Leadership

Change Leadership Challenge 1: Active, Committed Leadership

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This is the first in a series of posts about change leadership.

Today's executives have a great responsibility to enact change. Staying competitive in business requires implementing new technologies, improving processes, reducing costs, and enabling innovation. Yet these activities – all of which have significant change-management components to them – can be dogged with challenges.

If you want to lead your organization to achieve its goals, you need to learn how to lead change effectively. The success of your organization, and your career as an executive, depends on it.

Becoming a Strategic HR Professional

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~~ One in an intermittent series about strategic HR. If you have a fantastic story of strategic HR you’d like to see featured here, let me know! ~~

I’ve talked with many people about what strategic HR means. Most people seem confused.

“It’s having a seat at the table,” say some. What the HR professional does once in that seat isn’t clear. Others say it’s about making HR decisions from a financial perspective. In other words, cut long-term employees whose salaries have increased, but who are no longer innovating (while the root causes of lack of innovation go unexamined). Neither of these approaches leads to strategic HR.

Predictable Success, Truth Telling, Dealmakers, and Ecosystems: Highlights from the Inc 5000 Conference

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Inc 5000 was the highest energy conference I’ve ever attended. The power in the room was palpable: these entrepreneurs, builders of the fastest growing companies in America, have created the truly wonderful out of nothing. During the two days, I met CEOs from companies that license film clips, create employee feedback and badge software, and give military kids a scouting experience.

Besides meeting these amazing entrepreneurs, the other conference highlights were the keynote speakers. Here are a few highlights from my favorite keynoters: Les McKeown, Jack Stack, Lewis Schiff, and Ted Zoller.

Les McKeown, author of Predicable Success and The Synergist

I’m a Predictable Success fan (you can find my Predictable Success cheat sheet here).

Every Exec Needs a RACI Model

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“Even a thorough project plan can leave room for confusion about individual duties. A RACI model — or a visual map of everyone’s responsibilities — helps to prevent chaos from ensuing.” But how can leaders use RACI effectively? Partnering Resources founder Maya Townsend is featured in this Build magazine article on the ubiquitous RACI model.

“When Leading Change, Think Like a High-School Machiavelli” at the Inc 5000 Conference

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“The statistics on change are rather bleak. According to McKinsey Quarterly, only 38 percent of leaders who recently attempted an organizational change rated the outcome as better than somewhat successful.

“Not exactly a great track record. Speaking at the Inc 5000 conference, organizational expert and founder of Partnering Resources Maya Townsend shares some easy-to-implement tips for creating an environment that is open to change.”

Check out this article, by Kasey Wehrum of Inc. magazine, to learn how to successfully lead your organization through change.

Bringing Innovation to HR Strategy: Highlights of the 2013 SHRM Strategy Conference

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SHRM_Strategy

We’re living in a VUCA world, said Dr. Tom Hogan at the 2013 SHRM Strategy conference. And, indeed, that was the talk of the conference.

VUCA stands for volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Each of the speakers I heard shared thoughts, models, tools, and stories about how companies can succeed in a VUCA world.

Thinking Has Become a Daring Act

“Thinking has become a daring act,” keynote speaker Lisa Bodell (@LisaBodell) proclaimed. After all, she explained, what happens when we walk into an office to see someone staring out the window? We wonder why they’re not working. The act of thinking is seen as something frivolous, time-wasting, and counter-productive.

“What Got You Here Won’t Get You There” at the Inc 5000 Conference

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“Everyone knows the law of large numbers: the bigger you grow, the harder it is to grow fast. But mathematics isn’t the only cloud threatening a successful company’s parade. “The growth that landed you on the Inc. 5000 carries with it the seeds of problems you didn’t have when you were smaller,” Inc.’s editor in chief, Eric Schurenberg, warned the audience at the annual Inc. 5000 conference.

“What got you here won’t get you there. So what will get you there?”

This article by Leigh Buchanan of Inc magazine will tell you. Partnering Resources founder Maya Townsend, one of the three panelists at the Inc 5000 conference, and is featured in the article.

Getting the Message Across: Five Levels of Change Communications

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You told them… and they did the opposite.

You told them… and they ignored what you said.

You told them… and they got it.

People often tell me that change communications are the most challenging implementation task. Everyone knows that communication is necessary. But so much communication fails. People misunderstand the message, ignore it, or even counter it. That’s not how it should be.

The Five Levels of Communication

Five Levels of Communication

This tool, the Five Levels of Communication, provides a simple, intuitive, and logical method for planning and implementing communication during change initiatives. Developed by Linda Ackerman Anderson and Dean Anderson of Being First and highlighted in their book, The Change Leader’s Roadmap, the Five Levels of Communication is the best tool I can recommend for change communication.

Highlights of The Build Network Conference in Boston

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Make Change Stick

In June, eighty leaders of mid-sized companies convened at the Build Network conference in Cambridge, MA. The highlights (besides an incredibly enthusiastic, engaged audience that make my presentation on “Six Strategies for Making Change Stick” a ton of fun) were:

  • Dan Ritzenthaler (@danritz) and Nelson Joyce (@nelsonjoyce) of HubSpot (@HubSpot) talking about a technique they picked up from Google that makes every meeting better. Called “Always Be Capturing,” it centers on capturing all thoughts, timelines, issues in meetings. If it’s not worth capturing, it’s time to move on. Dan and Nelson said that this simple technique reduced conflict and accelerated design from months to five days in a recent intensive session with Google.

Setting the Right Pace for Change

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Metronome by Nigel Appleton

In a recent post, we explored the value of go slow to go fast. This idea suggests that, if we slow down at the beginning of a change initiative to engage stakeholders, gain clarity on goal and target outcomes, and work through tough issues, we can speed through implementation. On the other hand, if we choose to go fast up front, we risk setting ourselves up for frustration and firefighting by neglecting beneficial relationships and issues.

We can choose our pace. Some changes need to move quickly, others slowly. This post covers two fundamental questions: When should we go slow? How slow should we go?

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