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Tom Peters has a great post on his blog, "The Right Plan Is to Have No Plan" which discusses two belief systems adopted by leaders seeking to initiate change, that of planners who seek to impose top down solutions, who Tom says “more or less believe that the plan is the thing—and that the messy process of implementation on the ground will take care of itself if The Plan is ‘right.’” and searchers who adapt to the adapt to the local context and culture and implement change from the bottom up. Tom quotes William Easterly the author of, “The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good”, discussing the differences between planners and searchers…

"In foreign aid, Planners announce good intentions but don’t motivate anyone to carry them out; Searchers find things that work and get some reward. Planners raise expectations but take no responsibility for meeting them; Searchers accept responsibility for their actions. Planners determine what to supply; Searchers find out what is in demand. Planners apply global blueprints; Searchers adapt to local conditions. Planners at the top lack knowledge of the bottom; Searchers find out what the reality is at the bottom. … A Planner thinks he already knows the answers; he thinks of poverty as a technical engineering problem that his answers will solve. A Searcher admits he doesn’t know the answers in advance; he believes that poverty is a complicated tangle of political, social, historical, institutional and technological factors; a Searcher hopes to find answers to individual problems only by trial and error experimentation. A Planner believes outsiders know enough to impose solutions; a Searcher believes only insiders have enough knowledge to find solutions, and that most solutions must be homegrown."

This is central to a philosophy of small wins… An approach to change the advocates looking for making small wins that have the potential to bring about huge changes. Llooking for what’s working on the ground and then building of those proven successes…

"Somewhere in your organization, groups of people are already doing things differently and better. To create lasting change, find these areas of positive deviance and fan the flames." — Richard Pascale & Jerry Sternin, "Your Company’s Secret Change Agents," Harvard Business Review

"We made mistakes, of course. Most of them were omissions we didn’t think of when we initially wrote the software. We fixed them by doing it over and over, again and again. We do the same today. While our competitors are still sucking their thumbs trying to make the design perfect, we’re already on prototype version #5. By the time our rivals are ready with wires and screws, we are on version #10. It gets back to planning versus acting: We act from day one; others plan how to plan—for months." — Bloomberg by Bloomberg, Mike Bloomberg’s business saga

Successful leadership requires a solid underpinning philosophy, a purpose and a bias towards getting things done.. that is a focus on execution. A drive towards creating small wins, informed by what’s already working, creates change. Small change, builds..  creating momentum and momentum brings about significant change…

 

Technorati Tags: Small Wins, Momentum, Execution, Action, Change, Planning, Strategy, Management, Business, Plan

A leader is likely to be challenged by a number of leadership transitions as they develop and grow their careers. These transitions may be from team member to team leader, from manager to divisional leader or from director to CEO. Other difficult leadership transitions can occur as leaders move between companies or even between industries. Research reported in Management-Issues, conducted across 18 industries and 11 countries by the Institute of Executive Development and Alexcel Group found that the

"ramp-up time for new external hires is worryingly long. Around a third of those questioned said that it takes between six and nine months while a further quarter of respondents said it takes more than nine months… Ramp–up time for those making transfers within the same organization was less, but not by a huge margin. The most commonly cited period was between three and six months, with a quarter saying it takes longer than six months…. Moreover, one in five (21 percent) of executives who make internal transfers fail to meet expectations in first two years."

Given these findings and the risks associated with leadership transitions, it’s of critical importance for leaders, to learn how to transition effectively between different leadership roles. Some great advice on making an effective transitions is provided by Dan Ciampa and Michael Watkins in their post discussing the transition of Vikram Pandit, to become the new CEO of Citigroup and provide the following guidelines to help leaders make manage their leadership transitions.

1. Identify the critical alliances. "To transform their organizations, new CEOs must gain the support of powerful internal and external constituencies. Influential players must perceive it to be in their interest to help realize your goals. You must therefore begin to identify them and at least begin to gain their support during the transition."
2. Get the right top team in place — fast. "Like most new CEOs, you will inherit a group of senior executives. Some will have the knowledge, skills, and background needed to drive the business forward. Others will not….. The decision to remove a senior-level manager is among the most serious and complicated that any leader makes. But among the most common regrets CEOs have is not replacing senior-level people once it becomes clear they are not the right fit for the situation and for the CEO’s style or vision."
3. Secure early wins. "To create momentum, you must secure some early wins. …. This means marshalling resources to focus on issues that meet three criteria: (1) they yield tangible financial benefit, (2) they address issues that employees understand to be important, and (3) results can achieved early in the new leader’s tenure. New CEOs secure early wins by identifying substantial problems that can be tackled in a reasonable period of time and whose solutions result in tangible operational and financial (not just behavioral/attitudinal) improvements in performance."
4. Lay the groundwork for effective communications. "New CEOs prepare for derailment when they fail to get their messages about priorities across, to convey the values that they hold as important, or to clearly define expectations. As a result they create vacuums of understanding and emotional connection that undermine their effectiveness. ….. Everyone is parsing your actions and words closely and critically, hunting for signals of direction, purpose, motives, and, especially, for the answer to “who is this person?” Leaders lay the seeds of their own destruction when they fail to gain control of the communication processes of the company. As a result, do not effectively get their messages across to the people whom they most want to influence; nor do they shape the mood or morale of the organization."
5. Shape your vision. "…. What we mean by vision is a vivid mental image that depicts your view of the desired future state of the organization in an inspiring way. It is not a statement of mission, a set of objectives, or a list of values. It is a picture of what will be seen, heard, and felt when the organization fulfills that mission, and achieves those objects….. If it’s not inspiring, for the leader and for key people in the organization, then it’s not a vision."
6. Build and use a balanced advice network. "…Finally, and perhaps most important, you have to build and use the right kind of advice and counsel network. No leader is an island. …. So its essential that you find ways to accelerate learning about markets, products, technologies, organizational capabilities, team, politics and culture. Identifying and leveraging the best advisors — internally and externally — is the most effective way to do this."

This useful list of guidelines can assist in your leadership transition and compliments a previous post "5 tips on making a successful leadership transition". Another great resource for planning a successful leadership transition is the Harvard Business Review book "The First 90 Days" which I’ve previously reviewed here. Before jumping into a new role or hastily accepting that new leadership position take some time to plan your first 90 days and thereby increase your chances of success……!

 

Technorati Tags: Leadership, Transition, Business, Management, Planning, Change, Career, Success, HBR

Kevin’s Eikenberry has a great post that caught my eye titled "What to Communicate" discussing the importance of communication to leaders. I really believe that we do not spend enough time figuring out the why before we move on to figure out the how. Kevin reminds us of this principle by providing the following rule of thumb:

Communicate why before how, and don’t switch too soon….. In most organizations and teams the ‘why’ is missing. When the why is strong enough, the how will be figured out. Besides, if you are trying to empower your organization, as a leader you probably need to spend less time on how anyway…. Focus more of your communication and conversation on why and less on how.

A similar view is expressed by Annette Clancy from the blog Interactions in the post "The Management/Leadership Conversation", who makes the following observation:

"In order to follow I need to know ‘why’ and once we’ve worked out the ‘why’ I want to know what the implications are. Lots of people can manage, but leaders do things in their own inimitable way. Too many ‘leaders’ are really managers who are preoccupied with the ‘how’ and the ‘what’."

 

 

The importance of spending time to understand the why before the how is discussed in detail in Peter Block’s book “The Answer to How is Yes”, some of the reasons Peter gives in his book, to support focusing on the why are:

 

• "We often avoid the question of whether something is worth doing by going straight to the question ‘How do we do it?’"
• "Too often when a discussion is dominated by by questions of How? we risk overvaluing what is practical and doable and postpone the questions of larger purpose…"
• "…engage in conversations about why we do what we do….. create the space for longer discussions about purpose, about what is worth doing. It would refocus our attention on deciding what is the right question, rather than what is the right answer."

 

• Are you acting on what matters?
• Are you acting on what’s worth doing?
• Are you giving priority to what matters?
• how will the world be different tomorrow as a result of what we do today?

 

Technorati Tags: Vision, Purpose, Mission, Management, Leadership, Book, Why, How, Question, Communication

The Anecdote Blog has an interesting post discussing "The Three Journeys" that organisations take as they seek to transform and implement their strategy.

 

 

Leader who are striving to bring about change and who are seeking to implement their strategies would do well to consider structuring their approach as the following three journeys:

• The first journey is designed to help the organisation’s leaders develop a common understanding of what they would like to achieve and defining this end-state in broad terms, while knowing that detailed plans are unlikely to be achieved (the world is too unpredictable for a simple, linear view). We encourage the leadership group to develop a rough mud map of the journey from the current situation to this desired end state while resisting the urge to fill in the details. The staff fill in the details as part of the second journey.
• The second journey involves the rest of the organisation (or a representative subset) planning how they will get to the desired state. This involves understanding the current knowledge environment—who’s connected to whom, where are the important knowledge assets, where are the blockers, what are the enablers—and developing the best possible map based on current information and resources available that can be made to guide the third journey.
• The third journey is when the organisation actually embarks on implementing the ideas developed in the first two imaginary journeys. Most importantly in the third journey, the organisation implements an iterative process they designed in the second journey that embeds new knowledge-related behaviours and provides opportunities for new ideas to be injected in how things are done.

What I like about this approach is that it supports a key principle of collective learning, as discussed by Michael Watkins in his book “The First 90 Days”, that I discussed previously. This is to…

“…focus on setting up a collective learning process….. Rather than mount a frontal assault on the organisation’s defences, you should engage in something akin to guerrilla warfare, slowly chipping at their resistance and raising their awareness of the need for change…. The key, then is to figure out which parts of the change process can be best addressed through planning and which are best dealt with through collective learning.”

The first to journeys are about generating collective learning experiences, first with the organisation’s leadership and then with the broader organisation. The to follow-up on these learning experiences with concrete planning, the creation organisational alignment and focused execution.

 

Technorati Tags: Change, Leadership, Management, Business,OD, Learning, Transformation, Planning, Transition, Strategy

Bob Sutton posts on four principles that leaders can use to guide a "leader who [is]  implementing any change that employees will find disconcerting". The four key principles are prediction, understanding, control, and compassion and are described as follows:

1. Prediction: Give people as much information as you can about what will happen — to them as individuals, to their workgroups, and to the organization as a whole — and when it will happen. This makes the layoff real for people and helps them prepare for the future. 
2. Understanding: Explain why you believe the change is necessary. Human beings have consistently negative reactions to unexplained events. This effect is so strong that it is better to give an explanation that people dislike than no explanation at all — so long as the explanation is credible.
3. Control: Giving people influence over what will happen is often impossible, but giving them influence over how it happens and when it happens is often possible.
4. Compassion: Senior executives should express human compassion, and when appropriate, sorrow, for the consequences of their business decisions.

These principles are key to sustaining employee motivation an loyalty during and after the difficult times…

 

Technorati Tags: Change, Principles, Morale, Transformation

The article How Do You Know If Your Change Will Stick? provides a great list of diagnostic questions that can be used to assess if your organisational change is going to stick.

 

Requirement #1: A clear vision of your purpose and goal

1. Why does this organization exist?
2. What does the organization expect to accomplish by making this change?

Requirement #2: Flexible thinking

1. Do people in the organization tend to take an “either/or” view of processes and outcomes? How can we encourage more “both/and” thinking?
2. What assumptions are we making about our market, our customers, or our employees that can be re-examined?

Requirement #3: Involvement and commitment

1. Does everyone affected by this change understand both why and how it will be implemented?
2. What can the organization do to foster a sense of ownership and commitment in its members? What can I do personally?
3. Do the people who report to me feel comfortable asking questions or offering suggestions about the way things are done? If not, what can I do to encourage better two-way communication?

Requirement #4: An empowering culture

1. What kinds of behaviors does our organizational culture reward? What kinds of behaviors are discouraged or punished?
2. Will our current organizational values support or inhibit the behaviors needed to accomplish this change?
3. If our culture must change to support a new goal, direction, or process, which aspects of the existing culture will be most difficult for people to let go of?

Requirement #5: Recognition of the human aspects of change

1. Who in the organization feels threatened by this change? Why?
2. Who views the change as an opportunity? Why?
3. How could the change be structured to give more people opportunities for growth?

Requirement #6: Antidotes to fear

1. How do I react when other people make a mistake? What is my first question when something goes wrong?
2. What roles in the organization will be most affected by this change? What can be done to help these people make a successful transition?

Requirement #7: Action – avoid paralysis by analysis and get started!

1. What are the primary and secondary objectives of this change? How many can we achieve (or make a start toward achieving) with a less-than-perfect plan?
2. Can new processes and procedures be broken down into smaller steps, some of which can be started now?
3. Can we implement small pilot programs to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the plan?

Requirement #8: Effective communication

1. How do people find out what’s happening in the organization? How often is the information updated? Is the grapevine generally accurate or inaccurate?
2. Are leadership’s words and actions congruent? Are we walking the talk, or just talking?
3. Does everyone in my department understand how his or her job and the work of the department will be affected by the change? If not, what can I do to provide more information?

Requirement #9: Talent management

1. What are the strengths and weaknesses of the individuals who report to me?
2. Are the people in my department in positions that maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses?
3. Does the organization have objective means (job benchmarks, documented performance metrics, employee assessments, etc.) of identifying position requirements and matching individuals to jobs?
4. Is everyone in the organization informed about new positions that may be opening or positions whose roles will change?
5. What opportunities can we offer to employees who would like their jobs to be different?

Requirement #10: Positive reinforcement

1. What attitudes and behaviors do we need in order to make this change successful? How can I recognize these behaviors in others?
2. Are there programs in place that encourage and reward the behaviors needed by the organization? Are the rewards meaningful to the recipients?

Requirement #11: Meaningful metrics

1. Does every measurement tie directly to a strategic objective, or could some metrics be eliminated?
2. Do individuals understand how their work affects the measurement?
3. Are metrics updated and publicly discussed on a regular basis?

Requirement #12: Passion for the change

1. What excites me about this change? How can I share my enthusiasm with others?
2. Who in the organization is passionate about the change? How can we involve these people in leading the change?
3. How can I balance compassion with high expectations?

 

Technorati Tags: Change, Assessment, OD, Leadership, Questions, Management, Project, Business, Transition, Execution

 

 

 

The First 90 Days a Harvard business Review book by Micheal Watkins provides a guide for leaders making a transition from one role into a new one. Transitions are one of the most difficult times for most leaders. This book is an essential guide for leaders in transition… 

“Transition failures happen when new leaders either misunderstand the essential demands of the situation or the lack of skill and flexibility to adapt to them.”

 

Promote Yourself

“This doesn’t mean hiring your own publicist. It means making the mental break from your old job and preparing to take charge in the new one. Perhaps the biggest pitfall you face is assuming that what has made you successful to this point in your career will continue to do so. The dangers of sticking with what you know, working extremely hard at doing it, and failing miserably are very real.”

 

Accelerate Your Learning

“You need to climb the learning curve as fast as you can in your new organization. This means understanding its markets, products, technologies, systems and structures, as well as its culture and politics. Getting acquainted with the new organization can feel like drinking from a fire hose. You have to be systematic and focused about deciding what you need to learn and how you will learn it most effectively.”

 

Match Strategy to Situation

“There are no universal rules for success in transitions. You need to diagnose the business situation accurately and clarify its challenges and opportunities. Start-ups, for instance - of a new product, process, plant, or completely new business - share challenges quite different from those you would face while turning around a product, process, or plant in serious trouble. A clear diagnosis of the situation is an essential prerequisite for developing your action plan.”

 

Secure Early Wins

“Early wins build your credibility and create momentum. They create virtuous cycles that leverage the energy you are putting into the organization to create a pervasive sense that good things are happening. In the first few weeks, you need to identify opportunities to build personal credibility. In the first 90 days, you need to identify ways to create value, improve business results, and get to the breakeven point more rapidly.”

 

Negotiate Success

“Because no other single relationship is more important, you need to figure out how to build a productive working relationship with you new boss and manage his or her expectations. This means carefully planning for a series of critical conversations about situation, expectations, style, resources, and your personal development. Critically, it means developing and gaining consensus on your 90-day plan.”

 

Achieve Alignment

“The higher you rise in an organization, the more you have to play the role of organizational architect. This means figuring out whether the organization’s strategy is sound, bringing its structure into alignment with its strategy, and developing the systems and skill bases necessary to realize strategic intent.”

 

Build Your Team

“If you are inheriting a team, you will need to evaluate its members and perhaps restructure it to better meet the demands of the situation. Your willingness to make tough early personnel calls and your capacity to select the right people for the right positions are amongst the most important drivers of success during your transition. You will need to be both systematic and strategic in approaching your team building challenge.”

 

Create Coalitions

“Your success will depend on your ability to influence people outside your direct line of control. Supportive alliances, both internal and external, will be necessary to achieve your goals. You should therefore start right away to identify those whose support is essential for your success, and to figure out how to line them up on your side.”

 

Keep Your Balance

“In the personal and profession tumult of a transition, you will have to work hard to maintain your equilibrium and preserve your ability to make good judgements. The risk of losing perspective, getting isolated, and making bad calls are ever present during transitions. There is much you can do to accelerate your personal transition and to gain more control over your work environment. The right advise-and-counsel network is an indispensable resource.” 

 

Expedite Everyone

“Finally, you need to help everyone in your organization - direct reports, bosses, and peers - accelerate their own transitions. The quicker you can get your new direct reports up to speed, the more you will help your own performance. Beyond that, the benefits to the organization of systematically accelerating everyone’s transitions are potentially vast.”

 

In Conclusion….

Transitions need to be carefully managed as they are risky and prone to failure. This book is very well written and full of practice advice to guide leaders through the crucial first 90 days in their new roles. I found this book an extremely useful resource in a recent transitions that I made from a leadership position in one organization to another. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for some guidance and advice as they seek to develop their personal 90 day transition plans.

 

Technorati Tags: Book, Review, 90-days, 100-days, Plan, Career, Transition, Leadership, Management, Business, Change, HBR

Kathrine Walsh discusses some of the lessons John Kotter, the author of ”Leading Change“ and ”The Heart of Change” has learnt, in the article ”Five Things I’ve Learned About Change“

I personally admire Jack Welch as a change leader. And I have learned many lessons from him. He’s said that “the world is moving in nanoseconds,” so you better damn well be sure you’re good at change. He’s also talked about how “incremental change can easily be resisted by a bureaucracy.” Constant baby-step improvement is fine, but it is not enough. Sometimes sweeping change is what you need. It is what leaders do. They take existing systems and adapt them to new waves of technology and competition.

The more adaptable you are, the better. I’ve found that the more adaptable organizations or individuals are to change, the better they can sustain high performance over time. There is a definitive relationship between leadership and change……. The companies that were better at change were performing better over time. And they had better leadership.

The most basic aspects of leadership and change are a function of human nature. I’ve found there are specific steps in the process of how people make significant changes. The steps tend to be universal, independent of the content of change. They apply to process reengineering, the need for more innovation, new business strategies, you name it. The eight steps are to create a sense of urgency, put the right team together, create a sensible change vision and strategy, communicate the plan to obtain buy-in, empower people to act, garner some short-term wins, then pound away the changes you are trying to make until you implement them and can make them stick. That basic process is at the heart of leading change.

Details of leadership are situational. Leaders, by definition, have to fit into the situations they’re dealing with. As situations change culturally, and through time, successful leadership styles change too. I would bet that if you look at the people today who are providing terrific leadership in their organizations, some of the things they’re doing are different from their counterparts in 1950. Today there is more diversity in terms of gender, ethnic background and race. As the details vary, so does the leadership style.

I’ve had to lead change at various points in my career. So I can say that if you don’t know how to do it, good luck to you! The better you are at seeing and identifying the right steps, the higher your chances of success. In my personal life, I cope with change poorly at times (according to my wife). But in general, I create change, and the reason I do it well is because I have a high sense of urgency.

Some great tips….! 

 

Technorati Tags: Change, Lessons, Learning, Leadership, Management, Business, Context, Book

Photo by howlinhill

 

Dick Richards of the blog Come Gather Round provides the following three principles that assist in the leadership of change:

1. In the realm of human activity, things change only after they are accepted for what they are. This principle is a slight variation of The Paradoxical Theory of Change. At a very simple level, the principle was illustrated when my wife and I decided to change our kitchen countertop only after we accepted the fact that the countertop that was in our home when we moved in was ugly and getting uglier….. That things change in the realm of human activity only after they are accepted for what they are is the reason that customer and employee satisfaction surveys are important. It is the reason that W. Edwards Deming insisted that fear be driven from the workplace: where there is fear there is likely to be denial or avoidance of what is. It is the reason that a recovering addict must say, “I am an addict.” It is the reason that honest feedback is essential to the growth of a person.
2. Change occurs as a function of distress, vision, capacity for change, and achievable first steps. This principle was elucidated by Richard Beckhard as the Formula of Change Equation, which has several variations. My own favorite version is this: D x V x C x F > R. The equation shows that change can only occur when the product of distress, D, vision, V, capacity for change, C, and achievable first steps, F, is greater than resistance to change, R. Notice that if any of the four variables on the left of the equation is zero, change is not possible.
3. People are more likely to act on their own conclusions than on someone else’s. This is one reason that organizational visions, missions, values, and strategies often fall far short in implemention: people are asked to act on someone else’s conclusion. It is why really good coaches and counselors guide clients to their own decisions rather than offer advice. It provides underpinning for permission marketing, quality initiatives, and religious institutions that are based on facilitating inquiry rather than providing answers.

 These three principles are powerful in guiding change. I have often seem change efforts fail when one of these principles are violated, when we fail to accept reality as it is, when we fail to build dissatisfaction with the status quo, when we force our views onto others and when we move too far too fast and those around us don’t have the time reflect and to act on their own conclusions.

 

Technorati Tags: Change, Communication, Buy-in, Vision, Involvement, Execution, Management, Leadership, Business, Acceptance, Reality

Research by ROI Communication on change and communication found that change programmes fail if employees don’t grasp the rationale for the change. Roger D’Aprix, vice president of ROI Communications found that:

“the only way you can rationalize the change is by reference to the marketplace and the forces that are driving the organization…”

It’s important when communicating the rationale for change employees need to know:

1. Who is our competition?
2. What is the competition doing?
3. What choices does the customer have in dealing with us as an organization?
4. What are the customer’s needs and demands?
5. What about our shareholders and the financial community — what are their needs and expectations?
6. What technological forces are affecting our organization, our products and our services?

These questions create a powerful context that make the change meaningful. This helps employees understand that the organisation is not changing for the sake of change and that the change is not about driving a managers personal agenda.

In addition to a clear rationale for change, leadership is of utmost importance. During times of change leaders need to be more visible, more transparent, open and to keep the focus on the vision. D’Aprix puts it this way.

“Leadership at a time like this has to be extremely visible and doing lots of face-to-face communication… the good, solid leaderships do this fairly naturally. The bad ones keep it all secret and quiet, and they pretend that everything is fine. That’s a recipe for disaster.”

Communicating and leading change is a difficult task, however if you spend the time to answer the why the how takes care of itself. If the why is compelling, the how is emerges from the passion, participation and wisdom of those engaged in the journey.

 

Technorati Tags: Change, Communication, Vision, Business, Leadership, Research, Management

The leadership practice of being fully present and in the moment is one of the most powerful and difficult leadership practices we can master. This state of being is captured by Lao-Tzu as follows:

Do you have the patience to wait
till your mud settles and the water is clear?
Can you remain unmoving
till the right action arises by itself?
The Master doesn’t seek fulfillment.
Not seeking, not expecting,
she is present, and can welcome all things.

The practice of being present and mindful in our leadership is an important discipline. Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee discuss this topic in the article ”In a Bad Spot? Try Mindfulness” have shed some light of this critical leadership skill.

When navigating through uncertainty, especially during times to rapid change, crisis or when facing novel situations the ability to be fully present is critical. This is because in these types of situations, “When faced with this kind of turbulence, mindfulness becomes even more important. You need more, rather than less, information, and it is generally more difficult to get. You need to leverage your strengths and find those people who are succeeding despite the disruptions. You need to stay calm.“

Their advice?

“In high-pressure situations….. many people point outward: They find reasons for their problems outside of themselves. They blame others or the situation and they look for excuses. Good leaders point inward: They take personal responsibility for what is happening and what needs to be done, even when circumstances play a definitive role. Dan Sontag routinely asks himself, ‘What is my part in creating this situation and what do I, personally, need to do about it?’….. In high-pressure situations . . . most people point outward: They find reasons for their problems outside of themselves.”

The ability to be fully present and to respond appropriately to the situation unfolding before you requires self-mastery. One wrong step and the situation can spiral out of control. To help remain mindful the authors point out that one needs to be self-aware and have an understanding of your environment and the people around you.

 

Self-Awareness

“Knowing yourself enables you to make choices about how you respond to people and situations. Deep knowledge about yourself enables you to be consistent, to present yourself authentically, as you are. We trust—and follow—people who are real, who are consistent, whose behavior, values, and beliefs are aligned. We trust people whom we do not constantly have to second-guess…. Honing the skills of mindful attention to oneself enables us to make better choices because we recognize and deal with our internal state — thoughts, physical sensations, and emotions. We are then better able to make sense of people and situations around us. Our perceptions are clear, not clouded by our own filters, biases, and unexplored or unacknowledged feelings. Through purposeful, conscious direction of our attention, we are able to see things that might normally pass right by us, giving us access to deeper insight, wisdom, and choices.”

Environment and People Awareness

“For a leader, each conversation and exchange is an opportunity to gather valuable information about people, groups, and cultures, while building relationships and resonance. Attending carefully to our human environment and our relationships enables us to see details we may have missed and generate more accurate ideas about what is really going on. We notice subtle patterns in people’s behavior, group dynamics, organizational processes, and even worldwide events. When we are mindful, we are more in control of ourselves and situations simply because we see reality more clearly. … paying attention to the dance between people and groups. By listening to their conversations, watching how they interacted, and noting what they hinted about one another in one-on-one discussions with her, she saw subtle signs of competition and mistrust among the members of the group. She also noticed the opposing side’s quiet satisfaction in the face of this situation.”

The ability for us to be fully present, mindful of our internal state and the environment allows us to respond as true leaders. This practice is especially required when managing organisational change and crisis situations. The more we practice being present the better we are able to influence, guide and lead.

 

Technorati Tags: Mindfulness, Being Present, Change, Crisis, Practice, Leadership, Management, Business, Self-Awareness

I have posted before on the importance of conversation in leadership (here and here). Meaningful strategic conversation is an emotionally draining and difficult leadership task. However without meaningful conversation, buy-in and commitment remains elusive, as was observed by Steven Covey “no involvement, no commitment“. Meaning conversation creates involvement……. which generates the commitment …… and…… it’s commitment that ensures aligned action and an effective end result. Therefore, getting the conversations right is of critical importance. 

 

One of the most frustrating situation which a leader is faced with is one where a team’s conversation becomes stuck. I’m sure we’ve all experienced these  stuck conversations, on these occasions:

• People feel they have not been heard and therefore keep repeating the same points over and over again.
• It feels like everyone in the room has run our of ideas.
• People feel that they have missed some critical aspect of the issue at hand and therefore get stuck in analysis paralysis.
• People are ask themselves, ”why we’re have in this conversation again?”
• People feel that they don’t have all the facts necessary to commit to a course of action.
• There seems to be a hundred different reasons why the ideas resented to solve a problem are doomed to failure and will not work.

Unless stuck conversations are resolved, effective action will remain elusive, additionally any action “agreed” upon in the meeting will fail to be executed. Getting a stuck conversation back on track and productive requires insight into the meeting dynamics. It’s in these situations that I’ve found the ”change formula” (I previously posted on the change formula here) a useful tool. The change formula describes what’s required to bring about change in an organisation or in this case a conversation. The formula shows that change will occur when a dissatisfaction with the current situation, a vision of what is possible, and the first steps toward reaching the vision are greater than the resistance to change, as illustrated below….

 

 

The key insight behind this formula is that if the value of dissatisfaction, or vision, or first steps is zero, the resistance to change will not be overcome nor can anyone commit to taking ant action. A critical mass cannot be formed, and any organisational change cannot be sustained. Just as these components are required for meaningful organisational change they;re also necessary for meaningful conversations. So, to use the change formula when you’re next in a stuck conversation, help the meeting through the following steps:

 

1) Check for a Shared Understanding of Current Reality

• Are the right people in the room?
• Do all the people in the room have access to the evidence, data and facts relating to this problem (or opportunity)? Has this data been shared and discussed? 
• Have the people in the room discussed the available data and shared their interpretation(s) of the facts?
• Is there sufficient diversity of opinion and organisational functions for us to have a meaningful discussion?
• Do all the people engaged in the conversation have the same understanding of the problem (or opportunity)?
• Have use used tangible and specific examples, anecdotes and stories to illustrate the impact or the problem (or opportunity)?
• Has the exploration of the facts and data made those in the room dissatisfied with the current situation? If not you may need to stop the meeting and start a programme of collective learning, see my previous post on why this is necessary…

2) Facilitate a Shared Vision of the Future

• Do all the people engaged in the conversation have a common understanding of what a desirable outcome would look like?
• Have we explored various alternative futures? 
• Have we considered each alternative future’s advantages and disadvantages?
• Have you answered the WIIFM (What’s In It For Me?) question?
• Have you engaged people emotionally by creating an inspiring picture of the future?

3) Agree the Next Steps

• Is the gap between the current reality and the future vision small enough to be achievable, but not too large to be overwhelming? If not you’re going to have to chunk the the next steps into tangible short-term tasks that people can relate to (get the minds around)….
• Are the next steps achievable in the short term (6-12 months)?
• Are the actions described in S.M.A.R.T. terms (see my previous post on how to achieve this here) ?
• Has each action have an owner who is responsible for the S.M.A.R.T. outcome?
• Have you agreed to how the progress towards the vision will be tracked and managed?

That’s it, a simple and effective framework to help you resolve a stuck conversation. Any additional thoughts, ideas and suggestions are welcome. Try it, I would be interested in your feedback and experiences in using and improving on this approach….

Technorati Tags: Conversation, Vision, Learning, Leadership, Management, Communication, Current Reality, Model, Framework, Change, SMART

Initiating and leading change is one of the greatest leadership challenges. Many change programmes fail long before they’re ever started. I’ve seen many change programmes fail simply because the organisation and it’s people were not ready for the change being thrust upon them. The typical scenario is that the leader is introducing a change the organisation cannot assimilate, because it’s not ready or the leader is too far ahead. Before acting to introduce change a leader needs to carefully assess the organisation’s readiness.

Michael Watkins in his book “The First 90 Days” provides a great tool that can be used to assess an organisation’s readiness to accept change. In the book he distinguishes between two approaches for initiating change, the plan-then-implement approach and the collective learning approach. Understanding when it’s appropriate to use each approach can mean the difference between success or failure.

“The straighforward plan-then-implement approach to change works well when you are sure that you have the following key supporting planks in place:

1. Awareness: A critical mass of people are aware of the need for change.
2. Diagnosis: You know what needs to be changed and why.
3. Vision: You have a compelling vision and solid strategy.
4. Plan: You have the expertise to put together a detailed plan.
5. Support: You have a sufficiently powerful coalition to support the implementing.

 

…If any of these five conditions are not met, however, the pure plan-then-implement approach to change can get you into trouble. ”

This diagnostic is a very useful way of assessing an organisation’s readiness for a traditional “plan-then-implement” approach or alternatively, if additional ground work is required before embarking on a large scale change programme.

 

 

Leaders will often find themselves in a situation where a plan-then-implement is not appropriate, in these situations an alternative approach is need. In these situations Michael recommends that a collective learning approach is adopted, whereby you “focus on setting up a collective learning process….. Rather than mount a frontal assault on the organisation’s defenses, you should engage in something akin to guerrilla warfare, slowly chipping at their resistance and raising their awareness of the need for change.”

“The key, then is to figure out which parts of the change process can be best addressed through planning and which are best dealt with through collective learning.”

Collective learning is best initiated as conversation or dialogue with the intention of exploring and understanding how things are working in a non-threatening environment. The next time you’re thinking about embarking on a large scale change programme, stop and ask your self?

1. Is the organisation ready for this change, i.e. do they understand the need for the change?
2. Is there sufficient appetite for the change? Remember that people have limits as to how much change they can absorb at once. Chunk your change programme into digestible pieces.
3. What collective learning conversations needs to be initiated now to prepare for changes that need to be made in 6-2 month time?

 

Technorati Tags: Change, Transition, Project, Plan, Vision, Strategy, Business, Leadership, Management, Conversation, Learning, Book

Heath and Dan Heath, authors of “Made to Stick“, ask a very interesting question in their article in Fast Company,  ”Give ‘em Something to Talk About” discusses a very interesting question…

“Your product may be good, but will it spark a conversation?”

Conversation creates and emotional connection with your product and increases a persons connection with the product…

“Conversation isn’t everything….  But all businesses today crave the credibility, not to mention the free advertising, that comes from word of mouth. As such marketing matures into its own discipline, more companies are thinking about how to kick-start it. So why is it rare to find a business that is good at sparking these customer conversations? ….Call it the 105% Rule. From a word-of-mouth perspective, it’s virtually impossible to discuss an experience that is 5% better than the norm on all dimensions. People don’t talk like mystery shoppers, reporting diligently on each relevant feature. People talk about the exceptions, the unexpected, the highlights….. Conversations can’t be “snapped on” after the fact. You have to plan for them. So what’s your plan? How can you give your customers something to talk about? Fostering the conversation you want customers to have about your products should be an explicit part of product development.”

 

The Leadership Insight

Conversation is an important part of our social, emotional and intellectual make up. What get’s talked about generally gets attention and gets done. As leaders in your organisation and community what are you doing to spark a conversation? Meaningful conversations are the catalyst for change. They help us to grind a new pair of glasses with which to see the world. When we see the world differently we begin to act differently….!

What action are you taking to catalyze meaningful conversations and spark change?

Technorati Tags: Conversation, Brand, Leadership, Communication, Change, Vision

An article from HBS Working Knowledge “Don’t Listen to ‘Yes’“ where Martha Lagace,talks with Professor Michael Roberto, author of the new book Why Great Leaders Don’t Take Yes for an Answer on why it’s essential for leaders to spark conflict in their organizations, as long as it is constructive.

If people smile, nod, and say “yes” at your company, maybe it’s time to start an argument. According to HBS professor Michael Roberto, the lack of good conflict—constructive conflict—within an organization makes it that much harder to accurately evaluate business ideas and make important decisions….. But conflict does not mean browbeating.

The importance of constructive conflict

Leaders should create a climate of constructive dissent to improve the quality of decision making and to increase the levels of commitment to the decisions being made. Michael Roberto finds that by:

“Keeping conflict constructive helps to build decision commitment, and therefore facilitates implementation”

This is a key insight which is too easily overlooked. Patrick Lencioni in his book ”The Five Dysfunctions of a Team“, reviewed here,  made a similar observation on the importance of conflict in teams and the key role that constructive conflict played in teams in building commitment to team vision and goals.

This insights means that to be effective we need to change the way we make important decisions. Encouraging constructive conflict in important decision-making processes increases people’s commitment to the decision and this in turn helps to ensure more effective implementation. Given the critical importance of conflict and dissent in effective decision making and execution leader need to take a more active role in fostering the dissent in their decision making processes.

“Leaders need to recognize that expressing dissent can be very difficult and uncomfortable for lower-level managers and employees. Therefore, leaders cannot wait for dissent to come to them; they must actively go seek it out in their organizations……. Leaders can and should take concrete steps to build conflict into their decision-making processes. For instance, they might ask a set of managers to role-play the firm’s competitors in a series of meetings so as to surface and test a set of core strategic assumptions. Or they might assign someone to play the devil’s advocate so as to ensure that a thorough critique and risk assessment of a proposal has been conducted before moving forward……. By inducing vigorous and open debate, leaders avoid the guessing game of trying to discern whether or not people truly agree with a choice that has been made” 

The three cultures of indecision

Looking at organisations culture of decision making Michael Roberto identifies three of what he calls ”cultures of indecision“ that undermine effective decision making in organisations:

 

The Culture of ‘No’

“Lou Gerstner coined the phrase ‘culture of no’ to describe the situation he inherited at IBM in the early 1990s. In this type of culture of indecision, dissenters essentially have veto power in the decision-making process, particularly if those individuals have power and status. The organization does not employ dissenting voices as a means of encouraging divergent thinking, but rather it enables those who disagree with a proposal to stifle dialogue and close off interesting avenues of inquiry. Such a culture does not force dissenters to defend their views with data and logic, or to explain how their objections are consistent with the organization-wide goals as opposed to the parochial interests of a particular division or subunit. A culture of no enables those with the most power or the loudest voice to impose their will.”

The Culture of ‘Yes’

“When Paul Levy embarked on a turnaround of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, he discovered a ‘culture of yes.’ Levy described the dynamics: ‘People will not tell the truth during meetings about how their department would react to a given proposal. They will sit there quietly and you won’t find out until a week later that they object to something. This behavior had become standard practice. If you object to a proposal, you get quiet during the meeting. Then later, when you leave the room, you undercut the consensus that appeared to have emerged.’ Many organizations have similar patterns of behavior, and the tell-tale signs are quite similar to those described by Levy.”

The Culture of ‘Maybe’

A ’culture of maybe’ exists when companies are highly analytical, yet also quite uncomfortable with ambiguity. They go to great lengths to gather more information and to perform additional formal analysis, in hopes of reducing the ambiguity associated with various options and contingencies. They strive for certainty in an inherently uncertain world—to turn every maybe into a simple yes or no. Indecision and a lack of closure result if managers cannot recognize the costs of trying to gather a more and more complete set of information.

It seems to me that these three cultures are drive by the need to avoid conflict and dissent. The price they pay is in the lack of commitment and execution. The key lesson I take away from this is that conflict, although uncomfortable and messy at times, is a powerful mean of fostering commitment to decisions.

 

Keep the conflict constructive 

To be effective, leaders need to ensure that conflict remains constructive. That is, they must stimulate task-oriented disagreement and debate while trying to minimize interpersonal conflict. Leaders can accomplish this by taking concrete steps before, during, and after a critical decision process.

Before the decision making process

• Establish ground rules for how people should interact during the deliberations.
• Clarify the role that each individual will play in the discussions.
• Build mutual respect.

During the debate

• Redirect people’s attention and recast the situation in a different light.
• Present ideas and data in novel ways so as to enhance understanding and spark new branches of discussion.
• Basic facts and assumptions when the group appears to reach an impasse.

After the decision making process

• Leaders should try to derive lessons learned regarding how to manage conflict constructively.
• They must attend to hurt feelings and damaged relationships that may not have been apparent during the process itself.

The skill of hosting constructive dialogue is necessary for all leaders to take time to learn.

 

Ensure that the process is fair

Constructive conflict requires a fair decision making process. All people involved in the debate need to feel that the process used to come to the decision was transparent and fair.

“Keeping conflict constructive helps to build decision commitment, and therefore facilitates implementation. But, to build buy-in, leaders also need to devise a fair process. During a decision-making process, some individuals will have their views accepted by the group, while other proposals garner little support. Leading a fair process does not mean trying to satisfy everyone in terms of the ultimate decision that is made. Instead, it means creating a process in which leaders have demonstrated authentic consideration of others’ views. For people to believe that a process is fair, they must:

• Have ample opportunity to express their views and to discuss how and why they disagree with other group members.
• Feel that that decision-making process has been transparent, i.e., that deliberations have been relatively free of secretive, behind-the-scenes maneuvering.
• Believe that the leader listened carefully to them and considered their views thoughtfully and seriously before making a decision.
• Perceive that they had a genuine opportunity to influence the leader’s final decision.
• Have a clear understanding of the rationale for the final decision.”

Make time in meetings for constructive debate

Constructive conflict and debate take time. Debate is one thing that your cannot optimize and make effective by limiting the time available to explore options and for each team member to feel heard.

“Leaders need to be careful about trying to maximize the efficiency of their meetings. In so doing, there may be a pernicious unintended consequence. Agenda overload, coupled with the quest for efficiency, often works against a leader’s best efforts to stimulate debate. Why does efficiency crowd out debate? For some dissenters, it takes some time to gather the courage to express their views or to determine precisely how they would like to articulate their point. For others, they may want to listen to others and gain a better understanding of the issues before offering their views. The rapid pace of the discussion may become discouraging to those who aren’t comfortable ’shooting from the hip’ as soon as a new topic opens.”

Hold people accountable

 To hold people accountable require clear rules of engagement and clarity around acceptable behaviour and norms.

“It is very important for leaders to be clear about the way in which they want people to contribute and behave during decision-making processes. People need to understand what is expected of them, as well as what to expect of the leader. But perhaps more importantly, leaders need to maintain discipline over time, holding people accountable if they violate the accepted norms and rules of engagement. If someone clearly engages in personal attacks or withholds a dissenting view only to obstruct the implementation later, they need to be held responsible for such dysfunctional behavior. Leaders may find that such moments are developmental opportunities, where they can help their managers and employees learn and improve from situations of poor performance.”

The need for constructive conflict to build commitment and to drive implementation is a key leadership principle. It’s a skill that’s essential to effective change and execution and as we all know the ability to facilitate change and drive results are priceless in today’s business environment.

 

Technorati Tags: Comitment, Communication, Management, Debate, Leadership, Decision, Change, Execution, Meetings, Business

“Content of organization change is one thing; process is another. The former, the what, provides vision and overall direction. The latter, the how, concerns implementation and adoption. Content is about purpose, mission, strategy, and values. Process is about how the content is planned, launched, more fully implemented, and sustained.” - W. Warner Burke, Organization Change

 

The Leadership Insight

 

The distinction between the content and process of change may seem academic, however it’s critically important. Too often we spend a large amount of time developing, formatting and discussing the content of the organisation’s vision, strategy and values. We then communicate and publish our grand new plan and that’s pretty much where it ends. We don’t spend enough time discussing and reflecting on the process of change. We try to bring about change from the corner office, instead of getting our hands dirty. The process part of change requires us to spend time in understanding where the organisation and its people are psychologically, to plan a change journey that captures the people’s imagination, to keep and ear to the ground so we can make adjustments to the journey and to celebrate the people’s achievements along the way. It’s in the process of change is where true leadership is exercised and tested.

 

Technorati Tags: Change, Content, Management, Process, Leadership, Quote