Transitioning from ‘push’ to ‘pull’ while managing change…
We as individuals, the world around us and even the organizations we work for are constantly changing. Success or failure of these changes whether personal or organizational can easily be narrowed down to the adoption and long-term sustenance. New year resolutions for example, are the actions we choose for ourselves intended for our betterment; but we are seldom able to sustain it. Similarly, most organizations choose to either transform or continuously improve to keep forging ahead. But how many of these changes are they able to successfully sustain?
For the purpose of this article, lets focus on the organizational changes from the change manager’s perspective. Some very popular changes we will be able to relate with are implementation of a new technology, change in organizational culture, introducing a new L&D program or LXP platform, or encouraging developing new skill sets / capabilities. Given the vast literature on change management, we know that driving change doesn’t mean only equipping employees with a new software or new ways of communicating but requires a preparation phase, a proper internal communication plan, training programs, and evaluating the success of the program and reinforcements to ensure adoption.
Most of these interventions are “push” where the leaders / program managers/ team leads are pushing information to the employees. But isn’t the true predictor of change enabling more pull related interventions? Let us understand what are push and pull interventions and how can you gradually transition from more of push to pull related activities!
Push interventions focus on cascading information of the upcoming change to a specific audience. The goal is to spread awareness and build understanding among employees. Leadership connects, department level townhalls, 1 on 1 discussions with team leads / people managers and organization/function wide mails are popular “push” channels because they’re great for launching campaigns for new programs.
Like for anything else in life, the human tendency is people value things better when they themselves seek it. Therefore, sooner or later, the change manager should transition to creating opportunities for “pull”. The trick is to use “push” measures to create discontent with the current state, and “What’s in it for me” messages for each group. Once this is done right, circumstances can be created to move to “pull” interventions.
“Pull” channels are used to draw employees to your program. Like in marketing, Google reviews, and word-of-mouth reviews on sites are leveraged, need is to provide people platforms to construct their understanding of the upcoming change through their relationships and interactions. Meaning is created in conversations and dialogues. That is where “change champions” become important. Managers must learn how to identify and energize a firm’s most valuable players, including champions, partners, and other valuable stakeholders, as well as critics and detractors. Launching quizzes with associated monetary rewards or recognitions are also effective.
Thus, to transition from push to pull, start your change journey strategic approach, and let that create the required pull! The pull is possible only when change is viewed as an opportunity by the impacted stakeholders.
