Conquering Change Takes a Team

Michael Bonner is used to having people looking over his shoulder at work. He teaches middle-schoolers at the Ron Clark Academy in Atlanta, a school known for its innovative practices.

“Every week 500 to 700 teachers come watch us teach,” he told the audience during his Main Stage presentation at CAMEX24 in Savannah. The observers are open to gaining new ideas and insights into teaching and learning which they can take back to their own schools.

How open are you and your store to fresh ideas? Is your team bogging down efforts to innovate?

Every so often a “black swan” event occurs, a massive change that disrupts everything, such as the stock market crash that led to the Great Depression in the 1930s or the housing mortgage collapse a couple decades ago. COVID-19 was another such event, forcing campus stores and their institutions to move more quickly to digital course materials.

But instead of seeing the pandemic’s impact as a total disaster, “it was an opportunity for all of us to work together and see what we can do differently,” Bonner noted.

He pointed out that companies such as Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Spotify, WhatsApp, Venmo, Kickstarter, Instagram, and Zoom didn’t exist before 2007. None of the companies invented a brand-new product or service, they simply took advantage of new technologies to improve on existing forms of transportation, accommodations, radio, communications, banking, investing, and meetings.

However, it may be much more difficult to recognize the opportunities in change if your store’s work culture undermines employees. Bonner suggested stores “intentionally collect, accept, and implement feedback” to foster a more change-friendly workplace. “Ask simple questions” on a survey that employees can take anonymously, he said, and feed the data into an artificial intelligence app such as MonkeyLearn to generate a keyword cloud. The more often a word has been mentioned or selected by a survey-taker, the larger the word will appear in the cloud.

“That will show you what you need to work on,” he said.

Bonner also identified five types of employee personalities:

Believers are internally motivated, mission-driven, and willing to confront negative talk and attitude. They make great team players.

Tweeners are loosely motivated by company mission and exhibit some enthusiasm, but also tend to be messy and gossipy.

Survivors have become overwhelmed, possess no aspirations, and don’t show any sign of professional practices.

Fundamentalists display a negative attitude toward everything, believe reform is a waste of time, and think that internal problems are due to outside forces.

“Which personality is dominating your workforce right now?” Bonner asked.

“With Fundamentalists, you have to create strong boundaries to catch them,” he said. Give them an opportunity to observe and model more positive behaviors, and provide firm feedback. “What are you allowing, stopping, and reinforcing?”

Survivors need a system to help them regain control of their work, while Tweeners’ energy needs to be redirected into more productive channels. To keep Believers motivated, build a diverse community and focus on results.

In searching out ideas for coping with change, Bonner suggested using the SCAMPER model. Take an idea and Substitute something, Combine things, Adapt or Modify it, Put it to another use, Eliminate an element, or Reverse it inside out or upside down. Looking at the idea from these different perspectives can help lead you to the right solution.