunity to inform the company and inspire confidence in its new strategy. A boss ‘lets go’ of their employee by giving them a packet of information about their future. When it comes to change, information is a must. Yet those in charge of change misguidedly believe that “If they knew what I know they would understand it and believe its efficacy the way I do.”

In our personal lives, we’re profoundly aware that information about change doesn’t equate to effectively managing it. For example, when your boss informs you that the business requirements have changed and the skills and abilities you have spent the last 20 years building, no longer cut it in your industry. Or after 40 years of a seemingly decent marriage, your parents inform you at the family holiday party that they’re getting a divorce. Or perhaps your spouse’s commanding officer calls to inform you that your wife was shot down in enemy fire. The information is helpful in that you know more than you did before, but it does absolutely nothing to help you successfully transition to your new reality.

Yes, from a purely informational standpoint, losing a spouse in the line of duty is very different than being told your company has a new strategic direction. However, the emotional response and ensuing journey from current to future state is very similar. Underneath it all are the emotional feelings of loss.

Perhaps you are an early tech adopter, find yourself reflecting on Amazon Go and thinking, “Yeah, but what is lost when there are no lines and no checkout?” In my opinion, the loss of the customer/cashier experience, which is central to this industry step change, is a very real feeling. Amazon could have bet the farm on its tagline no lines, no checkout, no seriously but they knew that pithy information wouldn’t be enough. From what I observed, they had (and continue to have) an equal or greater number of physical staff (greeting, restocking shelves, answering questions) on the floor as traditional convenience stores do to address the personal implications of such a change.

A change leader that only utilizes an information dump overlooks the most important part of change – it is personal. Those directly impacted by the change need more than information, they need a process to help them move from current to future state. They need to be prepared, ahead of time, for feeling like a shoplifter. In the best of cases, change management creates an excitement around becoming the shoplifter – it did for me. Effective change management leadership is just that; those in charge of the change, guiding those impacted by it, to journey effectively through it.

To fully help move leaders and ultimately your organization through change, you MUST make it personal on three fronts: Scope, Commitment, and Mechanics. The following questions will help those leading change, personalize their leadership of the change and ultimately the outcome of it.

  • Scope. What is the degree of difficulty to pull the change off? How many people will be impacted? Who specifically, will be impacted? How severe will the impact feel to them?
  • Commitment. For those, the change impacts, how aligned and ready are they for the change? Will there be perceived winners and losers? What’s greater, the pain of the current state or the pain of change?
  • Mechanics. Is there a change plan that assumes a journey versus an information dump? Does the plan account for the scope and degree of commitment? Is the plan built on creating a unique experience for each individual or group of individuals’ impact? To what extent are change efforts integrated with other business initiatives and changes? Are metrics in place to clearly indicate progress (or stagnation) during the journey to current state?

Certainly, Amazon excelled on all three of these fronts when launching Amazon Go. However, if I had to guess, when bringing Amazon Go to market (and the reason they spent five years and launched a year late) they were experts in the third. They managed the mechanics of the transition. They had their plan, resourced it accordingly, evaluated their metrics and evolved it internally before they brought it to the public, which is most likely why I was in and out in under 5 minutes and didn’t miss a cashier one bit.

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