Keep Manager: Everything stays different
Keepers are the game changers of our time.
When I first publicised the term ‘keeper manager’ around five years ago, there was a great deal of interest in it. Nevertheless, compared to the change manager, it still leads a shadowy existence today. This is completely unjustified, because companies need it now more than ever as a stabilising force in the flow of change: ‘Panta rhei’ – everything flows. And at the same time, it needs dry land to get solid ground under its feet again. The keep manager ensures that there are enough of these landing stages, islands and other load-bearing substructures. After all, no one would think of crossing the Atlantic Ocean while floating. Even a ship is nothing more than a safe place on the wide sea.
What can we trust in?
Economic crisis, corona crisis, climate crisis, migration crisis, energy crisis – the stack of crises has become a poly-crisis. The individual crises influence each other in such a way that they even reinforce each other. For us humans, this results in massive stress in many cases. We are programmed to react particularly strongly to deficits, conflicts, crises – in other words, negative stimuli. This makes sense in evolutionary terms. But our alarm system also kicks in when we have no immediate way of changing the situation. You could also say that we react highly sensitively to surprises, both positive and negative.
Change phases are such surprises. They are largely black box processes, where less is clear than unclear. That is why the term ‘manager’ is misleading: we can only manage what follows a logic and occurs in cause-and-effect relationships. This may work well for technical systems. However, change processes are largely ‘human changes’, i.e. changes in the way employees think and behave. And that makes them highly complex and difficult to control. This results in a high degree of uncertainty for all those involved. An essential task of the keep manager is therefore to ‘put soil back underfoot’, even if they are ship’s planks on the open sea. His offer: psychological security. The question behind it: what can we trust in?
Trust and stability
Trust is different from security. I can trust people and things, even (and especially) when I am not quite sure and there is a risk. The keep manager fosters this trust. He starts with self-confidence and thus influences self-assurance. It can help us to get through uncertain phases. Self-assurance is a member of the ‘self’ family: self-esteem, self-image, self-efficacy, self-regulation… are at home there.
Our self-assurance is the anchor in risky phases of life. We can do it, even if we don’t know exactly what’s coming. We are confident and know our resources. To get in touch with this inner stability, Keep phases are needed:
- pausing,
- get an overview,
- separate the helpful from the less helpful,
- consolidate.
Methodically, the keep manager works with tools from coaching and facilitation. In coaching, too, a noticeable (and often not self-initiated) change begins with: stabilising, stabilising, stabilising. Change needs a strong, resilient and ‘secure’ (because it is based on trust) relationship.
Only when the ground is prepared can the path of change be embarked upon. This firm footing consists of resource and value work, rituals, role clarifications, clarification of the corporate culture, timeline work, avoidance of conflicting objectives, securing knowledge and best practices, and transgenerational knowledge transfer.
The keep manager as a curious traditionalist
Psychological security in change processes includes the confident handling of feelings, especially fears and the underlying concerns and doubts. This means that I am allowed to express fears and concerns and that these are taken into account in the discourse. The stigmatised ‘slowpokes’ are given a voice by the keep manager.
Admittedly, in our times, change sells better than continuity. Anyone who comes out as someone who clings to older, established things actually needs minority protection and a quota. But keep managers are all that and more. In addition to an appreciative progressive part, companies also need a curious traditionalist. They complement each other and are not a contradiction. Tolerance of ambiguity is required, as is playing with two hands at the same time: both/and instead of either/or.
The manager as a jack of all trades
To return to the seafaring image: in nautical language, a ‘keep’ is a groove or notch that holds the rope in the guide (e.g. on the mast). Good ‘running’ and ‘developing’ also requires secure guidance.
Well-managed change processes require a new emphasis in leadership. In the past, the role was characterised by providing direction and setting goals, leading the way and inspiring others. Today, the role spectrum is much more differentiated. The modern manager is a bit like a jack of all trades. Today, they are transformers and preservers (and much more) all rolled into one. I think it is important that change and keep managers, as well as senior staff, serve as role models. How do they deal with their own insecurities and mistakes? How well do they manage to establish their own psychological safety and act as a role model?
The one-sided focus on change managers and the consequences
Since systems are self-regulating and create homeostasis, i.e. an inner balance, the necessity of keep is self-explanatory. Biological systems such as our body also work with agonists and antagonists, with the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system, with waking and sleeping rhythms.
Behind every organisation stands a system of people who follow human and not technical laws. With the decades-long one-sided focus on the change manager, far too little importance has been attached to these human components and far too much to the technical controllability of change processes: ‘It’s complicated enough as it is, why make it more complex?’ could be the thought behind it.
The purpose of change and keep managers
Why do organisations need change and keep managers at all if all of life is change anyway? After all, nature doesn’t have ‘managers’ – it could easily do without us humans. What we have learned from nature has created many problems so far. However, there are two important human characteristics that can justify and explain professional process support:
Firstly, we humans have no time. At least, that is how many of us experience it, and so we try to manage our time or save on it. The time researcher Karlheinz Geißler called us the ‘clock time people’ because we live by the clock and often do not experience time in the here and now. Nature, on the other hand, has time. It does not need a change plan to accelerate natural development: ‘Time is cash’ – change in a company always has an economic dimension, which includes time management. Change and keep managers therefore have a ‘plan’ for the future that is fed by the past. Differences between actual and target figures result in a need for action in the context of time.
Secondly, we humans are constantly making judgements. Nature does without them. In nature, a wrinkly apple is a wrinkly apple. For us, it is classed as B-grade or scrap. This constantly changing judgement results in a continuous need for change. Some of these changes seem completely superfluous, while others lead to outstanding innovations. Without these constant evaluations and shifts in values, there would be far fewer changes. You could say that re-evaluation always means change.
A final thought to round off
Last but not least: there are keepers not only at sea. In team sports, too, the keepers are important team members. They make sure that no balls, whether foreign or their own, go into the net. (That’s right: more than a few change processes have been an own goal. True to the motto ‘Now that I know the solution, I want my problem back’). Maybe we should leave out the manager and reduce it to keeper and changer. This would probably make the game more fluid. Keep it simple.
Notes:
Some people and organisations prefer the known suffering to the unknown solution. They see themselves as victims of circumstances, competition, family or politics. Horst Lempart can achieve amazing results here as a ‘personality disruptor’. Just talk to him about his beautiful website or on LinkedIn. And if you are interested, take a look at the amazing list of German books that Horst Lempart has published.
We are also happy to recommend the podcast episode ‘Keep Management – The Other Side of Change’, in which Dierk Soellner talks to Horst Lempart about change fatigue and overload and the stabilising effect of keep management (in German).
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Horst Lempart
Horst Lempart works and lives as a systemic coach, supervisor, speaker and author in Koblenz. He loves being out and about in his role as ‘The Personality Disrupter’ with loving irritations and helpful provocations. His motto: appreciative of the person, disrespectful of the problem.