Richard H. Carson
Appearances
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
So I took my own experience as a manager of organizations, as a consultant working with organizations and as an academic who learned about these different models and applied all of that to this particular model that we're talking about.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
Yes. For the most part, even though a lot of these models were developed earlier, there wasn't a lot of interest until the book In Search of Excellence came out. That really made a big difference. That was the beginning of people, mainly in the business arena, looking at it and saying, maybe there's a better way to do this.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
Almost a decade later, in search of excellence, kind of more into reinventing government, which was another book that was the one that both Clinton and Gore picked up on in terms of implementing what that was about. So the whole idea of, I think the word reinventing is really key there.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
The whole idea of changing your organization and the fact that you, given what happens externally and internally that forces change, It means you just can't ignore it. You shouldn't ignore it. It's like you said, change for the sake of change is ridiculous. But understanding the forces internally and externally and how to deal with all of a sudden became very, I guess, popular.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
Yeah, exactly.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
It's People Sustained Organizational Change Management. And I use the word people very on purpose because organizations consist of people and it's people that are the problem, people that are the solution. And the only way you're going to sustain change is to create that mindset in the people who work in the organization. I'll give you really an example.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
Before I wrote the book, when I was implementing change in my organization, I did two things that really helped. Consultants will give you a set of recommendations. They'll give it something in a binder and here you go. And a lot of people will just put that on a shelf. So the trick is to be successful is how do you maintain that? So two things you can do.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
Number one is to develop a multi-year strategic plan that dedicates accountability, resources, do affect the change. The other thing I did was I created a position of change manager. Now, you go into organizations and you aren't going to find a lot of titles of change manager.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
And this particular person, this woman, basically, I gave her the authority to walk around the organization and say to individual managers, Okay, you are given this task to be done on this date with these resources. How are you doing? And she would keep on. They had to meet those benchmarks. And so the security plan was implemented, and there was a person making it happen.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
It can't really be the manager because the manager has other things to worry about. but you need somebody whose job is to change manager. Having a multi-year strategic plan with resources and a change manager really makes a big difference.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
It's similar in that the three phases are to initiate an organizational assessment, to implement organizational change, and you're ready to maintain that change. So that's basically the same as Kurt Lewin's model. The detail on it is one of the things that's really trying to emphasize that he didn't touch on is the human aspect. You have to really have engaged people in the process.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
I like to characterize my kind of philosophy as carpe diem or seize the day. And I say that because I have not, even though my background is in urban planning, I haven't planned my career and taking a particular trajectory, I basically seized on opportunities, career opportunities, as they presented themselves. So my career is, I started out wanting to be an archaeologist.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
And I go into a lot of detail from the very beginning to the very end about how you use human resources. You need to obviously have buy-in from the leadership, but you have to have a process by which you engage the entire organization and everybody in it, give them a role in making the process successful.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
And a lot of times what'll happen is that a consultant comes in, makes recommendations, the leadership basically goes to the managers and says, this is it, do it. And no one has had any input and they're basically clueless in terms of what happens. And a lot of times what happens is it won't work because the consultant didn't dig down in the organization to find out what the real problem was.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
Or even if you knew what the problem was, how do you successfully implement it? I'm very concerned about a lot of consultants, okay, are basically selling a product over and over and over to different organizations. And they go in basically with a mindset that Okay, this is it. This is what you're going to do. This is what I'm going to tell you.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
Xerox, this is pretty, actually, I'd say funny, but actually it's sad. Somebody actually gave a report to an organization and they just basically Xeroxed, changed the name, but forgot Mystical. So the organization is reading this recommendation. All of a sudden, this other company name starts showing up. It's just like, How embarrassing is that?
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
But not totally undercut their credibility, but every exercise has to be unique. And it has to basically be very sensitive to the people in the organization. And you really, it's important to really listen. And that's why the initial phases of the model are sitting down with Managers, line staff, stakeholders, if you were in a corporation, be consumers as well as suppliers.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
So really sitting down with those people and listening to what they're saying before you come to any conclusion at all.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
I'll go through the 10 steps, basically. First steps, number one is first steps, problem identification, scoping out the problem. Second is there's a kickoff that explains the program, the process, everybody in the organization. So you don't just send out an email. You sit down with each of the organization's working groups and take them through the process and
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
get their buy-in, get them to understand that change can be difficult, but they will be part of the process and will have input all through the process. Then there's data collection and assessment. This is probably the most boring part because you end up reading a lot of annual reports. It's a lot of statistical analysis, media, press information, Anything that's written or data driven.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
Then you go out to the stakeholders and meet with the individual stakeholders, whether they're vendors, consumers, whatever, however they touch the organization. You get that feedback, then you go next into the actual organization change. And I won't go through that in detail, but that's the diagnostic portion of the model.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
And what I ended up doing was I ended up using diagnostic model by the National Institute of Health. which was a medical diagnosis process. And what I found was that organizations and people are remarkably the same in terms of their ailments and symptoms and how you can diagnose them because organizations are made up of people. And so I've used that diagnostic model Then you implement the change.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
But once I realized it was really about digging in dirt, I moved on from that into architecture. Architecture led me into urban planning. Urban planning eventually led me into what is called community development, which is an umbrella for engineering, plan review, urban planning, a variety of kind of disciplines under one umbrella, and eventually into consulting.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
There's process mapping, re-engineering. Then you lock in change. There's a number of ways to lock the change in, from executive leadership coaching to staff training, TQM, things like that. And then finally, you maintain the model. And that's, like I said, you can do that through multi-year strategic plans and budgeting primarily.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
But you also need a feedback loop that constantly goes back on an annual basis and kind of looks at the benchmarks that you set to see if you are achieving those and why not.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
So every time something came along that I found interesting, I pursued it. And I've been very happy with that.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
Urban planning is part of it is that I've always been interested in community and organizations are basically a community of people. And so I've looked community at a scale and I'll give you an example. I was the regional planning director for the Portland metro area of 1.5 million people.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
And in that job, we created plans for land use, solid waste management, wastewater, open space, a variety of really large plans. That is like a maximum scale of community. And for a while, I was an advisor to off and on to three governors of Oregon in both land use, environment, and economic development. So that's even a larger scale of community.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
But also the most enjoyment I ever had was I was the head, I guess, the planning director for a community of 25,000 people. And I really enjoyed that because I would walk into on a grocery store and somebody would stop me and say, can you get a stop sign on the corner of X and Y? Wow, let me look into that. I can actually do something real.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
Then later on, when I got into the consulting work, I started working with other organizations and really trying to solve their problems. And how I got into that was one of my last jobs as a manager, I took on an organization that had a lot of problems. And so I hired a consultant to do what is called a performance audit, the GAO government standards for his performance audit.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
So they came in and did a performance audit. And I got really interested in that to the point where I left my job. I went into, I went to work for these people because I loved it so much. It was so interesting. And I went back and got my doctorate work in organizational psychology and eventually applied that to what I do now, which is organizational change management.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
So that's kind of the evolution of how I started out digging in the dirt and not liking it and moving on to helping organizations with their problems. And basically, it always starts with a problem. When somebody comes to me and basically says, look, we have a problem, X, Y, Z, and we want you to help us fix it. Maybe it's because I'm compulsive about fixing things.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
Maybe I shouldn't have been an engineer instead of a organizational change person. Whenever somebody comes to you and says, we have this problem we want you to help us with, chances are they're wrong. chances are that isn't the actual problem. The problem, it's a symptom of something else. And they really don't know what that something else is. They just know that, I'll give an example.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
I just worked for a 70 government in Southern California. And they came to me and basically said, the city civilians and the business people, which are usually opposed, are all complaining about the same thing, about the performance of a particular agency. And while I looked into it, it was really interesting, but you know, what they thought was the problem wasn't really it.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
Usually it's usually I end up giving them a series of recommendations about how to approach the different issues, the different problems that I found that are resulting in these symptoms.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
A lot of times what happens is, whether it's an elected board or a board of directors for a company, they will tell you what the problem is. They'll say, here's the problem we want you to fix. And my first reaction is, maybe. I'm not going to start from a position of... This is the problem. I'm going to fix it.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
I'm going to start from the position of I'm going to talk to people internally and externally and ask them what they think. In other words, I will start with the front counter line staff who do the customer service. And I'll start at that level and say, what do you think works around here and what do you think doesn't?
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
And then take it to outside stakeholders, to managers, until I get a 360-degree look at what people are thinking about what works and what doesn't. And then I'll go back to the people who fired me and basically say, look, this is what I found out. Now, you can deal with it or not. If you want to deal with it, then I will give you some recommendations.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
By the way, when I talk about recommendations, I use internal staff to develop And that's because I want buy-in from them. I'll give an example of something that I was thinking about the other day. It has to do with Trump and Musk and their Dodge or Department of Government Efficiency. This was done before by President Swain and Al Gore.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
The way they did it was they went in and they basically engaged the staff to find solutions. And it was, while accounts were successful, or as Trump and Musk are basically coming in and threatening people, their jobs, and they're going to have a very hard time getting those people to be part of the solution. There's going to be a great deal of resistance.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
to them from day one, not because they deserve it, but because of just people are afraid. Change scares people. And the first thing you have to do, at least what I do, is sit down with folks and say, look, if you do this, if you work on this, your life, your career, your work environment will be better, not worse.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
The mantra usually to begin with is, but we've always done it this way. Why change it? We've done it this way for a decade.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
Let's start with a quick note about centuries. I won't go back a lot on this, but 500 BC, a Greek philosopher said, nothing endures but change. And that's what the change is, the constant change. And it's hard for people to get their head around that, especially when you go in and try to work with them, because like I said, their attitude is, you've already done it this way.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
I think the recent history of change management starts in 1947 with Kurt Lewin, who... created the first change management model. He did a lot of other things. He came up with the force field analysis, action research, but change management, he came up with a three phase model, which was freeze, moderate, and then refreeze.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
Almost every model, including mine, almost every model since 1947 has followed that Those basic three phases, one way or another, sometimes it's five, sometimes it's seven, but they all basically say you go in and shake it up, you reform it, then you maintain it. And you may do that several times. So since 1947, Ross came up with the kind of stages of grief phase.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
model, which was actually a change management model. Edward Deming came up with a more statistically based model, mainly for the Japanese. He couldn't sell it to the American auto industry here until the Japanese picked it up and made a success out of it. And then all of a sudden, the American automakers were interested in the Deming method. Carter Later came along with one.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
ProSlide had the Yadcorp. They're basically all the same. So I came up with, I looked at maybe over 100 models. I came up with 22 from about, from Kurt Lewin to about 2016. I haven't found much since then. What I really looked at was trying to take it the next step.
Chief Change Officer
#287 Richard H. Carson: The 39-Step Playbook for Change That Doesn’t Collapse — Part One
So what I've done instead of, even though it was, it's very generalized three to five steps, I came up with the same three phases, a little bit different name, but they're basically the same. Then I took those into 10 steps and then I took those into 39 separate actions. Each action has a lot of detail about exactly what you can do to accomplish that particular action.