Focusing Change To Win Series – How Can You Lead to Thrive?

Posted on January 20, 2015 by agincourtarcher

Series Introduction

This is the eighth in the series of highlighting contributions from 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors detailed in our book Focusing Change to Win. Each blog gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips. In this blog we are focusing on How Can You Lead to Thrive? Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

8. How Can You Lead to Thrive?

Clearly from this survey, leadership skills that focus change to win are at a premium. Today, change is the norm. It is neither random nor regular but hovers somewhere between. How these interrelationships arise and how they challenge organizations is not well understood (IBM & KMPG Surveys endorse this)

Why should leaders focus on their organization’s essence?

An organization’s essence is the amalgam of mission, vision, values, intent and ethics. These components should be the focus of aligning and realigning people rather than delivering the corporate directives after a strategic planning retreat. Sustaining an organization’s essence is a dynamic that requires everyone’s engagement to define and redefine under changing situations.

It’s only by leaders “inter-reacting” that they can develop people’s shared clarity about the organization’s essence – “what we stand for!” From shared clarity comes confidence, from confidence comes cohesion and from cohesion comes the freedom to decide and act. That’s how organizations will stay on track today. Many people making many decisions true to their organization’s essence.

It’s also expected that some employees (including some executives) will not “buy into” an organization’s Essence once it is clearly defined. Leaders should then be ready for those employees and managers to transition out of the organization. This will benefit them and organizational cohesion

What are the dangers of using technology to increase control?

Technology increases the illusion of greater control which can feed a leader’s “Control Addiction”. More measurement equals more control. But measuring what is easy to measure can have the very opposite effect. The problem is that most of what is easy to measure has already occurred. What is difficult is dealing with the factors that are difficult to measure and with forecasting what is likely to happen down the road. We can’t spend more time looking through the “rear view mirror” when we have a winding road ahead of us. Technology’s cheapness and speed feeds this addiction with the past and “looking in the rear view mirror” by access to ever more data and information at the cost of acquiring knowledge and wisdom.

This condition is worsened by technologists clinging to largely sequential design and deployment processes which are not fully user or client inclusive, e.g. “Waterfall Process”. Contrast this with agile processes which are fully supported by our contributors. See the link to comparing the Waterfall Process with Agile Methodologies.

Why do we have difficulty developing leaders that can thrive in today’s conditions?

Today’s conditions are not good proving grounds for the leaders we need. More of doing more with less, multi-tasking and the growing doubt that we may be doing the wrong things means that decision-making, and expectations are now more compressed. Consequently, entrenched expediency leads us into solving one problem so quickly that we find we have now created five more problems. We are so busy trying to solve problems there’s no time for “Where the hell are we going?” These conditions are not good for selecting or developing leaders who can work well under fluid and complex conditions.

How do we develop leaders that can thrive?

The tension between what Leaders want to achieve and their current culture prevents traditional leadership training from making a significant impact. For example, many leaders’ previous training has left them feeling that they could do a better job doing it themselves. Of course, too often this has not happened together with little sign that they have addressed their own or their junior leaders’ performance issues. The consequence is that leading up to a change they lack confidence and skills to handle the natural uncertainty that change creates. Consequently, they default to avoidance and expediency and as a result staff resistance rises morale suffers.

The conclusion is that Leaders need to develop a better framework to assess their competence to lead people, make the next and later changes more effectively.

In this section we outline how leaders can be developed to increase their chances of achieving both measurable short- and longer term results than traditional leadership training. It is based on approaches:

Aligning People – Getting people on the Same Page
Action Learning – Solving Difficult Problems while developing leaders’ skills

A Final Thought

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. A leader’s role is to create successful change that fulfills people and avoids human casualties. Leaders need to create working relationships that are rewarding not just superficially productive.

Action Points 7: Leading to Thrive

A Leader’s greatest impact is when they motivate their followers to action by appealing to their shared sense of their organization’s essence. Use these questions to rate your leaders’ abilities:

To what extent do your leaders focused on developing rewarding not just working relationships?
How reliant are your leaders on “command and control”?
How well do they really engage those they lead?
How well do they foster a culture of collaboration? Consider both internally and externally.

Leading to the Essence

Do your people know what your organization stands for? Specifically:

How well understood is the organization’s essence? (mission, values, intent and ethics)
How well aligned are my people with the Organization’s Essence and where it’s headed?
To what extent do leaders use the essence to guide and coach their people?

Developing Leaders

To what extent are you distributing and empowering leaders at all levels.
What evidence do you see of true “inter-reaction” where success and failure are openly discussed?
To what extent do they then take lessons learned and use them to repeat success and avoid failure.
How well do they use processes to help people stand back, objectify problems and make people’s thought processes transparent?
To what extent does the urgent drive out the important and mask how things accumulate, misalign and make each subsequent more difficult?

Problem Solving

How often do your leaders try to solve complex problems with processes geared to “benign or simple problems”?

How often do leaders face complex or wicked problems?

Leading Learning

What expectations do we have of people to develop shared knowledge from similar situations?
How much effort have you put into helping people express being puzzled or misunderstood?
How well do they lead people on tackling problems and solutions by sharing understandings, resolving differences and producing agreed courses of action?
How well have leaders, especially senior leaders, consistently expressed their expectations of learning to all levels across the organization?

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Developing Leaders for Effective Change

Posted on January 6, 2015 by agincourtarcher

Leading in times of transition is at best a significant and complex challenge. At worst it can be a leader’s darkest nightmare. The tension between what leaders want to achieve and their organization’s culture often means that traditional leadership training has not equipped leaders to effectively lead the organization through major changes.
Too often previous leadership training and a history of failed change contribute to the tension between the forces for change and those for maintaining the status quo. Unfortunately, as each attempt to use training to improve leadership competence fails so do the chances of successful change decline.

One reason leadership training lacks impact (no matter how good) is the lack of rigorous and continuous linkage between advancing change and advancing competence. Consequently, leading up to a change, those expected to start the change become part of the problem, not the solution. Too often they are unable or unwilling to tackle rising uncertainty and resistance.

How can you re-engage managers and develop their leadership competence?
This blog looks at how you can develop both measurable short- and longer-term results based on:
1. Getting People On The Same Page by Aligning People and then;
2. Making Better Use of What You Have by using Action Learning to help managers solving difficult problems while developing their leaders’ skills.

Continue reading →

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Focusing Change To Win – How Effectively Are You Communicating Change?

Posted on January 6, 2015 by agincourtarcher

Series Introduction

This is the seventh in the series of highlighting contributions from 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors detailed in our book Focusing Change to Win. Each blog gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips. In this blog we are focusing on How Effectively Are You Communicating Change? Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

7. How Effectively Are You Communicating Change?

The following is based on 684 contributors who chose to add comments on communicating change. Unsurprisingly, contributors see their people at the heart of any successful change process. They see gaining stakeholder commitment as a force multiplier of powerful change ambassadors. Essential to creating that commitment are leaders taking their people into their confidence with honesty and courage.

Surprisingly, however, our analysis also sheds light on some blind spots. Overall, contributors focus more on technique than systemic or strategic issues when communicating change. For example:

They (Leaders) lack the ability to motivate or hold people accountable….they do a poor job at this…..lots of saying nothing….People are told, not asked.

Change Communication Blind Spots

How do communicate change. Zone of Concern Chart

Real change requires authentic communication and dialogue across all organizational levels. Although, employee’s resistance and disagreement are unavoidable, contributors show how it can be managed through multiplexed and constant communication. They stress that this only happens when change communication is centered on establishing and retaining trusting relationships. If employees feel fairness, they will trust more and trust is the glue of success.

So, what role does communication play in reducing change mistrust and cynicism among employees? Frequently, it’s people’s sense of fairness. The communication timing, involvement and sequence impact their sense of justice.

Where’s the Requiring Environment?

There seems little focus on improving alignment and change success. Issues like change management, communication, and change measurement were under 6% of contributors’ comments on communicating change.

Looking in more detail, a third of contributors said that they didn’t know of any change related communication or that their leaders don’t communicate enough.

For most contributors, real change is the outcome of authentic communication. They show how change can be managed through constant communication. Contributors often commented that trust in management was the only variable that significantly impacted change resistance.

However, comments on authentic communication and building trust seem to collide with those related to top down led change. Critical contributors point out that top down rests too often on leaders clinging to the belief that power, privilege and success lie in their core group. Whatever blend of top down and bottom up it is clear – one should be intentional and as one contributor said:

Being solid in the values you hold as a leader that needs clearly articulating and solidifying with your change management team before you start planning.

Our contributors are clear. Lay the groundwork for successful change before trying to carry out the next change. This starts with putting the change management team together before a specific change is planned. Then develop a shared governing set of values and design the change measurement framework.

Implementing Effective Change Communication Processes – A Questionnaire

This 38 question instrument was developed from 755 contributor comments on implementing an effective communication change process. It is designed to engage those involved in change management and leadership in selecting relevant questions and then reaching a consensus on improvement areas.

Analyzing Change Impacts
Set-up Change Program with Metrics
On-going Communication & Training

Action Points 6: Implementing an Effective Change-Communication Process

Based on your answers to the questionnaire above, use the following questions to develop your plan for developing effective change communication.

Have you established an explicit set of shared governing values?
How are you getting people ready for the inevitable change?
Have you engaged stakeholders and change agents?
Have you put the change-management team together?
How do plan to align the team’s values of change and their expectations of one another?
How are you going to improve leaders change communication skills?
Who is going to ensure that real change will be the outcome of authentic communication?
How are you going to ensure that all your people know and understand your change rationale?
How are you going to monitor employee’s sense of fairness and trust? (Remember: trust is the glue of success.)
How are you going to establish dialogue between groups and individuals, in often tense situations?
How are you going to establish and monitor your change’s requiring environment? Is there a set of aligned change expectations between leaders and each individual?

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Focusing Change to Win Series – Why Bother Measuring Change?

Posted on November 11, 2014 by agincourtarcher

Series Introduction

This is the forth in the series of highlighting contributions from 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors detailed in our book Focusing Change to Win. Each blog gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips. In this blog we are focusing on The Why and What of Change. Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

Why Bother Measuring Change?

Most of our contributors do measure change, but 37% either don’t measure change or they don’t know if they do or feel measuring change is too difficult. So, here’s some evidence why this is worth struggling with. For example, learning is the most mentioned benefit of measuring change (27.1%). Yet, if this is so important then why the lack of focus on vehicles like coaching, mentoring and training to capitalize on this learning.[3]

Another striking disconnect is the low numbers of those who see benefits of measuring change’s impact on marketing and customers. This is curious, as our contributors’ most common reason for losing customers is not price but poor quality (92.2%), poor follow-up by sales people (76.5%) and making the wrong assumptions about customers (64.5%). After detailed analysis, it would seem that the relationship between change and competitive advantage is not as clearly visualized as one might think.

In addition, the use of employee metrics including personal performance, resistance to change, improvement to company culture and understanding our purpose, are low compared to satisfaction surveys. Most concerning is the lack of focus on individual behavioral change and tracking pay-related rewards. This is further evidence of little focus on accountability and establishing a requiring environment

Even when metrics are agreed upon, the next challenge is creating greater transparency so that they are used to create and sustain change momentum.

What Questions do Change Metrics Need to Answer?

Overall, there needs to be more focus on developing effective change metrics. The challenge is: How well do your change metrics accelerate learning, problem solving and decision making?

In Section 4, we distilled contributor questions on what they need change metrics to answer into a questionnaire. We ask readers to go through and rate their current metrics under three sections:

Navigating during a Change
Reviewing a Change
Planning the Next Change

Our contributors suggest establishing a change scorecard with their leadership team and key stakeholders. For example by:

Agreeing on those questions which the team needs to answer
Deciding what current metrics could be put to good use
Assessing during the change process how well they cover the risks of losing customers through poor product or service quality and poor sales follow-up.

And finally……Asking how well your scorecard helps you sell this and subsequent changes?

Action Points 3: Developing More Effective Change

Metrics

Protocol

Three themes were referenced in contributor comments about change metrics and how to test their overall effectiveness.

How well do your change metrics accelerate learning, problem-solving, and decision-making?

Establish Your Change Scorecard

It is strongly suggested that you go through this process with your leadership team and key stakeholders. (See section 7 for more details.)

Review the table Contributor Questions.
Agree on those questions your team need to answer when you are doing the following:

Navigating a change
Reviewing a change
Planning the next change
- What current metrics could be put to good use?
- How well do they cover the risks of losing customers through poor-quality sales follow-up during the change process?
- How well do they inform you that the organization is reducing assumptions about customers’ view of the change and how the change responds to their needs?
- To what extent do your selected metrics allow you to preempt or least respond quickly to competitors
- How well do these metrics allow you to gauge and track employee stress around the change?
- To what extent will your metrics allow you to respond quickly and effectively to employee stress before it hardens their change resistance?

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Focusing Change to Win Series – Why do people resist change?

Posted on October 28, 2014 by agincourtarcher

Series Introduction

This is the third in the series of highlighting contributions from 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors detailed in our book Focusing Change to Win. Each blog gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips. In this blog we are focusing on Why Do People Resist Change. Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

3. Why Do People Resist Change

Here’s the reality, Leaders need employee support and trust if their change is going to stand any chance of success. Our contributors underscore this. If people are cynical about a change, pessimism will set in, and failure is assured. Our contributors show that there are no simple remedies, no sound bites or grizzly 7 step plans. Yet, at its core there are fundamental values that, if believed in, will offer a sound basis for planning and executing successful change. Change failures have left their mark on our contributors over the last eight years. Through their eyes, resistance is a brownfield site where change is synonymous with downsizing, doing more for less, and treating people poorly.

Accelerated change demands more of everyone. Such change has major consequences for employees. Accelerated change failure creates cultural toxicity. Crucially, leaders need to separate the symptoms of change resistance from the stress that causes it. If they don’t, they are just like bad sales people trying to overcome objections and not realizing 60% of those objections are of the salesperson’s own creation. These contributors, they are saying that change resistance is natural, but you don’t need to make it more difficult if you do some things profoundly well. The chart below gives a sense of the avoidable.

Change Resistance Factors

Once you recognize that Change Resistance causes stress then you can be more effective in reducing it. Our contributors say that, if leaders create clear and consistent frameworks, you help most people make informed decisions about committing to a change or not. Here’s what our contributors are saying:

Align Expectations between leaders and people
Set Clear Direction: Leaders clarify their change’s What, Why, How and WIIFMs (What’s In It For Me) for different groups and people.
Develop Accountabilities: by developing the rewards and consequences that assure expectations of both leaders and their people are met.

These are sound practices for reducing and managing people’s stress, but only if leaders realize the importance of Walking Their Own Talk.

Action Points: Managing Change Stress and Resistance

All these contributors are saying that change resistance is natural, but you don’t need to make it that difficult if you do some things profoundly well.

This starts with recognizing that change resistance is caused by stress. So why not treat the cause and not the symptom? Stress is natural and good if managed. Stress is reduced if leaders create clear and consistent frameworks that help people make informed decisions about committing to a change or not. Here’s how we interpret what our contributors are saying

Clarifying the Direction:
Leaders clarify their change’s what, why, how, and WIIFMs¹ for different groups and individuals. What does this mean for me? This leads to aligning expectations.

Aligning Expectations:
This is a process flow in two directions between leaders and each individual.

Developing Accountabilities:
This step develops the rewards and consequences through performance measurement, management, and rewards that ensure expectations of both leaders and their people are met.

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Focusing Change To Win Series: How is your “What” connected to your “Why”? – Setting-Up Change For Success.

Posted on October 14, 2014 by agincourtarcher

Series Introduction

This is the second in the series of highlighting contributions from 1072 Business Leaders and Consultants from 80 countries in 19 Industry Sectors detailed in our book Focusing Change to Win. Each blog gives some of the key findings and a sample of useful tips. In this blog we are focusing on The Why and What of Change. Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:

How is your “What” connected to your “Why”?

We take an in-depth look at how our contributors improve their chances of thriving, by communicating in ways that build trust and engage people. For these contributors, communication must constantly focus on the Why of Change & What is Expected and what the change is not about. This is the Change Expectations Framework. It engages deeper understanding and helps everyone manage stress more effectively.
Note: You may think everyone does these three steps, you are probably wrong at least 70% of the time according to studies over the last 10 years. Here’s why it is even more important today. Most contributors (89%) say that their organizations change at least every 12 mths . These changes are driven by 3-4 simultaneous reasons for change . All these changes should have three things in common. What you expect people to:

Stop doing, (so that they can start doing new things)
Start doing, and
Continue doing

How often does your organization initiate change

Yet, this survey’s findings show that contributors rarely mention all three in the same contribution. Why is this important? It creates increased stress and potentially change resistance. It works like this.
Assuming we are always managing change with limited resources like people, money, technology and time, leaders have to manage the tension between these three elements of stop, start and continue. Then, after deciding the commercial need for change, leaders need the Emotional Intelligence to identify which groups and individuals are likely to experience unhealthy stress and resistance.
This underscores the need for leadership consensus on why are we changing. For many contributors, leader inconsistency fuels people’s natural resistance . The ever-increasing rate of change demands that leaders give clear and compelling reasons for employees to overcome their feelings of here we go again . Unfortunately, we conclude that too many leaders either ignore, or are unaware that change will be stressful for their peers and employees.

Contributors readily see the need for change to adapt, survive or improve. The world’s ever-increasing pace demands that leaders give clear and compelling reasons for employees to overcome their feelings of here we go again. That response begs the question: What can leaders do about this condition. What follows are some thoughts.
All those implementing change know in advance, to some extent, that a change will be stressful and that not everyone will be willing to engage. For example, people often work well under certain stress to increase productivity. But, under other circumstances, they are surprised at the stress that another aspect of change can induce. So, stress can be negative, positive or neutral. For example, passing in an examination can be just stressful as failing. The problem occurs when people are under excessive or prolonged stress – Unhealthy Stress. The challenge for change leaders is that stress is unique and personal. A situation may be stressful for someone, but the same situation may be challenging for others.

Action Points: Reducing Employees Stress to Manage Change Resistance

Most contributor responses indicate that their organizations change anywhere from daily to annually. These changes are often unique to the organization, the triggers for change, and how change is managed. Yet all change has three things in common.

The Three Common Elements of All Change

Defining your own change and how it is managed starts with the following:

Identifying what you expect people to stop doing, so that they can start doing new things
Specifying what you expect people to start doing
Confirming what you want people to continue doing, while continuing to coordinate and keep the organization running.

Focus on communicating constantly the why of change and what is expected for your change to be effective and communicate what the change is not about. This is the change expectations framework, which engages deeper understanding and helps everyone manage stress more effectively

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Our Corporate Ebola is Failed Change

Posted on October 7, 2014 by agincourtarcher

Just like the disease, corporate change has a 50% mortality rate

Boise, Idaho, 10/07/14 – Local management and organization specialist publishes a fascinating new book Focusing Change To Win. It provides a prescription for combating the risks inherent in organizational change. Risks like poor revenues, lost opportunity, competitive vulnerability, increased employee cynicism and fear. The endemic nature of these risks led Nick Anderson and his Nigerian co-author Kelly Nwosu to ask:

Why do some companies thrive on change while other just survive?

Answering this question led to a global study of 6000 comments from 1072 business leaders from 80 countries in 19 industry sectors with over 10,000 years of change management experience provided some powerful and practical advice and tools.

To reach this point, you have to go back to Nick’s experiences with failed change. The list, many of us can relate to includes:

“Am I going to have a job tomorrow?”
“Why did they let Sue go?”
“How am I going to tell Bill he hasn’t got a job?”
“What am I going to do?”
“We tried this before…”
“This (change) is only for them …..not us?”

Since those early days, his work with organizations across the business and public sector encountered a litany of failed change. His ongoing research shows survey after survey reporting that “People are the problem” (as the main reason). Percentages of failed change continue to this day ranging from 40% to 80% and many commentators agree that more changes fail than succeed. Only last September the Project Management Institute’s 2014 Report found that 56% of projects fail to meet their goals.
What is really thought provoking is that Nick and Kelly’s book show that there are those who do get it right.
But, really, isn’t comparing failed change to Ebola ridiculous? Nick Anderson doesn’t think so. The cost of a failed change can be staggering. Organizationally failed change can be fatal to both the organization and their people. Individually the stress of failed change permeates people’s lives, emerging as cycles of addictive behavior, broken relationships and financial hardship. For example, one Swedish study showed increases of heart disease was linked to poor leadership. Job insecurity has been linked to several different outcomes, such as:

Negative attitudes towards work
Turnover intention
Health complaints.

Data from 400 nurses at a Swedish acute care hospital showed that job insecurity affects stress even after taking account for individual characteristics. (Naswall,Sverke & Hellgren)
A 22 country European study concluded that while job loss is traumatizing, it is not common. In contrast, the fear of job insecurity is widespread and its health impact is as bad as losing your job (Mathilde Godard). Or, how about a German study which concluded that after the 2008 recession

“People fearful of losing their jobs are 60% more likely to develop asthma”.

Closer to home, studies from Texas A & M and University of California add weight to the endemic nature of this corporate virus.

So, what can we do about this disease?

Clearly, the last 20 years demonstrates:

Current Theories and prescriptions are not working or user friendly.
The reliance on imported change processes alone are less effective.
Leaders are facing greater complexity, accelerating change, greater competition and more knowledgeable customers.

The critical point of staving off failed change is to recognize that there is no “cookie-cutter” “quick-fix”. Importing new theories from outside an organization increases people’s natural resistance. It truncates thinking about “why will this change work for us?” and creates divisions between the “Importers” from the rest of the organization.
So, this book advocates using facilitated discussions, questionnaires and other tools to engage people in creating their own change approaches, processes and protocols. You may be thinking.

“Why not use what’s worked from outside” “It’s cheaper and faster etc.”

Here’s what the authors concluded. Excluding people from deciding how their organization handles change risks creating greater resistance and less sustainability. Fundamentally, it excludes middle level leaders so they cannot develop to their leadership skills and risks their resistance to the point of ensuring that change will fail.
Those who thrive on change really understand this. They recognize that so many “imports” are too often seen as disrespectful of people’s skills and expertise, especially when those people have experienced failed change. Importing prescriptions needs far more thought on how to reduce the toxicity of past failures. So, why is this book important for leading successful change?
As Bill Connors, President & CEO, Boise Metro Chamber of Commerce) said:
“Focusing Change to Win is a must read and reference for business people regardless of their company’s size. Whether you run a family business or public corporation, this book has thought provoking tools and questionnaires you can use immediately. Nick Anderson and his co-Author Kelly Nwosu have done a masterful job in distilling over 6000 business leaders’ comments into such a practical set of tools. If you want your next change to be successful, this is essential reading.”
To find out more go to focusingchangetowin.com or amazon.com. Also Nick will be at the Boise Chamber of Commerce for a book signing on Wednesday 29th October from 8 am to 10 am.

For more information,
Nick Anderson
(616) 745-8667
nanderson@thecrispianadvantage.com
For more information on 10/06/2014:
http://focusingchangetowin.com

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How do you ensure New Hires can develop Sales Mastery?

Posted on January 29, 2014 by agincourtarcher

Being competitive comes from people who are well aligned with their organization’s intent and mission. If you take that extra care to recruit and select such people, my question is:

How easy is it to waste the opportunity you have created?

Certainly, having faith that “they will get it” is not a strategy. Without real investment of your time, onboarding will be hit and miss. So, let’s look at that investment and how best spend time with New Hires. Continue reading →

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So, You give them $1000 per head for sales training and a month later the give you $130 back – What!?

Posted on July 25, 2013 by agincourtarcher

Crazy as this seems, surveys and research show this is a common outcome.

There’s got to be a better way to ensure sales executives get a return from their sale training projects. We need to raise the bar in how we select Sales Training providers?

A poor investment?

What follows is my personal quest for improving the outcomes of such projects

Three reasons kept surfacing in conversations with sales managers:

1. How Much People Forget.

No matter how well we train sales people and they say they get it, typically most value gained erodes inside 30 days (80%+ is typical)

2. How hard people find it to change their natural behavior

They get frustrated easily, after seeing the value of change and experiencing progress during a training program, they slip back to their default behavior – their comfort zone.

3. Even when trained well, coaching is too little and too-outcome focused. And again people revert to their default behavior pattern.

Our experience is not unusual. All those trying to gain competitive advantage for their companies recognize these problems.

So, we discussed

Why aren’t things improving?

Continue reading →

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Change Management Fallacies – Survey

Posted on June 19, 2012 by agincourtarcher

The continued high failure rates of implementing change owe much of their origins to the fallacies of change management and how people view research (based on Korzybski). We would like to know how prevalent these fallacies are in your organization’s leadership team.

Please read the following and then click on the link to complete the survey.

Complete the survey

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

“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.

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Getting the Best out of the Matrix

Posted on December 7, 2011 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 →

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Key Account Management Series: Why are Sales Compensation Hydraulics Still Leaking?

Posted on November 29, 2011 by agincourtarcher

1. Introduction

I developed this as a discussion paper for a client’s European Sales Management Effectiveness Project. The interesting perspective is how the issues raised in the early 90’s are still validated by Deliotte’s 2010 survey of 250 Sales VPs. It begs the question:

Why are Sales Compensation Hydraulics Still Leaking?

1.1. How do you design a good sales compensation plan?

Specifically, a good plan:

Uses performance metrics that drive the company’s overall strategy;
Ensures roles, skills, selling, processes, internal culture, etc. are consistent with the overall sales force strategy
Are mechanically sound ; and
Can be administered efficiently.
Fits for your sales organization?
Can be administered with existing people, processes, data, and technology

(The following is based on Frank Cespedes book Concurrent Marketing, The Management of Major Sales (Neil Rackham) and 2010 Strategic Sales Compensation Survey by Deloitte & Varicent)

1.2. Compensation Hydraulics springs a leak

Since the mid 90’s the great bulk of literature still emphasizes what might be called

“Compensation Hydraulics”: Push this pay lever and get this kind of behavior.

This type of thinking fails to recognize that sales compensation is dependent upon, data analysis, strategy, values and human motivation. Many forget to ask:

How should we pay our customer facing people? (Which inevitably involves a range of business issues?)

Continue reading →

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Problem Defining & The Consulting/Intervention Process

Posted on October 24, 2011 by agincourtarcher

Problem Defining & The Consulting/Intervention Process

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

Intervention theory¹and 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

Continue reading →

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Vision: The Guidance System for Partnering

Posted on October 23, 2011 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 →

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Effective Communication & Perception – Why is this so difficult?

Posted on October 18, 2011 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 →

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

Posted on October 18, 2011 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 →

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

Posted on May 17, 2011 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 →

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

Posted on April 17, 2011 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

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

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© 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.

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Complexity, the New Normal 2: Leading to the Essence

Posted on March 20, 2011 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 →

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Getting the Best from your Sales Training: Methodological Agnosticism?

Posted on February 28, 2011 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.

Continue reading →

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Getting People on the Same Page – Preparing for Change

Posted on February 2, 2011 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

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?

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 TCA 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, TCA 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.

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Getting People on the Same Page – Seven Leadership Challenges

Posted on January 22, 2011 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 theSeven 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?

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 fromUsing 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 fromHistorical & 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

“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?

__________________________________________________

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

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Implementing Sustainable Change – Leadership Challenges

Posted on January 5, 2011 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.

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Top Down or Bottom Up – Making Change Personal

Posted on November 22, 2010 by Terrance Merriman

By Contributing Blogger – Terry Merriman, PCO Associates

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.

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Leading Competitive Differentiation

Posted on November 13, 2010 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.

E-mail I Web I Linkedin

Listen to the Radio Show of this Blog

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Leadership Challenges in Turbulent Times

Posted on August 21, 2010 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!

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.

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?

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?

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

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?

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?

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.

Name

Email

Industry

Feedback

Δ

_____________________________________________________________________
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.

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Have you got your Change Shoes on? –

Posted on August 19, 2010 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.

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.
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.
Provide targeted feedback. Give specific examples of behaviors to change.
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.
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.
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?

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Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage

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Top Down or Bottom Up Approaches to Successful Change

Posted on August 15, 2010 by agincourtarcher

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 contributors indicate that their organizations change at least annually. These changes are often unique to their organization from the triggers for change to 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:

Why Change
What is Expected and
What the change is not

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, and often missed step, is facilitating feedback from your stakeholders. 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?

Greater clarity and trust
Increased competitive agility
Faster decision making
Progress metrics focus on what really matters
Greater confidence in doing the right things right
Accelerated performance towards people’s potential
Improved extent and quality of delegation
Better motivation as people know what success looks like

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

Continue reading →

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Quality Sales Managers Matters

Posted on July 19, 2010 by agincourtarcher

The focus of this blog is the first of two on Improving Sales Effectiveness. The first is the Quality of Sales Managers Matters. It is based on findings from the Conference Executive Board, PDS Groups and Huthwaite Research Group studies on sales management and coaching. All three agree on 5 Main Factors: (Listen to the Radio Show)

#1 High-performing sales manager’s impact reps engagement and financial performance. Reps reporting to great managers report high job satisfaction with four times more revenue than those working for poor managers.

#2 Coaching Is King—The manager activity most linked with sales rep success is coaching. However, their coaching ability to coach individual sales reps is the weakest.

#3 Who they coach is selective— Coaching low or star performers does not statistically improve performance. Core performers, the 60% center of the performance Bell Curve make significant improvements with coaching.

#4 Bottom-Line Impacts—Effective coaching hits the bottom line. Core sales reps receiving great coaching reach on average 102% of goal in contrast to sales people reporting poor coaching who achieve only 83% of goal. Good coaching can improve core performance by 19%. This is lower than with PDS’s and Huthwaite’s sales productivity projects (18%-30% sales increases)

#5 Great Coaching Is a Learned Skill—Quantitative analysis shows that five elements account for 77% of coaching effectiveness. Armed with this information, we can develop great coaches by focusing them on specific activities such as emphasizing the importance of targeting the best opportunities and spending at least three, but no more than five, hours coaching each rep per month.

What difficulties do firms face in getting Sales Managers coaching to impact results?

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Managing Alignment Challenges (Part 3 of 3) – Improving Performance

Posted on May 25, 2010 by agincourtarcher

Introduction

During many consulting engagements we identified that organizational misalignment as a major factor in organizations and individuals were not achieving goals

Today I want to cover the second in a three part series on Managing Alignment Challenges to improve the odds of bringing successful change to the listeners’ organizations.

Last month we covered, Managing Conflict and Relationship Tension. This month I will cover…

2. Managing Complexity and then next month

3. Improving Performance

What are the signs of problems with Performance Improvement?

Here are some familiar problem statements we here from our clients about this third area of Alignment Challenges

We could be better at identifying problems and their solutions before they actually occur. We are too reactive and this slows us down
The way we allocate resources and feedback on their performance compounds problems in managing progress
People get so absorbed in what they are doing that Key Stakeholders are not actively involved. This has led to tension between them and the project team
We are reactive and respond too quickly to changes to understand the implications and impacts on other elements and groups
We don’t reuse what has been done before – “Reinventing the Wheel” is costly and takes time
Measuring the impact of what we do is too subjective and lessens our ability to stay within budget.
Cost overruns and missed milestones are too common and compounded by finger pointing.

What are the criteria for successful performance
Improvement?

Build on existing language.If there’s no common language, you are confused and competitively blind. But, you need to start where you are!

Change is hard, real change is real hard.Companies routinely initiate change but never seem to “really” change. We focus on avoiding those common “change traps”

Change is not about making time, it’s about releasing time.Executives must “create” time for change by reducing the distractions to getting work done.

Coaching cascades reinforce change.Managers must coach and be coached.

Create an accountability environment. Support, compensation, and other directional systems must be integrated.

Do “different” things! Don’t just do “things” differently.Think “out-of-the-box” and do different things rather than trying to get a little better at what you’re currently doing.

“Everyone needs to walk the same talk.” Receiving inconsistent voices from various sources causes people to “do what they’ve always done”.

Measure the “hows” not just the “whats” of success.Move management’s focus away from what was achieved to how you can win – measure leading indicators, not just lagging indicators.

No one sales process is the “right” one.The “right” sales process is the one to which people are committed.

Paint the train – revenue and competency grow together.Too often such training is disconnected from “real jobs.” Revenue and competency growth are dynamic concurrent processes not static sequential ones.

Sales and marketing people learn when they realize their collective ignorance risks losing a specific deal.It’s not what you know, but what you don’t know that creates competitive vulnerability.

Speed, intensity and momentum are critical.Move with “speed” to swim above cultural inertia. Move with “intensity” by focusing on a few new things. Build “momentum” by promoting early successes.

White Noise can’t be ignored. The background “hum” of distracting cultural legacies- “white noise”- drags change and must be overcome FIRST.

For more go to PDS Groups web site

The Heart of Performance Improvement – Effective Delegation

At the heart of Performance Improvement lies in Manager’s being required to delegate responsibilities for those people who have been identified for promotion

A Working Definition

Enabling others to do a job for you while ensuring that:

They know what you want
They have the authority to achieve it
They know how to do it.

By communicating clearly:

The nature of the task
The extent of their discretion
The sources of relevant information and knowledge.

Each task delegated should have enough complexity to stretch – but only a little by including:

Agreeing criteria and standards by which the outcome will be judged.

Agreeing first how often and when information is needed to monitor progress

Avoiding making decisions for the delegate when they are capable
Not making a decision unless provided with clear alternatives, their pros and cons, and the individual’s recommendation.

Not judging the outcome by what you would do, but rather by its fitness for purpose.
Delegating the task and its ownership so that it can be changed or upgraded, if needed.

To get to the state where effective delegation can flourish needs people to be aligned.

What is alignment?

Clear Expectations

– Validating & agreeing statements about what two people expect of each other

– Agreeing measureable deliverables that will evidence fulfillment of each expectation.

Mutual Accountability

– Accepting responsibility & authority for agreed upon expectations between two people, for tasks performed & results achieved

– Accepting positive or negative consequences of that performance.

Real Alignment

Performance Improvement ranges from the formal to informal yet for any effort to stick, managers and leaders have to constantly reinforce the need for effective delegation which inherently involves coaching. The basis for this condition is that when expectations relating to effective performance are made explicit, it is the responsibility of the originator, usually the Receiver’s Manager, to gain agreement to the expectation and the Receiver giving the evidence they are going to provide to meet the expectation. This is a very effective way of reaching mutual understanding so that the rating of performance and coaching is objective.

Great, but how can this help me?

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

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Managing Alignment Challenges (Part 2 of 3) – Managing Complexity

Posted on April 19, 2010 by agincourtarcher

Managing

Complexity

Introduction

During many consulting engagements we identified that organizational misalignment as a major factor in organizations and individuals were not achieving goals

This changed our focus to ground other work by aligning people’s expectations first before designing learning, coaching etc. Over the last 10years, the PDS team developed their expertise and alignment practice with AlEx™ by serving companies in Canada and the US.

(Listen to the Radio show)

Over the years we have learnt that anticipating and managing misalignment goes to the root of building successful change whether it’s a family business transitioning between generations, construction projects with many different companies involved or implementing electronic patient records.

Today I want to cover the second in a three part series on Managing Alignment Challenges to improve the odds of bringing successful change to the listeners’ organizations.

Last month we covered, Managing Conflict and Relationship Tension. This month I will cover…

2. Managing Complexity and then next month

3. Improving Performance

The Strongest Shape in Construction and in Managing Change

I chose the second as the need for change can seem deceptively clear yet being comfortable with complexity is something people want to avoid. Somehow “complexity” has become associated with ineffectiveness, something to be avoided.

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. Just consider this, in a KPMG (2002) survey of 134 public companies.

56% per cent of Companies wrote off at least one IT project in the last year,
Average cost of US$12.5M, while the highest loss was placed at US$210 million.
US$1.7 billion for this group alone.
67% said their Program management was “in need of improvement or immature“
44% rated project performance against any established measures.

In other words unless we must become better students of not only what to change but how to change the climb out your referred to will be longer and more painful.

In an earlier program on to hire or rehire people as companies recover prompts me to ask: How are the employees affected by such failures?

Jaundiced….Post recession employees reveal they expect far more than the status quo, which could have significant implications on company bottom lines, employee morale and turnover. In Q3 2009 Glassdoor.com conducted their Employment Confidence Survey of 1,195 employees conducted by Harris Interactive®.

57% expect a raise, bonus and/or promotion
35% expect hiring freeze to be lifted and/or more employees to be hired in
their department
24% expect health benefits and perks that were previously reduced to be restored
19% expect to look for a new job

These factors don’t sound like change isn’t getting any simpler. How do you see it affecting leaders managing change and this increasing complexity?

Martha Maznevski and her colleagues at IMD put it like this.

“Complexity” is today often considered the latest business buzzword – it reflects a current common reality but not a lasting one. Executives say, “Yes, complexity is the real leadership challenge that I face. How can I focus on my area when everything else is connected? How can I be held accountable when everything is interdependent? How can I sort this out?

It’s overwhelming.” Good questions with few answers. We think “complexity” is much more than a buzzword, but a reality that is here to stay.”

How leaders react to this inevitability is curious. Many see their world as complex so their organization should be complex. But, the key is to focus on what to simplify. Central to this is your purpose and values; core processes and decentralization; early awareness systems; and leadership. Once these are clear and consistent, managers in different areas of the company can respond to complexity according to their own needs and realities. Here are some examples of complexity issues leaders face..

“Our management structure and style gets in the way when dealing with complex and changing business environments.”

This is often not so much one of structure but style. The key lies in effective delegation. Delegating task and responsibility, i.e. enabling others to do a job for you while ensuring that:

They know what you want
They have the authority to achieve it
They know how to do it.

By communicating clearly:

The nature of the task
The extent of their discretion
The sources of relevant information and knowledge.

Each task delegated should have enough complexity to stretch – but only a little by including:

Agreeing criteria and standards by which the outcome will be judged.
Agreeing first how often and when information is needed to monitor progress
Avoiding making decisions for the delegate when they are capable
Not making a decision unless provided with clear alternatives, their pros and cons, and the individual’s recommendation.
Not judging the outcome by what you would do, but rather by its fitness for purpose.

Delegating the task and its ownership so that it can be changed or upgraded, if needed.

So, you are managing complexity at the coal face rather trying to do everything back in the office on the surface.

How do you then get an organization’s purpose across to people?

Second point is Creating Momentum for change by leaders modeling what it means to be, say, the Customer’s Choice. Including:

Defining what value you want to give customers
Challenging the status quo
Probing and testing teams’ understanding of the change in hand
Aligning people’s expectations and actions with corporate goals and “The Vision”
Persevering when “the going gets tough”
Making decisive, courageous and consistent decisions
Motivating others to reach higher goals
Encouraging others to effectively manage risk
Communicating verbally up, down and across the organization – not just e-mail or presentations
Most importantly soliciting feedback on actions taken

What other ways should leaders be mindful of in getting decisions taken earlier and at lower levels in their companies?

After delegation and momentum it has to be teamwork where the weight of complexity can be shared. Specifically, building and growing teams that delivers customer and stakeholder value by:

Identifying key stakeholders to lead partnering activities, e.g. suppliers, subcontractors, branch offices
Sharing common strategies and building solutions with customers and other functions within the spirit of “we are all in this together”
Focusing team effort on delivering value for both customers and other stakeholders
Making and delivering on commitments
Supporting and implementing team decisions
Resolving conflicting positions inside the team
Engaging others to improve solutions and decisions.
Developing external alliances to develop new and innovative solutions

It sounds like you are encouraging leaders to develop trust in their people to do the right thing, but to many that is going to seem risky especially if they have tried before and they have had to take back control

It’s an astute point. It’s down to leaders actively cultivating a climate to anticipate mistakes through praise for prompt action in dealing with the errors and avoiding risk. The last thing to do is to “reward the inactive and hang the innocents” – The Blame Game.

It’s crucial that Risk Managing and Planning are yoked together, back to an earlier program when I mentioned Clauswitz and Contingency Theory. This includes:

Scheduling, anticipating and alerting to avoid risk situations.
Reviewing plans from a risk perspective
Praising people for coming up with solutions
Ensuring every plan is reviewed from both the risks to subcontractors, suppliers (“respected friends”) as well as Customer’s perspective.
Developing options and contingencies with costed options at each project milestone
Engaging all appropriate stakeholders in a timely manner to get multiple perspectives on how the schedule is developed
Creating rapid feedback to alert when a task is delayed or accelerated

How would you sum up managing complexity?

Effective Delegation, Building Momentum, Developing Teams and linking Planning to Risk Management lie at the heart of navigating complex situations, but above all Leadership cannot be repetitive, but should be predictable. Permanent communication is therefore the leadership survival tool in complex organizations, but much more in terms of “storytelling”, interpreting context and meaning, and investing in relationships than in transferring dry facts or ultimatums.

Tip of the month

If you want to follow these three programs you will find an article “Eternal Triangle” in the resources section at pdsgrp.net/resources where you will see a summary of what I have covered today.

Here’s my tip.

Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.
T. S. Eliot

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.

Name

Email

Industry

Feedback

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© 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.

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Managing Alignment Challenges (Part 1 of 3) – Managing Conflict

Posted on March 18, 2010 by agincourtarcher

Walk the Talk – Radio for Agile Minds – Managing Alignment Projects

Introduction

During many consulting engagements we identified that organizational misalignment as a major factor in organizations and individuals were not achieving goals

This changed our focus to ground other work by aligning people’s expectations first, before designing learning, coaching etc. Over the last 10years, the PDS team developed expertise and an alignment practice with AlEx™, by serving companies in Canada and the US.

Consequently this approach has helped clients add millions in sales, bring construction projects in on time, and successfully transition family-owned businesses.

This month, I want to build on last month’s theme. Regular readers will remember I was talking about how many change projects were planned in response to the economy yet almost half of the respondents indicate that a significant number of change projects failed to meet their stated goals.

We have learned that anticipating and managing misalignment goes to the root of building successful change. And so my theme this month Managing Alignment Challenges so that you can increase the odds that the change you’re planning will achieve its desired results.

Today, I want to focus on people alignment but recognize that alignment of resources with strategy, for example, are other important components of successful change. It’s a big subject. But one thing is for sure – Change has to be personal before it can be organizational…

In your experience what are the main points for listeners to consider in improving the odds of making a change work?

For this blog I will focus on one of three key areas:

Managing Conflict and Relationship Tension

Subsequent programs and blogs I will cover…..

2. Managing Complexity

3. Improving Performance

The first is essential to recognize that there will be conflict and you have to manage it. Too often it’s the 800lb Gorilla in the room.

I chose the second as the need for change can seem deceptively clear yet being comfortable with complexity is something people want to avoid

Thirdly, if you are not actively focused on improving performance…why are you changing?

The last point seems obvious…why else would people want to change…?

For Example, if you are in China many changes get caught up with ensuring the leaders don’t “lose face”. In Corporate America, newly appointed leaders want to put their “stamp” on their tenure….there’s a primal nature to new leaders that we often cloak in business school speak, like “we needed a change of direction to improve the businesses performance….blah, blah, blah” And, of course, then there are the two ugly sisters – Greed and Ego.

The point about improving performance is that leaders start out pontificating about this subject yet get caught up in the first two and lose sight of Change’s central purpose.

So, you have the Eternal Change Triangle. If you go into a change with these things in mind you have the strongest structure on which to base change. If you don’t see or manage these three you will be flying a jet without any sense of direction. It’s why we use the metaphor of “The Performance Flight Deck”

Why do you think people don’t recognize the first two’s importance?

In my experience, especially in this economy, too many leaders can get caught up in expediency – a compulsion “to do something” NOW!

Back to an earlier blog, this call to action that is so prevalent in our culture. Though, the strangest thing I am about to say seems to contradict myself:

Despite the ubiquity of business planning education in entrepreneurship, there is little evidence that planning leads to success (Honig)

(You are going to have to unpack that one for me…and the listeners…LOL)

On the one hand, Mark Hurst on his Blog quotes Calvin Coolidge,

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

The trouble with the Coolidge’s take on success is, as Mark points out, that persistence is only effective if there’s a clear goal.Like the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, a sort of feline Clausewitz. Alice asks which way she should go, and the Cheshire Cat answers:

“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.

“I don’t much care where,” said Alice.

“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.

For me that means, You have to stop and take time to find the direction. You can’t run while you’re reading the map. Too many leadersfocus on the end goal and not enough time on:

How are we going to get people to not only accept change but also be committed to changing?
How are we going to manage this change and keep making money?
How are we going to manage SNAFU’s (define)?

To summarize

“The general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.”
-Sun Tzu, the Art of War

Let’s turn to this month’s theme, what are some of the benefits in managing conflict?

Our work in aligning people on construction projects with Turner Construction, strongly suggests that there 8 benefits

Helps develop a healthy attitude to managing rather than hiding conflict.
- Helps objectify disagreements and prevents things getting personal
Reduces the distracting and destructive products from poorly handled conflict situations.
- Defend Attack Spirals have destructive long lasting effects that last year
Helps harness diverse views and experience in the project team for the good of the overall project and Owner.
- The power of accepting the “Half Baked” is an inclusive stance not poorly thought out
Helps handle change as change progresses and manages the constant flow of information between key players…e.g. Owners, consultants and contractors.
- Plays to an earlier program, Clauswitz on not being caught up in sequential thinking – Change is not start with A, then B, then C
- Change is A learn and choose B or C or both knowing that B & C need to be accomplished
- Too many leaders have a touching reliance that they have complete knowledge
Addresses the tensions in managing the change dynamics as during the change life cycle

If you’re leading such a change, what are the typical examples of change dynamics?

Very often leaders have a false sense of control, and if for example they commission consultants or create teams things take on a life of their own

Another dynamic is my sixth point…

6. Recognizes that as work precedes the relative bargaining strengths of the parties are constantly adjusting. Standard approaches to planned change do not take this into account.

In more formal changes, like in construction we find that we need to help teams

7. Overcome the inflexibility inherent in standard contracts. For example, one contract assumes that the design is complete at the time of bidding and that the contractor employs most of the resources that will be required for the project. The fact is, design is rarely 100 % complete at the time of bidding and contractors subcontract most of the work.

Most importantly, aligning people as we do…

8. Develops Project Teams while recognizing their different rules of engagement. AlEx™ recognizes and helps facilitate different project needs and rules of engagement, like:

Changing Owner demands
Rapid learning
Generating and maintaining effective interaction between team members so that they can exchange views and debate the consequences of their decisions in an open and honest forum.
Changing circumstances over the project’s lifecycle.
Shifting relationship tensions between the major members of the project team.
Building trust for when things do not go as planned.

How would you sum up managing conflict…?

Conflict in life is a natural as breathing. What we have lost sight of especially with the backdrop of what’s happening in Washington is how do you respect another party’s opposing stance and achieve successful change…I heard a item on the radio about the Life Raft Debate where the students vote which professor they would choose to take the last place on their life raft…they chose the devil’s advocate….because all the others tried to entertain rather then debate

Tip of the month

If you want to follow these three programs you will find an article “Eternal Triangle” in the resources section at pdsgrp.net/resources where you will see a summary of what I have covered today.

Here’s my tip.

If you are planning a change or are in the middle of one…..how many times last week did you not confront your demons and openly say:

“The Emperor has no clothes……”

It’s OK to confront the issues not the person if you don’t unaddressed conflict will fester like road kill.

Then, stand back and look at your own organization – and ask “What traps are we falling into?”

http://pdsgrp.net/Media/audio/6294_031510.mp3

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

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Getting Committed People on the Same Page – Disturb First, Enable Second?

Posted on March 11, 2010 by agincourtarcher

Last month I looked at why so many changes initiatives fail. One thing that struck me after the program was the inability to gain others commitment lies at the heart of so many failures. This is often due to the lack of interest paid by those leading change for those who have to make the change.

Previously, one stat sticks out from our work in aligning companies for change is that over 70% of leaders expectations are not known or realized by those affected by a change. Their people are not on the same page!!

Now, add to that apparently unrelated data…

An estimated 247 billion emails are sent each day

“The number of worldwide email users is projected to increase from over 1.4 billion in 2009 to almost 1.9 billion by 2013. In 2009, 74% of all email accounts will belong to consumers, and 24% to corporate users.
Worldwide email traffic will total 247 billion messages per day in 2009. By 2013, this figure will almost double to 507 billion messages per day.
In 2009, about 81% of all email traffic is spam Source: Press release from The Radicati Group, 6th May 2009 Quoted by Digital Stats.com

Stats vary but most people seem to say each person gets 5000 ads per day.

Now here’s my point in both your personal life and at work how much time do you have to spend listening to somebody drone on about:

The latest, greatest, best, more, more…Their solutions for you….

How often, in your personal and work lives, do you have to spend listening to somebody drone on about the latest, greatest, best, more, more…their solutions for you….

So, How do you typically react? Why should it matter to Change Management?

It reminds me of a cartoon of a family sitting at a meal table (rare enough of itself) with heads bowed and the son texts mom to pass the fries! This would be funny if I had not enforced a “no device” rule at our family meals – me included!! So, my reflections as to why we get resistant to change are these:.

Firstly, People overall forget what it’s like to be in somebody else’s head, like the research I referenced two months ago. “There’s not enough time…they cry”

Second, instantaneous communication reduces people’s patience from more deliberate consideration – we drift into the white noise, the buzz of attention deficit….but Are we challenged to really think?

Third, access to the internet has produced the most mature and knowledgeable change audience in history.

Why should this matter?

In terms of influencing people to even consider buying into your change process, be careful you are not:

Doing what you’ve always done… not getting what you want …

Whether you are influencing people in your own organization or trying to sell your service or product you will need to be more skilled at understanding where people are in their heads about change than ever before.

Change in West Michigan has come in many forms….change leaders ignore at them at their per. For example, Gilder’s vision of the future of “Cathedrals of bandwidth” will affect how people see work and how they see change. trends of exponential growth in technology and application will continue as far as we can see into the future.

The Technology Horse has looong bolted and the “Control Door” is hanging off its hinges……

So let’s stand back and see if we can start being practical. As the snow melts, I am reminded of when it snows. Each snowflake has a similar structure, yet is infinitely complex, and as each falls leads to complex behavior. If each person is a snowflake we must treat them as similar yet unique. (This is Fractal Theory..if you’re interested.

When managing change I find it’s helpful to look at how people change in a rigorous yet flexible way. It can be used to locate where individuals, groups and you are in terms of seeing the world, state similarly. This snowflake or fractal is based on a series of questions which follow a sequence – often shown as a ‘U”. The “U” is one of the most fundamental concepts in the psychology of learning and change. Readerers may remember in the last program that we consistently think we are better than we actually are – in psychology it’s called “self serving bias”. For Example: 94% of men rate themselves in the top half of male athletic ability

Change Management’s Foundation

So, I am going to make a claim that I have never done before:

If you use the following six questions in your life, it will change your perspective of others and most importantly yourself:

Now let’s use this “U” Map to can locate yourself and those you are trying to bring to your point of view and be committed to the change

1. What is the problem?

Do you have one and others don’t?

2. How is it a problem?

Do they see the same linkage as you? Structure, recurrence, competitively weak?

3. What are the consequences?

Can they see the ramifications that you do?

Now, let’s pause and ask: If you’re at 3. and those you want to influence can’t answer 1 – What is likely to happen?

If they are OK, but are they disturbed to the degree they are willing to consider changing? If yes, we are at the bottom of the U at the Change Pivot when momentum or change energy starts to be

Now, let’s look at how people are enabled?:

1. Why solve this problem?

a. Do they see this change as a priority

b. Or, Do they think we should do something differently?

2. How to solve the problem?

a. Are your technical people see a solution in the same frame from those in other functions

3. What will be solved?

a. Does cost of the present outweigh the cost of change?

So, Let’s say you are at 3. and I am at 6. Giving you an ROI ?….

What is your likely reaction?

Resistance; which I have created!

So, now you have the U – Ask yourself how many times has a sales person “Crossed the U” with you? Ask yourself, How many times have we as change agents “Crossed the U”? with the leadership team? Only to find we left the group “not getting it!” “not on the same page” Yet it was us that left them behind

Great, but how can this help me?

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

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