How to Sucessfully Drive Change

I’m always fascinated by the dynamics of leaders and their organizations. Some leaders are able to successfully drive major changes without a backlash and others simply can’t. This past week, there was a local organization that handled some changes exceptionally poorly. Here’s the background:

A local church implemented sweeping changes which included the firing of half of its employees and the elimination of music during services. In communicating this, the Bishop sent a five page letter to the congregation. According to the Kalamazoo Gazette, the letter “rebukes the church community for retribution, name-calling and dissent.” The letter also stated, “Some of you might feel compelled to leave the congregation and, if that’s what you choose, may God bless you on your journey.”

The result? The letter ignited a long simmering conflict and subsequently resulted in an assault charge filed with the police after a 78 year old member of the congregation claimed she was shoved by the priest. The priest has since resigned.

Certainly there are times when leaders can and must make tough calls. However, when you do, there are some steps you can follow to minimize the disruption and bad feelings, including:

• Communicating the problem in advance: Chances are your employees already know what’s happening. Keeping them in the communications loop will ensure that they perceive the problem the same way you do.

• Asking for suggestions: There are several advantages to this:

1. You might just find a great idea you hadn’t previously considered.

2. People will be more willing to accept change if they have a voice in making those changes – even if you don’t pick their suggestion.

If you have to do something really unpopular, try this:

• Explain why the change is necessary
• Apologize for the necessity of the action
• Whatever you do, don’t blame the members
• Do provide an opportunity for them to vent and provide feedback (small groups or individual discussions are best for this)
• Communicate a plan for moving forward to better times

The moral of the story? When you lead or have responsibility for controlling an organization, you can’t make arbitrary decisions without negative fall-out. If you attack and blame your members, they will fight back. It’s always better to engage them in implementing the solution than to arbitrarily force a change. That’s a waste of everyone’s time and energy and just might be enough to force your calmest employees to lose control.

Talent Management and the Bottom Line

For years enlightened business leaders have recognized the obvious: Hire great people, treat them well, and your business will flourish. For those leaders who haven’t recognized this yet, there may be a new motivation to get on the bandwagon.

Moody’s Corporation, the bond rating service, has started recognizing “a direct connection between financial performance and success in recruiting and retention.” Knowing this, they are now starting to use talent management as a factor in the process of rating companies. In addition, Watson Wyatt has developed a “human capital index” and has found that good people practices can increase a company’s value by as much as 30%.

What does this mean to you? Picture the CEO of a publicly traded company explaining what he plans to do to improve the retention of employees at a shareholder meeting, right after he explains his plans to grow revenue. Suddenly those employee relations activities that are often delegated to the lowest levels of the organization are now in the limelight.

This doesn’t mean that my humorous attempt to improve employee morale by including a wet bar, hot tub, and masseuse in my department budget proposal years ago is any more likely to get approved now than it was then. However, there should be more scrutiny of those items that truly do impact the selection and retention of a company’s most valuable asset.

HRM Innovations, LLC is available to help with any questions you may have on HR or Management related topics and can be contacted at: Kevin@HRMInnovationsllc.com or 269-615-4821.

Are You a Visionary Leader?

Recently a client asked me to prepare a presentation on visionary leadership. Hopefully by now my regular readers will know that I strongly advocate that leaders work with their employees to create a vision and set challenging expectations for each individual in support of that vision.

Now, I do admit to being a little spoiled here. Between reporting to a series of presidents who spoke limited English, to owning my own firm; I haven’t had close supervision in a very long time. And, I will admit that there are times (like when training someone new) when close supervision is a really good thing. But after that, if people know what you expect and are bought into your vision, micromanagement will only serve to encourage them to limit taking ownership of their work.

At one end of the spectrum, Netflix has established themselves as the master of a no policy workforce. Being in a creative industry where the opportunity for damage due to the quality of their products is limited, they have taken visionary leadership to a new level. Netflix does not have a policy for vacation time. Their entertainment and business travel expense policy is simple: ”Act in Netflix’s best interest.” But my favorite is this comment on their dress code:

“There is also no clothing policy at Netflix, but no one has come to work naked lately.”

We’ve all heard the horror stories of the leaders that slow progress and frustrate their employees by reviewing every minor decision. Does this sound like you? If you are a control freak who needs to be involved, then identify the key things that are most important to your business, like product innovation, service quality, or quantity produced. Get your employees excited about your vision for those areas and leave the rest up to them. There’s a good chance that they will come up with suggestions for doing things better, faster, and will have more fun along the way. Process improvements can be a really great thing – and they rarely come from the top down, but rather the bottom up.

Visionary leaders focus on the big picture and the end results. They trust their staffs to handle the details. If you are a leader who can’t trust your staff to come to work wearing clothes, then you don’t have the right staff.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.”

- Antonie De Saint-Exupery

Creating Caring Communities

Recently, the son of a neighbor was diagnosed with cancer and our neighborhood support network immediately sprang into action. Family support was coordinated, communication channels were set up, and trees throughout the neighborhood were decorated with ribbons.

Surprised? We weren’t. This is standard fare for our neighborhood. It’s just that kind of place. But can employers create these types of caring communities in the workplace? Absolutely they can, and here’s how great leaders do it:

1. Know your employees: Make it a priority to know your employees, by name, and to know something about them personally. If yours is a small organization, this part is easier, but the need doesn’t go away for larger groups. Maybe you can’t know everyone, but you should certainly make the effort to try. Set aside time every week to go talk with them.

2. Be human: While they don’t want you to share every detail, people will feel closer to you if you open up to them about your personal life. Sharing key milestones and proud moments helps to create a bond and build trust.

3. Lead by example: If you want your employees to care about each other, start by caring about them. Provide support for them when they are in a difficult situation. Attending the funerals of employee’s loved ones and celebrating their milestones will send a strong message about your concern for them.

4. Don’t start a committee: Having a person to coordinate support in a crisis is a good thing, having a committee that provides flowers for every special occasion is generic and half hearted. Keep it genuine, keep it unique. Does this mean everyone will get the same treatment? Probably not, but what two situations are the same?

5. Focus on the positive: Look for the good things that happen everyday and your employees will start doing the same. If they feel good about the work they are doing and aren’t afraid of being punished for mistakes, they will be more likely to apply energy to helping others.

Sailing Along to Better Performance Management

A couple of weeks ago, I led a training session on performance management at one of my client companies. Performance management is one of my favorite topics and the training must have made an impact because my client keeps reminding me of the analogy I used.

Here's how it goes. During the summer I love to sail. I use a small, old, basically indestructible, and incredibly fun sailboat. When I sail, I pick a point on the other shore and then sail towards it. While I'm sailing, lots of things happen. The wind changes, other boats pass me, and I hit some big waves. To reach my "goal" on the other shore requires continuous adjustments.

Now pretend that each of your employees is a sailboat. Do they know where they are supposed to be heading? Do you provide the coaching adjustments that they need to navigate the obstacles that come along or do you wait until the end of the year to point out that they sailed to the wrong shore?

Great leaders inspire their people to stay on track, work their way around the obstacles that come up and to storm the other shore. Timid leaders leave their flotillas adrift at sea. What kind of a captain are you?