Tag Archives: embedding change

The Fallacies of Change Management – Poll

Posted on by agincourtarcher

The continued high failure rates in implementing change owe much of their origins to the fallacies of change management and how people view research (based on Korzybski). See how many are true from your experience

1. Over-Simplification:  The belief that complex organizations mirror what their leadership views .

“I think we have a pretty good handle on what people think, we don’t need a survey to tell us what we already know”

2. Re-definition: A propensity to cast strong sub-cultures as sources of weakness when they may in fact contribute to the organization’s identity.

“It’s the field technicians that’s the problem. They are still resistant to the newer products ans systems”

3. Missionary zeal: The belief that a complex community can be converted to a single purpose that overrides its fractional – often factional – interests and perspectives.”

“I am sure when the see the case for this change they will come along”

4. Displacement:  the attribution to cultural causes of structural weakness.  It is not the values but the organisation or control system that is faulty.

“You know if we had a fully integrated reporting system I think we could overcome many of communication problems”

5. Scapegoating:  The attribution of group’s values to responsibility for failure.

“It’s sales responsibility to ensure good customer follow up but they just don’t seem to care and want to go on to the next deal”

6. False Attribution to one cause what is due to many causes. E.g.

“they didn’t adopt the new technology because they weren’t computer savvy”

7. Discounting: Concluding that because one factor plays a role, another does not; the fallacy of drawing negative conclusions from positive observations. E.g.

 “Our exit interviews show that people are leaving for higher pay and so it’s not anything that management can do differently”

8. Myopia:The idea that change management can divorce the individual from their working environment. E.g.

“People are change resistant because they don’t like the new curriculum”

9. Gut over Data: Drawing conclusions on implied assumptions that when explicitly stated are rejected. E.g

“Yes, I know that’s what your findings say but I think it’s really a recruitment issue”

“You can prove anything with statistics”

10. Politics: Many assumptions influencing reasoning are of the hidden, unconscious type. E.g.

 “When we presented our findings only Joe and Lisa said what they felt, the rest just looked uneasy”

11. Hereditary: Demonstrating that a characteristic is hereditary and not alterable by the environment E.g.

“We found that traditionally main land Chinese expect a “thirteenth month’s pay before Chinese New Year, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

“We wouldn’t have any of these problems if we could get more mid-westerners with their good work ethics”

12. Environment: Demonstrating that a characteristic is altered by the environment and claiming that it is not hereditary. E.g.

“We are getting more quality problems since we installed the new line. It’s the new displays they don’t understand”

Since all important human characteristics are environmental, therefore environment is all-important, hereditary unimportant, in human affairs E.g.

“It’s not so much their experience that matters it’s how they are led. We need our leaders to lead not shilly-shally around having more team meetings”

Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog.
How about asking us?  The first call is free!  Just email me to set it up.
Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

_________________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page 
Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage

E-mail I Web I Linkedin

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2012]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Focusing Change to Win – Global Survey of 1072 leaders – Executive Summary

Posted on by agincourtarcher

If you think change is expensive, how about failed change?

Instead, how about Focusing Change to Win?

The Cost of Failed Change

 Failed change means lost opportunity, competitive vulnerability, poor revenues, lost employees, increased cynicism and fear. Its residue is a hostile and toxic culture, where change resistance becomes the norm.

So, why is this survey important?

Change management’s track record isn’t getting any better and, isn’t likely to, if we don’t do different things. Who says? 

  • Change failure rates continue above 60%
  • Surveyed executives still say people are the main reason for failed change
  • World economics are negatively impacting working and commercial relationships 
  • Technology continues to deliver faster, opportunity-rich and competitively challenging solutions that often impact jobs and working relationships. 

Change management was never easy, and now is even more challenging. Unfortunately, any consensus on the causes and solutions of failed change remain elusive. Yet, some organizations do manage successful change. This puzzle is what motivated this study and led to this question and our survey: 

A Fine Line

     What are the meaningful differences between those that thrive on change and those that just survive?

 After analyzing over 6000 contributor comments, there are clearly those that understand this condition and those who do not. They realize that working relationships are increasingly stressed in the drive for ever faster responses to competitive threats and opportunities. Unfortunately, this survey confirms other studies. Too many organizations are still trying to do things differently not do different things. In a recent study: 

“96% of leaders say their current business models are misaligned with emergent realities, unforeseen challenges and changing priorities. Two-thirds say “extensive changes” are required. Yet they also confess they don’t know how to go about fixing what’s no longer delivering sustainable competitive advantage” [1]  

Continue reading →

Getting the Best out of the Matrix

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Introduction

For 40 Years few have challenged Matrix Management’s viability. Most writers remain convinced that a matrix approach is superior to a hierarchy, but why hasn’t it been more successful? This blog looks at pointing the reader to answer:

How do ensure we get the promised rewards of the Matrix?

First,  a definition for SHRM

In a matrix structure, an employee reports to two managers who are jointly responsible for the employee’s performance. Typically, one works in an administrative function, such as finance, HR, information technology, sales or marketing, and the other works in a business unit related to a product, service, customer or geography.

The matrix model is a network of interfaces between teams and the functional elements of an organization. As its simplest it is:

 think horizontal – think vertical – think interface.

Here are some of the challenges facing those thinking of improving or moving to a matrix based organization.

Continue reading →

Problem Defining & The Consulting/Intervention Process

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Problem Defining & The Consulting/Intervention Process

Calif Manage Rev. 1979 Spring;21(3):26-33.Kilmann R, Mitroff I.

Intervention theory1 and the consulting process2 have developed to provide more effective methods by which organizational change is conducted.  These methods have emerged in order to operationalize a theory of changing rather than a theory of change.  The latter is what Bennis3 found to be the focus of most discussions on organizational growth and change; yet a theory of changing is needed to create planned change in organizations and not just to explain natural change after the fact.4

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Vision: The Guidance System for Partnering

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Introduction

Developing successful partnerships can only be accomplished if there is a strong and shared sense of vision.  It is the cornerstone, and launching point for successful partnering efforts.

Visioning in a partnership if different form other uses of the word.  It is much more than a defined set of shared goals and aspirations.  It exists to offer a tangible guidance system  which provides direction to both parties and helps them carry out their larger goals.  Such a system enables partnerships to overcome obstacles and achieve results.  When they lack vision they tend to drift around, or fall apart.

Continue reading →

Effective Communication & Perception – Why is this so difficult?

Posted on by agincourtarcher

INTRODUCTION

Accurate communication can be defined as

“an idea transplant from one mind to another”.

Unfortunately, between two minds there is often a breeding environment for misunderstanding and distortion. It’s where phraes like  “I don’t think we are on the same page”

 originates.  Many factors influence such distortions.  These include:

  • style and structure of the communication
  • social climate between the sender and recipient of a message,
  • integration of the message with other experience and learning
  • motivation of the recipient to listen. Continue reading →

Presenting a Persuasive Case – How do you sell an idea?

Posted on by agincourtarcher

INTRODUCTION

A frequent and often crucial situation in management today is one in which one person is seeking to persuade another to accept proposals for change.  This situation commonly occurs when a subordinate presents a case to his or her boss.

 Unfortunately, people usually spend a great deal more time and effort in collecting supporting facts and figures than in planning for the face-to-face interaction on which the success of the whole exercise usually depends.  Careful consideration of interactive strategy at the planning stage can both assist in the selection of effective arguments and result in more persuasive interactions.

Feature Dumping

This discussion of the issues involved concentrates on persuasion in the boss-subordinate context; but the principles considered apply equally well to any situation in which one person is seeking to gain the co-operation or the consent of another.

Continue reading →

Complexity, the New Normal 4: Improving Sales Performance – Are you ready for the Challenge?

Posted on by agincourtarcher

 This is the forth in a leadership series – Complexity the New Norm. This series is looks how we implement successful change that fulfills people and avoids human casualties.

Our question is, how do we create working relationships that are rewarding? (Rewarding not just productive).  Why?

It’s only by energizing people and harnessing technologies better than anyone else that companies can thrive.

Genuinely aligned, empowered and collaborative people will outperform the competition every time.

This month I consider probably one of the most difficult areas is sales, especially complex sales.

What makes sales complex?

Classically, “Many to Many” Think of it like a bow tie. On the left side you have the selling organization and on the right Complex Sales. Typical characteristics:

  • Many decision makers
  • Team selling
  • Proposal or tender based selling (RFP)
  • Post sales support requirements like after sales service
  • Needs tailored solutions
  • High value, e.g often needing board approval
  • Long sales cycles
  • Technical/knowledge based elements
  • Consultative selling requirements
  • Customer relationship focus

So, more people across the company need to communicate with customers and prospects before, during and after the sale. This increases complexity and the difficulty of “Keeping Everyone On The Same Page”

Continue reading →

Complexity, the New Normal! 3: Listen to your guts – Are they really on the same page?

Posted on by agincourtarcher

 This is the third in a leadership series – Complexity the New Norm.This series is looks how we implement

Seeing the Wood for the Treessuccessful change that fulfills people and avoids human casualties.Last time, I asked how we create working relationships that are rewarding. (Rewarding not just productive).  Our position is that it’s only by energizing people and harnessing technologies better than anyone else that organizations can survive and thrive.Genuinely aligned, empowered and collaborative people will outperform the competition every time.Many surveys show executives say that their people aren’t ready to handle this “new norm” So, what’s getting in the way?When the urgent drives out the important, many leaders ignore what their “guts” are telling them, even when they sense people aren’t on the same page. They’ve sensed it before and seen the results.  Yet, complexity and urgency mask how things accumulate, misalign and make each change more difficult.You know that feeling yourself. We’ve all worked in dysfunctional work places.  You pick up on people’s differences (often unstated in team meetings) and how they use their experience to justify their positions.  They are oblivious of others views. Worse still they believe that their views are shared by everyone.If leaders are aware of these things, why don’t they do something?I think it’s like how people put up with physical pain and stress – take the pain killers and go on. And I am not implying they’re weak but their strength to persevere can be a two-edged sword. Here’s some examples of what leaders ignore and don’t realize their effect:It’s expecting things to be done and repeatedly being disappointed.It is the lump in your stomach when they are handed  yet another impossible deadline.It’s feeling that they have to be a mind reader to figure out what is expected.It’s that welling anger they get when important decisions fall apart (because there really wasn’t any buy-in).These are all misalignments. People not being on the same page. It’s costly, pervasive and accumulates.Now, add increasing complexity and we need to say – we can’t go on like this anymore.  The busyness of complexity masks misalignments especially when wicked problems get into the mix.You’ve mentioned wicked problem solving before….But why is it so important in leading in complexity?Wicked Problem Solving

Horst Rittel coined the term Wicked Problems as he found traditional approaches to design and planning were not effective. It’s how we solve benign or simple problems.

  • Gather data
  • Analyze data
  • Formulate Solution
  • Implement Solution

This apparently very reasonable approach starts faltering  when you:

1. Don’t understand the problem until you have developed a solution.

You can’t search for information without having some sense of what a solution looks. Rittel said:

“One cannot first understand, then solve.”

And what ‘the Problem’ is depends on who you ask – different stakeholders have different views about what the problem is and what constitutes an acceptable solution.

2. Don’t have a nice neat ending.

If there is no defined ‘Problem’, there can’t be a definitive ‘Solution.’ So you can’t solve the problem with the ‘correct’ solution. Herb Simon, called this ‘satisficing’ — stopping when you have a solution that is ‘good enough’

3. Don’t have right or wrong solutions.

Solutions are simply ‘better,’ ‘worse,’ ‘good enough,’ or ‘not good enough.’ How “good” they are will vary widely and depend on different stakeholder values and goals.

4. Can’t draw on past experience

There are so many factors and conditions that no two wicked problems are alike.

Here are a few examples of wicked problems:

  • Whether to route the highway through our city or around it?
  • What should our mission statement be?
  • What features should be in our new product?
  • How should we respond to a competitors new…fill in the blank?

The point is managing complex and wicked problems shifts the center of gravity toward peoples’ relationships and interactions. It shifts from relying on expertise and pride in accumulating knowledge to learning with and from fellow learners, honestly disclosing doubts and admitting ignorance.

I am thinking leaders who are listening will be saying: OK, I get, it but where do I start?

As I said last time, complexity and misalignment is best handled by those directly involved. So, leadership should be devolved to the lowest level. This means expectations you have of your leaders need to be clear, agreed and tracked. There are several alignment areas that senior people need to address with lower level leaders, which I will cover in later programs. But, I will start with a key competence that leaders need improve in their teams and activities.  It’s a bastion against the confusion that comes from poorly managed complexity

Leading Learning

Leaders have to shed their prejudices and bad experiences of learning at school, – like cramming or memorizing, and that learning by doing is good enough. Many leaders will have to unlearn, and then learn about Leading Learning. There are five criteria you should expect your leaders to evidence in their learning expectations: Are they …..

  • Planned?
  • Action-Focused?
  • Constructive?
  • Social?
  • Time-Bounded?

Using these criteria, leader expectations need to specify what they expect of their people and draw out what their people expect in return.

What do you see as the main areas for leaders to think about when it comes to leading learning?

Here are four things to reflect on about your organization. Ask yourself:

How do we really match-up when it comes to leading learning?

Learning team-based sense-making process.

1. Learning is team-based sense-making process.

  • What expectations do you have of your people to develop shared knowledge from similar situations?

Why?

  •  Shared situations builds shared sensing, which builds common frames of reference.
  •  Positive shared experiences strengthen organizational culture.
  •  Shared situations builds shared learning and reduces the exclusivity of individual experience
  • Can you find expectations that say it’s OK for people to express feelings of being puzzled or being misunderstood:

Why?

  • Such expressed feelings are often the tender shoots of learning and if subject to making people feel stupid will stunt learning before it has even got going.
  • Sharing puzzlement develops learner ownership because there’s “gas in their tank” to do something about it.
  • You don’t know how many others have the same feelings until they are expressed.
  • Getting people on the same page only happens when people’s feelings are transparent to others. It takes the guesswork of where people are coming from. It reduces assumptions about people’s intention, motivation and agenda

 2.  Learning is a socially negotiated

  • Leader expectations need to specify that making sense of problems and their solutions needs to be negotiated with the intention of reaching understanding, resolving differences and producing an agreed course of action.

Why?

  • What’s agreed is far more likely to stick
  • Stakeholder and team member interests of are more likely to be respected and served
  • Better alignment leads to growing trust and openness which leads to people being less guarded

3. Learning is multi-level  sense-making

  • Leaders, especially senior leaders, need to ensure that their expectations of learning are expressed to all levels both vertically and horizontally across the organization.  The belief that knowledge is only in one person’s head went out with the craftsman and his apprentice. Knowledge and reasoning need to be used for collective sense-making.

Why?

  • It’s the social process that bonds people together. As we engage with others we influence and are influenced by our working community their beliefs and values.
  • This type of participation is how we absorb and grow a healthy culture.
  • This is how we grow as individuals and develop rewarding relationships

It’s crucial that leaders understand that activity constrains and defines the learning that can occur, so the last point

 4. Learning is a product  of activities, systems and processes

Learning through Activities

The blend of people, their experiences, values and beliefs are not reducible to individual actions in complex situations. So, leader’s expectations need to shift from the individual to the team.

Why?

 

  • It’s not about you; it’s about us – “Leave your ego at the door!”
  • Information isn’t any good if it is not shared, in ways that others can understand
  • If you don’t interact with others your chances of building trust, respect and other relational glue is remote

If I am a leader or business owner listening to this today I might be saying that’s all very well but I have a business to run. What advice would you give them?

Do what you’ve always done, get what you’ve always got! – Not!

1. Hire people who evidence lifelong learning – if people aren’t curious they are not for you.

2. Make sure you pay people for doing different things not just doing what we have always done – cos if you don’t you will get what you’ve always gotten.

3. Ensure you make sure all people know learning is a priority and it’s not something left to chance or the competition

 


_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page
Nick Anderson, Senior Partner, PDS Group LTD

Listen to the Radio Show of this Blog

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, PDS Group LTD and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2011]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, PDS Group LTD and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Complexity, the New Normal 2: Leading to the Essence

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Listen to the Radio Program – 15mins

In my last blog I introduced my new leadership series – Complexity the New Normal.

It’s time we had a debate about how we develop rewarding working relationships today. (Rewarding not just productive).  It is the competitive core – energizing people and harnessing technologies better than anyone else.

The ultimate standard for such rewarding relationships is a leader’s ability to sustain superior results over an extended period.  The debate should focus three

The Gordian Knot

questions:

  • What does it mean to lead?
  • What does it mean to follow?
  • When do you choose one from another?

Why is this debate needed for us to climb out of this recession?

People have lost trust. Many business leaders, too many unfortunately,  are seen as self-serving and subservient to shareholders.

What happened? “Org Chart Thinking” increasingly doesn’t work. Knowledge workers respond to learning not “command & control”. Plus, young people don’t want to wait in line to lead. Most important, people are searching for genuine satisfaction and meaning. For example, “restoring people to full life and health.” Medtronic.

Continue reading →

Getting the Best from your Sales Training: Methodological Agnosticism?

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Designing Sales Training: Methodological Agnosticism


Sound weird, doesn’t it? Truth is . . .  being tied to one training methodology simply isn’t productive.

There’s no “perfect training methodology” – whether it be focused on selling, managing or coaching. Any training should  Advance Competence while Advancing Sales. Complex sales organizations need methodological purpose rather than one methodology piled on top of existing methodologies.

Additionally, people have been trained a lot in their lives. It seems obvious that we should also give them credit for the concepts, processes, and skills they have already learned. Adding methodologies (no matter how good they are) risks creating indifference. We know indifference does not change behaviors! Conversely, building commitment relies on giving your people and managers credit for what they already know, while at the same time changing behaviors that do not work.

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Getting People on the Same Page – Preparing for Change

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Listen to the Radio Show based on this Blog

In this blog I want to focus on Preparing People For Change by over viewing improving people productivity and it’s connection to gaining people’s commitment.

Why is this so important as we climb out of this recession?

It’s a good question…over the last 15 years the odds of making a successful change in North America haven’t changed appreciably. Two thirds of change initiatives fail, including family businesses trying to pass on their company to the next generation. Number 1 reason executives surveyed said “People”

What is your take on the reasons for such a high failure rate?

The performance challenge is greater than ever. How you rebuild and lead an organization to perform near its potential is even more difficult today.

As Tim Kite of Focus3 Consulting says:

It’s challenging because an organization is the sum of its parts piecemeal improvement doesn’t address the organization’s system. To meet this challenge you need to be really clear on the difference between performance drivers vs. performance indicators. Too many people focus on the numbers and too little on Drivers:

20 Communication Channels to Get Aligned

•         Key Drivers produce performance

•         Key Indicators only measure performance (even well designed ones)

•         You can’t manage indicators only drivers can be managed
There are Five Drivers that cover your business system

•         People – Selection, Development & Retention

•         Culture – Clarity, Consistency & Connection

•         Strategy – Value Proposition, Marketing, Sales Customer Care, Financial Goals

•         Processes – Work Flow

•         Structure – Organizational Design, Role, Relationships

When you align these Five Drivers you need to ensure that:

  • Culture aligns and motivates people,
  • Strategy delivers in line with Customers needs,
  • Systems delivers high quality consistently,
  • Structure empowers people and smoothes workflow
  • People Driver recruits, develops and retains the right people.

How do you assess if these drivers are broken or needs repair broken?

Let’s take costs. To manage costs effectively across the Five Drivers you need clarity as to what are Core and Non-Core expenses or to put it another way what directly contributes to Top Line revenue vs. the cost of doing business which only indirectly contributes to revenue

Core Expenses are what drives Top Line Sales Revenue

So, Core and Non-Core Expenses first. You are likely to find functions which are internally misaligned present opportunities for improved productivity. Coupled with this is looking at inefficiencies when functions work collaborate with each other

Consider a company with nine functions, such as Production, Marketing, Finance. How many communications channels? You have 9  functions with 9 communication channels less 9 channels within each Function = 72 Communication Channels

Additionally, within one function say you had 50 people 2450 channels potentially.

As you look at these channels you find inefficiencies. Friction between Finance and Marketing is not unusual. So, what happens to communication flows? Communication reduces and fall back on being formal and response times get slower. We call these Expectation Gaps

Expectations Gaps Are like Pot Holes. Fill them quickly before damage occurs

Expectations are like Potholes

It sounds like they don’t know “who’s on first” and even if they did no one is holding people accountable good starting point?

Exactly. It’s like many poor performing teams at least one of the following will apply:

•      Four Team members called Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

•      There was an important job to be done.

•      Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it.

•      Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.

•      Somebody got angry about that because it was Everybody’s job.

•      Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it.

•      It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.

How expensive is that?

What signs should look for to see if think is going on?

“That’s not what I meant…”

“This is not what I asked for!”

“My colleagues don’t seem to do what I expect…”

“They never tell us the whole story!”

“I can never do anything right!”

“They never send us information; we’re always sending information to them!”

Sound Familiar?

Yes, I know several organizations where those examples would get a lot of nodding. Do you have any idea what misalignment costs?

60%+ of change initiatives fail in North America

70%+ of leaders expectations are
not understood by their people about a major change

In the last 12 years, 2 in 3 failure rate has not changed Harvard (1996) to McKinsey (2009)

Executives surveyed continue to say the number one reason for such failures is PEOPLE. It really goes into the millions and can close businesses. In one survey 134 public companies average cost of failed IT projects was $12.5m. This does not account for the cost to their cultures and people.

What are the human costs of misalignment?

With misalignment the first to go is Trust coupled to a Fear Of Conflict. When these two exist, a Lack of Commitment grows and its partner Avoiding Accountability rears its ugly head. Finally, silos are reinforced, people do what they have always what they have always done and improved performance doesn’t happen. As these dysfunctions grow over time you will find that the 8OOlb Gorilla feeding on what’s left of your enabling culture.

800lb Gorilla of Mislignmenton a rich culture of unstated expectations and assumptions.

How many of these are due to people not being on the same page?

In our projects 70%+ of leaders’ expectations of each other and those implementing a change have not expressed. Apart from unstated expectations, how do you identify poor expectations

The biggest culprits are the expectations are ambiguous, lack specificity which leads to disappointment, failure and bad feelings etc. here’s some typical language that predicts performance improvement failure:

•  “Soon…….”

•      ASAP

•      “Right Away….”

•      “I’ll Try To Get To It………”

•      “Later….”

•      “By The End Of Next Week

So, Practically what can people do about this when they hear language like this?

First get key players get them to articulates and record expectations then apply:

“The three most important rules in creating accountability cultures are:

Specificity, Specificity, Specificity

Dealing with Expectations Gaps

1. Which expectations gaps are barriers to improving performance and reducing expenses?

2. Who do you need to gain agreement from?

3. Once agreed, ask them to tell you what evidence you will see that your expectation has been met?

4. Then, hold them accountable – “Inspect what you expect”

5. Then, what do you think others expect of you that is connected to these gaps?

6. Now, repeat steps 2,3 & 4

Have you done any projects locally where you have helped fill such expectation gaps?

An Alignment Success

Ken Genzink, Genzink Steel tried twice over the last five years to reduce his operational management of the Family Steel Fabrication business. On both occasions he had to reengage to save the business.

As says in his testimonial, “I realize now more than ever that many decisions and observations were assumptions”

This resulted in problems like:

•      Job Shop Scheduling software didn’t work

•      People were cynical about it ever being useful.

•      Structural Steel side of the business was losing money due to poor estimating

•      Difficulty in retaining skilled people

The Implementation consisted of the following activities:

•      Developing a vision for change to reduce dependency on the

•      Owner’s day-to-day management.

•      Isolate key Alignment Components and their definitions which Ken Genzink saw as crucial to achieving greater market responsiveness and help him devote time to his other businesses

•      AlEx™ was then configured specifically for Genzink Steel. AlEx™ is an Automated Accountability Tracking tool that identifies expectations gaps and monitors people’s progress in filling them.

Ken now works at another location devoting the time he needs to the other Family businesses. Gross Revenues have steadily increased from $20 to $30m, and

Genzink is now on the acquisition trail.

“104 jobs: Genzink Steel Supply and Welding Co., maker of metal wind turbines, and other fabrications”(GR Press Aug 2008)

Tip of the Month

If you are getting people ready for change

My Expectations of Others

•      What I expect you to keep doing

•      What I want you to start doing

•      What I want you to stop doing

Others’ Expectations of Me

•      What things I think others want me to keep to keep doing . . . .

•      What new things I think others want me to start doing . . . .

•      What things I think others want me to stop doing . . . .

Then meet with those who you need  to implement your change and compare your answers – be prepared for surprises.

Listen to the Radio Show



Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the  first thing on your mind after reading this Blog.   How about asking us?  The first call is free!  Just email me to set it up.  Don’t wait, get PDS working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

_________________________________________________

____________________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page
Nick Anderson, Senior Partner, PDS Group LTD
E-mail I Web I Linkedin

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, PDS Group LTD and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2011]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, PDS Group LTD and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Getting People on the Same Page – Seven Leadership Challenges

Posted on by agincourtarcher
Listen to the Radio Show of this Blog
Like most consultants, we are often accused of borrowing the clients watch, tell them the time and then hand it back with a bill………So, given the threats to our economy, it’s a statement of the obvious. We live in turbulent times… only this time what follows is free.
I got to thinking what are the challenges of leadership in the times we are living in:
Some years ago I noted this quote:
“Business is now so complex and difficult, the survival of the firm is so hazardous, in an environment increasingly unpredictable, competitive and fraught with danger, that their continued existence depends on the day-to-day mobilization of everyone’s intelligence”
(Konosuke Matushita, founder of Matsushita Electric)
It struck a chord…to mobilize everyone’s intelligence… for regular listeners you will recognize a theme in our work at PDS…releasing and focusing people is still a crucial ingredient to survival and sustained success

So, my focus in this blog is the Seven Challenges of Leadership in Turbulence

OK. I know you well enough by now to know there’s a core to these challenges…
Spot on….it’s Bravery…
“Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death.”
Omar N Bradley
The first step “walk and talk – - – the same talk” constantly. Alignment between attitude, philosophy and actions is key!  That consistency is hard to find, particularly since producing a payoff in change is often more about emotion and intuition than it is about analysis and logic.
Where’s the bravery you ask?
Try making emotional and intuitive decisions which may or may not be born out by analysis and logic! Yet I like, Peter Senge’s viewpoint:
“high levels of mastery….leaders cannot afford to choose between reason and intuition, any more than they would choose to walk on one leg and see with one eye”
It’s that outward calm of seeing a swan glide across the water, yet below the water line…furious paddling.. It’s about not losing your head those around you are running around like chickens with their heads cut off…..what are we going to do….
The bravery comes to challenge how your company operates, its implicit beliefs and philosophies (e.g., The unspoken creed…once in automotive always in automotive).  Your culture can create its own distractions which interfere with what seems right, intuitive and obvious.   Many times, discussing this tension is repressed so that “we don’t take our eye off-the-ball,” or so we don’t offend others.  Consequently, leaders often focus on the seemingly “urgent” and let the critical issues slide.   They take refuge in “safe” financial performance targets that can’t be easily disputed.  These targets rarely support desired behaviors or intuitive outcomes.
Yet there are automotive dependent manufacturers in West Michigan that are wondering how to “keep it shiny side up!”
So in this fog of war, where do leaders look to survival?
If you look at successful companies, they have varied strategies, structures and systems.  However, their leaders do have something in common.  They share surprisingly consistent philosophies.
These successful leaders have moved away from over reliance on very formal ways of running their organizations (like articulating strategies, building structures and developing systems).  They have moved toward using more organic ways of managing (like engaging people in defining a purpose, implementing through necessary and defined processes and developing people).
So what does this point out?  It goes to the root of why so many change initiatives fail (60% +) even after overdosing on business re-engineering and other scientific management techniques.  Many Leaders manage what is easy to manage (like managing numbers and not people).  They’ve been trained in the scientific disciplines.  They forget they are managing an “organism.”  They dismiss the small and gradual steps associated with real change for grandiose strategies
So, let’s put this into perspective.  Successful leaders recognize that an organization’s purpose is more important than short-term outcomes.  Why?  Outcomes change – the purpose does not!  Their focus is on how they can create committed members of a purposeful organization.  Putting purpose above outcomes, allowing new improved outcomes to take precedence and promoting different things to be done takes bravery.
Why is bravery so important?
It takes bravery for leaders and executives to address seven critical challenges.  Without question, addressing them is about not acquiescing to “legacy tendencies” but about incorporating “what now works” into the development of “tomorrow’s legacies”!  Bravery is about doing “different things,” not about making excuses as to why you can’t do different things.
Getting above the white noise of excuses is not for the faint hearted….getting up with clamor of resistances and fear
Where do we start with these challenges? Is there a sequence or are they inter-related?

Have you got Leadership Testicular Fortitude

1. Embedding Purpose

Where are you on the continuum from Undefined or Conceptual to Clearly articulated & translated?
So, you’ve written and articulated the corporate purpose!  But, do the troops actually understand what this means to their everyday behavior and actions?  So often the organization states its purpose without regard as to whether or not it has created any ownership in that purpose.
Essential Questions:
  • How will you gain widespread organizational support for your purpose?
  • How will you ensure new activities, actions and behaviors invigorate your purpose?
  • How will you ensure your expectations are aligned with what people assume is expected of them?

2:  Removing Distractions

Where you on the continuum from Unidentified to  Identified and Managed Distractions?
There are always distractions that deflect an organization from its “appointed” tasks.  If these distractions go unidentified, they grow stronger. Distractions don’t just miraculously disappear. The longer they last the more they clog corporate arteries. Executives need to lead the “charge” in identifying and eliminating distractions.
Essential Questions:
  • How will you convince people to dismiss actions, operations and processes which stimulate doing old things?
  • How can you eliminate duplicate processes and reports that slow the organization down?
  • Who will oversee the distraction-elimination process; and, what authority will they have?
I can see how that would help but does this really get over the fog of war…that we face today?

 

Getting People on the Same Page

3:  Aligning Organizational Expectations

 

Where are you on the continuum from Defused & Misaligned to Focused & Aligned Expectations?
Over and over again, employees say,
“I wish someone had told me exactly what was expected.”
Have you ever considered that others’ assumptions of “what is expected” might be counterproductive to your purpose or outcomes?
“Are people doing what you expect or what they think you expect?”
Essential Questions:
  • What are the key components that reveal your organization’s direction and success?
  • How will you translate these words into actions, competencies and behaviors that can be managed?
  • How will you measure the degree of alignment with your purpose, and what evidence of alignment are you looking for?
Doesn’t this demand more from a leader than just stating the facts?

Making clearer emotional connections

“Its alarming how one individual can undermine a change simply by being out of touch with intuition and empathy.  One of the most overlooked, yet common ways, leaders fail albeit unintentionally, is not to express appropriately, candidly and consistently what they feel as well as what they think. This is known as unintentionally ambiguous behavior which gives gives mixed messages. Next to aggressive behavior ambiguous behavior can cause the most tension for sellers and buyers alike” (Adapted from Robert Cooper’s book, Executive EQ.)

4. Creating Differentiation

Where you on the continuum from Competitively Vulnerable to  Differentiated & Own Your Niche?

If you feel like you’re the same in the marketplace, odds are that’s how the customer sees you.  As a leader, you are responsible for creating a climate of differentiation.

Essential Questions:
  • How will you ensure that customer contact people and others connect with one another to develop differentiable approaches?
  • How will you measure the degree and profitability of differentiation?
  • How will you leverage differentiation to lead your market place?
I can see how these first four create a platform for success…but how do leaders get this to stick and not just be another “flash in the pan”?

5:  Coaching Strategically 

Raising the Bar

 

Where you on this continuum from Coaching being Isolated & sporadic to Cascaded & Consistent throughout you organization?

We know, we know …. your people coach! The real question is, do your people coach with the right intensity and frequency to replicate successful behaviors? Or, is coaching infrequent, informal and isolated?
Essential Questions:
  • What will you do as a leader to establish your coaching cascade? (Starting with you, of course)
  • What is the right intensity and frequency of coaching needed under present competitive conditions?
  • How will you know that coaching is effective?
6:  Replicating Success
Where are you on this continuum from Using Lagging Indicators to Using Leading Indicators to replicate success?
The words, “best practice” seems to have permeated the corporate world.  Your people undoubtedly have their own practices of choice, honed by years of personal experience.   Often corporate rewards go to these people rather than to those who demonstrate the “best practices” that everyone can adopt and benefit from.
Essential Questions:
  • What will your real best practices look like?
  • How will you tie best practices to behaviors which can be evidenced and replicated without alienating the productive, “lone rangers?”
  • How will you use your “language of leaders” to make managing easier and more measurable?

7:  Rewarding Change

Where you on this continuum from Historical & Slow to Related & Responsive when it comes to Rewarding Change?
If the recognition and reward systems of your company run on “legacy,” it will only encourage doing things differently, not “doing different things!”   To change, you need to consistently reward the new behaviors, not the “reward legacies” of the past.
Essential Questions:
  • What proportion of people’s compensation should be tied to adopting the new behaviors?
  • How will you measure and reward those who support your purpose?
  • How will you “raise the bar” so that over time people demonstrate excellence in the new behaviors?
Where do you go from here?
Ensure that your “walk and talk” are consistent.  This relates to your language, how you reward excellence, how you coach and how you react when things go wrong!  Bravery means displaying an attitude of distinction.
Create a cascade of conversation and coaching that gets above the “white noise” of legacy…..that’s doing different things!
Align the expectations of the organization. Bravery is found in exposing misalignments and distractions for immediate correction.

Tip of this Blog

Look at your team/colleagues…whose up for a fight?
“He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words”
(William Shakespeare, Henry V part of his speech before the Battle of Agincourt)

Listen to the Radio Show



_________________________________________________________

Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the  first thing on your mind after reading this Blog.   How about asking us?  The first call is free!  Just email me to set it up.  Don’t wait, get PDS working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

__________________________________________________

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page
Nick Anderson, Senior Partner, PDS Group LTD
E-mail I Web I Linkedin

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, PDS Group LTD and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2011]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, PDS Group LTD and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Implementing Sustainable Change – Leadership Challenges

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Walk the Talk – Radio for Agile Minds – Change Management – Our Beliefs Change Management – Our Beliefs

Regular readers will remember I was talking about how many change projects started in response to the worsening economy yet almost half of the respondents said that a significant amount of change projects failed to meet their stated goals.

Top-Down or Bottom-Up – Making Change Personal

Posted on by Terrance Merriman

By Contributing Blogger – Terry Merriman, PDS Group Ltd

Implementing successful and sustainable change is tough, strategic change initiatives fail two-thirds of the time in North American business (Kotter, 1996, and McKinsey, 2009).  How can your organization succeed?  You can succeed by making change personal!  Remember, performance is personal before it is organizational.

Isn’t this a truism, a matter of common business sense?

Since when was common sense common practice! It is common for many leaders to plan their change initiative, communicate it to their leadership team, tell the organization to watch for it, set some goals and measures, and incorporate the goals in their team and department objectives.  Then, the change dies and the leadership team wonders why.  The answer; the change was never translated into personal action!

If your people don’t embraced change and those in your value chain (including your customers and vendors) it will fail.  Why?  If your people do not understand the change initiative, buy into it, and integrate it into their daily activities, it will not work. Consequently, planned change and personal action don’t mesh as people are skeptical, don’t understand why, don’t see the need, and don’t know what’s in it for them.

So how do you make change personal?

Define, Communicate, Delegate and Track change related expectations. We usually get the organization’s side of change, define and communicate, pretty well.  Where we fail is in putting the personal side of change, communicate, delegate, and track, into play.

  • Define the change in terms of broad categories of activity to which everyone in the organization can relate, and specific results that benefit the organization and its people.
  • Communicate the change initiative, and include the message that leadership will be expecting everyone to participate by defining specific expectations of each other necessary to carry out the change.
  • Communicate More, by focusing on individual working relationships by:
    • Get each leadership team member identify specific expectations of each other as to what they must do to successfully implement the change.  Ensure the expectations are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time and budget bounded, Ethical and Recorded.
    • Have each leader discuss their expectations of the receiver expected to execute, and ensure each accepts accountability for each other’s expectation.  This helps to create a productive relationship and integrate the change into the business at the leadership level.
  • Delegate by cascading the above process to each leader’s direct reports, peers, and business partners to those teams that are considered key players in the change initiative.
    • Ensure people delegate not only the responsibility and accountability but also the authority to execute each expectation. In this way people can develop ownership of  those expectations other have of them.  This step integrates the change throughout the organization as it becomes a part of each person’s work responsibilities and commitments.
    • Ensure each expectation’s originator is held responsible for assessing the receiver’s ability to meet their expectations and coach them to develop their competence.
  • Track each expectation’s results.  This means each person holding accountable the person who agreed to meeting and reporting progress to an expectation’s completion.  So, the Accountability Culture is born.  The expectations approach challenges leaders and their direct reports to get personal first perspective and serves to foster improved communications between them.

The Expectations Approach makes change personal by casacading accountability for implementing change throughout the organization in a way that helps people understand the reasons for and expected results from the change, and buy into it.  We’ve found it one of the most effective ways of implementing successful and sustainable change in organizations.  The side benefits of this approach are that it improves accountability throughout the organization, and encourages creation and development of productive relationships between people, leading to improved organizational performance.

Where has this approach been used succesfully?

This approach has been successfully employed in Fortune 500 companies and family owned businesses, from new selling strategies to management transitions (See Project Summaries) It has been  shown to work in for-profit and non-profit organizations from large to small, and it also works in government organizations (it’s been used in the British Navy by its developer, John Machin).

“Change is Hard and Real Change is Real Hard!” If you want to be successful at change, you have to be prepared to tackle the hard part of change – making it personal.

Listen to The Radio Show



Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog.
How about asking us?  The first call is free!  Just email me to set it up.
Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

_________________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page 
Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage

E-mail I Web I Linkedin

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2012]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Leading Competitive Differentiation

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Listen to the Radio Show of this Blog

Last month we looked at competitive differentiation and emphasized the importance of Competitive Value Discovery as fundamental. It helps you discover value potential over your competitors. Finding value that the Customer had never thought of before is competitively differentiating. Also, whether it’s your existing customer or you are trying to secure a new client, they always weigh your value against your competitors’. Focused Value Discovery helps you gain greater control over what they weigh, how they weigh it and, as importantly, what the competition is doing in the same regard so that we can counter such tactics. So, if we have far better intel and a better sense of the client’s changing priorities we can work both offensively and defensively to influence their Decision Guidelines.

In sum, you need to gain the high ground

What have you chosen for us this month?

This month I want to explore why planned and focused value discovery is vital to creating and implementing a successful sales strategy. Aligning where you are going with your resources gives you the best chance for creating new or additional revenue sources. This means being competitively clear about how you are going to choose the products (or services) you want to build.  For instance:

  • Build the product you want to build,
  • Market the product you want to build,
  • Sell the product you want to build,
  • Service the product you want to build
  • Build the next generation

Determining where to differentiate based on market conditions is a strategic value conversation. You have to know your products as well as you know your competitor’s. Then determine strategically where competitors are most vulnerable and how to deliver those messages. You must regularly test your premise with the customer…

How easy is it to find out how your competitor is differentiating themselves?

Not easy! Sure, hard product functionality is on their website – that’s the easy bit. It’s difficult because most think each competitor is static and consistent – but they are not! Many competitors don’t even behave the same between their different regions or divisions. For example, a competitor can be your partner in one geography, yet be your competitor in another. Typically, this occurs in IT. So, what they do in Idaho is often very different than what they are doing in Chicagoland. With one client, we helped them find out that a technology partner was in fact competing against them using two strategies. The first was in schools districts and the second in State Government. They were losing 8/10 sales to them. After we determined this we helped them reverse that condition.

Why do so many companies fail to recognize such competitive strategies?

Because they don’t have the focus, processes and ability to read their competitive environments. Such signals are not easy to read: they are weak ambiguous, and need deciphering. Only a systematic and aligned process can decipher competitive signals early enough to make a difference.

It is difficult. First, top management is never close enough to the market. Second, some top executives can’t see competitive reality. Somehow they become insulated from competitive reality by relying on intelligence that is invariably biased, subjective, filtered or late.

By the time most executives get evidence of changes in their markets, they have already lost touch with customers, technology, competitors, suppliers, government and the other forces operating to squeeze their profits.

The question is, if you do nothing, what are the competitive consequences? Without taking specific preventive measures, such as ensuring that top managers consider competitive information in making decisions, companies will be hit on the head by change – time and again.

You may be thinking, who has the time to continually and systematically identify such signals early? Who has the expertise to attempt to decode all of them? The answer is: Your people – those who are in daily touch with the competitive arena.

Survival depends on competitive agility when facing changes in the environment by:

  • Continuously moving on three fronts - content, context and process
  • Being unpredictable and so easily identifiable to your competition
  • Being experimental

To compete in unstable markets you need to be competent in two things:

  • Identifying and understanding the competitive forces at play and how they change over time, linked to
  • Mobilizing resources to respond competitively

How do you get this flow of competitive intelligence to decision makers?


The Five Aspects of Competitive Strategic Change

Our uncertain environment means strategic change involves parallel streams of activity.  There is no easy logic; It’s more like brewing a culture– like beer. It’s a difficult complex process where a manager’s ability to cope with ambiguity is paramount.

It’s not surprising then that higher performing firms  handle five interrelated aspects of strategic change better:

1. Assessing the Competitive Environment
2. Leading Competitiveness
3. Linking Strategic & Operational change
4. Learning Competitively
5. Orchestrating Competitive Change

Let’s look at the first of these five.

1. Assessing the Competitive Environment

The firm has to be an open learning system and not reliant on one specialist function.

As Romme (1989) puts it:

“There is the problem of not only environmental “sensing”, but also “sense-making”"And sensing tends to be by individuals whereas sense making nearly always involves collective processing…

Successful competitive sensing and sense making is  requires:

  • Key people to champion assessment techniques which increase openness
  • Both structure and culture to encourage environment-facing behaviors

Even with these factors are present there is no guarantee anything will change without actions which stabilizes and drives this assessment capacity forward.  .

Presumably, this means leadership style has to change?

2. Leading Change

I agree, it’s not is not just ensuring that the environment is understood; the vital need is to ensure that the organization learns and acts on new information that requires courageous leadership. The leadership challenge is that unpredictability makes the prospect of greater control remote.  So, big initiatives in themselves are of limited value and may well be dangerous.  Paradoxically, effective leadership relies on the gradual and modest.  This includes assessing, for instance, through “problem-sensing” and “climate-setting” management can assess the political implications of a competitive strategy. Effective leadership relies on shaping a long term process rather one direct initiative. These processes have to encourage analysis and actions which are sensitive to changing circumstances.

Competitive research suggests that leading an organization through change does not imply reliance on one leader.  Great emphasis in those organizations studied was placed on:

  • Creating a broader notion of collective leadership at higher levels
  • Embedding a complimentary sense of leadership and responsibility at lower levels

Leaders need to be “Radical Gradualists,” knowing where they need to go using incremental and unspectacular steps.
It involves integrating competitive actions at all levels.

Building a climate for leading change also needs to raise energy levels and set new directions. The conditions needed are:

  • Showing why the changes are needed
  • Building the organizational capabilities to mount the change
  • Establishing an agenda which sets direction, visions and values

What’s the next challenge for becoming more competitive?

3. Linking Strategic & Operational Change

The cumulative effect of separate acts can be powerful.  As Pettigrew & Whipp puts it:

“Translating strategy into operational action does not occur by a neat sequence of steps to a logical outcome; it may include…iterative actions  in order to break through ignorance or resistance; it often requires…aborted efforts and the buildup of slow incremental phases of adjustment which….allow short bursts of concentrated action…”

You need to focus on:

  • Opening up people to reach closure on what worked in the past and reinforce the changes that need to be made
  • Sustaining speed, intensity and momentum of the process
  • Recognizing that re-formulation of the strategy will occur – Set the expectation that you can’t to get it right first time
  • Translating strategic intent into operational reality – WIIFM

Then, new knowledge and insights gained during implementation of a strategy can be captured, retained and disseminated. So, replicate success and avoid failures better than you competition

I am curious to learn about the next step

So, the next step is about the organization’s ability to keep learning about its competitive surroundings

4. Competitive Learning

Peter Senge defined learning organizations as:

“Organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to learn together.”

Competitive learning organizations need to create positive learning spirals that:

  • Develop the value of competitive knowledge as a key differentiating weapon
  • Facilitate learning  that generates, maintains and regenerates that knowledge
  • Find ways of exposing knowledge locked-up  in the procedural repertoires of the firm
  • Ensure that the knowledge base of the firm matches changing competitive conditions

Competitive learning spirals involve observation, reflection, hypothesizing, experimentation, action and “hands-on” application.  What is learned has to be codified and diffused.

Such spirals are team based. People collectively developing their knowledge, values and shared mental models of their competitive environment. It goes beyond training.  The need is for a much broader approach which embraces “play experimentation”, developing appropriate language as well as reshaping attitudes and values.

Often overlooked, is the need for breaking down entrenched knowledge and beliefs – “unlearning”. – Shedding outmoded knowledge, techniques and beliefs, and then learning new ones to carry out strategies is crucial.  The ability to do so faster and more effectively than your competitors becomes almost priceless!

How do Leaders juggle all of this?

5. Orchestrating Competitive Change

It’s about holding a firm’s strategic thinking together, while carrying out the reshaping and adjusting which new or emergent strategies demand. Research shows the need for competitive integrity between the strategic competitive position adopted by the firm, the internal resources and external collaborators

Such orchestration is not easily attained or maintained.  It means solving analytical, educational and political problems.

The problem of orchestration lies in the divergence between official goals and more routine decisions.   As Kanter (1983) says, “there are many rules for stifling innovation”.  These include multiple layers of managerial approval; intensive controls; secretive decision making; and suspicion of new ideas.  In other words, corporate contradictions prevent change – the formidable obstacles to which many give little attention.

Are there any other aspects which leaders should consider when conducting competitive change?

Developing Competitive Networks

A key aspect is developing competitive networks.  It’s investing in networks to build up, for example, a set of complimentary assets which it needs in order to exploit its knowledge base.

Networking focuses on developing relationships between your firm and others which are directly concerned with generating new intellectual capital (IP) For example, sharing life science research with a collaborator. Each has one piece of the puzzle, so they build a database by sharing intellectual property.

It also is about developing relationships which affect the firm’s process of generating and altering its knowledge indirectly.  An example here is with data centers and different IT firms used to support the customer’s service in that data center.

Developing such networks requires learning local cultural and market conditions, techniques of partnering, negotiation skills and collaboration. Such networks are often invisible assets which cannot be readily purchased and controlled.

So, I guess the real question is how well an organization develops its competitiveness by being better at discovering customer values and then aligning their organizations and partners to meet those demands. Right?

Competitive Value Discovery is the tip of the spear targeted and driven by superior focus, processes and leadership that galvanizes the organization. It is sustained by the belief that being competitive is about making sense of changing market conditions, customer needs, priorities and competitive responses.

Competitiveness rests not only aligning such aspects, but also replicating what works over and over again. Can you tell me what those systems are in your organization?

Listen to the Radio Show

Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog.
How about asking us?  The first call is free!  Just email me to set it up.
Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more,
we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page 
Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage

E-mail I Web I Linkedin

Listen to the Radio Show of this Blog

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2012]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 

 


Leadership Challenges in Turbulent Times

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Leadership Turbulence

It’s a statement of the obvious ….. We live in turbulent times… I got to thinking what are the challenges of leadership in the times we are living in. Some years ago I noted this quote:

“Business is now so complex and difficult, the survival of the firm is so hazardous, in an environment increasingly unpredictable, competitive and fraught with danger, that their continued existence depends on the day-to-day mobilization of everyone’s intelligence” (Konosuke Matushita, founder of Matsushita Electric)

It struck a chord…to mobilize everyone’s intelligence… for regular readers you will recognize a theme in our work at PDS…releasing and focusing people is still a crucial ingredient to survival and sustained sucess

So, my focus this month is the Leadership Challenges in Turbulent Times

What’s the core to these challenges that leaders face….it’s Bravery…

Bravery is the capacity to perform properly even when scared half to death.
(Omar N Bradley)

The first step “walk and talk – - – the same talk” constantly.  Alignment between attitude, philosophy and actions is key!  Such consistency is hard to find, particularly since producing a payoff in change is often more about emotion and intuition than it is about analysis and logic.  Where’s the bravery you ask? Try making emotional and intuitive decisions which may or may not be born out by analysis and logic!

Yet I like, Peter Senge’s viewpoint:

“high levels of mastery….leaders cannot afford to choose between reason and intuition, any more than they would choose to walk on one leg and see with one eye”

It’s that outward calm of seeing a swan glide across the water, yet below the water line…furious paddling..


It’s about not losing your head while those around you are running around like chickens with their heads cut off…..what are we going to d!….what are we going to do!

The bravery comes to challenge how your company operates, its implicit beliefs and philosophies (e.g., The unspoken creed…once in automotive always in automotive).  Your culture can create its own distractions which interfere with what seems right, intuitive and obvious.   Many times, discussing this tension is repressed so that “we don’t take our eye off-the-ball,” or so we don’t offend others.  Consequently, leaders often focus on the seemingly “urgent” and let the critical issues slide.   They take refuge in “safe” financial performance targets that can’t be easily disputed.  These targets rarely support desired behaviors or intuitive outcomes.

Yet there are automotive dependent manufacturers in West Michigan that are wondering how to “keep it shiny side up!”

So in this fog of war, where do leaders look to  survival?

If you look at successful companies, they have varied strategies, structures and systems.  However, their leaders do have something in common.  They share surprisingly consistent philosophies.

These successful leaders have moved away from over reliance on very formal ways of running their organizations (like articulating strategies, building structures and developing systems).  They have moved toward using more organic ways of managing (like engaging people in defining a purpose, implementing through necessary and defined processes and developing people).

So what does this point out?  It goes to the root of why so many change initiatives fail (60% +) even after overdosing on business re-engineering and other scientific management techniques.  Many Leaders manage what is easy to manage (like managing numbers and not people).  They’ve been trained in the scientific disciplines.  They forget they are managing an “organism.”  They dismiss the small and gradual steps associated with real change for grandiose strategies

So, let’s put this into perspective.  Successful leaders recognize that an organization’s purpose is more important than short-term outcomes.  Why?  Outcomes change – their purpose does not!  Their focus is on how they can create committed members of a purposeful organization.  Putting purpose above outcomes, allowing new improved outcomes to take precedence and promoting different things to be done takes bravery.

Why is bravery so important?

It takes bravery for leaders and executives to address seven critical challenges.  Without question, addressing them is about not acquiescing to “legacy tendencies” but about incorporating “what now works” into the development of “tomorrow’s legacies”!  Bravery is about doing “different things,” not about making excuses as to why you can’t do different things.

Getting above the white noise of excuses is not for the faint hearted….getting up with clamor of resistances and fear

Where do we start with these challenges? Is there a sequence or are they inter-related?

They are interelated but a logical place to start is:

1. Embedding Purpose

Is your purpose Ill-defined or Conceptual Clear, well articulated & translated?

So, you’ve written and articulated the corporate purpose!  But, do the troops actually understand what this means to their everyday behavior and actions?  So often the organization states its purpose without regard as to whether or not it has created any ownership in that purpose.

Essential Questions:

  • How will you gain widespread organizational support for your purpose?
  • How will you ensure new activities, actions and behaviors invigorate your purpose?
  • How will you ensure your expectations are aligned with what people assume is expected of them?

2:  Removing Distractions

Are your distractions unidentified or well identified and managed?

There are always distractions that deflect an organization from its “appointed” tasks.  If these distractions go unidentified, they grow stronger. Distractions don’t just miraculously disappear. The longer they last the more they clog corporate arteries. Executives need to lead the “charge” in identifying and eliminating distractions.

Essential Questions:

  • How will you convince people to dismiss actions, operations and processes which stimulate doing old things?
  • How can you eliminate duplicate processes and reports that slow the organization down?
  • Who will oversee the distraction-elimination process; and, what authority will they have?

I can see how that would help but does this really get over the fog of war that we face today?

Not unless you integrate it with the next challenge…

3:  Aligning Organizational Expectations

Are you expectations unstated or defused or well focused & aligned?

Over and over again, employees say, “I wish someone had told me exactly what was expected.” Have you ever considered that others’ assumptions of “what is expected” might be counter productive to your purpose or outcomes? Are people doing what you expect or what they think you expect?

Essential Questions:

  • What are the key components that reveal your organization’s direction and success?
  • How will you translate these words into actions, competencies and behaviors that can be managed?
  • How will you measure the degree of alignment with your purpose, and what evidence of alignment are you looking for?

Doesn’t this demand more from a leader than just stating the facts?

Yes. It’s about lt’s making clearer emotional connections. It’s alarming how one individual can undermine a change simply by being out of touch with intuition and empathy.  One of the most overlooked yet common ways leaders fail, albeit unintentionally, is not to express appropriately, candidly and consistently what we feel as well as what we think. This is known as unintentionally ambiguous behavior. It gives mixed messages and next to aggressive behavior, ambiguous behavior can cause the most tension between leaders and others. (Adapted from Robert Cooper’s book, Executive EQ).

What is the context for well focused & aligned exepectations?

4  Creating Differentiation

How vulnerable are you to being seen as “same-o,same-o” or clearly differentiated from your competition?

If you feel like you’re the same in the marketplace, odds are that’s how the customer sees you.  As a leader, you are responsible for creating a climate of differentiation.

Essential Questions:

  • How will you ensure that customer contact people and others connect with one another to develop differentiable approaches?
  • How will you measure the degree and profitability of differentiation?
  • How will you leverage differentiation to lead your market place?

I can see how these first four create a platform for success…but how do leaders get this to stick and not just be another “flash in the pan”

5:  Coaching

How would you describe the coaching process in your organization…Isolated  or Cascaded

We know, we know …. your people coach!  The real question is, do your people coach with the right intensity and frequency to replicate successful behaviors? Or, is coaching infrequent, informal and isolated?

Essential Questions:

  • What will you do as a leader to establish your coaching cascade?
  • What is the right intensity and frequency of coaching needed under present competitive conditions?
  • How will you know that coaching is effective?

6:  Replicating Success

How reliant are you on using Lagging Indicators as opposed to Leading Indicators?

The words, “best practice” seems to have permeated the corporate world.  Your people undoubtedly have their own practices of choice, honed by years of personal experience.   Often corporate rewards go to these people rather than to those who demonstrate the “best practices” that everyone can adopt and benefit from.

Essential Questions:

  • What will your real best practices look like?
  • How will you tie best practices to behaviors which can be evidenced and replicated without alienating the productive “lone rangers?”
  • How will you use your “language of leaders” to make managing easier and more measurable?

7:  Rewarding Change

To waht extent does your reward system reflect what worked in the past rather then being liagned with your current direction?

If the recognition and reward systems of your company run on the “legacies of past success” it will only encourage doing things differently, not “doing different things!”   To change, you need to consistently reward the new behaviors, not the “reward legacies” of the past.

It’s like traning people to use the longbow,used in the Middle Ages as a weapon of war.A trained army archer could shoot upwards of ten to twelve arrows in one minute, making him the world’s first “machine gun” in some ways. Today how ever, the fastest rate of fire a 36 barrell Prototype mini gun, and can shoot 1,000,000 rounds per minute

Essential Questions:

  • What proportion of people’s compensation should be tied to adopting the new behaviors?
  • How will you measure and reward those who support your purpose?
  • How will you “raise the bar” so that over time people demonstrate excellence in the new behaviors?

Where do you go from here?

Ensure that your “walk and talk” are consistent.  This relates to your language, how you reward excellence, how you coach and how you react when things go wrong!  Bravery means displaying an attitude of distinction.

Create a cascade of conversation and coaching that gets above the “white noise” of legacy…..that’s doing different things!

Align the expectations of the organization. Bravery is found in exposing misalignments and distractions for immediate correction.

Tip of the Blog

Look at your team/colleagues…whose up for a fight

“He that outlives this day, and comes safe home,
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is nam’d,
And rouse him at the name of Crispian.
He that shall live this day, and see old age,
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors,
And say ‘To-morrow is Saint Crispian.’
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars,
And say ‘These wounds I had on Crispian’s day.’
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot,
But he’ll remember, with advantages,
What feats he did that day. Then shall our names,
Familiar in his mouth as household words”

(St. Crispen’s Day Speech William Shakespeare, 1599)


Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog.
How about asking us?  The first call is free!  Just email me to set it up.
Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

_____________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page 
Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage

E-mail I Web I Linkedin

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2012]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

 


Have you got your Change Shoes on? –

Posted on by agincourtarcher

Now, that’s a change shoe!

Sustainable change is based on leaders having a radical vision and building a pathway to that vision one step at a time.

Just as you wear a pair of shoes, this change walk has the left shoe – radical, right shoe gradual –  Radical Gradualism

That got me to pose this question:

“What is the glue that holds an organization together while it goes through change?”

Relationships – the golden triangle of your people, your customers and your partners.So, that’s the pathway today – creating and holding on to that human glue that produces success

“Where’s the evidence to support your track this month?”The answer seems obvious…but…why is this facet of business becoming more important?

Traditional rationalization and cost cutting strategies fail too often – too many business turnaround failures. These traditional approaches, which are predicated upon cost efficiencies, have left companies demoralized, distracted and less productive.

If you look at the data – pure light

Successful leaders transform their organizations doing several things, like:

  • Building closer relationships with customers while harnessing human talent to deliver greater customer satisfaction: HP’s competitive strategy vs. IBM Mini Computers
  • Leveraging internal resident talent and expertise to resolve business problems and capitalize on opportunities: 3M Post-It Note
  • Fostering a climate that results in personal ownership for doing what’s needed:  HSBC’s Customer First Change Process in the UK
  • Devolving responsibility to groups and teams create a project based organization: Volvo pioneered work cells – one team-one car
  • Raising the importance of individual and organizational learning, ensuring learning and working are integrated: KPMG link learning to career progression
  • Secure changes in attitudes and behavior: Fred Smith, FedEx “Anywhere,Overnight, Guaranteed”

“In the military, leadership means getting a group of people to subordinate their individual desires and ambitions for the achievement of organizational goals. And good leadership has very measurable effects on a company’s bottom line.”

My call to action: Challenge your attitudes, values and your behavior. They are the sole of your change shoes, rather than just focusing on your technology, products and services – all of which can be copied.

Some would say that other things like the right “goto” market strategy with the right distribution channels etc. So, have we got a chicken and egg situation like what comes first

People or Process or Structure?

Good point, but consider this: the days of ready, aim, fire have long gone, it’s been ready, fire, aim for some time. Few startups succeed – e.g. new restaurants close before their first anniversary. The change paradox is this “hurry slowly” – radical gradualism is a simple concept rigorously implemented

Let’s put it another way: At least three separate disciplines drew essentially the same conclusions about change and project management:

WYSIWYG-( What you see is what you get) is no longer reality. It’s IWKIWISI (I’ll Know it When I see It!) that reflects our world today

Like a lot of what you say seems common sense…why don’t more companies take this approach…?

Many factors….one telling fact  is that average age of senior executives while falling is between 46-50 yo.So, they graduated between 1978 – 1982….Who had a laptop let alone a cell phone? At that time business schools still held on to a Fortune 500 view of the world and seeing the world through the lens of the Harvard Business Review. Let me ask you – What percentage of businesses is of this size in West Michigan? – Not many. So, the enculturation of managers was still “ready, aim, fire”

Bosses are turning still turn a deaf ear…Bosses are ignoring a wealth of creative ideas from
their employees

  • 1:4 people believe that they are never listened to by superiors
  • Among older people the proportion rises to nearly 1:2!
  • 1:4 never been asked by their bosses for their opinion or actively encouraged to offer up ideas, no matter their length of service.
  • 1:2 Canadians surveyed believe that their companies use half or less of their brain power
  • Surveys – NOP Survey 1000 (London & South East) & “Report on Business” Magazine Dec 1998)

Do you see this trend getting worse?

 

Employees want bosses to listen better

In the Leadership Digest, in 2006 – While employees gave their bosses “high marks” in a recent study of worker satisfaction, staff still suggested areas for improvement:

  • 43% want bosses to use their employees’ skills and abilities better.
  • More than 35 % want the boss to step in more often to resolve conflicts.
  • Just over 25 % wish bosses would ask for their ideas and listen more readily.

So, it depends on how business leaders react. Let me explain, based on James Brian Quinn, Philip Anderson, Sydney Finkelstein,with rare exceptions, productivity lies more in intellectual and systems capabilities than say raw materials, land, plant, and equipment. Intellectual and information processes create most of the value-added for firms in the large service industries–like software, medical care, communications, and education–which provide 79 percent of all jobs and 76 percent of all U.S. GNP.

In manufacturing as well, intellectual activities–like R&D, process design, product design, logistics, marketing, marketing research, systems management, or technological innovation–generate the real value-add. McKinsey & Co. estimates that by the year 2010, 85 percent of all jobs in America and 80 percent of those in Europe will be knowledge-based. Yet few managers have systematically attacked the issues of developing, leveraging, and measuring the intellectual capabilities of their organizations.

What are the other pitfalls in creating this service based economy and how does it relate to relationship development?

The more knowledge workers, the flatter the organization which impacts the style of leadership and how wealth transitions from one generation to the other or to new owners. This economy is and will become more dynamic.

Can you explain what you mean wealth transition?

Dynamic = more transitions – buying and selling, merging acquiring. But, What gets missed? Capital is no longer about bricks and mortar – it’s Human Capital

So, what challenges does this present? What can you do to build value in these circumstances?

The greater reliance on human capital for valuing an organization the more PE firms, M & A need to look at tools to assess the real value. This means doing the obvious things of doing inventories of the people, their skills, competence and certifications, where needed to redress findings like:

  • Only 1  in 10 can consistently achieve their Strategy’s  full potential
  • Non-Financial Factors valued most by investors
    • Strategy Execution
    • Management Credibility
    • Innovativeness

What are the main things executives have to do better?

Fulfills others: Take risks, trust each other, take  proactive approach that we will work together on solving problems, share considerable confidence in their own and others abilities, have enthusiasm for their jobs.

Providing effective feedback is one of a manager’s most important tasks; it’s also one of the most difficult. Here’s a six-step model, proposed by Jack Stahl, current CEO of Revlon and former president of Coca-Cola, to facilitate feedback and make it more effective.

  1. Value the individual. Begin by affirming what the employee contributes to your organization. Be sincere and thorough. This step is critical because it frames the conversation.
  2. Ask the person to identify his/her biggest challenges. Ask the employee to assess his/her performance, including both strengths and challenges. This will help you pinpoint areas for targeted coaching.
  3. Provide targeted feedback. Give specific examples of behaviors to change.
  4. Agree on areas to develop for the future. The objective here is to focus the individual’s development and encourage him/her to practice specific new skills. You could also point him/her to training opportunities.
  5. Agree on the benefits of improving and the consequences of not improving. This step is designed to fuel the employee’s motivation to improve or change.
  6. Commit your support and reaffirm the person’s value. “When people feel valued, they can hear difficult feedback without being demoralized by it.”

Great, but how can this help me?

This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog.
How about asking us?  The first call is free!  Just email me to set it up.
Don’t wait, get The Crispian Advantage working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching improve bottom line results.
If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.

_________________________________________________________________________
For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page 
Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage

E-mail I Web I Linkedin

© Copyright All Rights Reserved, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds, [2010-2012]. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage and Walk the Talk – A Blog for Agile Minds with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Top Down or Bottom Up Approaches to Change

Posted on by agincourtarcher

(Listen to the Radio Show)

Ideally your approach to change would be personal!  You make sure your team members buy into it, own it, implement it, and are rewarded for it in their work relationships. Yet, today we still see many leaders using Top Down Change as the default approach without considering the impact on productive relationships.

Why is building productive relationships so important?

As somebody once said, “Performance is Personal before it is Organizational”.  None of us work in a vacuum.  Improved workplace performance requires productive relationships with peers, bosses, subordinates, customers, clients, vendors, suppliers, and the community.

What is the essence of productive relationships?

In our survey of 1072 business leaders – Focusing Change to Win most contributors indicate that their organizations change anywhere from daily to annually. These changes are often unique to the organization, the triggers for change and how it’s managed. Yet, all change has three things in common.

The Three Common Elements of All Change

The Expectations Change Framework

It starts by defining your change in terms of :

  •  Identifying what you expect people to stop doing
  • Specifying what you expect people to start doing
  • Confirming what you want people to continue doing

Then, focus on communicating constantly the Why of Change & What is Expected for your change to be effective and what the change is not about. This is the Change Expectations Framework which engages deeper understanding and helps everyone manage stress more effectively.

Just in case you think everyone does these three steps, you are probably wrong at least 70% of the time according to studies over the last 10 years.

The crucial step in all this is facilitating feedback from stakeholders as to their reactions to your position and what they want you to start, stop and continue doing in return. You have the responsibility to set the Expectations Framework but the what and how of change comes down to aligning expectations. Then people can:

  • KNOW  WHAT MATTERS
  • DELIVER WHAT MATTERS?
  • TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT MATTERS

What are the benefits productive relationships?

Many Hands make light work

  • Clarity of expectations
  • Measures of progress, what matters, what’s important
  • Confidence you’re doing the right things right
  • Personal performance up to your potential
  • People / Team “in tune”, on the “same page”
  • Achievement of short and long term plans and goals

How do you reconcile this approach with a top-down approach?

Continue reading →