How to get Beyond Leadership Buy-in
August 4, 2009
It almost goes without saying that an organizational change initiative without proper levels of leadership support is doomed to fail. Perhaps the project will be paid lip service, but it will ultimately either be ignored into oblivion or cut short of its potential with one drop of the axe.
Not only do organizational leaders have the power to make or break your project on their own, but it is impossible to bypass them to change the organization below. Individuals experiencing change will look to those in power for confirmation that they are committed to the new way of doing things. It is under intense scrutiny that leaders are watched to see if their actions match their intentions. If not, the change initiative will be dismissed as “flavor of the month” and not taken seriously.
Amid all this doom and gloom, there is a bright side. You don’t have to settle for the level of leadership support you currently have. As fellow human beings, leaders are capable of being informed and influenced.
Take the following steps to determine how to best garner the support of the most influential people in your organization. Read more
Free Webinar April 16: Beyond Buy-in
April 9, 2009
I’ve found through my conversations with organizational change agents that one of the most common challenges is getting individuals – usually peers or superiors – to do what needs to be done to make change happen.
Does this sound familiar?
The head of another department is not responsive to my requests.
An executive is not communicating the change properly, and it’s diminishing the message.
The CEO insists on maintaining an environment that is not conducive to the changes we should make.
Join me for a free webinar that shows you 5 steps to gain leadership support for your change initiative – through their words and actions.
Beyond Buy-in: Raise Leadership Support for Your Change Initiative
Date: Thursday, April 16, 2009
Time: 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Eastern
Space is limited. Please register to reserve your spot and receive log-in details.
Advice for aspiring change agents
March 31, 2009
I had lunch today with a woman who is interested in a career in organizational development or change management. She is currently in sales development and getting her MBA.
My advice? Start right now.
Don’t wait until you have a job with “change” in the description.
Don’t wait until you have a title that gives you the power to change things.
Don’t wait for permission.
Assume the role that you’re itching to play, no matter where you are in the organization.
Take action to change something for the better. Today.
I had another conversation today with a man who wished he had done just that. In the last few years, he saw that things were being poorly managed, that processes needed to improve, that silos needed to be broken down. Unfortunately, at the time he thought that he was not in a position to say or do anything to make a difference. Now, the company is being sold, and he doesn’t work there any more.
If you see a problem, you might be the only one who can start to fix it.
Inquiry: What will you change today?
To better clarify what needs changing, check out the Change Starts Here workbook.
Book Recommendation: The VITAL Core
March 9, 2009
In the last few days, I gobbled up the information in a wisdom-packed book called The VITAL Core, by Audrey Dorsey. In her work as a Fortune 500 executive coach, the author has identified five core focus areas of successful leaders:
Vision – Know your ultimate pursuit
Intention – Focus on clear goals and have a plan of action
Telling Your Story – Engage people and build relationships
Attitude – Hold beliefs and values that support you
Leverage – Use your resources wisely
The book contains stories that demonstrate each key point, then each chapter zeroes in on the specific steps you can take to make progress on your own toward being a more successful leader.
One new insight that is particularly useful for change agents is the value of learning to Tell Your Story. When you talk about your change initiative, do you make it compelling and draw people into the story? One of seven tips for generating impactful stories is to “convert information into impressions” – that is, win people over not only with logic but with how they should feel about the project. If you want the other six tips, plus numerous others, you’ll have to read the book: www.thevitalcore.com.
Case Study: A Fizzled Balanced Scorecard Implementation
March 5, 2009
In the history of Balanced Scorecard implementations and organizational change in general, stories of projects falling by the wayside are numerous. Even organizations that have had great success and demonstrated breakthrough results have fallen away from the methodology, either due to a change in leadership or from the initiative growing stale. In the case of The Jel Sert Company, a mid-size food manufacturer based in West Chicago, Illinois, the project never quite gained the traction it needed to sustain itself, and the leadership team made the conscious decision to end it. Read more
How to deal with a clueless boss
March 2, 2009
I recently answered the following question on LinkedIn:
How do you (convincingly pretend) to listen and respect your Pointy Haired Boss? How do you hide the fact that you are thinking “my God, you are so clueless yet so oblivious to it”?
Name-calling aside, it is easy to identify with the author’s plight. Who among us has not had the same thought at one time or another (or for years at a time!)?
Most answers up to that point advised him to either quit as soon as possible or just grin and bear it. The following was my brief response:
Consider that you are contributing to his cluelessness if you are not providing constructive feedback. Instead of asking how you hide it, perhaps the question to ask is “How do you respectfully inform your boss that s/he is negatively affecting your or your company’s performance?”
I’m guessing that’s not the response he was looking for when he asked the question, but he probably wasn’t satisfied with the other two options either.
Sure, he could quit, but what if he really enjoys his work and his coworkers, and doesn’t want to leave the company? Besides, what happens next time he finds himself in the same situation?
The “grin and bear it” solution creates a pressure-cooker scenario. Accepting the situation as-is does nothing to solve what is most likely a real problem. It is not going to fix itself.
So, if addressing the issue is the best solution, how do you respectfully inform your boss that he is negatively affecting your or the company’s performance? Follow these steps:
- Stop the name-calling and talking behind his back about it (and griping on public forums!). It only serves to destroy your own integrity, and it fuels your rage.
- Realize that the “clueless” leader is the norm, not the outlier. The higher up in the organization you are, the less people tell you what you don’t want to hear. And you don’t notice the change.
- Get clear about what the real issue is. If you’ve been working with this boss for a while, chances are that everything he says is annoying. Take a step back to understand what really needs to be addressed. If it still seems like a lot of things, choose the most important. You don’t want to generate a laundry list or it will seem like an attack.
- Make sure you are in the right frame of mind for an effective conversation. Approach it with a genuine perspective that you are trying to help your boss, or at least doing the best thing for the company. If you go into the conversation seeking to right a wrong or to exact some kind of revenge, not only will your boss be more defensive during the conversation, but it will be more awkward afterward.
- Plan when you will have the conversation. You don’t necessarily have to schedule it with your boss, but know ahead of time for yourself when and where you will talk.
- At the beginning of the conversation, ask permission to give the feedback. It is unlikely that he will say “no,” and after saying “yes” he at least needs to hear what you have to say.
- Unless you have permission to represent a group, don’t drag other people into it. It might be comfortable to make yourself seem like one of many, but from the boss’s point of view, that’s a mutiny.
- Be honest and direct. Tell your boss the experience from your perspective, and what the implications are. Use specific examples.
- Expect your boss to be defensive. He may deny it or even turn it around to be your own fault. Don’t become defensive yourself. If you feel that you’ve made your case, thank him for letting you share your perspective and politely end the conversation.
- Thank him for listening (even if it seems like he didn’t). If the conversation went well, ask how you can best follow up.
Perhaps it’s not your boss who needs his mirror polished. As an organizational change agent, you know the leaders who need to change their own behavior to make the initiative successful. If you are not having these conversations, who is?
If you need to have a conversation like this, but you struggle with the best approach, please contact me and we’ll talk through it.
Beyond Buy-in teleclass on Thursday, February 26
February 17, 2009
Join me for the next Enclaria teleclass:
Beyond Buy-in: Raise Leadership Support for Your Change Initiative
Date: Thursday, February 26, 2009
Time: 3:00 – 4:00 p.m. Eastern Time
Cost: Free
Leadership support for change is known universally as one of the necessary ingredients for a successful transformation, and yet building support is one of the most common challenges facing a change agent.
No one can implement organizational change alone. No matter your position in the organization, in order to lead change you need to have key individuals not only agreeing with you, but also moving the initiative forward.
Whether you are just getting started or your quest for change is well underway, if you need the leadership of your organization to show more support for your initiative through words and actions, this teleclass is for you.
In this teleclass, we will cover the following topics:
- Learn whose support you need
- Understand different levels of support
- Specify what leadership attitudes and behaviors are needed
- Discover the available methods of influence
Little blue notebook
December 11, 2008
When I was a fledgling change agent, I kept a little blue notebook hidden in my purse. It was a Mead Five-Star Fat Lil’ Notebook. Inside were one-page observations, comments, quotes and complaints that reflected what I felt needed to be fixed at the company where I worked. It’s probably a good thing that blogs hadn’t been invented yet.
I still have it. Here are a few excerpts:
CULTURE
Lack of follow through. We are good at identifying problems but frequently push them aside to focus on other things. Sometimes we even know the solution and don’t follow through.
INCENTIVES
Sales managers are given a bonus based on accuracy of the total number of cases. The customer of the forecast is the planning department. Total number of cases does not help them plan better. Reward the desired behavior – some measure of SKU or category forecast accuracy.
LEADERSHIP
No one can say anything in front of [name]. He should not be the end of the line final decision maker. Does he know people are closed-mouthed around him? His decisions sometimes are reversed at meetings he doesn’t attend.
STRATEGY
What is our strategy? To sell to anyone who will buy? Why are we not more discriminating in what we sell? What is the process that makes us continue to try to sell every combination of goods?
The notebook served a few purposes.
- A record – it’s easy to lose sight of things that need to be fixed when you either get used to them or move on to something else. Writing it down preserves the memory, and you can go back and count the number of instances something is mentioned to measure its importance (forecast accuracy was a big deal).
- An outlet – you can tell by the tone of some of the comments that I was mad or annoyed. Writing was a way to vent the negative emotion. It can also help clarify what is the crux of the problem.
- An integrity-keeper – writing down your thoughts privately can help you refrain from complaining to others. According to The Transparency Edge, one of the books in my reading list, one way to destroy your integrity is with unproductive criticism or complaining. (Of course, if someone had found the little blue notebook, that would have been another story.)
Granted, I was not able to fix everything on the list, but I was able to take a stab at some of it. And that’s really my point. Don’t keep a journal like this just to document the list of everything you don’t like about your company. Write with the best intentions to take action and improve the important things.
Inquiry: What’s in your little blue notebook? What are you going to do about it?
Leadership is overrated
December 2, 2008
Now that probably sounds like a crazy statement to make when you’ve called your business Enclaria Leadership. More about that later…
Don’t misunderstand me. Leadership is important; however, it is the means, not the end. I’ve read about and studied Leadership for while now and much of the time this fact is overlooked. The goal is lasting, meaningful, necessary, challenging improvement – aka change. Leadership is a necessary but not sufficient component of a transformation initiative. It’s time to turn off the background choir and fuzzy glow every time the word is mentioned.
The fact remains: In order to change their attitudes and behaviors in a cohesive manner, people need someone whom they trust to show them the way, motivate them, and eliminate barriers.
The person who steps up to do so is a leader, whether he or she is an executive, a department manager, or simply someone who believes a change is warranted and takes action. It’s a tall order, and one that is both voluntary and earned. No one will argue that Leadership is not imperative to implement change.
At the same time, Leadership is not the only necessary component required to transform an organization. The tools for transformation are found in “show the way,” “motivate,” and “eliminate barriers.” These are the vision statements and strategies, the communications plans, the incentives and the management systems. These are all necessary pieces of organizational change that need to be executed well to achieve results. Without these, your change initiative will fall flat.
The Leadership component in the statement above is “trust.” When we consider whether to follow someone, he receives a higher level of scrutiny on the trust factor. Is he credible? Is she consistent? Does this person respect my ideas? Does he know what he’s doing? Can I believe what she says? With such high standards, it is easy to see how Leadership creates heroes and villains. Placed on such a pedestal, Leadership turns into a theoretical concept whose attainability is out of reach.
Personally, I hold the belief that if you have noble intentions and have the courage to step forward to make a difference, with a lot of effort and a little guidance, and using all the tools at your disposal, you can make it happen. My aim is to equip people like yourself to lead organizational change. So, when you work with Enclaria, you will definitely spend time working on leadership issues – things like style, vision, communication, influence, integrity. Since leadership is only one of the many tools that we can use to achieve lasting transformation, the name of my business is now Enclaria, LLC.
What drives you to lead?
July 14, 2008
First, a quick poll, based on the top definitions of “to lead”:
Next, an inquiry: Based on your poll response, what drives you to lead?
Source: lead. Dictionary.com. Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1). Random House, Inc. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/lead (accessed: July 13, 2008).
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