Conscious Leadership

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

Conscious Leadership — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 18:19:10 -0800

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.

ROI of Successful Transformation or Large-Scale Change

Conscious Leadership — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 11:41:15 -0700

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:

Acceptance: How many employees believe in the value and benefits of the change, and agree that the change is necessary.
Speed of Adoption: How quickly people make the changes required.
Utilization: How many people do their work in the new way.
Proficiency: How effective each person is once they have adopted the change.
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).

The Enigma of Organizational Transformation Happening One Person at a Time

Conscious Leadership — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 11:39:29 -0700

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.

Define Your Change Before It Defines You

Conscious Leadership — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 17:27:46 -0700

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.

No Change Management Without Change Leadership

Conscious Leadership — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 12:02:54 -0700

As an executive today, the likelihood that your organization is undergoing significant change is high. So is the likelihood of failure. McKinsey & Company's latest research reveals 70% of major change initiatives fail. Whether the content of your change includes new technology, reorganization, downsizing, restructuring, merger or acquisition (or a complex mix of changes) we have found that change leadership as a key component of the change management plan significantly increases implementation success.

Moore & Associates helps leaders lead and manage change and transition. Following are a few of the key change leadership deliverables we provide our clients - you may want to include them in your change management plan:

Develop the change leadership competencies of the senior team.

Position senior managers in key roles within the change initiative that play to each person's strengths.

Facilitate the development of a vision and strategy for the change.

Coach senior managers on how to develop followership for the change and buy-in from staff at all levels.

Provide strategic communication coaching to key senior leaders responsible for communicating all aspects of the change internally and externally.

Instill follow-through mechanisms led by senior managers to ensure course corrections are expedient, successes are celebrated, and the changes stick.

Teach the senior team about cultural and individual patterns of change resistance, how to proactively address them, and why resistance is necessary to get the best outcomes in a major change initiative.

Embed the change management process into the culture, creating a change-resilient organization able to lead and manage on-going future change regularly and more easily.

10 Pre-Requisites for Successful & Sustainable Change

Conscious Leadership — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 15:06:34 -0700

When planning a reorganization, restructuring, culture change, technology implementation, or any other major performance improvement initiative, incorporate this checklist of Moore & Associates's best change management practices into your change plan:

1. Committed top leaders

2. Written description of how the changed organization will function

3. Conditions that preclude the status quo

4. Likelihood of a critical mass of support

5. A medium to long term perspective

6. Awareness of resistance and the need to honor it

7. Awareness of the need for education, and new knowledge and skills

8. Conviction that the change must be tried

9. Willingness to use resources

10. Commitment to maintain the flow of multi-way information and communication

If you would like more detail on the 10 Pre-Requisites for Successful & Sustainable Change, just send us an email at info@moore-online.com.

Without Good Leadership & Management...

Conscious Leadership — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:53:11 -0700

Without good leadership and management working in tandem, an organizational culture can denigrate into a place where all relationships are reduced to transactions; all motivations turn to self-interest; all sense of value is driven by individual choice; and sense of self-worth is primarily attached to personal entitlements.

Do you inspire a higher purpose in your organization? Are you ready to lead and manage to it? Do you have leadership, management, structure, processes, systems and people practices that not only support (and enforce) the day-to-day operations of the company, but also a greater good?

Drive Results with Honest and Targeted Assessment & Development

Conscious Leadership — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 12:39:44 -0700

Anne M. Mulcahy, Chairwoman and CEO of Xerox, in a recent interview commented on key learnings from running human resources earlier in her career:

"One was that you discover quickly how little honest feedback people get in companies, and how important it is for people to have a sense of candid assessment. It became very much a mantra for me, to kind of influence a culture that assessed people accurately and really dealt with people fairly.

"The other piece is the importance of talent development. Not everyone is created equal, and it's important for companies to identify those high potentials and treat them differently, accelerate their development and pay them more. I think sometimes companies get confused with processes they think are the fairest, and that is not what companies need."

Assessment and constructive feedback is much easier to give and receive when it is against criteria that a company's leadership team has agreed to and which will drive results in their unique business. Leadership for Results is a 10-step process delivered in collaboration with a client's leadership team - to select, assess ,and develop the behaviors that will deliver company, team, and individual results. Here are the steps:

Step 1: Determine the results required in your organization - drilled down to the two or three levers that if pulled (or pushed) correctly will really deliver results for the company.

Step 2: Create the company's Leadership Profile - through a negotiation and assessment process, key leadership behaviors and practices are agreed upon. The team further agrees that the new Leadership Profile will be ingrained in the team's daily work because to do so will pull the two or three levers that will deliver results.

Step 3: Establish clear expectations for the collective senior team - and the responsibilities and performance measures for each person's individual role.

Step 4: Pinpoint specific behaviors - that while congruent with the company's Leadership Profile - will help each executive deliver results necessary in his or her role.

Step 5: Create a development plan for each leader that will help each person "live" in their day-to-day work, the behaviors agreed to by the team, and deemed critical to driving company, team, and individual success.

Step 6: Provide executive coaching for both performance and behavior.

Step 7: Ensure consequences and rewards are right to motivate and reinforce both development and performance. It would be wise to consider the essence of the second paragraph of Anne Mulcahy's quote above in designing a philosophy for consequences and rewards.

Step 8: Provide on-going coaching and feedback for each executive.

Step 9: Conduct a 360 degree feedback process aligned to the company's Leadership Profile (which, remember, is tied to the two to three levers that drive the organization, and the specific results required by the leadership team and each person).

Step 10: After a period of time refine and further link promotion and pay to both performance and development.

Leadership for Results works because it's a team-building and collaborative process that gets everyone on the same page regarding what results are necessary in your company, and the specific behaviors that will deliver them. Further, those behaviors are pinpointed for each person's unique role. And last but not least, objective assessment, coaching, consequences, and rewards support and reinforce performance company-wide, within the leadership team, and for each individual.

The Recession's Impact on the Reasons Executive Coaches are Retained

Conscious Leadership — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:13:15 -0700

A recent survey of 140 leading executive coaches conducted by Harvard Business Review found that the reasons companies engage coaches have changed. Ten years ago, most companies called coaches in to help fix toxic behavior at the top. Today, most coaching aims to develop the capabilities of top performers. The survey found that the top 3 reasons coaches are engaged are:

Develop high potentials or facilitate transition: 48%

Act as a sounding board: 26%

Address derailing behavior: 12%

The survey statistics are relatively congruent with the executive coaching services within our consulting practice. What is surprising for us, however, is that coaching has increased in our practice in those 3 categories due to the recession, rather than decreasing, as it has for many firms.

While the recession has increased our executive coaching clientele, it has also brought new issues and challenges for clients. Following are 11 areas of added focus our clients are currently seeking our assistance with:

Needing to develop and practically apply solid management and leadership skills - now.

Stress management practices and solutions - both at work and in personal relationships.
Dealing more effectively with ambiguity - individually and in assisting those they manage and lead.

Become more aware of the multiple facets of their own behavior and those they lead - and use that knowledge and wisdom to make better decisions.

Manage the tension of the opposites - operating tactically for short-term results while strategically building for the near and long-term future.

Although painful, stop bargaining and make the hard choices and difficult decisions within their organizations.

Lessen the tendency to react, and instead focus on finding new creative opportunities and solutions for their companies.

Overcome a "crisis of confidence" in one's abilities to handle current economic, market, and organizational complexity.

Develop skillsets for leading and managing non-stop change.

Emotionally and intellectually "process" the hopes and expectations that haven't worked out as planned - in order to move forward in a new viable direction.

Learn how to negotiate conflict better - as differences of opinion within senior teams is intensifying resulting in a collective diffusion of resources, nerves, and effectiveness.

Organizational Design as a Competitive Advantage

Conscious Leadership — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 14:11:35 -0700

Organizational Design is the conscious and deliberate process of configuring and aligning a firm's structure, processes, systems, and people practices to create an effective organization capable of achieving the business strategy.

The term "organizational design" is often used synonymously and mistakenly to mean "organizational structure". From the definition above, clearly organizational design entails more than moving boxes and people around an org chart.

A well-designed (or well-tuned) organization fosters a culture in which individual and collective behavior is shaped, developed, rewarded, and enforced (as necessary) through consistent management and leadership practices, processes, and systems working in unison to get everyone on the same page about what each person needs to do to drive results for the company.

People working in an aligned organization:

Deal better with ambiguity and fear of the unknown about the marketplace
Can hold the tension of the opposites - place their attention simultaneously on implementing what needs to get done today while creatively planning new strategies, products, or services for the future
Quickly re-configure their divisions, products, services, and teams to adapt to rapid change - reinventing or adapting to changing conditions without major upheaval, disjointed efforts, and unnecessary chaos
Maximize effectiveness, efficiency, results, and profits.

You may ask - if "Organizational Design" promises all of these things - why have I not heard of it, or why are we not doing it? Maybe your organization hasn't needed to up until now.

Through the example of the current financial and housing crisis, we're just beginning to discover (actually, we're just beginning to take seriously for the first time) the interwoven connectedness of systems and organizations - and the power of behavior on them. You could say that those systems and organizations were aligned - unconsciously.

Designing an aligned organization requires a holistic versus a piecemeal approach. It requires expertise in aligning the various operations and functions that run through an organization married with an equal level of expertise in the psychodynamics of people - an unusual combination.

Companies that learn how to consciously and systemically design all aspects of their firms - shaping behavior in support of the vision and mission - will not only survive the economic debacle, their organizations will become their competitive advantage.