PAUL PUCKRIDGE: Welcome to the Success eCoaching program. Today's lesson, using the force field analysis technique. Hello, my name's Paul Puckridge. I'm the national training manager here at the Success Institute. It's my pleasure to welcome you to this coaching lesson.

A question I'd like to ask you, and this is what I ask a lot of people that go through change management programs or processes, is what are the compelling reasons for change? When you ask a typical employee what the reasons are for change, they'll often have negative things to say.

Why do we have to change? This is just creating more paperwork. I don't see the need. We're expected to do more with less. And you've probably heard those sorts of reasons before.

But of course, in most situations, there are compelling reasons why, as an organization, or as a team, or a department, that you need to change the way you do things. And I wanted to share with you today a very simple, yet powerful tool that, should you decide to use, can be very useful in helping you show your team members the benefits of the reasons for wanting to change. And it's called a force field analysis.

Now, to do a force field analysis, it's very simple. You can use a boardroom, or a meeting room, or some large area. Find a white board or some butchers paper. And on the page, you write the three headings-- hindering forces, present performance, driving forces. And in the center, you write down what the present performance is.

In this case, let's imagine that we are expecting our salespeople to now start making direct calls to clients to set up appointments. Now, I realize you might be watching this and you are not a sales manager. That's OK. But let's just imagine that's the scenario.

So up until recently, staff had not had to call your clients direct and set appointments, but now they do. So this is a tool that you can use to facilitate. And what you would do is you would write those three things up, and then in the center you'd write down the present performance.

And now you start asking the team, what are some of the things that are stopping us from making these calls? What are the hindering forces? And someone says, well, it's hasn't been done before. We've never done this in our organization. Fair enough. You write that up.

You then ask again, so what's hindering us from doing this? Someone else says, well, we haven't had any training to do this work. OK.

What else? Well, a lot of our sales people are very negative about having to do this. OK.

And you go through as many of the hindering forces as possible. And then you think about the driving forces. OK.

What's compelling us to make this change? And someone says, well, the sales budgets have increased this year. OK.

What else? The competition is getting tougher. And competitive salespeople have to do this. OK.

What else? We want to offer better service to our customers by having more contact and direct contact. OK.

What else? It's a new KPI. So it's part of our new performance appraisals. All sales people are now expected to call clients directly.

So then what we do is we go back and look at the hindering forces. And we give each one of these a rating between 0, meaning no real issue or impact, and 10, meaning this is a very big impact on our business.

So the very fact that our staff have not made calls before. What sort of issue, what sort of impact is this on our business? And we decide among ourselves, it's probably about a three.

The fact is, they're salespeople. They know how to make a phone call. It's not as if we're expecting them to do brain surgery.

Number two, they've not had training to do the work. All right, fair enough. We haven't trained them specifically. It is an issue. It's not the most compelling issue, but we acknowledge it by putting a 6 there.

Negative stuff attitudes. OK, we knowledge that the staff are very negative towards having to do this. And that certainly is a major hindering force, which we want to try and address.

All right, let's have a look at the other side. Driving forces-- sales budgets have increased. What's the impact of this on our business? Well, it's a 10. Obviously, if sales budgets have increased, we have to meet our budgets. It's the ultimate.

Competition is getting tougher. That's an 8. Again, it's a fact. If we want to keep our jobs, we have to acknowledge that competition is getting tougher. Therefore, we have to compete.

We want to offer better service, we'd say that's an 8. As part of our organization's approach to improving, we see that as being very, very important.

And finally, it's a new KPI. Well, that's a fact. It is a new KPI. We have to do it. It is a driving force. We might like it, but we have to do it.

Now what you do is you add up your numbers for the hindering forces, and you add up the numbers for the driving forces. And when you do this, the team members who are sitting around the table get it. They start to see that although there are issues and problems and hindering forces, they certainly don't outweigh the driving forces. And so therefore, you have a compelling case for going ahead with this.

What you might also like to do is have a look at the hindering forces and obviously start to address or identify negative staff attitudes. Obviously, that's a very high number. How do we address that?

And what you might find in a brainstorming session is that perhaps the reason they're negative is that they're going into something that they haven't done before, they're unsure of what they have to do. And by then brainstorming how you can turn around the attitudes or the behaviors, you may find your people are more willing to give it a try.

So that's a simple idea, and we call it the force field analysis. So if we can help you or your organization in the future with change management, training, or any type of professional development, please give me a call on 1300-811-891.

That's it. End of the presentation and your lesson. Have a good week. I look forward to talking to you soon.