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Q:
Sometimes companies need to change even when there is
not a crisis forcing the issue. In such cases, how do you
keep your people excited about a change initiative after
its newness has worn off? Trevor Smith,
Singapore.
A: You
have to stay excited yourself. And not just excited, but
obsessed.
Talk about
the initiative at every meeting, celebrate its smallest
milestones and champion everyone who supports it as much
as you do. If there is one reason that even the most
meaningful initiatives too often die an ignoble death,
it’s boredom.
If
people—sometimes even the leaders who started the whole
thing—don’t see immediate results, they may begin to get
distracted by concerns that seem more pressing. And,
before you know it, pffft. The initiative that was
supposed to change everything has vanished into thin air.
At which point, everyone sighs from relief. Or, worse,
they quietly chuckle at the inevitable demise of yet
another lame change program.
Such
entirely human sighing or chuckling would be fine, of
course, if change weren’t a matter of life and death.
OK, that
sounds overly dramatic. But in today’s marketplace, if you
don’t keep reinventing your company’s way of doing
business, you’ll be trampled by the competitors passing
you by. Which is why you have to continuously cheerlead
your change initiative—and more too. Indeed, you also have
to avoid three traps that, while perfectly understandable,
have a way of speeding initiatives into oblivion.
The first
is launching another big, important initiative while your
first big, important initiative is still a work in
progress. Now, we’re not putting a kibosh on new tactics
or projects while an initiative is under way. But tactics,
like a focus on purchasing, or projects, like a special
sales contest, are not initiatives. Initiatives are
transformative, like globalization. The best start as the
seed of an idea that grows into a forest that eventually
encompasses almost every activity across the company,
sometimes even bringing customers and suppliers into the
fold. And that is why a company can only handle one
initiative at a time, switching only after the first is
ingrained in the culture, which can easily take two or
three years, if not longer.
The second
trap is not putting the company’s best people on a change
initiative. Oh, sure, we realize that it’s hard to take
Ellen and Mario out of the jobs they’re so good at to put
them onto something so new and risky. But that’s the kind
of talent shake-up that makes an organization believe, not
to mention the kind that makes an initiative thrive and
succeed.
The third
trap is related: it’s not publicly promoting and rewarding
the people who do embrace the initiative. Even when the
initiative’s results are still emerging, these individuals
have to be held up as role models and heroes, and treated
accordingly. Do that, and people will enlist in your cause
faster than you can count them.
And that’s
what you want. Even with strong management support, no
initiative has ever succeeded without widespread
engagement. You’re right. The early days are easy; the
hard part comes when the newness gets old. The trick is to
never let that happen.
Q:
What are some of the best approaches to improving
marketing? Linda Schanz,
Edison,
New Jersey
A: Not
long ago, we were helping our son get ready for college
and noticed a hefty section in his course catalog
entitled, “Topics in Sales and Marketing.”
With that
in mind, we humbly note that your question is bigger than
the both of us. Indeed, marketing has become an
increasingly complex science of data mining, number
slicing and niche segmenting.
But since
you asked...we would only add that, in our view, sales and
marketing will always contain an element of art. Consider
two terrific campaigns that just took place in connection
with baseball’s World Series.
In the
first, a
Boston company,
Jordan’s,
promised full refunds on all the furniture sold in its
stores between March 7 and April 16 if the Red Sox won
this October. The team did win—insert hallelujahs here—and
the company’s leaders have been on TV ever since,
congratulating the 30,000 customers who are now receiving
refunds on $20 million worth of stuff.
In the
second, Taco Bell promised to give away a taco to every
person in the United States if a base was stolen during
the series. The young Red Sox star Jacoby Ellsbury did the
honors, and Taco Bell reaped untold millions in publicity
with the happy stampede that followed.
Enough!
We’ll leave sales and marketing advice to the experts,
simply noting that, when all is said and done, a clever
idea can still score big.
*****
Jack and Suzy Welch are the
authors of the international bestseller
Winning (Collins). Their
latest book is Winning: The Answers: Confronting 74 of the
Toughest Questions in Business Today (Collins). They are
eager to hear about your career dilemmas and challenges at
work and look forward to answering your questions in
future columns. You can e-mail them questions at winning@nytimes.com.
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