Leadership Trends and Realities

What are You Selling: The Human Factor in Change Management

Posted by: Kelly Rietow, Principal, ROO Solutions

Each day we are selling our organization and our prioritizes to people, not just purchasing managers.  We need to get employees aligned with our strategic priorities, we need to get one department to play nice with another department, and we need to recruit the kind of people that want to drink our Kool-Aid.  It is also critical to help employees understand their role in the change if we want them to exert any discretionary effort toward successful change.  Clarity, consistency and accountability are essential for success. 

Clarity of purpose:  Why is change necessary and how does an individual or division contribute to the broader organizational change effort.  What is the burning platform, and why is change a better alternative than standing still?  Does budgeting, staffing and management action confirm and reinforce our stated priorities?  Is this another program-of-the-month that people will ignore until it goes away? 

Consistency:  People will resist change if their efforts are discredited or their risk-taking is punished for failure.  If your are focusing on innovation, do you also accept failures and risk taking, or do you shame and blame unsuccessful projects?  If your change effort focuses on cost reduction but your executive team enjoys the 5-day retreat in the Bahamas, are you being consistent?  As leaders, we are always under the microscope, and the messages we deliver to different groups need to be consistent or we lose credibility.

Accountability:  When your star performer resists change or outright refuses to participate, how does leadership respond?  Is the behavior ignored, swept under the rug, or addressed head on?  Do your HR and project management systems (resource allocation, prioritization, recognition) reinforce change implementation and sustainment?  When in doubt, follow the money.

Ensure clarity, consistency and accountability can improve the odds your change effort will take hold and be sustainable.

The Business Barnyard: Sacred Cows, Sacrificial Lambs and Turkey Programs

Posted by: Kelly Rietow, Principal, ROO Solutions 

How to Sabotage Your Change Efforts Every Time

Change efforts usually start out with the best of intentions.  We want to enter new markets, improve productivity or increase employee engagement.  These are worthy efforts. What organization doesn’t want to grow revenues, improve margins and enjoy a happy and productive workforce?  Unfortunately, our best intentions frequently encounter apathy at best and outright sabotage at worst.  More often than not, we are our own worst enemy.

Barnyard Barriers

You are likely aware of the “above the line” change barriers in your organization – financial and human resource constraints, organizational inertia, or perhaps lack of focus.  Hopefully you have dedicated the time to clarify the scope of your change effort, committed resources to the change, and communicated the need for change consistently and repeatedly to the workforce.  When your efforts begin to stall out, (or ideally before you launch the effort), take time to identify some of the barnyard barriers that may be getting in your way:

The Sacred Cows

Sacred cows are the protected people or practices in your organization.  Perhaps it is Joe in the shop, who has worked for the company for 25 years and whose skills are outdated.  “We can’t make Joe change – he was the first employee ever hired.”  Perhaps it is the overly tolerant company culture that stymies progress and avoids conflict.  Perhaps your organization prides itself on success in a given market that is dying.  During change leaders talk a good game, but when it is time for the difficult decisions, we tend to avoid tough topics or back pedal.  “We can’t just change “x” – it is part of who we are,” or “What would people say if we actually stopped 100% inspection?”  or “Our customers expect us to do all of our machining in house.”  If you find yourself saying “can’t,” “we never” or “What would people say?” you are likely uncovering a sacred cow.

The Sacrificial Lamb

Sacrificial lambs are offered up as examples to the organization.  Perhaps you are launching a new product and the development team is well behind schedule.  You can choose to sacrifice quality or features to meet the launch date, or perhaps you offer up the project manager as the “sacrificial lamb” – demoting her or publicly chastising him.  After all, somebody has to be responsible for this failure.  “Now the staff will know we are serious.”  The problem is, the more often you blame individuals for team missteps, the less likely people are to take a risk or assume a leadership role in the future.  You will be left with an organization of people afraid to act.

Perhaps the offering is simply symbolic, with no actual change or sacrifice made.  For example, you install a new CRM (customer relationship management) system, but you tolerate the sales force using the old system of paper tracking, and not entering leads into the system.  You are sacrificing the quality of your customer management information for the happy factor of the sales force. 

Turkey Programs

Stability leads to expectation.  Expectation leads to entitlement.  Once employees receive a turkey at Thanksgiving for a couple of years, it becomes an expectation, and eventually an entitlement.  “What do you mean we don’t get a turkey this year?”  “Last year’s turkey was at least 15 pounds – which cheapskate decided we only deserve a 10-pound bird?”  “When Tim was running the company, we always got our turkey the Tuesday before Thanksgiving.”  Be mindful of the expectations that have become hidden entitlements and create a strategy to address them.

We wish you success in identifying and addressing the barnyard barriers in your organization.

 

From Planning to Performance: Putting People and Execution back into your Projects

Posted by: Kelly Rietow, Principal, ROO Solutions

Well, it is that time of year again.  Time to budget, time to dust off last year’s annual plan, and time to wonder….what happened? 

How many “mission critical” or “#1 Priorities” projects stalled out, never got off the ground or were simply forgotten about?  Before committing to priorities and budgets for 2012, dedicate the time to set your organization and project teams up for success.  This requires realism, prioritization, adequate resourcing and most importantly, leadership commitment. 

To determine organizational priorities:

• Differentiate between must do, important and pet projects. 
• Use a simple Difficulty / Impact analysis to prioritize corporate initiatives
• Decide what you are not going to do. 
  • Organizations typically assign too many initiatives and projects with a finite amount of resources.  Focus on the critical few projects and figure out if there are things you, or your staff, can stop doing. 
  • If no one reads that report, stop creating it. 
  • If your pet project consumes 5% of your time but prevents you from participating in a key project, stop working on it or do it during off hours.
  • If that is the way “we’ve always done it,” ask why.  Update, change or eliminate the process if it no longer makes sense.
• Figure out how good is “good enough.” 
  • Define the outcomes and deliverables for different levels of performance.
  • Some projects require “A” level performance and need to be resourced that way. 
  • If you do not have the financial or human resources to deliver an A performance, define what “B” or “C” level outcomes would look like.  Sometimes lesser outcomes are fine and you can work toward “A level.” 
  • If B or C level outcomes are not “good enough”, the organization needs to adjust for resources for the project to be successful.

To set up your project team for success:

• Assign an Executive Sponsor.  He / she needs to help define project scope, remove obstacles and ensure progress.  This person needs to have the authority to make things “happen” at higher levels in the organization. 
• Clearly define project scope:  what is in scope and most importantly, what is outside the scope of the project.  If the Executive Sponsor / Leadership Team cannot define the scope or intended outcomes at a high level, stop the project and figure it out.  Lather, rinse, repeat until the scope is clearly defined.  You are unlikely to succeed if the Leadership Team doesn’t know what success looks like.
• Assign a Project Leader.  This is basically the Project Manager who herds the cats and keeps the project moving.
• Define the “Core Team” necessary for success and the “consulting members” whose expertise you only need on occasion.  Don’t tie people up in meetings unnecessarily.
• Set expectations and ground rules for team member participation and contribution.
• Standardize agendas and minutes.  Assign someone (other than the project leader) to be responsible for taking and distributing minutes. Limit action item review to 5-10 minutes.  Focus on the working part of the meeting.
• Celebrate milestones and successes.  Don’t save up all your pizza parties and company presentations for “the big one.”  Acknowledge the small victories along the way to keep the project top of mind and your team members engaged.  Encourage project updates during company meetings. 
• Project closure.  Include a lessons learned, a short team member evaluation to share with the employee and her manager, and a timeline to ensure your project is sustained.

There is a wealth of reading material regarding strategic planning, yet only a few really good, practical books on execution.  Before committing to too many projects, too poorly resourced, consider reading a title or two:

 

For You: Up, Down and Across

Posted by: Kelly Rietow, Principal, ROO Solutions

Every day we can either help or hinder our relationships up, down and across our organizations and in our personal lives.  You likely have opportunities every day to take a shortcut, vent your frustrations or avoid a situation all together.  You also have the opportunity to do your best work, help out a friend or coworker, or have that difficult conversation while reinforcing the long-term relationship.

You make the choice whether or not to show up or to call in sick. Yet showing up involves more than your physical presence.  It means being engaged with people - think about “Being Famous” or the “Be There” principle of the Fish Philosophy    It also means positively, rather than negatively, impacting a situation or environment.  Whatever comments you make at the water cooler, whatever actions you take or do not take, impact how you “show up” up, down and across the organization.

Up:  Your manager’s boss may not see you regularly; he or she may not even know what your job is.  But rest assured that executive is keeping tabs on your progress, at least at a high level.  When you play a key role in solving a key customer’s problem, when you take a step forward to volunteer while others step back, and when you help keep projects moving when everyone else has given up, it is noticed.  I’ve been on a few leadership teams in both small and mid-sized organizations and company successes and missteps are regularly dissected.  Most of these organizations also conduct either formal or informal talent reviews.  It is the people who “show up” consistently that are identified for plum assignments and development.

Down:   I am continually surprised by the little regard people show to others, particularly those in public facing service roles.  I notice whether someone thanks the server for bringing her soup, because it is such a rare occurrence to even acknowledge people these days.  Clerks at the bank or grocery store are often shocked after they offer the perfunctory “how are you” and I take the time to ask them the same question.  This usually elicits a genuine smile- what a gift!  Regardless of whether or not you have direct reports, how you treat people lower on the organizational chart is noticed, and remembered.  The inventory clerk may just be your boss tomorrow and he will remember how you made him feel.  

Across:  Across the aisle, across the globe or across departments there are opportunities for collaboration and for conflict.  Some organizations encourage organizational silos and “blaming” other departments for delays or mistakes.  Other organizations focus more on the issues and solving problems.  Even if you are in a silo’d organization, you can take steps to build relationships across the organization.  When working on cross-functional teams, take time to learn about the other team member challenges – what does project success look like?  What will be the obstacles and barriers?  In what ways do your functions have conflicting goals that need to be addressed?  Building relationships across the organization will help establish your organizational identity, enhance your credibility and increase the likelihood of your name coming up when leaders discuss high potential staff members.