Skip to main content

You want real change? Get involved

Recently, we had to design a change management program for a set of people. Now, for most change management programs there are two objectives. One is the actual change - the change needed - the cultural change and the effectiveness of it and so on. But, there is a second unstated objective - signalling. Telling the powers that be that 'I am working on it', 'creating noise' and 'some event management'. All too often, the second objective overtakes the first.

With the result that there is a lot of short term happiness of something being rolled out, the sound of boxes being ticked, but without an eye on the real (actual) change that is expected as an outcome. Usually, the shortest path to get there is to get a training consultant - usually a marquee consultant with a big name. Now, nothing wrong with this - but the risk of doing this is to kind of place your second objective before the first. On the other hand, it is smarter to get an organizational consultant who will work with you over time - with a neutral perspective - and yet work with you to achieve the change - by understanding the culture and the need for change and driving it.

Alongwith this, if you want real change and you want the first objective to be met - it is very important for your senior leaders to be part of it. And when I say part of it, viscerally part of it. (In the previous example that I had mentioned the senior leaders led teams from the front - part of every single meeting and stood up on stage to make core technical presentations.)

I also remember two great leadership engagements where the leadership team spent two days with the team on a very 'different' assignment - the immersion that you get out of such a program can be never be got by a vendor driven program.

The moral of the story being - if you want real change, it is important that you are neck deep in the process. Roll up your sleeves and be a part of it - whethere at design or at implementation or at follow up. The commitment from the leaders drives change better than any slogan or campaign. Simply, this cannot be outsourced!
Labels:

Comments

  1. UnknownAugust 30, 2014 at 5:30 PM

    Hi Neel - this is very true! no change can be sustainable unless it is internally driven and senior leaders are intimately involved...very good article with practical implications for all of us!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Be Civil. Make nice!

Popular posts from this blog

Zero to One

Zero to One by Peter Thiel is a nice read. (Yes - if I sit down to write a book review - the book has to be worth it - and usually good - so most of my book reviews are about good books.You can stop here if that's the information you seek.) Where this book scores is in contrarian thoughts and contrarian questions that make you think. It starts with a four big lessons learned from the 90s dot-com crash that is, Make incremental advances, Stay lean and flexible, Improve on the competition and Focus on product, not sales. Just as you warm up to it, he says, the opposite rules are more correct - which are: It is better to risk boldness than triviality. A bad plan is better than no plan. Competitive markets destroy profits. Sales matters just as much as products. And finally leaves with a simple definition of contrarianism - it is not to oppose the crowd (or follow a smaller or newer or older crowd) but to think for yourself. "All happy companies are different"...
Post a Comment
Read more

The man who saved Pumpelsdrop

This was a story we had in college if I am not mistaken. Perhaps it was in school, but a delightful story it was. The story goes somewhat like this ( reproduced from here ), but the college version we had was slightly different from this.  I t was a dull, gloomy and a depressing morning in a town named Pumpelsdrop in northern England. The Great Depression had brought all the businesses to a standstill. The bored automobile dealer was spending time alone, as usual. But, this seems to be an unusual morning as an odd entity (customer) appeared on the horizon. A man in a bright suit walks up to the dealer and says, "I need to buy a Rolls Royce Phantom II. We have a business conference coming up and I need to impress my customers". Then proceeds to pay 10% of the deal with a single check for 2000 pounds. The rest he says will pay when he takes the delivery.   The auto dealer was stunned. He was delighted to hear that someone is holding a business conference of some kind and ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Anti networking year

I dont usually go out of my way to network. But over the last few years, I ensured that I spend some time creating new connections. It is a small fragment of my time that goes into it, but what I realised was that some of those networking events were not really working out. I also took time to post about the things I do (mostly on Linkedin) and here (nobody reads this - this is more of a note to myself).  It seemed to be the same set of people saying the same set of things. So, this year I have decided to step back.  Unless it is a truly unique event, I wont be going to any event - and thats how the unconference happened.  Unless it is a really significant update, I wont be posting about it.  And spend time creating and doing the things I like to do. Perhaps read more. Or write more. It is April now and I have done well so far.  Managed to read a few books. Actively working on a few creations. And then some. Lets see.  So for all I know, I might write less ...
Post a Comment
Read more