The Art of Implementing Change: What Chefs Can Teach Us About Leading New Initiatives
Photo by Fabrizio Magoni on Unsplash
Introduction - How we influence the work of implementing change
As a novice cook, I’ve marveled at people who can whip up a quick meal with ease. They don’t use recipes, they speed through cutting ingredients, and (most impressive of all) they are efficient with their work.
These chefs combine artistry and experience. Once you see the shortcuts and the principles, you can start using them yourself. This is true of implementing change.
It’s hard to know what to do to make a change easier. All changes come with their own variables, so many people don’t even try to manage change. Those people are missing an opportunity.
Using the same approach that I’ve taken to making cooking a more pleasant (and quicker) experience, you can learn the basic skills and recipes necessary to implement change.
In this article, I will teach you a framework of actions that you can apply when implementing any organizational change. You will bolster the odds of your change being a success, and reduce the risk of unexpected blowback.
This approach draws on practices successful change managers have applied to their projects for years, coupled with research into how individuals adopt new behaviors. It’s also curated by my experience in over 10 years of organizational change efforts.
Step 1: Set the table for change
When I used to estimate how long it would take me to cook a recipe, I would have to double the suggested time. I thought I was just slow. It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out you need to get ready before you cook.
The fancy French word I learned for this is ‘mise en place’, or ‘everything in its place.’
You need to have everything in its place to have the needed components quick at hand. This concept applies to change, too.
Our first step is to prepare before your change journey:
State the goal with clarity
Figure out who’s involved
Follow the goal with a cogent explanation of why that goal matters
Draw the journey from where you are to where you are going, and any meaningful steps in the way
This is not an academic exercise! Much like pulling out the ingredients and reading the recipe before throwing things on the heat, you are preparing for the next steps by being able to answer questions before they come up and finding the tools you will need along the way.
Sometimes change efforts create friction —and heat.
Photo by Frederick Medina on Unsplash
Step 2: Figure out what’s in the way
If change were instant, you would declare it complete and that would be that. It’s like bestowing a title on someone or even getting married. You stand at an altar, declare you are wed and now you are married.
But the actual change extends far beyond that declaration (before and after.) There was the relationship until that point and the work that goes into maintaining and growing it after. Change, no matter how much you want it, involves effort.
Obstacles, inertia, and lack of attention prevent change from occurring. As a leader, we have to respond to those barriers as part of our plan.
To implement a change, you need to identify what things are maintaining the status quo and resisting the change.
Here are some steps for doing just that:
Who is invested in the current system and why?: Figure out the people that have strong opinions (or who should have them) about the change. Make your list and revisit it often. Review it with the team to see if anyone is missing.
What feelings or emotions are tied to the state of things now and the change?: What is the history of the current state? What are the relationships between the people involved?
How does the system handle any change: Every organization has a system to execute on change. Even if they haven’t decided on one intentionally, it exists. What is that change machinery going to allow in your system?
Identify structural or environmental factors in the way of change: Are there other factors in the organization or the community at large that might hinder your plans. Common examples are competing projects or larger organizational/leadership changes.
How are you accounting for the behavior of people: Plan for some involvement with the people experiencing the change. The basic steps are usually communication. Think of the other strategies you will bring to get people involved, including pulling them in to the project or integrating your work with existing initiatives.
Step 3: Design your approach
If you’ve done the steps above, you should see the journey and the obstacles along the way. Now you can devise the toolkit you will use to implement your change.
The toolkit comprises all the little and big interventions that will overcome the obstacles preventing you from progressing through each step in the change journey.
This is where the art of change comes in, because your approach will depend on the situation. You will need to adapt based on what you learn.
As Mark Twain said, “history doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes.” We can use experience in change programs to find common tools you might start with. Just like a chef has a toolkit of techniques to apply, you can have these ready to adapt to your own recipe.
Let’s identify common barriers and the solutions that you can institute to implement the change:
Transparency: Change that happens in darkness gets perceived in a negative way. When people are missing information, they make up their own explanations. Those explanations are usually not charitable. By being transparent, you earn the benefit of the doubt. At the very least, people listen more when you come out ahead of hard conversations, rather than trying to plaster over them later.
Communication: The more you can make the change understood, the easier it is for people to navigate. The mere exposure effect is a psychological principal that shows people have more positive responses to things they see more often. Communication provides you that exposure with your message. Don’t let someone else provide the message in an incomplete or inaccurate way.
Empathy: Change represents many things for people. Don’t ignore that fact when implementing your change. I have seen people leading a change with talk of how much better the “new” is than the “status quo”, framing that status quo as foolish in front of the very people that designed it— and then asking for their support. That lack of empathy can jeopardize all your hard work.
Behavior Modification: Any progress requiring new behaviors needs to account for how we can support them. Designing programs that make the fresh approach less burdensome and more automatic will produce better results.
Structural Redesign: If you have identified the structures that resulted in barriers to adoption of your change, you should conduct some redesign. You might not need to alter the system, but you can repurpose or redirect. The Japanese martial art of Aikido is the called the “gentle way” because it redirects the attacker’s energy away from the defender. Consider how you can redirect the resistance from your change efforts.
You should have a reason for doing everything. Identify your barriers, review your understanding of the people involved, and then create strategies that account for both. When you’ve tested them, determine what works and adjust as needed.
As you get feedback and learn from the results of those tests, you can further refine your change approach.
For example, if you create a video update, you can assess its impact by looking at the comments or analyzing the viewership analytics. This information is helpful for deciding where to focus efforts later.
The Combined Effort
We talked about the professional chef’s tactic of preparing with mise en place, but they have another important habit during the meal: frequent tasting
Many variables determine the ultimate result of a dish. I saw noted chef Jacques Pépin explain that recipes give a false sense of absolutism. You can never cook the same meal twice.
He might share a souffle recipe with a friend in another city, and it comes out different: the altitude, the ambient temperature, the humidity— these variables all act on the flavors and textures of the final meal.
The art of cooking, he says, is to acknowledge, adapt, and create something fit for that situation, with those ingredients, and your tastes. That means you have to sample your dish during the cooking process and adapt.
Just as a chef acknowledges the changing variables of their meal, as a leader implementing change, you must note what is shaping your efforts. Test the reality of your work often and make adjustments.
You should know the recipes for change, but be ready to adapt when the environment exerts its influence back on your work.
Learning from the people you are helping is one of the best ways to accomplish this. Flour can’t talk to you. People can.
Even when stakeholders can’t tell you what they are feeling or why, their input provides you with a mosaic that is helpful in adjusting your plans.We can’t truly know others, but we should try to understand them as much as possible (and do so with humility.)
That layer of insight, projected over all the steps you have learned, will help your initiative overcome organizational inertia and the personal fear of the unknown.
Conclusion - It’s your turn
Even when we aren’t skilled in the kitchen, we can follow a recipe, take friendly advice, and go slow. The results can surprise us.
You can learn from the skill of others, and even if you have to adapt based on your unique circumstances with substitutions and adjustments, you can make something great.
But you need to be willing to try, and to learn from what the feedback is telling you.
To implement the change you need, show up, follow the steps outlined above, and be willing to listen. The most meaningful changes take work. Respect that by planning to see them through.
Callout: Prompt: This is the start. If you’d like to learn more, I’d encourage you to sign up for the free course I’ve created for pitching your ideas. An important component of implementing any change.
