Conscious Leadership

Avoiding Mistakes in Managing Crisis Change

For anybody leading change in their organization, here's a blog post well worth reading by Harvard Business School Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter: 13 Unlucky Mistakes in Managing Traumatic Change - and How to Avoid Them. 

She lists 13 common mistakes made when leading change in a crisis, and some useful guidelines for avoiding them. Kanter notes that these actions are common during "traumatic" change; we'd argue that they are business-as-usual actions today in many private and most public sector organizations.

Our experience shows that executives who master leading strategic change while managing through the immediate crisis can avoid the traps Kanter outlines:

1. Pressure to act quickly undermines values and culture.
2. Management exercises too much control.
3. Urgent tasks divert leaders' attention from the mood of the organization.
4. Communication is haphazard, erratic and uneven.
5. Uncertainty creates anxiety.
6. Employees hear it from the media first.
7. There is no outlet for emotions.
8. Key stakeholders are neglected.
9. It seems easier to cut than redeploy.
10. Casualties dominate attention.
11. Changes are expedient, not strategic.
12. Leaders lose credibility.
13. Gloom and doom fill the air.

2010 Copyright © Moore & Associates

CEO Succession: An Ongoing Process Starting with Your Strategy

What do corporations, government agencies, and nonprofits have in common? They all struggle to handle well the succession of their top person. Why is this? A myriad of reasons, but a few that we see repeatedly are echoed in a good article by Ana Dutra and Joseph E. Griesedieck, Planning for Your Next CEO: It's High Time for Boards to Get Succession Planning Right.

The authors are right on in their observation that CEO succession all too often becomes at best an exercise in damage control and at worst an unseemly scramble that can hurt a company, shareholder value, and public perception.

So why doesn't succession planning get the "planning" it deserves? According to the authors' research, for CEOs, spotting the talent that will eventually replace them can be an unwelcome intimation of executive mortality. For boards, bringing up succession can feel awkward when things are going well - when they're not - it can feel like a threat.

A few of the solutions include:

• When CEO succession is a regular, structured process that forms part of the board's agenda it becomes a matter of routine, as normal of a discussion as the annual compensation review.
• Boards should view CEO succession as a strategic process intimately related to the organization's performance.
• Begin planning for CEO succession the day a new CEO starts. While internal candidates aren't always eager to be compared and benchmarked, as long as it's done in a consistent manner, they'll view it as part of their own career development plans.

Organizations with a fair, objective, and transparent CEO succession process will find it easier not only to attract and retain top talent, but to execute strategy which is the key point: consideration of any candidate should start with unanimous board agreement around the corporate strategy. For example, if a company is looking to do significant acquisitions as a part of its strategy, it would require a CEO who is a great communicator and skilled at culture integration. But if the company is planning to focus on its core business, a CEO candidate with extensive industry and operational experience may be best.

In our management consulting work, regardless of the change initiative the client is undertaking, to gain traction and deliver results, successful change starts with alignment around the organization's strategy. Never pass up an opportunity to test for agreement on strategy (or strategy execution) with your top people. Discussion about CEO succession is a perfect catalyst for discovering (and doing something about) disagreement within the board or leadership ranks around the strategy and how to execute it.

2010 Copyright © Moore & Associates

A Word About Teams

Effective teams are a crucial element of high-performing organizations. We’ve had a run on consulting requests from clients that have team building or team development as a part of the work so we thought it would be helpful in this blog entry to highlight a few of the commonsense findings from one of our favorite team resources; “The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization” by Jon R. Katzenbach and Douglas K. Smith:

 

1. A demanding performance challenge tends to create a team. The hunger for performance is far more important to team success than team-building exercises, special incentives, or team leaders with ideal profiles. In fact, teams often form around such challenges without any help from management. Conversely, potential teams without such challenges usually fail to become teams.

2. The disciplined application of “team basics” is often overlooked. Team basics include size, purpose, goals, skills, approach, and accountability. Paying rigorous attention to these is what creates the conditions necessary for team performance. A deficiency in any of these basics will derail the team, yet most potential teams inadvertently ignore one or more of them.

3. Team performance opportunities exist in all parts of an organization. Team basics apply to many different groups, including teams that recommend things (i.e., task forces), teams that make or do things (i.e., production teams, sales teams), and teams that run things (i.e., management teams at various levels). Most organizations recognize team opportunities in only one or two of these categories, leaving a lot of team performance potential untapped.

4. Teams at the top are the most difficult. The complexities of long-term challenges, heavy demands on executive time, and ingrained individualism of senior people conspire against teams at the top. As a result there are fewer real teams at the top of large organizations.

5. Most organizations intrinsically prefer individual over group (team) accountability. Job descriptions, compensation schemes, career paths, and performance evaluations focus on individuals. Our culture emphasizes individual accomplishments and makes us uncomfortable trusting our career aspirations to outcomes depending on the performance of others. “If you want to get something done right, do it yourself” is a common belief. Even the thought of shifting emphasis from individual accountability to team accountability makes most people uneasy.  

2010 Copyright © Moore & Associates

Accelerating Corporate Transformations

Six mistakes can derail your company's attempts to change, according to the spotlight article in the January-February 2010 issue of Harvard Business Review: "Accelerating Corporate Transformations (Don't Lose Your Nerve!)" by Robert H. Miles. Here are the six problems that can slow your corporate transformation to a crawl (the author suggests you attack them sequentially):

1. Cautious management culture. Compel all executives to confront reality and agree on ground rules for working together.
2. Business-as-usual management process. Run a no-slack launch on a parallel track with regular systems; make sure there are early, visible victories.
3. Initiative gridlock. Limit the company to three or four initiatives.
4. Recalcitrant executives. Compress launch to quickly engage key executives and to identify those not on board.
5. Disengaged employees. Rapidly cascade the changes to all employees to boost engagement.
6. Loss of focus during execution. Anticipate and defuse postlaunch blues, midcourse overconfidence, and the presumption of perpetual motion.

This is an excellent article for any executive or senior team planning to launch major organizational change or transformation and we highly recommend it. We do however have a different take on a key point of the article - that transformation launches must be "bold and rapid". The article opens with the author's reflection on 25 years of research and working with CEOs responsible for transformations. The common CEO lament is "we should have - and could have - moved faster. Such executives have a long list of regrets: They wish they had unified the leadership team right away. They wish they had engaged employees sooner, and quickly drummed up support for the new vision. They wished they hadn't waited so long to test their assumptions and refine their key initiaitves..."

Is anyone asking the question - why the delay in each of these areas? After all, we're talking about highly successful CEOs and executive teams here. Hint: it might have something to to do with the order of 6 mistakes above - certain ones are far more critical than others, more difficult to address, and easier to avoid. And they can't be solved with boldness, speed, and "rapid all employee cascades"...

2010 Copyright © Moore & Associates

Self-Reflect Before Leading Change in the New Year

Leadership matters. And as W. Warner Burke says, "Leadership is personal. The process concerns the use of self, how to be persuasive, how to deal with resistance, and how to be political, in the best sense of the phrase: how to embody the vision of where one wants the organization to go. It is important, therefore, for the leader who is about to begin a significant change effort to take some time at the outset to reflect."

Burke has useful suggestions for leadership reflection in three categories: self-awareness, motives and values. Here are some of his ideas for "self-awareness" in preparation for leading large-scale change or transformation:

There is growing evidence that self-awareness is related to performance; that is, high performers tend to have a greater overlap between how they see themselves and how others see them than do moderate and low performers. It behooves leaders who want to bring about a successful change effort to be as cognizant as possible about themselves in personal domains such as the following:

• Tolerance for ambiguity: The courses that organization change will take are not exactly predictable; being able to live with this kind of ambiguity is important.
• Need for control: It is difficult to be a "control freak" and lead change effectively. Organization change is messy, sometimes chaotic, and seemingly out of control; thus being clear about what you can control and need to control and what you're not likely to be able to control is critical.
• Understanding how feelings affect behavior: What is your typical reaction when others disagree or challenge or resist the change that you, as a leader, feel strongly about? Knowing yourself in these ways help you to manage yourself more effectively, especially in trying circumstances.
• Personal dispositions: Most people know whether their preference is extroversion or introversion, but what about other dimensions, such as the need for closure and intuition compared with sensing? (These are components of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), based on Carl Jung's personality theory). There is some evidence, for example, that intuition (trusting one's hunches, future orientation, and conceptual tendency) is more related to leader behaviors than is sensing (being fact-based, concrete, and practical).
• Decision making: It is highly valuable to understand the differences between times when as a leader you need to take the reins and decide, and times when you need to loosen control and involve others as a part of self-knowledge.

Our experience is that successful major change or transformation takes both leadership skills (visionary, persuasive communication, tolerance for ambiguity, ability to share power and control, etc.) and management skills (practical, concrete thinking, need to control, etc.) - i.e., leaders who can manage the "status quo" to make sure the trains run on time so to speak, while letting those with true change leadership abilities lead the change.

Cultivating individual (and collective executive team) self-awareness is a key ingredient for making major organization change work. It's all about positioning yourself and your players: with self-awareness, the best leaders properly position each executive in whichever camp best plays to individual and team strengths, mitigating weaknesses so the organization wins.

2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates

Government Leaders' Opportunity to Improve Organizational Performance

The US federal government lags well behind the private sector in a number of important organizational performance measures, particularly in fostering employee engagement, talent management, and accountability says a recent McKinsey & Company survey. But according to the survey, the federal government enjoys relative strengths in the elements that deal with the heart of the organization. In fact, government managers - more so than their private-sector counterparts - understand and embrace the direction and vision of their organizations and are motivated to make a difference.

We've found similar strengths and opportunities for improvement in state and local government and encourage agency leaders to consider the three areas of focus recommended for federal agencies:

• Engage the workforce to gain their input, earn their commitment, and ensure an open and trusting environment.
• Strengthen talent management practices to attract, develop, and retain human capital.
• Improve accountability measures by introducing more rigorous operating metrics and performance management systems, and by clarifying roles and objectives.

For more information on the McKinsey survey go to: http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Improving_worker_performance_in_the_US_government_2471

2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates

A Tsunami-sized "Guiding Coalition" Won't Overcome an Unaligned Executive Team

It's accepted dogma that successful organizational transformation requires involvement and buy-in of a critical mass of people at all levels of an organization. It's false (and foolhardy) to believe a massive outreach for all-hands participation on a transformation's "guiding coalition" can substitute for the specific work that only top leadership can do.

Transformational change requires inclusive involvement of all employees. However, casting a wide net of  "participation and excitement" by broadening the guiding coalition to include all levels of an organization cannot take the place of first doing the exclusive (and difficult) work of aligning the executive team around the transformation.

People often talk about organizational change resistance as if it doesn't pertain to senior management. In fact, change resistance is a normal response in everyone, executives included. Intense work with the executive team, especially in the beginning but throughout a transformation is crucial.

Organizations don't change - people do - and it starts at the top. Initial stages of transformation may include months of work sessions with top executives not only to sort out what needs to change, why, and how but to learn about personal and organizational change and increase their own self-awareness and change leadership competency.

The most important foundational work for any major change - most certainly transformational change - is getting the executive leadership team to think, act, and feel as a unified body. Work with this team can be intense and conflict must be surfaced and worked through. Political posturing is normal and should be expected as executives try to maximize their own division's or department's gain from the change. This work is not for the faint-hearted, takes tremendous skill and finesse as a consulting team, and it cannot be skipped or avoided.

After the executive team is aligned with the strategic aspects of the change and are prepared to lead the transformation, you can broaden the executives'  reach by careful selection of a change leadership team, followed by the launch of large-system change initiatives to enlist engagement of the entire organization.

Reaching down into the organization and gathering more people into the change effort before aligning the top team creates a false sense of engagement, urgency, and momentum for the change. If the executive team isn't aligned, you will encounter problems in each ensuing step of the transformation - most notably where the rubber meets the road and the planned changes (and difficult decisions) are actually implemented.

2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates

ROI of Successful Transformation or Large-Scale Change

Calculating projected return on investment (ROI) is common practice in evaluating the cost versus benefit of implementing strategic initiatives of all stripes and scope. But what about major change efforts?

The one critical success factor in any organizational change initiative is how quickly people participate in, accept, and assimilate the transition. Yet how often is this seemingly obvious truth factored into leadership discussions of ROI and risk analysis for large-scale change and transformation?

In essence there are five "people side" factors which contribute to, or limit the value (ROI) a change delivers to an organization. Simply put, anytime a change requires people to do their jobs differently, it's how effectively they master the change that determines the business value the change delivers.

Increase the value (and success) of your transformation by designing, leading, implementing, and sustaining it to deliver high returns in these five "people side" change ROI factors:

1. Acceptance: How many employees believe in the value and benefits of the change, and agree that the change is necessary.

2. Speed of Adoption: How quickly people make the changes required.

3. Utilization: How many people do their work in the new way.

4. Proficiency: How effective each person is once they have adopted the change.

5. Mastery: How effective the organization has become at embedding change leadership and change management competency into the culture, thus making it change-resilient and change-ready. (Change Mastery is the ultimate change ROI - paying dividends well into the future).

2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates

The Enigma of Organizational Transformation Happening One Person at a Time

Sustainable organizational change and transformation happen one person at a time. This is a challenging concept for executives and managers - anything "one at a time" sounds inefficient at best, incompetent at worst.

No question; transformation or large-scale change is complex particularly in the context of major strategic shifts, reorganizations, mergers, or significant IT implementations.

Paradoxically, this complexity must be paired with a simple (not easy) fact which holds a key to successful change...change happens one person at a time.

What do we mean by this? For any change to take hold - whether it's changing something in your personal or professional life, or changing your company strategy, structure, or technology - the change eventually requires you to do things differently. In order to do things differently, a change in perception is generally necessary, and sometimes you need to learn new skills.

Regardless of what the change entails and what you must do differently to live and sustain it, the new change must appeal to your own motivations or it won't hold. Human beings simply don't do things differently unless personally motivated to do so. Mandated change just doesn't work.

Therefore, leaders of large-scale change or transformation need to:

• plan
• generate buy-in
• implement, and
• reinforce

the change in ways that satisfy peoples' existing motivation.

Since people are motivated by different things successful change requires a systematic way to ascertain individual motivations (yes, this can be done with thousands of employees) and design a change management strategy to play to them - thereby transforming your organization and its culture one person at a time.

2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates

Define Your Change Before It Defines You

Essentially there are three types of change: developmental, transitional, and transformational.* And there are two ways to approach each one: reactively or proactively (consciously). Thus there are six possible scenarios that could define the scope of your organizational change effort. You know where this blog post is heading...

There are two very common "change scope" mistakes executives make in the planning and design stages of major organizational change. Each mistake contributes to 1) the poor failure rate of major change initiatives (70%), and 2) not achieving the return on investment (ROI) the change was intended to deliver (even if the change effort has been declared a success).

The first mistake is inadequately thinking through and analyzing the people and cultural impacts in a holistic manner regardless of the type of change (developmental, transitional, or transformational). This is a sure shot to turning even the most straightforward change (developmental) from proactive to reactive once you reach implementation.

Preparing for implementation (or in the midst of it) is not where you want to discover people disengaged, unwilling, or not supported to make the transition, and a culture not capable or ready to assimilate the change. Re-work of the change design is now needed and implementation is delayed. Reactive change takes longer and costs more. Period.

The second mistake is a misdiagnosis of the type of change required to achieve the business results the change is supposed to deliver. Most often the change is defined too narrowly (i.e., thinking it is developmental and it's really transitional, or believing it's transitional, and it is transformational).

Like mistake number one, misdiagnosis catapults the change effort from proactive to reactive. Only now with too narrowly defined of a scope, the cultural and people impacts overwhelm the content changes (and timeline and budget), cause major re-work of the change design, and significantly increase the risk of failure.

Each type of change requires a different degree of sophistication in dealing with cultural and people aspects - with transformational being the most challenging. For example, transformation implies a fundamental shift in cultural patterns, beliefs, possibly values, and actions, as well as significant change in individual attitudes, behaviors, and skills to adapt to external forces signaling that the status quo is no longer an option for the organization.

And so a word to the wise - consciously define your change effort before it defines you! Whether you think you are doing developmental, transitional, or transformational change, proactively design it with a comprehensive change management plan that accurately assesses the people and cultural impacts at the beginning, and is absolutely realistic about the type of change required for the ROI needed.

* Three types of change defined by Linda Ackerman Anderson.

2009 Copyright © Moore & Associates