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Leading Change - Fighting the "New Normal" (Part II-Strategic Choice)

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I mentioned in Monday’s post that the good name of change management has been co-opted by two enemy tribes.  In Monday’s Part I, I discussed the first tribe:  The “Make-it-Work” Managers, whose efforts make everything important (…and when everything is important, nothing is important and change is sputters or fails).  Today, in Part II, I am describing the impact of the second enemy tribe, the “Shiny-New-Object” Executives.  Like the former tribe, these executives undermine the sustainability of change by creating unfocused, fatigued organizations.  In this case however, their weakness lies failing to make strategic choices—the tough choices that must be made to focus the organization and enable more tactical prioritization that fosters execution.

As illustrated in Part I, lobbing clichés at employees like, “changing the tires out while we drive 70mph” and “This is the New Normal, we all have to live with it,” is failed leadership in action.  We all may have made these comments in a flippant way or as a way of coping with the stress of change, but when they are said by formal leaders, they are interpreted by their troops as weak—giving in to forces they cannot control, leaving the troops subject to whatever evil lurks on the horizon.  A leadership team’s failure to understand this dooms their organization to repeated cycles of frustration with change.  Their organizations are marked by excuses (e.g., “no time to make the new change work”), confusion about priorities (and how to resolve conflicting ones), and abandonment of new practices (if adopted at all) because it is more simple to stick with what I know than fall on yet another sword by taking on more.

So…what do effective Change Leaders do as an alternative to surrendering to the “New Normal?”   

• Strategic choice:  “When we adopt this new strategy, what does that tell us, exactly, about what we will focus on…and what we will no longer focus on?”
• Leading simply:  “How can you describe the new direction and focus in terms of what I actually do?...Can you move past complexity and nuance to tell me what my ROLE, GOAL, AND MEASURES of success will be (and not be) when this new practice is in place?”
• Leading by example:  “When we adopt this new strategy or deploy this new practice/application, what will change in terms of how and where leadership spends THEIR time, how they will make decisions differently, what they measure, and what they want reported?”
• Endings Management:  “When we take on these 5 new things, what few things will we no longer do in order to make room for the new activity?”

Leadership is NOT about coming up with more elaborate answers or selling people on eeking out more in order to survive in or embrace the “New Normal.”  It is about making (often courageous) choices in order to drive focus and support execution of the “new.”  It may be true that today’s normalcy is one in which we take on more, but sustainable change occurs when the new displaces something in the current world.  Most importantly, the old (e.g., old sales model displaced by a new, consultative model) doesn’t go away just because management said it will or because the Project Team said the IT installation is done and training is complete.  The tough choices about which model will help the organization achieve its strategic goals is followed by tougher choices made in the process of driving focus on the “New.”

What would have to change in your organization to “legitimize” or legalize the asking of these questions?

Learn more about Leading Change (…Simply!) at http://www.lastwordonchange.com/simple-solution

Let's take Leading by Example and “Endings Management" to the next level.  Real leadership is shown when we not only decide what we are no longer going to do (the “Old”), but also what we will no longer do (as management) that reinforces the “Old.”  Without this step, the “New” is never experienced as different by our organizations…only “more.”  That’s a recipe for loss of management credibility, employee burn-out, and failed change.

Look for Part III (3 of 3) on Fighting the “New Normal” later this week.