Iraq 20 Years On -- Painful Lessons in Change
How we see determines what we see and I cannot but see this anniversary at least partly through the lens of large scale organizational change. Of course, the story contains much more, so much more. I offer these few lessons/reminders in commemoration of their importance and of the profound human sacrifices that produced/reinforced them.
1) It's about the people on the ground. Grand plans matter, but, in the end, not as much as implementation by those wearing boots on the ground. Failure to understand this fact leads to so many failures in organizational change generally and especially in cultural change and change related to mergers and acquisitions. As Eisenhower famously said, 'Plans are worthless, but planning is indispensable'. Deal makers and grand visionaries may bend the course of reality, but the doers create reality. They make visions real or they don't. Long after the dealmakers and consultants have left town with saddle bags filled with silver, long after the visionary has moved on to other dreams, the doers grind it out...or not. They do the hardest of hard work. And, to paraphrase Ukraine's Zelensky, 'they don't need a ride, they need ammunition'. They need what they need to do their work. Just ask the Iraqis... or the US Marines in Fallujah or America's healthcare workers or its teachers.
2) If you want change, then design it. Recognize that the bigger the change, the more the systems need redesigning in light of a desired end state. Change isn't simply about will power or grit. It's about creating a world, i.e., the systems, that support the desired change. That takes care and it takes time. 'Move fast and break things' may well speedily get you broken things. Think systems. Think systematically. Enter the process of change with a process to change, while knowing and expecting that it too will change. Again, plans are worthless, but planning is indispensable. (Here, I offer my book with Cassie Solomon as a potentially useful reference. Leading Successful Change)
3) Honor the people who occupy the world that you would change. Honor their reality and their past...and their power. Ultimately, as Confucius notes “The relation between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind and the grass. The grass must bend when the wind blows across it.” Yet, the change leader can only, like the wind, blow for so long. Hence, implicitly, Confucius notes that the grass will resume its former position when the wind ceases to blow... unless the grass has come, figuratively, to choose to bend. Above all, remember, as a change leader, that time did not begin with you...and neither will it end with you. Humility combined with purpose enables learning and its beneficial application. Take a cue from Henry V and walk quietly, even secretly, among the troops in order to know their state, including their state of mind. Winning hearts and minds begins with respecting the hearts and minds needing winning.
4) History matters, but pick the right example. I remember hearing the tale of a veteran international actor noting when he knew that the US didn't understand what would follow the 'big bang' of the invasion. He was flying into Iraq with a number of seemingly twenty-somethings, no doubt smart and ambitious and yet clearly looking in the wrong place for illumination. They occupied the time on the plane reading about Nazi mainly inconsequential post-war attempts at guerilla warfare, the so-called 'werewolves'. At that moment he said that he knew the US implementation of change was in deep trouble. One has to know enough to know where to look, to know whose experience to tap...and whose not to tap. A quickly defeated, balkanized, ethnically complex country, held together in no small part by an authoritarian center? Look for examples of centrifugal force, of what happens when the parts erupt, freed from the centripetal force of the whole because of the wreckage of the whole. Worry about civil war and consider the lessons of the Balkans, Northern Ireland, and Rwanda. Don't worry about werewolves. Learn enough to know who can teach you more. A good change leader sets out to identify what s/he doesn't know and then to learn it.
May we all recognize that today resembles and differs from the past. May we all look to learn from both the successes and failures of those who came before and, thereby, to honor their lives and their struggles... in their memory and to our benefit. I suspect they would hope for no less.