How you can use the CIA’s analytic process to deal with change
What happens when a colleague (or two or three) abruptly quits your team for a new opportunity. As a manager, you know that this will cause a lot of concern on the team:
What will happen to my workload?
Do I have to work overtime?
When are they going to hire replacements?
Why did they leave?
The list of questions goes on.
You know that psychological safety in the workplace is critical, and you want your employees to feel safe in their jobs, roles, and responsibilities. So how can you create this psychological safety in times of turmoil? I thought about this recently and reflected on a structure I learned almost 20 years ago. It wasn’t necessarily a structure that was used for managing change, but rather one for writing intelligence analysis.
In the IC, that’s how we wrote analytic papers. We started off describing the event (or events) that took place. The first question inevitably was “why did those events occur?” Then, we dove into the impact: Now that these things have happened, what’s the impact of them? Thinking about the impact led you to ask about the outlook: How long will this impact be felt? Finally, what are the implications of that outlook? What does it mean for related things?
The IC’s Writing Process
When I thought about workplace turnover, I recognized that something like that and the things IC analysis wanted to address were actually the same: What, Why, Impact, Outlook, Implications.
Recently, one of the organizations I have worked with went through some personnel changes. The head of the organization confided in me that she was concerned about the well-being and engagement of the remaining employees. She didn’t want their concerns about turnover to impact their ability to deliver on their mission. So I helped her to break it down, using the IC’s method of writing intelligence analysis:
What
Start with the What; acknowledge the reality: Two people just left your small team.
Why
Follow this with the Why – It’s always the first question to ask. Why did this happen? What caused the “What?” Maybe one of them was a poor performer and had the threat of being terminated? Maybe someone had been at the organization for a long time and wanted a change? Some of these reasons can be shared with the team, but other details can’t. The point is to share what you can about the “What” so people can have some understanding and closure on the recent events.
Impact
Discuss the Impact – what happens next. Once the shock of the departures has been addressed because people can understand the “Why” behind the “What,” it is important to be very clear on the impact and what is coming next. In many cases, these are factual. In this case, the team will be short-handed for some time, certain expertise is no longer around, there will be fewer people in the office, and people will need to dedicate time to recruiting candidates to refill the positions.
Outlook
How long will that last? The Outlook: This is where you break down what the impact looks like in the coming weeks and months. Describe how long it will take to recruit and fill a position, how long the team will be short-handed, etc. Giving people this kind of timeline (“Outlook”) can put them at ease for how long they’ll need to work harder than expected.
Implications
End it with the Implications, the hardest part. – This is where you think about the second, third, and fourth-order implications of what’s happening, far beyond the obvious of “We’re going to be short-handed so it’s going to be tough.” This requires a lot of foresight and nuance. If you’re going to have to hire someone new, what does that process look like? Are other people involved in the recruitment process? If so, does that mean the team will have even less time for their regular tasks? If so, what will that look like for them? How will the work get done? Do some tasks not get completed? What does that mean for your organization? Will teammates feel more stressed and burned out? How long does that last? What are you going to do to alleviate that in the short-term? These questions are the most difficult to answer but mean the most to your team.
Remember that each stage of this thought process is critical for determining the next phase. If you can’t articulate what is happening, it’s hard to figure out the why. If you can’t figure out the outlook, you can’t determine the implications of what’s going on. Start at the top and go from there. Take time to clarify each step and what it means.
And maybe the next time you need to have to manage change within your organization, this framework can help:
What. Why. Impact. Outlook. Implications.
