We Have A Leadership Crisis – Managing Successful Change

The February 2023 DDI report called “2023 Global Leadership Forecast” is the largest and longest-running global study on the current and future state of leadership.

The study revealed leaders are getting the development they need to meet key challenges. This is the area I would like to explore in the rest of this newsletter.

Five skills leaders need for the future

The study found that a critical gap persists in the skills leaders need to develop. The top five skills are:

·      Identifying / developing future talent

·      Strategic thinking

·      Managing successful change

·      Decision-making prioritisation

·      Influencing others

The following image illustrates the gap that exists across the five skills.

Source: Five Skills Leaders Need for the Future - Global Leadership Forecast 2023 | DDI (ddiworld.com)

In a previous newsletter, I explored how to address the leadership skill gap in Identifying / Developing Future Talent

This week I want to explore Managing Successful Change. Now there is plenty of information available via the internet on how to manage successful change. In fact, a Google search for “how to manage successful change” returned 1,530,000,000 results (3/5/23).

There are many so-called leaders who still don’t see managing change as a necessity and stick to the premise that if they think a change is a good idea, so will everyone else.

But, for those who recognise the need to manage change to deliver successful change, there is plenty of guidance for them to pull on as shown by the Google search. I am not going to repeat that here!

What I want to do is bolster that guidance and highlight some common mistakes that get made and adversely impact the achievement of successful change.

I believe there are 5 common mistakes that can be avoided.

1. Starting from the wrong place

2. Communicating rather than having a conversation

3. Leaders think they must have all the answers

4. Not soliciting feedback

5. Lack of engagement

Starting from the wrong place

Many leaders, when they start discussing a forthcoming change, start to talk about what the organisation will do and how it will do it.

This is often because the need for a change has been formulated in the “corner office” and when the leaders leave, they leave the “why” behind. They are now focused on what needs to change and how it needs to change. They make the blind assumption that everyone will know the “why.” Isn’t it obvious?

Let me give you an example.

It has come to the attention of the executive team that their main competitor is fulfilling customer orders twice as fast as they are currently able. This is starting to have an impact on customer loyalty and will only worsen if the situation is not addressed. Investigation reveals that the competitor has enabled their increase in fulfilment speed by installing moveable shelving and relocating shelves containing promotional items nearer to the picking staff. When the promotion ends the products get moved back to their original position and the closer location is then used for the next batch of sale items.

The exec wants to go further than moveable shelves and invest in cutting-edge technology to stay way ahead of the competition. They plan to invest in warehouse mobile robots to boost warehouse productivity.

The change is communicated as:

What: “What we need to do is increase the speed of our order fulfilment.“

How: “We will invest in warehouse mobile robots.”

Suddenly we have warehouse staff running scared as robots will be replacing their jobs. Other employees are concerned that their jobs will be next. There is massive resistance to the change.

We must start with why.

If the change has been communicated starting with why, the message could have been very different.

Why: “We are losing customers to our competitors as they are fulfilling orders faster than we can. If we do not stem the loss of customers as soon as possible, we will no longer be in business.”

What: “We will increase our order fulfilment speed, so it is accelerated to a speed far superior to that of our competitors.”

How: “We will invest in warehouse automation including mobile robots. The robots will reduce the need for operators to walk along infinite corridors looking for goods. The robots will bring the goods to the operator to consolidate an order. We will still need operators and there will be opportunities for existing staff to be trained to operate and maintain the robots.”

As we have now started with WHY and created the “sense of urgency” that Kotter talked about, there is recognition regarding what will happen if the organisation does not change. If the organisation does nothing, nobody will have a job.

Robotics in the warehouse may reduce the number of picking staff needed but it will introduce new roles to be filled.

Communicating rather than having a conversation

Back in July 2022, I wrote two articles “A Little Less Communication and A Little More Conversation Please, Part 1 and Part 2. The title was my artistic licence to deviate from the original title of the classic Elvis song to make my point.

I was proposing that we should think more about having conversations with our stakeholders than communicating to our stakeholders.

Leaders managing successful change need to recognise the difference. I often hear leaders say that they have communicated, and they did this via email last week. My response is that their action was not a communication but a broadcast and undeniably one-way.

If leaders think about having a conversation rather than communication, the one-way mode is eradicated.

I isolated 10 key differences between communication and conversation which are shown in the following graphic. You can read the in-depth explanation via the article links above.

Leaders think they must have all the answers

So many leaders believe that because they are in a leadership position, they must be seen to have all the answers. Yet, no one ever said that when you become a leader you also become the fount of all knowledge!

When managing successful change, openness, honesty and transparency are key. Leaders must be prepared to say, “I don’t know the answer to that but let me go and find out.”

The worst thing a leader can do is make up an answer to a question because it is certain to come back and bite them when proven incorrect.

Many leaders are not ready to be vulnerable and admit they do not know but they must be prepared to be vulnerable. Vulnerability is not something leaders should be afraid of. Being open, honest, and vulnerable does not put you at risk. Vulnerability is not a weakness.

As Brené Brown said, “Vulnerability is not weakness; it is our greatest measure of courage.”

“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.”

When you are vulnerable you build a connection with others which in turn builds trust and respect. Rather than feeling that leadership is talking “to” them about change, employees feel that leadership is talking “with” them about change and listening as a result.

Not soliciting feedback

When managing successful change, leaders must solicit feedback from stakeholders at all levels and positions in the organisation. This feedback is critical to informing leaders whether communication and engagement are working as intended, whether the direction is considered to be the right one, what problems are being envisaged that may not have been previously considered etc.

Soliciting feedback must be done on a regular basis and act as a checkpoint to determine if everything is on track.

Leaders may encounter resistance to the change when seeking feedback but that is not necessarily a bad thing. Resistance to change can be a good thing. Firstly, it shows that people have started on their change journey and moved along the change curve away from denial. If they remain in denial, that is a bad thing, If they are resisting the change, that is a good thing.

Resistance to change could be due to a lack of understanding which directs us to improve communication and engagement. It could be due to change fatigue which means we may need to slow down

Read more about this in my 2019 blog.

Lack of engagement

The final of the five mistakes is not engaging with stakeholders enough. This often happens as it is time-consuming and there are conflicting priorities. However, a lack of engagement could signal the demise of the change.

Engagement, in whatever form it takes, should enable stakeholders to seek out more information, raise concerns, ask questions, participate in user-experience sessions, engage in scenario testing, and get closer to the change that is taking place.

When stakeholders can get involved in the change taking place, they have skin in the game to make the change a success. When you create a sense of engagement it will result in ownership of the change.

Summary

Don’t lead change to change. You must intentionally manage successful change and avoid the mistakes discussed here.

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I am an organisational change management rebel WITH a cause. 

I am the author of seven books on organisational change, workforce resilience, leadership capability uplift and leading remote teams.

I am an international keynote speaker, consultant, facilitator, coach, and mentor.

I am passionate about enabling individuals and organisations to be the very best they can be through performance enablement, outstanding leadership, adaptation, agility, and resilience in the face of constant and uncertain change.

I would love to work with you and your organisation. Contact me here.