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.
This is the fifth 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 Change Gain Competitive Advantage? Here are the other book sections we are highlighting:
Even after 30 years, the connections between change management and gaining competitive advantage are not well articulated. The disconnects between commitments to change and actual competitive behavior are a major factor in change failure. Getting beyond imitatorsrelies on understanding and measuring behavior that distinguishes competitive behavior from other activities.
As one contributor said
Learning keeps us ahead of the competition by getting us closer to selected customers
to gather competitive intelligence
The seriousness of these ratings is underlined by the fact that, many studies show that it costs six times more to get a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. Acquiring new customers is costly, and in many cases, the money earned on the first sale doesn’t even cover the acquisition costs.
For example in the table to the right, only 70% of contributors say they measure customer satisfaction effectively. Worst still are the low percentages for the benefits of measuring change related to customers (3%) and their feedback when it comes to change success (12%)
These findings have uncomfortable resonance with the lack of customer focus we see in other parts of this report. Change drives these leaders, while customers and competitive advantage are apparent afterthoughts.
We conclude that there are practical ways to avoid these pitfalls. Overall, contributors comment that managing change for competitive success is a continuous, systemic, repetitive and uncertain process. They recommend five areas to improve competitive advantage through change.
Action Points 4: Implementing Change to Gain Competitive Advantage
Market and Competitive Sensing
What do managers do at present to maintain awareness of your competitive environment?
How well do managers use this information to make more competitive decisions?
What should managers do to improve awareness and agility to the competition?
Leading Competitive Change
What changes should managers make to develop a competitive culture?
How are you going to build more leadership capability to bring about successful change?
Integrating Change into Operations
Building Competitive Human Capital
What should managers be doing to link competitive change to day-to-day operations?
What performance metrics are needed to track this integration?
What performance management measures should you be using?
How do you see learning being managed both individually and collectively at present?
What should managers be doing to improve both individual and collective learning?
Developing Competitive Agility
What do managers do to reshape and adjust strategies?
What should be done to manage strategic change and the emergence of threats and opportunities?
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Globally there is a slow erosion of those binding forces for people to “go that extra mile”. The employee-employer psychological contract is degrading. The degree to which people identify with their job and consider job performance as important to their self-worth is slipping .In our recently published survey Focusing Change to Win identified the main culprits:
Poor Planning
Lack of Leadership
Inconsistent leadership
Poor Implementation
Lack of Adaptability
Lack of Communication
Lack of Control
More than ever, we need to repair, build and protect the trust people have in their employers.
In North America, our evidence from 8 expectation alignment projects ranging from Royal Bank of Canada through Nature Conservancy to Turner Construction shows a clear trend. Leaders consistently under-estimate the gap between what they expect of their managers and what people think is expected of them. Inall studies, leaders had 65%+ more expectations than their people were aware.
In the UK, managers need to do more if they want to earn employee trust , according to the latest survey into employee attitudes from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD). Trust in senior management is declining, particularly in the private sector, with
Only 25% employees willing to place a lot of trust in senior management to look after their interests and
Only 41% placing little or no trust in them to do so.
Essentially, new research suggests that many employees are losing faith in their management yet it seems leaders have don’t connect this condition with losing ground competitively. Continue reading →
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.
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.
_________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page Nick Anderson, The Crispian Advantage
On both sides of the Atlantic, the employment compact is fracturing along the lines of manufacturing outsourcing, poor change communication and inconsistent leadership. The bottom-line is that “doing more with less”sounds macho in closeted executive strategy sessions. The reality is that those who get the work done feel the stress of over-work and unabated insecurity is eroding trust in their leaders.
How close are we getting to the “old lie”?
Dulce et Decorum est Pro patria mori.( Translation: “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.”
Wilfred Owen – Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori – it is sweet and right to die for your country. In other words, it is great to work your butt off and then a get a pink slip
North Americans grow more cynical of being asked “go the extra mile” with even fewer resources. As a result, change resistance is increasingly more complex and individualistic.
This fracturing eats away at competitiveness. The leadership challenge then is to repair, build and protect the trust people have in their leaders and other functions.
In North America, over the last ten years I have conducted expectation alignment projects in very different organizations like Royal Bank of Canada, Qwest Telecommunications and Turner Construction. In every project, leaders consistently under-estimated the gaps between:
What they expect of their people and what the people actually think is expected of them.
What they think people expect of them and their people actually expect of their leaders
In all projects, leaders had 65%+ more expectations than their people were aware. As you read on you will see that my findings are disturbingly endorsed on both sides of the Atlantic.
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.
Accelerating Complexity places extreme demands on leaders. The leader’s ability to relate, energize, and develop their followers is critical to empower them to act without direction. It’s a competitive imperative and requires a new balance of more effective and affective leadership. It’s the ability to produce results by being affective. That ability to influence people, in the way they think, feel and act is now paramount
As Peter Senge said Leaders “…cannot afford to choose between reason and intuition, or head and heart, any more than they would choose to walk on one leg…”
So, this month I deal with what leaders need to do – the easier bit. Next month, I cover the tougher piece on how leaders need to lead transformationally.
In this blog I want to focus on Preparing People For Changeby 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
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.
• 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
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
Listen to the Radio Show of this BlogLike 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 changeis 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)
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, The Crispian Advantage
This month I continue to look at different industries that have difficulty in implementing successful change. Last month we looked at the problems cutting red tape in local government, this month we look at large Oilsands construction projects
Ugh?? Why? Bear with me readers….here’s some facts
Fact: Canada has the largest reservoir of crude bitumen in the world. Making Canada’s total oil reserves the second largest in the world, after Saudi Arabia’s.
Fact: Crude oil prices will go through the $100 pbl this year. Making Canada’s oilsands economically viable once again, especially with advances in production technology.
Fact: Forecasts say Canada will 5.0+ million barrels per day by 2035
Fact: In the last boom (2005-08) these projects ran notoriously over budget and behind schedule.
So, what’s going to happen in the next boom AND why should anyone care about what happens in the barren lands of Alberta?
Basically, the more delay in these projects, the greater the cost and guess who’s going to end up paying at the gas pump. Here’s some disturbing evidence. In a recent survey of Oil & Gas Industry executives,most said they were:
Dissatisfied with project performance (40% of capital projects overrun); Highest ever level of dissatisfaction
Agreed that poor project performance is not acceptable when the market expects predictable strong returns.
Agreed that they can’t afford to miscalculate project risks, yet they don’t have a good grasp of how manage them.
(Booz Allen Hamilton “Capital Project Execution in the Oil & Gas Industry”)
You would think these executives would have their act together by now. What sorts of things did the survey identify were going wrong?
Good question. Another survey identified several things, including:
1. Late scope changes
2. Insufficient resources
3. Poor support
4. Poor contracting strategies
5. Poor communications
6. Poor project processes and controls
7. Poorly developed teams
8. High Team turnover
9. Lack of stakeholder identification and engagement
(PriceWaterhouseCoopers 2004)
It strikes me that lot of these come down to people not being on the same page. For example, to what extent are late scope changes the result of inadequate communication between different groups?
Quite often. We find people in construction projects aren’t aligned early enough. For example, the owner may expect the Contractor (EPC) to have conducted a thorough review of specifications prior to start of drafting only to find out later the review was inadequate. Andthe longer specification mistakes remain uncovered the more expensive they become to fix.
The key problem is layered change. It builds pressure to “to get on with it”. Under stressful conditions, the ramifications of meeting the latest change order are not fully considered. So, more change orders are approved without sufficient time or budget for professionals to consider their impact and cost. This sets up “wicked problem solving” – you “solve” one problem but create five more – and so on.( C. West Churchman, 1967)
We have seen this happen when three projects were running in parallel on the same site where increasing Change Orders led to increased Requests for Information (RFIs)
It reminds me of a Monty Python sketch – Mr. Creosote. Creosote is an impossibly obese man who is served an enormous amount of food After being persuaded to eat “just one more mint wafer”, he explodes in a very graphic way.
Another good example are Poor Partnering Strategies – Normallyperformance guarantees and risk sharing are agreed to contractually between, say, Contractor and Sub-contractor. But, invariably no one then takes preventative action align specific expectations to avoid their use. As many say, “if you have to get the contract out then we really are in deep do-do!”
What have you found to explain this a lack of specific expectations and how it contributes to these problems?
At the start of a project, construction people are under enormous pressure to “get on with it!’. So, they agree too readily to others’ expectations of them and accept others’ agreement of their expectations. This ready acceptance of expectations is especially true between professional disciplines and companies. The problem is people don’t really specify what is being agreed to. This only emerges when the expectation’s Receiver doesn’t deliver what was expected by the Originator and then the remedy is usually expensive. At its core is a lack of understanding of what alignment is really about. Alignment requires a Responsibility Shift between an expectation’s Originator and Receiver. Let me explain.
The Alignment Responsibility Shifts
When the Originator has an expectation, they are responsible to initiate discussion with the Receiver(s) (70% of the time this doesn’t happen – LOL)
Shift 1. If the Receiver agrees to the expectation, then the responsibility shifts to the Receiver. To tell the Originator what they will and will not deliver to meet the agreed expectation.
Shift 2. Now, the Responsibility shifts back to the Originator to assess the Receiver’s need for help to meet their expectation. (Contrary to what common sense would indicate):
Shift 3.and most importantly the Originator still has the responsibility to provide that help. For example, like briefing, coaching, advice, support etc.
Now, Originator and Receiver stand a chance of being aligned. The key is that success is more likely, replicable, faster and at reduced cost.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. (Chinese Proverb)
Why don’t project management processes cope with this sort of problem very well?
Two factors. As someone once said:
“If everything is going according to plan, something somewhere is going massively wrong’
First. There is an over-reliance on such processes like accountability matrices (A grid of who does what, who they should consult and inform etc.). They fail to reflect the dynamics of a complex construction project. Back to Mr Creosote….it’s not so much about adding more! (Reporting, processes, communication etc.) but having clear expectations on how we handle problems and opportunities as they arise. Such rational planning processes needs strong emotional glue to be really effective. Let me explain.
Emotionally intelligent glueconsists of compounds like trust, constructive criticism and holding each other accountable. And like glue needs “curing”. It needs controlled heat, and a blend of team members to initiate and harden commitments, just like using high-performance adhesives when you need strong bonding.
The second factor compounds the problems of over-reliance on traditional project management processes. It’s the number of lines communications and deciding which are needed under pressured dynamics. Just take a 100 person project, potentially you could have 9,900 possible communication links. Regardless of matrix, project or siloed command structures, you still need a way of managing the myriad number of cross functional, organizational and contractor expectations. And if not surfaced and managed will negatively impact project execution.
How do you respond to those that say, “ This is why we have all this technology available so that all those involved have access to what everyone else is doing?
But, somebody has to feed the technology. More reporting what’s been done comes at a price – Time and declining utility. Unfortunately technology has become a two-edged sword….efficient yet overwhelming. It produces so much data that it dilutes information and makes sense makingdifficult. This then hobbles a team’s ability to cope with problems, delays and change and what they need to do.
Teams are most productive when they are bonded by the following curing process:
1. Sustainable Trust leads to
2. Healthy Conflict which leads to
3. Solid Commitment which builds
4. Owning Accountability which enables
5. Keeping Focused under the pressure of delays and problems
If these are not present cracks appear and quickly team adhesion fails. These cracks occur because expectation gaps and misalignments are not addressed early enough.
Let me explain how team adhesion is lost:
Lack #1: Trust
When team members get unsure what others really expected of them; as opposed to what their company has committed them to legally. This uncertainty is then compounded by cynicism from previous project experience. A typical cause of which is when:
“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”
Lack #2: Conflict
Lack of trust stifles teams engaging in unfiltered, passionate debate about key issues. This can develop into resistance to following through with expectations. Negative attitudes and unstated resistance occur evidenced by politicking, and regressing into pure self interest. Effective teams need to have:
“Iron sharpening iron, so one person sharpens the wits of another. (after Proverbs 27:17)
Lack #3: Commitment
Without conflict, it is difficult for team members to commit to decisions and ambiguity becomes the default. The resulting lack of direction and commitment can make project partners and teams disgruntled, falling back on required formal communication and lead to slower response times.
“We are reactive and respond too quickly to changes to understand the implications and impacts on other elements and groups”
Lack#4: Accountability
When teams don’t commit to a clear plan of action, even the most focused and driven individuals hesitate. They hold back from calling their peers on actions and behaviors that are counterproductive. This procrastination means correcting a situation becomes very difficult without direct confrontation of the issue for the overall good of the project.
“We could be better at identifying problems and their solutions before they actually occur. We are too reactive and this slows us down”
Lack #5: Focus
Now the lines are drawn. Project team members circle their wagons. They fall back into the distraction of putting their own needs first. If a team has lost sight of the need for collective achievement, the project will ultimately suffer.
“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”
These five cracks are rooted in problems of not aligning and managing expectations.
“Expectation Gaps are like pot holes, the more you leave them the deeper they get. The impact of misalignment leads to cost and time overruns and then bleeds over into subsequent projects” (Nick Anderson, PDS Group LTD)
Successful projects are founded on:”Get Personal before you get contractual!”
In summary, no matter how well a project is planned, it is executing the plan that ultimately determines success. Project success demands authentic communication to align expectations and then track them methodically. Tools needed to measure, manage and facilitate easier communication and alignment of critical expectations among project participants
So, you’re saying that those managing complex projects, like oilsands, need to stand back and consider what they do differently…..if past delays and overruns are to be avoided?
Certainly, there’s a case to answer and look at a new way of Expectation Alignment for More Effective Project Management. Let’s face it, You Can’t Manage What You Cannot Measure
As many project people will us:
“Building the thing is not difficult compared to managing all the people involved”
So called “soft” skills need hardening. Effective Communication should not only be acknowledged, but recognized as a cornerstone of successful project management. Why then is it so metric and data starved? How can we manage what we cannot measure?
So, here are the questions that took us 10 years to answer effectively:
How do we develop measurable ways of effective Teamworking?
How do we assess people’s expectations of others with those others have of them?
How can we drive performance discussions between groups and individuals on their expectations and assumptions that result in:
Specifying clearer performance criteria against which individuals/groups will be measured
Removing expectations that are non-value added and not strategically aligned
Identifying significant issues to address for project advancement
Creating an accountability framework
How can we help people be more aligned and focused?
I guess the question in readers minds is: If you make such an investment what do I get in return?
The ROI for Oilsands Projects – Sources of Payback
Expectation Alignment has been successfully employed midstream to “projects in crisis”, but its highest ROI is realized as preventative medicine used in real time to ensure proper project planning and execution.
We’ve covered Late Scope Changes and Poor Partnering Strategies of the 9 sources of failure. Let’s see how the others can be avoided or protected against by applying Expectation Alignment:
Optimized resources / Better support – Early definition of resource expectations all the way down the chain of command can avoid costly delays and expenditures. Similarly, competency gaps can be identified sooner by engaging in expectation alignment processes.
Improved communications – With numerous stakeholders involved in an oilsands project, static project charters and the like are not designed to manage the thousands of changing expectations. Successful project execution rests on agreeing, discarding or identifying the unresolved… Expectation alignment methods identify teams and managers who are especially strong or weak at communicating . Coaching or other remedial actions can thus be undertaken and the results monitored.
Accountability Tracking – Expectation Alignment’s regular and measurable process of developing and agreeing project expectations are taken to a level needed for a given project. Unlike project reporting which can often identify symptoms, Expectation Alignment tools also make accountability for task execution highly visible. Expectation Tension Ratings may also reveal important tasks that are not necessarily on the critical path but can have huge ramifications to project schedules or budgets.
Better Team Development– The Expectation Alignment process demands that Expectation Originators ensure that Expectation Receivers have the competency and resources to complete the required tasks. In situations where senior managers are working with junior personnel, assumptions are often made on their level of process knowledge and industry practices. Expectation Alignment addresses these issues by facilitating the alignment conversations that reveal experience gaps early enough to develop people and avoid later termination.
Effective Contracting Strategies – Incorporating subcontractors and key suppliers in the Expectation Alignment process often reveals owner expectations and other stakeholders are not captured in specifications and contracts yet play a significant part in them being effective
Reduced Team Turnover – Again consider the 5 key” Project Dysfunctions”. (Absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of commitment, avoidance of accountability and inattention to results). Getting teams participating in facilitated expectation alignment sessions creates an objective assessment of team stressors and progressively builds a more robust and productive project team culture.
Based on this foundation , Expectation Alignment becomes an effective tool to getting new people up to speed and address competency gaps before their credibility is damaged
Improved Stakeholder Engagement – while inclusion of all stakeholders seems an obvious remedy to avoiding later project problems, the explicit definition of mutual expectations, especially of external stakeholders can yield big paybacks. The process that enables external stakeholders to explicitly state their expectations and have them acknowledged also build good relations both in the current and subsequent projects.
In summary, where project delays are millions of dollars per day, the simple alignment and monitoring of expectations to make the many thousands of required daily decisions more accurate, is strongly beneficial and has been shown to result in very tangible savings.
Tip of the Blog
Here are some questions that are crucial to successful project execution. The above benefits accrue when all people understand:
What is expected of them
What they can expect from others
How well they are strategically aligned
How their performance is measured and compensated
What they can stop doing
What they need to focus on
What information and resources can be used to achieve their goals
This is probably the first thing on your mind after reading this Blog. How about asking us? The first call is free! Just email me to set it up. Don’t wait, get PDS working for you!. If our conversation leaves you needing more, we offer at a reasonable fee telephone and video coaching on change, alignment and executive performance that improves the bottom line. If that still doesn’t do it, we’ll work with you on a solution.
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________________________________________________________________________________________________________ For Help in Getting Your People on the Same Page Nick Anderson, Senior Partner, PDS Group LTD E-mail I Web I Linkedin
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.
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 Approachmakes 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.
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
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:
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?
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
This month’s topic looks at Competitive Differentiation in the Professional Services Sector. This sector typically includes accountants, lawyers, bankers and financial services, like planners etc. All these professionals offer very similar services due in part to regulations, certifications, disintermediation and the power of technology.
Go to any law firm’s web site like Varnum and Clark Hill, or large consulting firms and they look the same. They apparently have the same mouse trap.
Why did you choose your….attorney, accountant, financial planner etc?
So, how do professionals differentiate themselves?
On the basis of their expertise and their ability to develop Trusted Adviserstatus. David Meister asks: What benefits would you obtain if your clients trusted you more? For example, the more they will:
Treat you as you wish to be treated
Lower the level of stress in your interactions
Be comfortable and allow you to be comfortable
Involve you early on when their issues begin to form, rather than later (Open up)Share more information that helps you to help them, and improves the quality of the service you provide
Be inclined to accept and act on your recommendations
Bring you in on more advanced, complex, strategic issues ( Your are in the board room not waiting in the corridor awaiting instructions)
Refer you to their friends and business acquaintances
What characteristics would you look for in selecting your trusted adviser
Here are some of David Meister’s traits that Trusted Advisers have in common. Clients say they:
Make us feel comfortable and casual personally (but take the issues seriously)
Seem to understand us, effortlessly, and like us
Act like a person, not someone in a role
Are reliably on our side, and always seem to have our interests at heart
Don’t try to force things on us
Help us think things through (but emphasize that it’s our decision)
Criticize and correct us gently, lovingly
Don’t pull their punches: we can rely on them to tell us the truth
Are in it for the long haul (the relationship is more important than the current issue)
Give us reasoning (to help us think), not just their conclusions
Give us options, increase our understanding of those options, give us their recommendation and let us choose.
Are always honorable: they don’t gossip about others (we trust their values)
Help us put our issues in context, often through the use of metaphors, stories and anecdotes (they recognize that few problems are completely unique)
You said he listed “traits” as in a person’s character? So for example the adviser who is not honorable can’t be trained to be more honorable, right?
It’s a good point, in last month’s blog I made the distinction. Candidly, Meister’s list is mixture of Competencies and Traits. “So what?” you must be thinking,” I said, “Bottom line, you hire traits and develop competencies! Remember:
Competency : “The ability to do something successfully or efficiently.” ”Having the necessary ability, knowledge, or skill to do something successfully:” Trait: “A characteristic or quality of a person.” (They are wired that way
For all intent and purposes professional advisers reading this should focus on what they can learn and develop to be competitive differentiated trusted advisers. But, here is the rub. Developing trust is not well defined. For example, research I did with Linda Marsh into Mortgage Loan Advisers we found that the customers trusted those who used more “Transitional Structuring” WHAT! (Some people call it sign posting). Like,
“We have now covered David’s Trusted Adviser traits and we are now looking at Adviser Competencies…
We and others have identified observable and trainable behaviors that impact those traits that David mentioned like making the client “feel comfortable”. Now, here’s the fundamental point about developing trusted adviser status:
How do you balance helping potential clients feel understood while ensuring they understand the issues and options available?
That’s difficult because if they don’t feel understood they aren’t really going to retain what they are told AND won’t likely see you as a trusted advisor. It takes me back to the most fundamental process of when people make a decision to change. They have to be sufficiently disturbed or concerned about their current condition that they look for a solution that enables them to resolve their negative condition. If Advisors, don’t know how to locate where a client is in this process and help them through at their pace any residual trust will be eroded.
What competencies have you and PDS identified to help develop competitive advisers?
In the world of Professional Services regulations dictate levels of certification – so the expertise playing field is level, for the new client looking for an adviser. So, we at PDS isolate “Competitive Competencies” which:
Make a disproportionate contribution to customer’s perceived value
Are “competitively unique” or superior
Are extendible: providing “gateways to tomorrow’s markets”
The Value of Effective Competencies
Greater objectivity – less biased by the manager’s interpretations of what happened but what actually happened
More Useful – less dependent on the manager’s judgment, more on the Adviser assessment (crucial if they are to learn)
More focus – less overwhelming as it encourages managers to match the feedback to the Adviser’s ability and their willingness to receive it
More quantifiable – greater understanding what of works and what doesn’t under defined conditions and allows people to compare themselves against a standard
More effective – less guess work about how outcomes are achieved. (How you Win and Lose)
It suggests that Advisers needs someone to coach them?
Yes, it is essential. All those firms we have worked with try to get people effective coaching to secure and retain clients from their competition, like, Ernst & Young, who I helped develop their Relationship Management Program, Watson Wyatt, Royal Bank of Canada, JP Morgan Chase
In your experience, what traps do advisory firms fall into?
To put our recent study in context, most professionals we work with love to do a great job. As one senior adviser said to me“I treat my clients as my children…”
But, being a trusted adviser today is not enough. We surveyed advisers to see how they were competitively differentiating themselves. In summary.
1. Most do not truly understand what a competitive Client strategy is.
2. People don’t understand the difference between Competitive Value Discovery and Differentiation.
3. They do not understand the difference between preparation and planning.
4. They do not understand the difference between offense and defense
5. Because any strategic plans were not common amongst the troops, the plan is not maintained or advanced.
Can you explain the difference between Competitive Value Discovery and Differentiation?
Competitive Value Discovery helps you increase value potential. The idea of finding value that Client’s had never thought of before is competitively differentiating. So, we can introduce clients to ideas they may never have thought of and help them see the competition as “not on the ball”. Whether it’s your client or you are trying to secure a new client, they always weigh your value against the competition. What we have more more control over is what they weigh, how they weigh it. Additionally, we need to plant what the competition plants in the client’s mind. Then, we have far better intel and a better sense of the client’s changing priorities to influence their Decision Guidelines both offensely and defensively – Competitive Differentiation.
“Given the same amount of intelligence… timidity will do a thousand times more damage than audacity” “The best form of defense is attack.” Karl von Clausewitz
What else did you find out?
1. Their language is predominately about reacting to clients’ needs with no language of competitiveness.
2. No sense of doing things in a relational way but with competitive intent.
3. They see the activity of competing as separate from looking after the client.
4. The idea of decision guidelines and working to putting value behind them is a language that is foreign to them.
5. They don’t have a competitively strategic context for their day to day client interactions.
6. Largely, they have a passive position without having a strategy to extend the services they offer outsourcing.
What did you say to them about these findings?
How much profit are you leaving on the table because you are not managing our relationships with competitive intent?
So why are you not purposely discovering client value that will allow us to “Differentiate the Firm?”
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
During the last 6 months I have been coaching different professionals in how to reduce project costs and delays. This got me thinking about the last few blogs. The theme has been Aligning People for Change– coping with the economic turbulence we live in today. So, I got to thinking about practical tools that most leaders can use to “Talk Their Talk”. When there is a lot of uncertainty and turbulence leaders need to “up their game” by communicating better and more effectively.
This is the start of a series on developing leaders behavioral Skills. It is based on my 11 years with Huthwaite Research Group where we used research based models to develop groups and leaders effective communication skills including:
Developing effective solutions
Negotiating
Selling
Facilitating
In this Blog, I want to start with a core leadership skill – Developing Commercially Viable Ideas in Meetings
What type of research was involved to develop these models?
All these models and subsequent research projects are based on a large scale research project in the late 60’s
(Warr, P. B., Bird, M. and Rackham, N., The Evaluation of Management Training, Gower, 1970, Rackham, N. and Morgan, T., Behaviour Analysis in Training, McGraw-Hill, 1977. Rackham, N. et al., Developing Interactive Skills, Wellens, 1971.) to develop a truly descriptive and useful system for classifying
behavior. This long and tedious process considered many potential categories. The researchers finally concluded that a practical list of categories could be produced if the selected behaviors met 5 basics criteria. They were:
1. Measured accurately
2. Easy to understand
3. Distinct from other categories
4. Change how often it is used
5. Related to effective performance
What sort of things did they come up with?
Initiating
Initiating behaviors are proposals or suggestions to the group that call for action. After all, a discussion has got to start somewhere. New proposals and an addition to a proposal are both examples of initiating. There are two initiating behaviors: Proposing and Building.
Proposing brings forth a new suggestion, proposal, or course of action (e.g.“I suggest that we organize the project into five modules.”.
Buildingtakes the form of a proposal, but actually extends or further develops a proposal made by another person (e.g.“…and your plan would be even better if we added a scroll bar at the edge of the window.”)
Since initial proposals are often not the final solution, building is effective in producing an alternative or revised plan.
Reacting
The Blame Game
Reacting behaviors involve the affirmation of or objection to a person, his/her opinions, or an issue. There are three reacting behaviors: Supporting, Disagreeing, and Defending/Attacking.
Supporting is a behavior that makes a conscious and direct declaration of agreement with or supports for another person, or his/her concepts and opinions (e.g. “I like Sandra’s idea best “or “This sounds good”). Generally, this behavior builds cohesion and momentum.
Disagreeing is the direct objection to another person’s opinions or ideas. Disagreeing is an issue-oriented behavior (e.g. “Your third point is counter to regulation 10.3.3…”or “What you’re suggesting just won’t work as the impeller will overheat“). This behavior is normal in a discussion and needed to use the full resources of the group to get to an effective idea.
.Defending/Attackingentails attacking a person directly or by acting defensively. This behavior is people-oriented, and involves value judgments and emotional overtones (i.e. “That’s stupid!”or“Don’t blame me; it’s not my fault. It’s John’s responsibility.”). Defending and Attacking will only bring unhappiness and plenty of tension to the group. There are better ways of handling a discussion. If you are being verbally attacked, try not to play into the instigator’s hands by shouting back. Instead try to speak rationally and direct the discussion to the issue at hand rather than playing the “Blame Game”.
Clarifying
Clarifying behaviors attempt to clarify an individual’s or group’s understanding of the issues. Exchanging information and summarizing are involved in clarification. There are four behaviors;
Testing Understanding,
Summarizing,
Seeking Information,
Giving Information.
Testing Understanding seeks to establish whether or not an earlier contribution has been understood by the individual. It differs from seeking information in that it is an attempt to ensure agreement or consensus of some kind, and refers to a prior question or issue (i.e. “Can I take it that we all now agree on our tasks assignments for this week?”).This behavior is similar to Summarizing, but takes the form of a question.
Summarizing restates the content of previous discussions or events in a compact form. This behavior can be useful to ensure that the entire group is up to date with events that have transpired (e.g. “So far we have agreed that John will finish module A, while Maria and I begin module B.”).This will insure that you and the rest of the group have a clear understanding…
Seeking Informationseeks facts, opinions, or clarification from another person pertaining to a proposal (i.e. “Can anyone tell me which page this is on?”and “What test routine will you use?”). This behavior ensures that you are up to date with the topic of discussion. If you have questions, ask them as soon as possible (i.e. don’t leave questions until the night before the project is due).
Giving Information offers facts, opinions or clarification to a proposal (e.g. “The new system is easier to operate.” and “I’m worried about missing the deadline.”). Feedback is always appreciated even if it is not always positive.
Process Behaviors
Process behaviors entail the obstruction of or opening up of the discussion process to group members. Bringing Inand Shutting Outare the two behaviors that constitute Process Behaviors.
Bringing In invites views or opinions from a member of the group who is not actively participating in the discussion (i.e. “Lee, what is your opinion on the layout of the User’s Manual?”). This behavior may introduce some refreshing new ideas from a shy or reserved team member.
Shutting Out excludes another person or reduces their opportunity to contribute. Interruption is the most common form of shutting out (e.g. “David, what do you think?”Eric replies: “I think…”— Eric has interrupted David and shut him out of the conversation). This behavior may seem harmless, but if it occurs too much it can be felt as disrespectful and can deny others the opportunity to contribute to the discussion.
How was this research used to in finding better ways to run meetings?
It turns out effective meetings showed that all three main behavior groups were present in a balanced way. They found that once a group became locked into using one or two of these major classes the results they produced were impaired. Here are some Case Studies
Meeting Case Studies
Here are some groups and their meetings that were either high or low in Initiating, Reacting or Clarifying?
High on Initiating
Too many ideas and ideas to handle
Lack of attention to detail – “up in the clouds” feeling
Group Case – Research team in Chemical Industry
Problem– On surface seemed very creative, innumerable ideas. Management asked for reducing severe dust problems in one of their plants. First meeting came up with 14 viable methods. As this was urgent they reported – Production Director said “OK,which one?” After 5 subsequent meetings they had not reached a decision and generated 6 new ideas!!!
High on Reacting
Becomes emotional
Misunderstandings become more frequent
People take sides – entrenched
Group Case: Shop Stewards in Manufacturing
Problem – Coping with changes in the economic climate. Management started taking a more consultative approach by letting people in advance of potential change. Previously they reacted to Management proposals e.g. wages, benefits etc. They couldn’t get out their traditional mold. They left Initiating to management and were low in clarifying which led to more misunderstandings and became more emotional.
High on Clarifying
Very time consuming
Obsession with minor details
Feels like “swimming in syrup”
Group Case – British Civil Servants
Problem – They became bogged down in the meaning of the meaning. Consequently, 90% behavior was clarifying. Their Initiating Behaviors was
so low that they became stuck in minor detail. This was
Booged Down
compounded by low levels of reacting behavior so no one knew who supported or disagreed with other group members.
That’s the high side of the problem, what happens when you get groups that are low on these three areas?
Low on Initiating
Backward looking
Lack of enthusiasm
Undue attention to detailed analysis
Group Case: Production Control Committee in the Engineering Industry.
Problem: Representatives from Production, QC, Maintenance, Industrial Engineering and Production Planning had jobs which overlapped so that when problems came up there were disputes as to who was blame.
“We seem to be very good at dissecting situations and finding who is to blame. Perhaps we should be spending some time finding ways to prevent things occurring in the first place”
Low on Reacting
Tendency for Repetition
People withhold important information
Awkward and forced
Group Case: Systems Analysts presenting proposals to a group of staff members
Problem: The Systems Analysts came up with lots of proposals for change i.e. High Initiating. As a result Staff became nervous about these proposals and heightened by their use of technical jargon. So they were high in Clarifying and did not make any commitments. The Analysts Reacting already low levels dropped and gave more detail i.e. they were classic Low Reactors so the confusion continued. This is typical of specialists meeting decision makers and most know the discomfort of presenting to decision makers
Low Clarifying
Meeting becomes disorganized
Hasty decisions are made
People cannot agree afterwards on what has been decided
Group: New York Advertising Agency
Problem: This active & dynamic group responded to a client brief with everyone talking at once. There were loads of ideas, plenty of excitement and enthusiasm i.e. extremely high Initiating Behaviors. Also, they were high in Reacting Behaviors with a chorus of approval or disapproval and consequently very low Clarifying Behaviors. So confusion reigned. At the end they were asked to write what had been agreed. There were no two versions that were the same. Later further research showed people leaving a meeting could have an average of 5 misunderstandings per person.
What can we learn from these case studies in terms of where we are in this recession?
Leaders know that meetings are inherently expensive and today there isn’t time to tolerate the sort of problems illustrated. Leaders need to hold themselves accountable to managing meetings so that;
1. Initiating, Reacting and Clarifying Behaviors must be present and balanced if meetings are to be successful.
2. They are alert to the impact of High or Low Reacting seriously impairs productivity
3. They recognize that different meetings have very different needs, so what works for problem diagnosis will not work for evaluating a production plan
4. Some Meetings need to be high on one of the three – although you need to be cautious of High Clarifying. Leaders have to question if a meeting is the most productive use of meeting where there is High – Information Exchange
In the rest of the series we will cover specific skills that help leaders achieve these goals
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
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?
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
Since 1996 when Kotter’s research revealed that only 30% of change initiatives succeed. Even today, when McKinsey surveyed 3000 business executives this ratio of 1 in 3 still applied in 2009.
You see for people to be clear on their expectations of others they need to understand the change from their perspective. The problem is that managers use rational models which they think just makes a common sense and why things go wrong from the get go Why?
Because when they simply implement their prescription, they disregard or are not aware of certain, sometimes irrational- but predictable elements of human nature. Unfortunately, Yes. I say that because only 30% of change works and only 10% of such initiatives deliver everything intended by those planning the change.
Why has this lack of success been so difficult to improve upon?
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae monie a blunder free us”
“O would some Power the gift to give us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us”
Robert Burns
Another translation
The name of this radio program is “Walk the Talk” or translated “Do what I do” But what talk?
In times of change conventional wisdom suggests that the leaders of change should model the desired change to mobilize influential leaders to drive change deep into the organization yet….
So, you’re saying before leaders start walking their talk they need to be careful. What do you see as the pitfalls leaders should be aware of?
Two spring to mind.
First, Leaders think they have already made the change and we need to get everyone on side. Elaborate – behind closed doors – advisors, consultants etc.
Second, they think they are the panacea rather than mobilizing others to get things to happen.
Let’s take the first one.
Most senior executives generally buy into Gandhi’s astute observation:
“Be the change you want to see in the world”
Yet knowing something and committing oneself to change too often don’t lead to significant results
So, leaders change their behavior and yet nothing happens…I am confused…
You might as well talk to yourself!
And so are leaders…..when they make a change. Too often most leaders don’t count themselves among those who need to change.
Like if you pulled them to one side and whispered “Are you really customer focused?” they would say “No” (I don’t have time to be…have you seen the paperwork I have to get through or ….P & L)
The fact is we all 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
So, when it comes to change Walking your Own Talk it’s not so much as a desire to show people what to do BUT the real bottleneck is leaders knowing what to change at a personal level.
It sounds like many leaders don’t take a cool hard look at themselves before embarking on “Walking the talk” and prescribing what others should do?
Exactly, we often see this in our alignment work. Consistently, leaders have 70%+ more expectations than others realize and leaders are often oblivious of what their people expect of them.
What can leaders do to overcome this potential blind spot?
The Ring of Fire
There are several ways using surveys like 360 degrees feedback, or simply asking regularly what should I be doing differently? Or one large company has what they call the “Ring of Fire”
Direct feedback in answer to
1. “What makes you great?”
2. “What holds you back?”
Are people really going to reply honestly?
No, not if the climate has not been set.
Yes, if the Leaders don’t believe they are the cure all for their organizations problems.
Yet, it’s sound advice that they should mobilize others, who by experience, respect and ability can become influential it getting things to happen. Yet, too often the influential leader’s role has shifted from being that helpful element to a broad set of actions, to being a cure all.
It’s a mindset problem leaders have. They forget they need to create the framework for changes not persuade people to adopt their prescriptions for change.
That sounds like leaders should let people come up with their own solutions…
No & Yes.
Persuasion or selling the need for change and what the change needs to be get welded together in leaders’ minds.
Leaders need to create receptivity for change (Framework) and not stray into the debilitating arena of “I know what we need to do…..”
The dangers are that you are seen to be part of the problem, you risk cutting off the growing motivation to do something differently and focus people on being spectators of change rather than being players in the game.
In reality it is often unexpected people who feel compelled to step up to drive change e.g. Genzink Steel – work scheduler
That’s why keeping leaders focused on creating the framework of lasting change is vital.
Too often we see leaders vested in their narrow focus unwittingly excluding the very people the need to create this framework.
Ok. Got that. So, What does effective leadership look like?
If you turn to Robert Greenleaf’s philosophy it can help leaders create the frame and not try to build their house on their own.
“Greenleaf – The servant-leader is servant first… Becoming a servant-leader begins with the natural feeling that one wants to serve, to serve first. Then conscious choice brings one to aspire to lead. That person is sharply different from one who is leader first… The difference manifests itself in the care taken by the servant first to make sure that other people’s highest priority needs are being served. The best test, and the most difficult to administer, is this:
Do those served grow as people?
Do they, while being served, become healthier, wiser, freer, more autonomous, more likely themselves to become servants?”
Robert Greenleaf’s most important work, Servant Leadership (1977/2002), is subtitled A Journey into the Nature of Legitimate Power & Greatness. Though his terms are secular ones, his definition of leadership is the clearest statement of this idea that the needs of followers are holy and that legitimate use of power arises from the consent of followers.
Like Christ washing the disciple’s feet – what did this do for their perception of his leadership?
Here’s a tip for now:
How often do you proactively ask for feedback?
Remember alignment is a two way street
What you expect of me
What I think you expect of me
What I expect of you
What you think I expect of you
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.
st Churchman
lligent glue
The ROI for Oilsands Projects – Sources of Payback
amental. 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.
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.
How do you balance helping potential clients feel understood while ensuring they understand the issues and options available?
havior. This long and tedious process considered many potential categories. The researchers finally concluded that a practical list of categories could be produced if the selected behaviors met 5 basics criteria. They were:
Process behaviors entail the obstruction of or opening up of the discussion process to group members. 
The Crispian Advantage 