Fearless Change for Recession-age Profits

In our latest series of interviews we have decided to focus on organizational change. The attitude of successful change leaders reminds me of preparing for and competing in an endurance event. It really doesn’t matter how experienced you are or how well you feel you’ve prepared, you’ll always run into bizarre episodes and unanticipated situations.

The number 1 thing you will learn from Francie?

Attitude: Being fearless in the face of change.

Francie is from the “suck it up” school of business (as well as Johns Hopkins), and our interview seemed to reflect that her fearless approach to business was most certainly forged in the jungles of Vietnam and then refined in East Coast boardrooms. In either of these situations there is no room to complain or ‘blame the current environment’, you just get on with it.

Francie on Fear:

“I hope this doesn’t disappoint you, but the honest answer… is that in 21 years as a business owner… it has become a motivator for me… I just don’t have it.”

Amen.

We have been discussing change a lot recently; nearly every company in every market has had to make some sort of adjustment in order to survive the recession. Many readers will have no problem with the preparation stage of things, after all preparation is easy.

You can clean the gun, but can you hit your target?

Execution is where it all really begins; after you’ve done your preparation “act on it or stop saying you’re hoping for it because you can make happen whatever you want to make happen”. Now we understand that following through on a carefully crafted plan can be like the beginning of the Amazonian Ultra marathon. You spend weeks working on your game plan until it’s absolutely flawless; the only thing that can taint the perfect picture is failure at some critical point in your plan.

What’s going to go wrong first? Even as you start to pack up your gear the final destination and the magnitude of the task in front of you can seem dreamlike. It only really kicks in when you take your first stride into the undergrowth…

“I’m not paying attention to how others are reacting. I think if I did that, I think you become like those who you hang out with and those who you study. I am completely submerged in responding to and optimizing my own strategy.”

Execution starts from the moment you announce your plans, assign the tasks and institute the new processes that are involved. When all that happens change is inevitable because now you’re accountable, you have publicly committed to the path; you have no choice but to step up to the starting line.

Any feelings of dread, intimidation fatigue or doubt that swelled during your planning are now accompanied by bewilderment, lethargy, resentment, inadequacy, instability—and relief, elation, enthusiasm and respect.

As you dodge the tarantulas and fire ants you feel a sense of unreality as you glide towards your goal—or at least you glide for the first couple of miles—everything has changed but before long you realize nothing’s different as all the old emotions come flooding in.

Remember in business as in any other difficult undertaking, no one is 100% sure about their ability to function or be successful in this strange new world. It’s natural to hedge your bets…

It’s not enough that you’re pumped and ready to go…

Any change you make needs to be ‘sold’ to the people implementing it. If you’re about to punish yourself in a 6 stage 125 mile Jungle Marathon, you need to sell to yourself; when the President wanted to reform the healthcare system in the United States, he had to sell to the American people; and when you want to make dramatic and lasting change in your organization, you have to sell to your people.

“Healthcare has probably taken the worst image hit. Simply because they aren’t… adequately dumbing [it] down for public consumption”

You see a complex strategic vision may make perfect sense within your own head, but the people you are communicating to do not possess all your mental reference points. You must help people understand the overall idea in the simplest possible terms. You need to convince them that it’ll be effective and motivate them to embark on the journey with you and help develop the vision into something tangible and profitable.

The fall of the Professional Planner

Too many of the people we speak to believe that the plan is the goal; they believe that if they plan it well enough then things will simply fall into place and their enterprise will be miraculously transformed. This means that they divert their focus to other things and are shocked down the line when the plan hasn’t blossomed into their original vision.

Significant and valuable change is more than the design; motor enthusiasts see time and again exciting concept cars that are put on show only to lead to production models that look quite different.

“No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy” – Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

The point is that the blueprint is not enough; a fundamental change in attitude and methodology is essential.

Strong communicators make the strongest strength leaders

Finally, communication is the most critical part of any organizational change that you’re trying to achieve. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing you need to convince people to get on board with your vision – a lot of executives fall into a false sense of security. It’s important to remember that your people may be excited about the original road map but as soon as there is a diversion their expectations and reactions need to be managed if you intend to preserve momentum.

In the past the conventional wisdom has been that executive communications is not much more that issuing your orders, giving people their assignments and required actions. In a modern firm that simply isn’t enough: you need to provide detailed explanations of the decisions. People need to understand what led to the final decisions.

You have to make sure that your team understands the values and ambitions you used in your decision making process, were there trade-offs? Sacrifices? Why were they sacrificed? And did you consider alternatives? This will help your team perform without needing to be micromanaged every step of the way. This kind of information encourages people to take the initiative that maintains that all-important momentum. You really want as few bottlenecks as possible.

You first…

If you truly want to influence the way other people think and act you will need convincing of your own actions and philosophy. If your team doesn’t understand your new ethos or they disagree with it, they will be unwilling to alter their beliefs and the autonomous decisions they are allowed to make will not be in line with your desires.

We have seen many organizations lost in an unproductive tailspin during the execution of corporate change. Especially with larger enterprises there often seems to be numerous tasks with innumerable details with very little direction or formal arrangement of priorities, in such conditions it’s natural to be overwhelmed.

When things seem to be hurtling along at a lightening pace but not progressing in any meaningful way, we encounter executives at the end of their rope wondering if they can keep up with the current conditions and if the chaos will bear fruit.

The greatest ‘change leaders’ we’ve ever encountered understand that their most important legacy is not creating a single basic change but coaching an entire organization to constantly adapt to a violently changing market, as well as helping it develop the attitude and determination to do so without fuss. When an organization sees itself as truly innovative, change becomes a welcome challenge rather than a threat to be avoided. This type of attitude is what makes great companies truly exceptional.

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In our next issue we will be getting some insights from Ron Hanser, a CEO who has worked with many businesses from Google Inc. to local Des Moines-based firms.