3 Tips on achieving Fast, Effective, Sustainable change

Next weeks Business901 podcast guest is Sara Lewis, the Managing Director of Appreciating Change, a psychological change consultancy focused on helping leaders and managers achieve positive change in their organizations. She is the author of Positive Psychology at Work: How Positive Leadership and Appreciative Inquiry Create Inspiring Organizations and one of my favorites, Appreciative Inquiry for Change Management: Using AI to Facilitate Organizational Development .

This is an excerpt from the podcast:

Joe:  If you had three pieces of advice for leaders for achieving fast, effective, sustainable change what would they be?

Sarah:  “I think one would be you don't have to do it all alone. Draw on the collective intelligence of your organization. They want to survive as much as you do, they want to help. There may be some issues in the way they've been treated in the past but it's as important to them as it is to you that this organization continues to do well. One would be don't feel you have to do it all alone. The second would be, humans have evolved in such a way that they need more carrot than stick to be at their best. Because we over‑weigh negative things and under‑weigh positive things, we actually need three times as many good experiences as negative experiences to start to enter the enchanted place of creativity, connectivity, generativity, synchronicity and all the good things that help organizations to move much faster and much more efficiently.

Yes, you need to obviously keep a minimum line on things. But what most organizations need a lot more of is the good stuff pumped into them, so that positivity thing.

I think the third piece of advice, which is a much more generic one, is it's becoming increasingly clear that the leaders who are able to have the most positive impact in their organizations, whatever their style may be, the key thing is this thing about authentic leadership. Part of authentic leadership is being open and transparent in ‑‑ that's the other thing ‑‑ a managed way.

I remember some of the London Business School people said that after all their analysis, the art of leadership boiled downed to five words, which was, "Be yourself more with skill." All of those words are important.

So things like doing difficult things and asking for forgiveness, being humble about the fact that this is not doing it on your own. Everybody here has contributed to what we've achieved this year. Those old‑fashioned in a way is being grateful.

Everybody who comes to your organization helps to create it, does something that moves it forward. There's something about allowing that side of yourself to come through to people, because people do respond and emotions are very contagious, virtuous circles.

If we see people being heroic, we're more inclined to be a little bit more heroic ourselves the next time the opportunity arises. If someone is helpful, we see someone being helpful or someone is helpful to us, we're more likely to do it to somebody else.

You can set off these virtuous circles of very positive interactions, which just have not escalating, but the virtuous circle gets bigger and bigger benefits in terms of performance and productivity in the end.”

Related Information:
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Finding your Vision, It may be as simple as Tapping your Shoes

There are several purposes to the Balance Scorecard. One of the most important is to create measures that are forward looking and proactive. This way the Balanced Scorecard can be an effective agent of organizational change. However, we can never start any forward thinking without a vision.

I use to think that Vision and Mission Statements were a consultant/academic type exercise. I did them but I have to honestly admit, it may have been more of an exercise than a real vision. In recent years, working with such a variety of companies, I have shifted my thinking. Without vision, you seldom provide a unifying theme of purpose. All of your objectives, all the measures, all the targets, etc. become disjointed. In a recent interview for a future Business901 Podcast, Ari Weinzweig, CEO and co-founding partner of Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor, MI said, “Vision comes from the heart”. That statement sums it up perfectly.

Recently, I have participated with organizations using Hoshin Kanri and the Balanced Scorecard. These approaches have a remarkable similarity and both are driven by the vision and strategic goals of the organization. These approaches will highlight a lack of vision. You will find great difficulty in completing the process without a crystal clear view of where you want to go. It’s that Why, Simon Sinek explains in his book, Start with Why.

Whether you call it Why or Vision, there is not anything else more instrumental to your success. Do you believe your organization has a heart? Does that mission pulsate throughout the entire organization? It’s not an iterative process. It is not anything that is cloudy or mysterious to your organization. It is Why you get up in the morning and go to work. With Vision, With Why, a unifying theme of purpose exists. All of your objectives, all the measures, all the targets, etc. become aligned.

It’s very similar to Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz! She was running away from home for a better life. They did not understand her. She lacked a vision. Linda, the good witch came back and told Dorothy, “You have had the power all along; you just had to find it.” I encourage you as a business to find your vision and identify with it. Tap those shoes together: Find the Vision, the Why of your organization.

P.S. How long should you plan for? I think vision is something that will extend many years out and would venture to say for even young companies that 5 years is a minimum period. Most mature companies should paint a vision and strategic direction for at least a 10 year period.

Related Information:
Is the Balance Scorecard being revived?
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It’s the Who, not the Why @simonsinek

Does ROWE solve some Lean problems?

In next weeks podcast, I have David Kasprzak, of the popular blog, My Flexible Pencil discussing  ROWE a concept developed by Jody Thompson and published in her book, Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It: The Results-Only Revolution.

An excerpt from the podcast:

Joe:  That's a very interesting point, because that's what always frustrates me is that when people get into Lean, they just say "Oh, it's a cultural change." They create this atmosphere that you have to have, that you're supposed to have blind faith going there. That it's going to happen. Does ROWE solve some of those problems?

David:  I think it does. I think it does it in a very interesting way. I think ROWE is very much aware, and having talked with Jody directly, those folks are very much aware that businesses have a higher purpose. We can talk mission and values, but above that is a higher purpose. I think a lot of us are familiar with the example of the gentleman sweeping the floor at NASA, and they ask, what is his job? He said, oh, I helped to launch the space shuttle. So there is NASA's mission. Their higher purpose is to put a man on the moon or win the space race, or one of those things. There's a higher purpose involved.

We're looking to get people to that higher purpose, gives them a greater ability to focus on just what they need to do to accomplish that purpose, and that's where the culture change begins. Wait a minute, if I'm at home today right now and not doing what I would otherwise be doing if I was in the office ‑‑ which might be nothing more than hanging out at the water cooler ‑‑ am I detracting from the purpose of the organization?

Or they may have worked in a daycare as well, and they believe their higher purpose is to create a greater society, and the way they create that greater society is through proper education of young children.

If I decide to go and get my hair done today, and I don't have someone to cover for me, am I helping to achieve that higher purpose? No, clearly you're not. However, if you're given the responsibility for making sure someone covers your time and it does not detract from the higher purpose, then you are free to do what you feel you need to do that day.

That's why I say the responsibility only aspect of ROWE... I think there are sort of three Rs in ROWE. There's Results Only, Responsibility Only, and Respect Only. I think if you accomplish those things, people intrinsically start to see the need for efficiency, because not only does it benefit the business, but let's face it, people want to benefit themselves, too.

More information about Dave and Rowe can be found:
ROWE, Lean and the Shingo Model
“Results Only” means “Value Only”

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