leadership - Change Guides LLC - Guiding Organizations Through Change

The Impact of Culture on Organizational Change

March 9, 2011/0 Comments/in Change Management, Culture, Leaders/by admin

You may have heard it before… “Culture eats Strategy for breakfast.”

An organization with the best strategy in the world, but a culture that won’t allow it to make that strategy happen is doomed from the outset. Want to be the first to market with the most innovative products, but live in an organization that is full of bureaucracy and afraid to take risks? Fat chance you’ll be the first one anywhere. Want to have the highest quality, lowest failure rate of anyone but live in an organization where rules are lax and people make decisions quickly without much data? Chances are you will be chasing initiative after initiative trying to make your goals happen to no avail.

Culture is the sum of the beliefs and values that shape norms of behavior and dictate the ways things get done. There are several continuums that help define an organization’s culture. Is the organization driven by results and achievement, or relationships and people? Does the organization have an internal focus, or an external focus? Is the organization adaptive and flexible, or is it structured and stable?

Culture tells you a lot about an organization. What messages do leaders send with their words and actions? What type of behavior is being reinforced? Is conflict and risk encouraged or hindered? How do people communicate? How do people learn and share company knowledge? Is the organization open to change?

Some think that it’s too hard to change culture… that we can’t change it even if we know what gaps we have between our current state and our desired culture. Not true. There are real, tactical activities and leadership actions that can shape a new culture.

For example, if the organization lacks the needed focus on customers, then insist that every manager and above spend at least one day a quarter out in the field with customers. Or if your organization makes decisions on the fly and doesn’t us import data (not a good thing for, say, a pharmaceutical company), then insist that all projects use Six Sigma or similar tools. Or if your organization is too cautious and can’t move quickly enough to respond to new demands (not a good thing for, say, a software company), verbally encourage teams to make decisions faster and try new things… and then throw a big party the first time one fails as visible demonstration that we appreciate and value risk-taking and new ideas.

If we are serious about change in an organization, we can’t ignore the organization’s culture. If that culture is not consistent with the change that needs to come about, then the culture needs to be addressed head on. If we as leaders decide that we don’t want to do our part to change the culture, then we will live with the consequences of failure.

Leading the Change and Smiling for the Cameras

February 8, 2011/0 Comments/in Change Management, Leaders/by admin

Leadership comes in all shapes and sizes. Some of it is innate, some of it is learned; some of it is clearly definable, some of it is more esoteric; some of it is easy to recognize, some of it sneaks up on you.

Studies have consistently confirmed that the greatest contributor to successful organizational change is leadership. In repeated studies of hundreds of companies and their change efforts, “Strong Executive Sponsorship” was cited three times more frequently than any other contributing factor to successful change.

Why does leadership have such a huge impact on change? Because people support what they think their leaders support. If they don’t think their leaders are really going to make a change happen, they figure they shouldn’t waste too much time or effort thinking about it. They figure they have an “out” to just ignore. If they duck down in their cube long enough, all of this change stuff will blow over. For organizations that have tried to change in the past and failed, people feel even more justification in believing they can wait it out and nothing will come of it in the end.

But how do people really know what a leader supports? Certainly anyone in a leadership position is going to be telling their people that the big new thing is going to be great for the organization and the people. But people develop their perceptions about what leaders support not only through leaders’ words. Leadership action is even more important. Acting in ways that are consistent with words is the magic combination that moves people to act in new ways that leaders define.

It is like the leader is the celebrity and the employees are the paparazzi. People are watching what leaders do and say, and they are filtering all of that information to figure out if they should be on board with a change or not. Talking the talk is useless if walking the walk doesn’t follow.

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Being a Rebel Isn’t all Bad

January 25, 2011/0 Comments/in Change Management, Leaders/by admin

I always knew that being a rebel had an upside… Are you are Rebel or a Leader? Hopefully both! http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/01/are_you_a_rebel_or_a_leader.html

Build the Management Team, and Propel the Change Forward

December 7, 2010/0 Comments/in Communication, Leaders/by admin

Groups of management peers with similar titles and similar levels of responsibilities can be hotbeds of dysfunction. These people often competes for resources, promotions and attention. But unfortunately for organizations trying to transform, this group is integral to effectively changing the way an organization works. Management teams need to work together to achieve goals but sometimes the environment encourages the opposite.

If the leaders don’t create the right environment, managers focus solely on their individual fiefdoms, their silos. If resources and attention are scarce, this group can become a cesspool of finger pointing, competing, back stabbing and ganging up.

To prevent this limited focus, leaders need to set the right tone and stage for this group to work effectively and successfully. A few things can be done to encourage these managers to work together, tackle problems as a team and leverage opportunities cross functionally:

The manager group needs common cross functional and organizational goals
Managers need to be recognized for team efforts
Leaders need to handle the troublemakers
Managers need tools and training on how to work together

As employees and managers, we work within the limitations of our work environment. We work within the rules and expectations that surround us. We respond to signals about what is important and what is valued. When that environment encourages unproductive behavior, new signals need to be sent, new rules and expectations delivered.

A Simple Word – “Thanks”

November 23, 2010/0 Comments/in Communication, Leaders/by admin

When many of us in the US are getting ready to hunker down with family and friends to enjoy our Thanksgiving holiday, it is a great time to think about giving thanks at work.

It’s so easy to forget to say thanks. We are all busy. There are a million things going on. We expect people to do their job and get on with it. But just showing someone a little appreciation now and then can mean the difference between a “punch the clock” mentality and a committed and engaged co-worker.

Leaders are often trying to figure out the best ways to incent people to do their best. Of course they talk a lot about money. And money is certainly nice. But when leaders just take the time to show some true and honest appreciation for the work people do, the sacrifices they make, and the extra effort they spend…. they are always surprised by what a difference it makes in the outputs they see.

And saying thanks is not just on the shoulders of the boss. We should all thank our peers for their support, their ideas, and their companionship. And we should even thank our boss for what they do.

You likely spend more waking hours with your co-workers than you do with your family and friends. These people are like your family. Like it or not, you are in this together. You are a team. You are there to catch each other if someone falls. You are there to catapult each other over the wall. If any one person in your organization fails, the entire organization suffers.

Be grateful for each other. And tell each other “thanks”. People will appreciate it. And so will you when they thanks back.

Follow the Leader

July 8, 2010/0 Comments/in Leaders/by admin

There are more than a few leaders who expect different things of themselves than they do of those who follow them. To some extent, that makes sense – leaders are different… they may have more responsibilities competing for thier time, they are often over-booked and short on time, they have a level of experience that many don’t have. But, on the other hand, it can be problematic. In the end, leaders are part of the organization and what they do is seen by others as important, while what they don’t do somehow seems less important.

We have seen it often with eduction in organizations. Executives often aren’t exposed to the training that people get one level below them, creating a knowledge gap. Managers are told that certain training sessions are mandatory. But leaders often say “we already know how to do XYZ… we don’t need training on it.” Unfortunately, they don’t know what they don’t know.

That knowledge gap can lead to the demise of the learning that was intended. Without exposure to the same learning, sometimes leaders don’t ask the right questions to reinforce the learning, or they do things to undermine things that were taught – all unknowingly. And, without the interest and attention from leaders, many times the managers assume this must not be so important.

Leaders set the pace and the tone of an organization. Follow the leader was a game we all played in grade school… and to some extent, we still play it at work. If you are the boss, think about what you are doing and how those following will see it.

Changing Behavior Starts with Connecting the Dots

June 29, 2010/0 Comments/in Communication, Leaders, Uncategorized/by admin

“People need to play bigger!” This was something a leader announced to his organization about how they could transform their business. He had conviction and passion… but he also had everyone is his organization utterly confused. Play bigger? What did that mean? How on earth were several thousand people going to put such a vague directive into action?

When people are asked to change, we need to be specific about what is expected. Sometimes it might seem like we are stating the obvious and not giving people enough credit to think for themselves. But people need the dots connected for them when they are asked to change… and they need the dots drawn very close together and connected with a big fat marker.

What is expected of me? What should I do? It may seem obvious to leaders, but it is often times not to the people who need to shift the way they work.

Getting more specific eliminates confusion and misdirected efforts. Knowing very clearly what actions they should take helps people focus on conquering small concrete goals to build their confidence. And pride in even small accomplishments helps accelerate a person’s ability to absorb the change.

Once people pick up the behaviors, they will internalize them and make them their own. They will start to build on the new behaviors and improve on them. They will come up with ideas for how they can be even more accountable without being asked because this will be their new standard of behavior.

Leaders are People First

May 25, 2010/0 Comments/in Leaders/by admin

I can’t tell you the number of times I have heard someone complain that change is not happening in their organization because leaders are not saying or doing the right things. In fact, the most commonly cited reason for failure of organizational change is ineffective or insufficient sponsorship.

But leaders are people before they are sponsors. Just as we need to help people in the organization get ready, willing, and able to behave differently, we need to help leaders make that same transition. We can’t expect leaders to magically commit to a new set of ideas and behaviors before they themselves have fully thought through what it means for them, how they will be valued under the new environment, how supported they will be, and more.

Sometimes when people see leaders taking time to understand what is required and how they will fit in, they assume with snide cynicism that the leader is being “political.” But evaluating their own fate does not make a leader “political”… it makes them human. (Don’t get me wrong, there are overly ambitious leaders out there… but they are the exception, not the rule.)

Next time you want to blame the failure of a change on leaders, think about how you can help leaders make the transition to new behaviors and ideas. If we accept that leaders are people first, we can better position them to be sponsors.

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