Leading By Storytelling
Filed under: Leadership Callling, Leading Churches, Vision Casting
Every leader is constantly trying to find new and creative ways to communicate the culture of their organization both internally and externally. I have found not better way than storytelling.
The simplest definition of storytelling is when you can link existing personnel, ongoing programming and outstanding performance then you have a story to tell. This will allow you to reinforce core values and celebrate success by acknowledging over and above situations that give credit to your people and remind everyone of what is really important.
In essence if you have no stories to tell then you are not performing in critical areas. The good news in most organizations there are character driven people that are doing an outstanding job. The bad news is their stories are not being told.
I have never seen this work informally by just asking people for outstanding results during a meeting or telling a few stories during annual meeting. This will probably require formalizing this entire process to create a system where stories can be routinely asked for and submitted to someone who can evaluate them and then find appropriate platform for communication.
This must not feel like a monthly performance review system where everyone is checked against their numbers. It needs to be like what happened great in your area this month that would encourage everyone in the organization to know.
The formula is simple existing personnel + ongoing programming + outstanding performance = Success. The only missing piece is telling the story.
Role Of Short Term Wins
Filed under: Leadership Callling, Leading Change, Vision Casting
One of the major mistakes we make in major change initiatives is that we oversell the long term goal at the expense of dealing with the short term realities. People do want to know where they are going but they want to know even more what does all this mean for me right now?
Once the new change plan has been implemented it is critical for everyone involved to experience the benefits of short term wins so they can stay motivated for the future and the change that is yet to come. John Kotter list several roles that short term wins play:
1. Provide evidence that sacrifices are worth it: Wins greatly help justify the short term cost involved.
2. Reward change agents: After a lot of hard work, positive feedback builds morale and motivation.
3. Help fine-tune vision and strategies: Short term wins give the guiding coalition concrete data on the viability of their ideas.
4. Undermine cynics and self-serving resisters: Clear improvements in performance make it difficult for people to block needed change.
5. Keep bosses on board: Provides those higher in the hierarchy with evidence that the transformation is on track.
6. Build momentum: Turns neutrals into supporters, reluctant supporters into active helpers.
Therefore it becomes critical in any change planning to build into the strategy several things that can be done within the first six months that may be small in scale but clear wins that everyone can celebrate.
Characteristics Of An Effective Vision
When we think of the word vision we are drawn to a picture of the future of how things can be better than they are in the present. Most vision casting does a good job of painting a hopeful image of the positive benefits involved but not a very realistic job of the costs involved to get there.
This is a major problem because when the negative forces and fears involved in the change process start to appear and people are not prepared they can give up very quickly resulting in the death of the vision. John Kotter in his book Leading Change lists all the characteristics that should be included in an effective vision:
1. Imaginable: Conveys a picture of what the future will look like
2. Desirable: Appeals to the long-term interests of employees, customers, stockholders, and others who have a stake in the enterprise
3. Feasible: Comprises realistic, attainable goals
4. Focused: Is clear enough to provide guidance in decision making
5. Flexible: Is general enough to allow individual initiative and alternative responses in light of changing conditions
6. Communicable: Is easy to communicate; can be successfully explained within five minutes
The change process for most people is extremely difficult because of the fear of the unknown. There are powerful forces involved that will try to maintain the status quo at all costs. The pain of the present must be contrasted with the pain of the change process so that the people will know that the option of no change is not realistic.
People also need to be told on the front end that sacrifices are probably going to need to be made and there will be discomfort involved during the transition. However, if the vision takes the group to a better and more viable place then all the costs involved will be worth it every time.
The Building Blocks Of A Strategy
Filed under: Goal Setting, Leadership Callling, Leading Change, Time Management, Vision Casting
One of the best books I have read on developing a strategic plan and all that is involved in the execution of that plan was written by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan called Execution. It is a must read for any organization that uses teams to accomplish planning and execution.
A strategy is the key steps or methodology that you are going to use to accomplish your goals or mission. Many times the goal seems to be clear and necessary but the breakdown occurs at the point of determining how we are going to accomplish what we want to do.
In this book he lists several critical questions that should be answered during the development of your strategy to ensure a high probability of success:
1. How good are the assumptions upon which the plan hinges?
2. What are the pluses and minuses of the alternatives?
3. Do you have the organizational capability to execute the plan?
4. Are the short term and long term balanced?
5. What are the important milestones for executing the plan?
6. Can you adapt the plan to rapid changes in your environment?
The two most important questions are do you have the organizational capability to execute the plan? Just because it is the right thing to do may not mean we have the right people in place and this is the right time for implementation. If we add something major to our process without additional manpower it must be assumed that something else needs to go.
The last question is even more important in the culture we live in today. Just because something looks great as a strategy today and even works for awhile does not mean that it will be viable in the next twelve months. This means that nothing must become so sacred that it cannot be changed if necessary when a better plan is discovered.
The Flywheel
Filed under: Leadership Callling, Leading Change, Time Management, Vision Casting
The concept of the flywheel was used by Jim Collins in his best selling leadership book Good to Great. The major point of the illustration is that significant change occurs when you do the right things repeatedly over time and eventually you will have a breakthrough that results in significant success.
We all would love to have the quick fix strategy work instead, we want instant culture change. For every company that moved from Good to Great there was no single defining action, no grand programs, no celebrity leader and no one killer innovation that produced the results.
“Good to great comes about by a cumulative process—step by step, action by action, decision by decision, turn by turn of the flywheel—that adds up to sustained and spectacular results.”
A great example that really makes the point is used is from the legendary coaching career of John Wooden at UCLA. Most basketball fans know that he won ten NCAA Championships in twelve years and at one point had a sixty-one-game winning streak.
What most of us do not know is that for fifteen years coach Wooden worked in relative obscurity at UCLA before he ever won his first national title. During that time he was building the foundation for the program of great recruiting, player discipline and refining his style of playing the full court press style of defense.
The real character question for leaders today is how many are willing to pay the price of not demanding short term success at the expense of long term sustainability for the organization? It may keep you off the front page of the business section of your local paper but in this economic environment that can be a very good thing.
Communicating New Vision
After you know that you have top down buy in to the new vision for your organization, you need to create a team that can develop a strategic plan for the change you need that will allow you to move into the future. I cannot tell you the number of times I have reached this point in the process with great new ideas and the approval to implement the necessary changes only to fail.
The next step is that is extremely important is communicating the change vision. In all my years of doing this I think this is the beginning point of where the process starts to break down. We all have served on teams and worked for months on change initiatives and come out of the process totally together and passionate only to meet one year later trying to decide why the plan died.
What we simply fail to remember is that we have thought, discussed, and even hotly debated these ideas for literally hundreds of hours and the people who are on the front lines for execution have had no exposure whatsoever. We always undervalue the process of bringing everyone else up to speed and wonder why in the end they simply don’t get it.
There are several key criteria for effective communication. They are: keep it simple, use multiple forums and methods, repetition, repetition, repetition, and environments that allow give and take. The only way I have found to know that people have got it, is to let them hear everything they need over time and then let them ask questions and give back to me in their own words what we want them to understand.
Another very important aspect of communicating vision is that the leaders must be prepared to immediately walk their talk. John Kotter writes based on his research, “Nothing undermines the communication of a change vision more than behavior on the part of key players that seems inconsistent with the vision.” If the vision is empowering teams and the top leaders of the company are still micromanaging everything you can be sure the plan is dead.