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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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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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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Self-Directed Learning Requirements for Learning Management Systems

Posted on December 5, 2013 by agincourtarcher

Self-Directed Learning Requirements for

Learning Management Systems

(Adapted from research by Gerald Grow – Teaching Learners to be Self-Directed and others)

by Nick Anderson & Bruce Lewolt

In her highly regarded book, The End of Competitive Advantage, Dr. McGrath shows that the demise of once dominate companies, like Kodak, RIM (Blackberry), and Circuit City, was predictable due to their rigid structures that were designed to extract maximum value from what they thought was a sustainable competitive advantage. Further, that in today’s environment successful corporate structures must be designed to identify and quickly respond to a transitory competitive advantages and then move on to the next as the market changes. This means that the ability of the employees in the organization to learn and adopt new behaviors may be the only truly sustainable competitive advantage. Such an organization cannot survive with a minimalist approach to learning effectiveness. Instead they need systems that produce sustained changes in behavior, robust improvements in performance and that facilitate efficient self-directed learning.

All of this means that good learning management systems (LMS) need to produce deep and lasting learning and both guide and accelerate the learner’s progression from dependence to self-direction and learning independence. But, typically there are difficulties when an LMS adopts one-size-fits all approach that does not adapt to each learner’s developmental stage. For example, where a learner needs direction and the system is non-directive.

Another dynamic is that learners have varying abilities of self-directedness. The same learner can be very self-directive in subjects where they have both a robust knowledge level and a strong belief in their ability to perform (self-efficacy), yet need a high level of direction in subjects where one or both of these factors are missing.

So LMS design needs to reflect the stages of Self-Directed Learning (SDL) based on the Situational Leadership Model (Hersey & Blanchard). This means that LMS designers need to create an effective progression from dependence to self-direction that adapts to each learner and subject.

The first stage is to consider goals that are directly related to learning. For example:

To create self-directed and life-long learners
To create online learning that adapts to different learners
To allow self-directed and dependent learning to co-exist
To allow curriculum developers to easily create courses adapt to the individual learner.

If you are interested in having the authors speaking to your organization fill out this form.

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Focusing to Win: Executive Seminar Series

Posted on September 26, 2012 by agincourtarcher

This seminar series features Nick’s new book Focusing Change to Win which he co-authored with Kelly Nwosu.

These sessions provides business leaders with insights into critical areas to help focus their businesses and align their people for competitive advantage. Each seminar helps you answer a fundamental question:

Seminar 1: How Clear Are You On The Why & What Of Change?

Seminar 2: Why Do Your People Resist Change?

Seminar 3: Why Do You Bother to Measuring Change?

Seminar 4: How Can You Implement Change & Gain Competitive Advantage?

Seminar 5: Is Your Organization Thriving or Just Surviving?

Seminar 6: How Effectively Do You Really Communicate Change?

We take a deep-dive into a change issue that you face. You will come away with an understanding of where your expectations with key employees are aligned and not aligned, and how critical that alignment is for successful change. You will learn how to clarify and specify your own expectations as to well how you can check if they are understood. Each session helps executives assess their performance in terms of:

How well have you communicated your expectations to your people?
How well do you understand what your people expect of you?
What are the likely gaps between expectations and assumptions?
What are our options for planning and implementing success change competitively?

What do you get?

A copy of our new book Focusing Change to Win
A tool, the Four Blocker Alignment Analysis, to identify misalignment
A method to help set the right expectations and get people on the same page
An understanding of how to align agreed expectations effectively
An example of an aligned expectation relevant to your situation
An improved chance for successful change in your organization

What preparation is needed?

For each participant organization we have preparation guides that ask people to consider issues related to the question being posed for each seminar.

Who should you bring?

Please select up to five key people to join you who are important to successful change in your organization, such as:

Which colleagues will help you answer the seminar question posed?
Whose opinion do you value to help look at the question posed from different perspectives?
Whose commitment will you need to make improvements in tackling change competitively?

What will be covered?

Each session focuses on real-life scenarios within the framework of the research findings and assessment tools developed. As we say:

“There is no role-play only real-play”

Seminar Format

Seminars are customized for clients and depending on their needs. They normally run from half-day to full-day. They can be run fact-to-face or web-based, although experience suggest face-to-face gets the best results

Maximum attendance is 20 participants! Costs start at $150 per person per half day excluding agreed preparation time, travel and accommodation.

Why are these seminars important?

Failed change means lost opportunity, competitive vulnerability, poor revenues, lost employees, increased cynicism and fear. Its residue is a hostile and toxic culture, where change resistance becomes the norm. The cost of a failed change can be staggering, from lowering morale to losing key customers due to poor quality.

Focusing to Win and the survey on which is based confirms other studies

Too many organizations are still trying to do things differently not do different things

Survey Contributors realize that working relationships are increasingly stressed in the drive for ever-faster responses to competitive threats and opportunities.

So, what are the meaningful differences between those that thrive on change and those that just survive?

Many contributors seem resigned to resistance being unavoidable yet recognize that trust in management is the only variable that significantly reduces change resistance. They seem to have little focus on improving organizational alignment to achieve change success.

For others, whatever the blend of top down and bottom up led change, it is clear – be intentional. This is invaluable to avoid being misinterpreted and mistrusted. These contributors are clear and details how to lay the groundwork for successful change.

Each seminar takes an aspect of the problem based on over 6,000 comments to give participants an assessment framework for their organizations. These cover analyzing change impacts, setting-up the change Program with Metrics and on-going communication.

Executive Summary

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Rewarding Change – A Conversation

Posted on February 16, 2010 by agincourtarcher

(Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage & Dr Larry Dugan, Precision Personality Plus on WGVU )

This is part of the series: Seven Challenges of Leadership which focuses on ensuring competitive success by:

• Getting the Right People
• With the Right Focus
• To produce the Right Responses

We are at the 6th stage. In our prior conversations we have covered the topics of:

• The Intelligent Use of Consultants
• The Leaders Responsibility to Embed Purpose
• Remove Distractions
• Align Expectations
• Differentiate from the Pack
• Coaching Strategically

All too often the failure to reward change is the pivotal point where change efforts fail—which is what makes it so regrettable. A company has gone through the necessary steps and just at the point where they are implementing the change, they misfire. Rewarding change lags behind the other processes. Thus a company can embed purpose, remove distractions, align expectations and coach. But if the recognition and reward systems of your company are based on lagging indicators such as sales revenue and profit margin, you will only encourage people to do things differently, not “do different things!”

To change, you need to consistently reward the new behaviors, not the “reward legacies” of the past.

What attributes do effective leaders need to meet this important challenge of Rewarding Change?

• High on Open-Minded
• Low on Security Minded
• High on Innovating

What evidence do you have to demonstrate what happens when leaders and managers do not reinforce change?

Probably the best illustration of this occurred when we analyzed IMS’s communication channels.

Peter, was the Director of the Toronto sales force. Mary Jo lead the Division of Customer Data Solutions. Peter wanted simple, quick sales of equipment.
Mary Jo—and the company leadership—were shifting to a process of leasing equipment and providing service. The sales force continued to be paid a higher commission for selling equipment than selling Service Contracts. They had no incentive to do different things. Another example is what transpired with the Sweet’s Catalogs in the construction industry. A Sales force accustomed to selling large bound texts for thousands of dollars and the resultant commission, were now being asked to sell a CD-ROM version for significantly less (and less commission). This added to the dilemma of overcoming Industry resistance to making the shift.

So if you are going to ask people to sustain change, How can you measure and reward those who support your purpose?

This is the core of the issue. If a company is to overcome resistance to change, they need to reward new behaviors.

You start by keeping the right data. For example, if I am striving to emphasize positive labor—management interactions I have employees and managers track the time spent in productive business-based interactions and general positive social interactions. Then I reward—both by public recognition of their efforts and by financial compensation—those who show the most significant change.
Or if my goal is to continually find productive employees, I reward managers who demonstrate that they are taking steps in that direction.

What recommendations would you have on Benefits and Compensation?

Compensate new behaviors to a higher degree than old behaviors. As far as benefits go, work with the employee to ascertain what benefits are important to them. Example: A bank that was growing and needed a cadre of experienced employees for their new branches. Several very qualified applicants had been rejected based on the fact that they were seeking special conditions such as leaving at 3:30 (so they could be home for children returning from school) and ad hoc days off—to attend to sick children. Instead of hiring 3 full-time people, the bank hired 5 part-time staff, pro-rated the benefits packages and achieved their goal. If they had not been open to “doing different things” and compensating the employees and managers who resolved this issue, no one would have taken their claim seriously that they were “creating new policies” this could not have happened.

Another example: We were engaged with a company called MenuFocus. The “benefit” they are offering employees is the chance to design their future with the company. Now, the company helps in this process by completing comprehensive surveys on every individual in the organization so they can better learn their interests, aptitudes and personality traits as suited to a given position. That is a fringe benefit.

What proportion of people’s compensation should be tied to adopting the new behaviors?

Overall, at least 25%. At least 50% of increases in salary and benefits need to be tied to adopting the new behaviors. People need to know you are serious.

What else is important in Rewarding change?

Again, we start with Purpose. Successful companies place less emphasis on clear strategy and more on building a rich, engaging purpose. It is not enough just to build that purpose; you need to communicate purpose to employees at every level. Make it succinct. For example, tell employees… strategies change, purpose does not. We still have the same purpose; we are creating new ways to achieve that purpose. To use the example cited above, our strategy now is to lease equipment and obtain service contracts rather than sell equipment which will be antiquated in nine months.

Create new and more effective management processes.

• 45% of all profit margin fluctuations are a direct result of employee attitude
• 55% of employees feel underutilized and under-appreciated
• Boredom as a single factor reduces productivity by 50%—whether in a Service setting or a Production setting

Put these statistics together and you can begin to understand how companies fail. Successful companies move away from trying to control employees’ behavior and placing more emphasis in developing their capabilities and broadening their perspectives. Successful corporations are moving away from the old doctrine of strategy, structure and systems to a more organic model of purpose, process and people. This has meant creating an organization with which people can identify, in which they share a sense of pride, and to which they are willing to commit-committed members of a purposeful organization.
A great example of many of the concepts we have cited here can be found at Monarch Hydraulics. Monarch years ago instituted a Gain Sharing program whereby employees at every level shared in whatever gains made over actual costs.

So how do you achieve strong, enduring attachment from everyone to a new direction?

Achieving strong enduring commitment from everyone to new strategies requires a straight-forward approach including:

Articulating the well-defined corporate ambition
in such a way that captures employees’ attention and interest rather than stating purpose in terms related to strategic or financial goals.

Example:

FedEx. Overnight Anywhere Guaranteed.

This is Purpose. This can capture the imagination of everyone in the company every single day. Not ROI…not a strategy to penetrate the market more deeply. Purpose. Overnight Anywhere Guaranteed. There is no way you can misconstrue the meaning of those three words.

Another example, we are consulting with a Printing and Promotional Product Firm called Dodson Inc. Their new motto: 24-5…meaning:
• a 24-hour response on all estimates.
• 5 days to deliver product.
It is the focal point of every activity in the company. This is Purpose.

A sidebar. With this company we have another interesting phenomenon. As they recruit salespeople, this company openly tells applicants, we want you to make more money than we do as owners. How many companies do you know that do that? Again, to that end, to insure the change they have striven for, Dodson created a liberal compensations package

• Engaging everyone in the company is in developing, refining, and renewing the ambition.

• Ensuring that the ambition, the Purpose is translated into measurable activities to provide a Continuous benchmark for achievement.

• Making it everyone’s responsibility to sustain a Sense of momentum—and a sense of excellence—every single day.

How does a company instill new organizational values?

By the ways it defines, measures and rewards performance”

To date many still follow traditional practice of focusing almost entirely on financial results. The old mantra has had its day. This is not to say- “remove all financial targets!” It is more a question of balance:

“It’s fine to emphasize what we must shoot for, but we also need to know what we stand for…”

This is more difficult than articulating a new strategy because it relies less on analysis and logic and more on emotion and intuition. For too long, I think, we have operated on a set of beliefs and philosophies which have remained implicit. Some would say we repressed discussion of these issues so that we didn’t take our eye off-the-ball or not to offend people who held difference views. We have tended to taken refuge in “safe” financial performance targets that can’t be easily disputed.How many such differences do we know exist in the rest of Organizations?

How could unresolved differences blow us off course?

There are three lessons for instilling new organizational values:

1. Build the new philosophy around the company’s existing value and belief system.
2. Maintain a high level of personal involvement (leaders) in this activity over many years.

“In the end managers are loyal not to a particular boss or even to a company, but to a set of values they believe in and find satisfying”-Goran Lindahl, ABB

3. Third, translate broad philosophical objectives into visible and measurable goals.

“Most businesses focus all the time on profits, profits. I think this is deeply boring. I want to create an electricity and passion that bonds people to the company; you have to find ways to grab their imagination. You want them to feel they are doing something important.”- Anita Roddick, Bodyshop

What has been your experience of building core values?

We can’t use the same methods for, say, driving down profit objectives and establishing new value sets…organizational cynicism brushes off such initiatives as “flavor of the month.”

We can’t instill new values through a crash program, so:

How can we build on the strengths and modify the limitations of our existing values without radical change?
Where we do have to confront values, how are we going to do that?
What sort of things would you advise in terms of rewards for people who try or actually do change?

Here are some thoughts…

Sowing the Message

Embedding values is obviously more than fine words. What lessons can we draw from research?

“talk, listen, and feel the atmosphere. Reiterate the new values at ever opportunity and tell stories that reflect their impact…” Jamie Houghton, Corning

Needless to say he supported such communication with concrete action to signal his seriousness of the change.

Measuring Progress

Many have found real problems in placing measures of progress on such things as value statements which don’t easily offer clearly defined goals. Unavoidably,

“the hard drives out the soft, and commitment to the desired values dissipates”

How can we avoid this? For Example-

Houghton’s approach was to publicize the new values (“world class company”) to the wider community repeatedly which contributed, overtime, to Corning being polled as “one of America’s most admired corporations.’ The result being that it could be measured by the extent to which employees identified with the standard- “world-class company”-and took pride in this achievement.

How do you do this in a rapidly changing world?

By giving meaning to people’s work-It goes to the heart of what will make or break the new structure.

Today’s world of work is rapidly changing. People’s loyalty continues to drift away from the Company and more toward activities they find intrinsically satisfying and congruent with their beliefs. This is especially true of consultancies, and ad agencies and other service organizations, etc. The more leaders have to rely on consultants and other specialists:

You cannot afford to have dissatisfaction due to a lack of such satisfaction or congruence.

The most successful companies’ studies, in this area, developed a new kind of relationship with their people.

• They translate big ideas down to a personal level
• They recognize people’s contribution and treate them like valuable assets.
• They ensure everyone understood how their roles fitted into the company’s overall purpose and how they could contribute personally to achieving it.
• They are committed to maximizing opportunities for personal growth and development.

How can we Recognize Individual Accomplishments?

Whilst international communications do help, the real core of recognition is not appreciated by many.

“Personal recognition must reflect genuine respect. People on the front lines are quick to recognize empty public relations gestures…”

In sum, any changes we make must improve the connection between the growth and development of organization with the growth and development of individuals.

Commit to developing employees

A clear message. Successful companies make a stronger commitment to personal development. Instead of simply training for job skills they develop their capacity for personal growth.

Anita Roddick said: “You can train dogs-We want to educate people and help them realize their full potential”

A large Consulting Group views the development of its people as a goal in itself and makes no proprietary claims to the skills and knowledge it develops. It’s recruiting brochure promises ‘after training with us, you could work for anyone…”

What else do leaders have to consider in releasing their people’s potential?

Fostering Individual Initiative

We have to develop a new momentum that improves recognition for individual initiative as the main source of growth. We have to find ways of institutionalizing this central belief in policies and procedures. For example:

“3M’s-15% Rule-which allows employees to spend up to 15% of their time on bootleg projects that they believe have potential for the company”

What conclusions do you draw on rewarding change?

Three steps:

1. Continually refocus on Purpose in a mutually inter-dependent-and collectively reinforcing manner. In short, have everyone involved. MOVIE: Stand by Me

2. Continually Demand Accountability involving traditional standards or measures and new standards/measures

3. Continually Gather Data.

The danger is that if we don’t address the issues companies become focused on narrow corporate self-interest. We will eventually lose the excitement, support and commitment of those people who are the very engines for change-our people. We have to find a way of defining, establishing and sustaining a set of values which:

• Creates a sense of identity
• Creates a sense of pride not only to those employed by to customers and others.
• Respects and gives attention to our people’s ideas and inputs
• Motivates and builds commitment to a shared sense of mission.

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 on change, alignment, and personal and executive performance that improve the bottom line. If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.