|
You have
been charged with implementing a significant new
initiative. Perhaps your company has defined a new
competitive strategy and you need to align your group
behind it. Or maybe you’ve identified stubborn problems in
your unit that need solving.
Your goal
may be clear, but how clear is your strategy for reaching
it? Most major change initiatives fail, many of them soon
after implementation begins, says Larry Bossidy, coauthor
with Ram Charan of Confronting Reality: Doing What
Matters to Get Things Right (Crown Business, 2004).
The reason? Executives commit one or more of several
common errors, all of which stem from insufficient
planning and follow-through.
Executives
who want to avoid these and other prevalent mistakes when
implementing new initiatives should look to these five
steps:
1. Assess
the prevailing culture.
Before launching any change effort, carefully assess your
unit’s or company’s culture. “Get outside opinions,”
Bossidy advises. “Ask people you trust—a consultant,
customer, supplier, former executive of the
company—whether they think the culture can fulfill the
objectives of the initiative.” External opinions are
valuable because “people on the inside see the culture as
they want to see it—not as it actually is.”
Also get a
read on your culture from internal sources. Ask employees
and managers questions such as, “What do you like about
the unit [or company]? What don’t you like?” Solicit
opinions about what’s causing your group’s or enterprise’s
most pressing problems. Listen for answers relating to
your group’s flexibility and openness to change. Do people
feel encouraged to take risks and learn from their
mistakes? Are they comfortable talking about problems?
2.
Condition the culture.
If you’ve decided that the current culture is a poor match
for the effort at hand, you must condition the culture.
“Make the business case for change—in compelling terms,”
Bossidy says. “Then start with something simple, to build
confidence and demonstrate that people can work
effectively together.”
Building
momentum through smaller changes is particularly potent.
“Succeeding on a small initiative, no matter how simple,
provides a foundation for the next,” Bossidy says. It
shows people that they can rise to the challenge and
enables you to begin more complex changes later.
3. Commit
time and energy.
Some initiatives, once implemented, reach a plateau. As
the novelty wears off, people’s energy and enthusiasm
wane. To combat this tendency, the best change leaders
stay involved throughout implementation of the entire
initiative. “Kickoff speeches and delegation are not
enough,” contends Bossidy.
He also
recommends celebrating achievement of key implementation
milestones. “Have an end-of-the-year or end-of-the-quarter
party, where you recognize and reward people’s
contributions to carrying out the initiative.” Constantly
remind people of your appreciation, and show them the
quantifiable benefits of the changes they’ve made so far.
4.
Construct an able implementation team.
Assembling the right team to carry out an initiative is
the most difficult yet most important imperative for
change leaders, Bossidy maintains. As he writes in
Confronting Reality, “Naturally, you want people who are
enthusiastic about leading initiatives, but you also need
to make sure they’re functionally suited to the job and
motivated to make things happen.”
And if
your implementation team needs the participation of a few
individuals from other departments, be prepared for
resistance from their leaders—many of whom don’t want to
lose their best people to an “outside” project. “Appeal to
these leaders’ camaraderie, commitment to teamwork, and
pride in the company,” says Bossidy. “Reassure them that
they won’t be losing a talented employee forever. And help
them find ways to reassign responsibilities.”
5. Call on
your courage.
Initiatives require people to think and act in new ways.
They can require a leader to change some individuals’ or
units’ responsibilities or remove them entirely from the
team or company. Such changes in structure will create
“real or perceived winners and losers,” Bossidy writes in
Confronting Reality. To ensure the initiative stays on
track, deal directly with any “aggrieved constituencies
and [make] sure that good people aren’t discouraged or
driven out when their part of the business is cut down,”
he says.
Leading
initiatives will never be easy. But by applying a few
potent principles, you can sweeten the odds that your
initiative will survive the most common hazards.
Lauren Keller Johnson is a Massachusetts-based business
writer. |
