Leadership & Effective Change Initiatives

Change management initiatives are necessary for organizations to remain competitive in our rapidly evolving economic climate. These initiatives are extremely important, yet the majority of them are considered failures.

Recent surveys of chief executives from major corporations say up to 75 percent of their organizational change efforts do not deliver promised results. Overall, a full two-thirds of change management initiatives fail all together.

Since the pace of change in organizations is increasing daily, there is no better time to understand how organizational change initiatives can become more effective. The short answer is stronger leadership.

According to leadership expert and author John P. Kotter in his book “Leading Change,” there are eight common errors firms make when implementing change:

1. Allowing too much complacency
2. Failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition
3. Underestimating the power of vision
4. Undercommunicating the vision by a factor of 10 or more
5. Permitting obstacles to block the new vision
6. Failing to create short-term wins
7. Declaring victory too soon
8. Neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture

None of these errors alone would be all that consequential in a slower-paced, less competitive environment, but since the speed of change will only continue to increase addressing these concerns is of extreme importance.

All of these reasons for failure can be summarized by a lack of strong leadership. In fact, “ineffective change sponsorship or leadership” at the executive level was cited as the primary reason for failure in numerous research reports by Prosci, Harvard Business Review, McKinsey Quarterly and others throughout the past decade.

According to this research, the top three reasons for failure with change initiatives were:

1. Ineffective change sponsorship or leadership from executives
2. Employee resistance
3. Poor support and alignment with middle managers

Before any organizational change effort is initiated, it is vital for the leader to fully understand the scope of his or her commitment and involvement. Organizational change efforts succeed only when the leader is 100 percent committed and thoroughly embraces the effort required for its success.

Kotter’s eight-stage process for successful change initiatives is a solid blueprint for leaders to model. To succeed the leader must follow each of these stages and stay fully committed and present throughout the process.

A 2002 McKinsey Quarterly study of 40 banks, manufacturers, hospitals and utilities titled “Helping Employees Embrace Change” revealed that of the companies that were successful in their change initiatives, all shared the following attributes:

• All levels of the organization were involved from the very beginning
• Responsibilities were clear
• Reasons for the change were clear to everyone

Change takes time because employees need to move through their own stages of denial, resistance, exploration and finally commitment. Management must therefore be patient and recognize that every employee needs to go through each phase at his or her own pace.

This may seem to contradict the sense of urgency required to bring about change in the first place, but not if everyone is involved from the very beginning. Resistance from employees diminishes in direct proportion to the openness from upper management. By keeping all employees aware of the plan from the start and by giving them a clear and compelling vision of the future, a leader can help bring them on board with the change.

Most of us don’t like change of any kind and it is natural to resist because change often brings on anxiety by disrupting the status quo. This is true in our personal lives as well as our professional lives. However, change is inevitable and therefore we must all find ways to enable effective change to succeed.

Leaders must be extremely vigilant in every step of a change initiative because they most directly determine whether it is successful or not. Their guidance and stewardship throughout the process is more important than anything else.

Mark Craemer       http://www.craemerconsulting.com

Combining Best Practices of Expert Consulting and OD Consulting

One of the challenges in my line of work is clearly communicating the value of the services I provide. Organization development is a fuzzy term and it means different things to different people. Consulting is also a loose term that is hard to define.

Expert business consultants are often hired as a “pair-of-hands” to do something that cannot be done in-house because of time or resource constraints. These consultants are typically specialized in a particular business area and hired to complete a project with minimal supervision, assistance or even interaction with other people.

Organization development (OD) consultants provide planned interventions with individuals (leadership coaching, 360 evaluations), groups (conflict negotiation, team building, facilitation and training), or entire organizations (change management processes and implementation). OD consultants require a great deal of contact and collaboration with people directly involved in the intervention.

Organization development involves a system-wide application of behavioral science knowledge to a planned development as well as a reinforcement of organizational strategies, structures, and processes to improve an organization’s health and effectiveness. This cannot be done without the active participation of people within the organization.

OD consultants also work independently analyzing data as well as studying the client system with an outsider’s perspective, but we rely on both our client’s understanding and ownership of the problem at hand. In this way, we can become effective at helping the organization with their immediate challenges as well as provide learning and growth for tackling future issues on their own.

Expert consultants and OD consultants offer organizations huge benefits that supplement in-house management and staff. The consultant can be brought in when necessary to solve problems or develop opportunities as they arise.

But both the expert consultant and OD consultant could learn valuable lessons from each other in order to be even more beneficial to their clients.

Using an OD lens, the expert consultant could better look for signs of dysfunction, resistance, or a lack of trust within the client system. Paying more attention to these people issues can often mean the difference between a project’s success and failure.

The expert consultant should also consider taking a whole systems perspective when evaluating a particular project. Is the presenting problem really the issue or is it something larger within the entire organization that needs to be addressed before a sustainable solution can result?

A common downside in hiring an expert consultant is that if there is no learning from the work that is performed, then the next time the job needs to be completed, the consultant must be hired back again to do the same thing. This may be great for the consultant, but ultimately doesn’t serve the client very well.

The OD consultant is trained in the interdisciplinary fields of sociology and psychology, drawing on theories of motivation, learning and personality. Central to the OD process are the ideas of group dynamics and action research as well as maintaining a collaborative relationship with the client. The OD consultant is ultimately a change agent and knows how to get people in the organization involved in solving their own problems.

But the OD consultant could also learn important lessons from the expert consultant.

Much of the value the OD consultant provides is measured qualitatively rather than quantitatively. And though these results may be difficult to measure, especially because they are often longer in duration, measurements must be included in the scope of any project.

Perhaps most importantly, the goals of any OD project must be directly tied to a business result; otherwise the intervention can become merely an academic exercise.

Too often the OD consultant is caught up in helping people get along better, but not tying this directly to a business objective. The intervention may therefore appear much less important to the organization, no matter how much it has directly contributed to an increase in overall productivity.

Providing the best practices of expert consulting with solid measurable results that are tied to business objectives along with the best practices of OD consulting that incorporate people issues, a systems perspective and enables organizational learning is an approach that may ultimately deliver the best value to the organization. And that makes good business sense to us all.

Mark Craemer         http://www.craemerconsulting.com

Integrity First and Foremost

“I look for three things in hiring people. The first is integrity, the second is intelligence, and the third is a high energy level. But, if you don’t have the first, the other two will kill you.” – Warren Buffett

These days the word integrity is thrown around almost as often as the word awesome. And in the same way few things can be accurately described as awesome, I find few of our celebrated leaders demonstrate integrity.

Witness the news of the past few weeks where countless celebrities, sports stars, government officials, and business people demonstrated a lack of integrity in their behavior. Are we expecting too much out of these media-hyped people?

Integrity is defined as an adherence to moral and ethical principles, soundness in moral character or honesty. And unlike other knowledge and skills of leadership, integrity is not something one can learn and experiment with now and then.

We should seriously question the leadership of those who have failed us with a lack of integrity. Leaders in business and elsewhere need to consistently demonstrate integrity or we should reject them. Because without integrity there can be no true leadership. And unlike other qualities of leadership, integrity is either there or it isn’t.

So what does this say about the fallen leaders we honor so highly in our society? Did they delude us or did we delude ourselves?

Identifying integrity in someone is challenging because it is found within a person’s moral fiber or character. It isn’t something they can simply document on a resume or easily demonstrate in an interview. Integrity is proven through consistent behavior over time and verified by the people around them.

“The people with whom a person works, and especially subordinates, know in a few weeks whether he or she has integrity or not,” writer and management consultant Peter Drucker stated in The Daily Drucker. “They may forgive a person for a great deal of incompetence, ignorance, insecurity, or bad manners. But they will not forgive a lack of integrity in that person.”

Many charismatic leaders enjoy lots of media attention, but charisma can only go so far if there isn’t a solid foundation of integrity beneath the surface. We should question the supposedly strong leaders the media presents us with because simply reaching celebrity status does not make for a strong leader. In fact, it could mean just the opposite.

Great leaders model integrity through their honesty and by doing the right thing no matter the circumstances. Those leaders with integrity do what is right for the organization and the people within it—even when he or she may gain nothing from the outcome.

Strong leaders demonstrate an indisputable track record of integrity throughout their career. Look for it and demand it in those you choose to follow. Integrity is not the only quality to look for in a leader, but it may very well be the most vital.

Mark Craemer       www.craemerconsulting.com

Motivating Employees in the 21st Century

Forget all the things you may currently believe about motivating employees. Cash incentives to stimulate productivity may work in the short term, but are ultimately not sustainable. Threats are also short lived because employee resentment brings about ill will and this is counterproductive in the long run.

Such carrot and stick approaches for improving performance simply are no longer effective and it’s time organizations move to a more radical approach.

In Daniel Pink’s insightful book “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us,” he explores the question of what motivates people to do innovative work. Based on more than thirty years of research in behavioral science, he provides compelling evidence showing that monetary rewards can actually hinder creativity.

And as Pink relates in his speech at the TED Conference, when it comes to motivation, there is a huge gap between what science knows and what companies do.

Today, many companies more closely track knowledge workers hours at their desks rather than results produced. And, as I wrote about in a previous post, Results Only Work Environment or ROWE is one way to change this mentality.

Author Pink convincingly argues that once our basic need for financial stability is taken care of, the desire for intrinsic motivation kicks in. Intrinsic motivation is founded upon personal rewards (individual interest or love) rather than extrinsic motivation (money). In fact, many scientific studies have demonstrated that people actually become less motivated when money is tied to doing something we are already drawn to doing. It actually devalues it for us!

Further, Pink suggests it is necessary for both employees and employers to break free of this old “if-then” paradigm and replace it with “now-that” instead. Rather than hold out some reward or punishment in order to accomplish a goal, there should be an opportunity to tap into an employee’s own individual interest in meeting the goal.

“If tangible rewards are given unexpectedly to people after they have finished a task, the rewards are less likely to be detrimental to intrinsic motivation,” said Edward L. Deci, the University of Rochester psychology professor and author of “Intrinsic Motivation.”

The key to tapping into these intrinsic interests, according to Pink, is via autonomy, mastery and purpose.

Autonomy is about the urge to direct our lives. It means enabling employees to determine specifically what is entailed (task), when the work is done (time), how it gets done (technique), and with whom it is done (team). Autonomy requires management to step aside and give employees the opportunity to fully apply their creative selves.

Mastery is about the desire to get better at something that matters. It enables each of us to fully engage who we are in what we do. Only in this way are we likely to embrace the work we do as it transcends merely making a living and extends into making a life.

Purpose has to do with the yearning to do what we do in service of something larger than ourselves. It is the desire to leave the planet better than we found it. Purpose has to do with contributing to the greater good.

Writer and management consulant Peter Drucker stated “. . . once each knowledge worker has defined his or her own task and once the work has been appropriately restructured, each worker should be expected to work out his or her own course and to take responsibility for it.”

Enabling employees to tap into autonomy, mastery and purpose requires management giving up some control over how, when and where people work. It means the boss needs to incentivise people in ways that stimulate their desire to do good work. It means trusting that employees will choose to do the right thing for them as well as the organization.

These motivation techniques may not make sense for every workplace, but at a time of economic recession, global competitive pressures, corporate distrust, and low employee engagement, it makes sense to at least consider them wherever possible.

Mark Craemer  www.craemerconsulting.com