Here we are …. and now what?
I’ve always wanted to make the world a better place and lead a meaningful life. As a business consultant and coach, I can touch a wide range of organizations as well as individual people. Steve Jobs said, “Make a dent in the universe.” That’s what I want to do.
If you make a list with the top 5 things that it takes to turn an organization around, what should they be?
- A sense of urgency
- A vision for the change i.e. the desired end state
- A roadmap outlining how to get there, with clear roles and responsibilities; activities; resources and metrics to measure how you are doing so you can course correct where necessary and to know when you’ve achieved the desired end state
- Communication and engagement – there’s lots of opportunities for involvement so that those affected by the change have a voice into the process
- Sponsorship at the highest level with unrelenting drum-beat and high visibility
What is usually the most challenging thing about creating cultural change in an organization?
Making it real, effective and sustainable
Effective means more than just a fad, a new mission statement or a new set of motivational posters. Real cultural change is behavioural. At the end of the day, the real question is: Are we doing things differently and better?
Sustainable means embedding the change, anchoring it so that one doesn’t revert back to the ‘old way’ of doing things. As John Kotter says, so that you can “hold the gains” and not slip back to the way we used to do things.
What is one of the first questions I ask the leaders of the business that requested my help?
Often the first question is “How can I help you?” which brings out their thinking on what the need(s) may be in their organization.
If preparing to facilitate a strategy review session I ask the leader what his vision/ goal is followed by ‘what question do we need to ask ourselves in order to achieve your vision/goal?’ By this I mean what issues and challenges is the business facing that needs to be addressed to achieve the vision/ goal; what does the organisation have to do well in order to achieve ‘x’ outcome with ‘y’ KPIs. I use this as the starting point to work with the leadership teams to unpack the variables for each key area and to better understand where high leverage lies otherwise it is a waste of energy trying to manage outcomes directly when drivers that influence them are in a poor state.
At some point, I will ask about the problems they are trying to solve; the skills they are trying to build in their people; the changes they are trying to drive in their business; and the results they hope to achieve with my help.
The whole process can be compacted into 2 days which includes developing a high level score card.