The culture of a company is the behavior of its leaders. Leaders get the behavior they exhibit and tolerate. You change the culture of a company by changing the behavior of its leaders. You measure the change in culture by measuring the change in the personal behavior of its leaders and the performance of the business.
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan with Charles Burck. 2002. Crown Business, NY, NY. p. 105, 106
An organization can execute only if the leader's heart and soul are immersed in the company. Leading is more than thinking big, or schmoozing with investors and lawmakers, although those are part of the job. The leader has to be engaged personally and deeply in the business. Execution requires a comprehensive understanding of a business, its people, and its environment. The leader is the only person in a position to achieve that understanding. And only the leader can make execution happen, through his or her deep personal involvement in the substance and even the details of execution.
The leader must be in charge of getting things done by running the three core processes - picking other leaders, setting the strategic direction, and conducting operations. These actions are the substance of execution, and leaders cannot delegate them regardless of the size of the organization.
How good would a sports team be if the coach spent all of his time in his office making deals for new players, while delegating actual coaching to an assistant? A coach is effective because he's constantly observing players individually and collectively on the field and in the locker room. That's how he gets to know his players and their capabilities, and how they get firsthand the benefit of his experience, wisdom, and expert feedback.
It's no different for a business leader. Only a leader can ask the tough questions that everyone needs to answer, then manage the process of debating the information and making the right trade-offs. And only the leader who's intimately engaged in the business can know enough to have the comprehensive view and ask the tough incisive questions.
Only the leader can set the tone of the dialogue in the organization. Dialogue is the core of culture and the basic unit of work. How people talk to each other absolutely determines how well the organization will function. Is the dialogue stilted, politicized, fragmented, and butt-covering? Or is it candid and reality-based, raising the right questions, debating them, and finding realistic solutions? If it's the former - as it is in all too many companies - reality will never come to the surface. If it is to be the latter, the leader has to be on the playing field with his management team, practicing it consistently and forcefully.
Specifically, the leader has to run the three core processes and has to run them with intensity and rigor.
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan with Charles Burck. 2002. Crown Business, NY, NY. p. 24, 25
Most often today the difference between a company and its competitor is the ability to execute. If your competitors are executing better than you are, they're beating you in the here and now, and the financial markets won't wait to see if your elaborate strategy plays out. So leaders who can't execute don't get free runs anymore. Execution is the great unaddressed issue in the business world today. Its absence is the single biggest obstacle to success and the cause of most of the disappointments that are mistakenly attributed to other causes...
Here is a fundamental problem: people think of execution as the tactical side of business, something leaders delegate while they focus on the perceived "bigger" issues. this idea is completely wrong. Execution is not just tactics - it is a discipline and a system. It has to be built into a company's strategy, its goals, and its culture. And the leader of the organization must be deeply engaged in it. He cannot delegate its substance. Many business leaders spend vast amounts of time learning and promulgating the latest management techniques. But their failure to understand and practice execution negates the value of almost all they learn and preach. Such leaders are building houses without foundations.
Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan with Charles Burck. 2002. Crown Business, NY, NY. p. 5,6
Business transformation will remain at the forefront in 2023, as organizations continue to refine hybrid ways of working and respond to the urgent need to digitalize, while also contending with inflation, a continuing talent shortage, and supply-chain constraints. These circumstances, which require higher levels of productivity and performance, also mean a lot of change: In 2022, the average employee experienced 10 planned enterprise changes — such as a restructure to achieve efficiencies, a culture transformation to unlock new ways of working, or the replacement of a legacy tech system — up from two in 2016, according to Gartner research.
While more change is coming, the workforce has hit a wall: A Gartner survey revealed that employees’ willingness to support enterprise change collapsed to just 43% in 2022, compared to 74% in 2016.
We call the gap between the required change effort and employee change willingness the “transformation deficit.” Unless functional leaders steer swiftly and expertly, the transformation deficit will stymie organizations’ ambitions and undermine the employee experience, fueling decreased engagement and increased attrition.
Cian O Morain and Peter Aykens
"Employees Are Losing Patience with Change Initiatives," Harvard Business Review. May 9, 2023
In any business environment, change happens.
Let’s rephrase: In any business environment, change should happen. It shows you're committed to the kind of growth and evolution it takes to stay modern, relevant, and competitive.
Countless factors make change inevitable. Think of technological advancements, globalization, cultural shifts, and shifting economies. And since nobody's corporate goals include falling behind or growing stale, embracing change is a must.
But what kind of change are we talking about here? Change can include things like:
These all fall under the umbrella of organizational change. If you’re already on board with shaking things up, you’re ahead of the game. And you're not alone.
According to Gartner, 99% of all organizations have undergone a major organizational change in the last three years. But big or small, change doesn't happen naturally. Therefore, effective change requires a clear action plan.
"7 Organizational Change Management Frameworks That Stick," Remesh Blog. October 10, 2021
As a young man, I was fortunate to spend two years in Spain. The Spanish culture was rich and intriguing, yet also opaque and mysterious. Those years opened my eyes to the world and how other people experience life. One of the most salient lessons was the importance of culture. Culture can be both an enabler, and a stumbling block. It can bind people in unity or pit them against each other. As a result, I’ve been a keen observer of corporate cultures throughout my career. The interplay between leadership and culture is similarly fascinating. Leaders either engender and move forward the culture, or they can drag it down by tacitly allowing their teams to violate it. As practitioners, we know how critical it is to recruit leaders that can articulate how they’ve built up the culture and inspired their teams to do the same….
Meet Edward Stanworth (video). Global Leader Group. Accessed January 10, 2023
What does an organization look like when it has developed change competency? It often starts with an organization facing constant demands to change and using effective change management over and over with each new initiative, which leads to a fundamental shift in operations. Sponsors repeat the activities that made the last change successful. People managers develop skills to support employees through the change. People on the front lines of the organization see navigating change as part of their job and the way the organization does business. Eventually, each role in the organization will have internalized their role in change and developed the knowledge and skills needed to react to it effectively. This change-ready organization has developed change competency...
Change competency is similar to change management, with key distinctions.
First, change competency is not an activity. Prosci defines change management as the application of a structured process and set of tools for leading the people side of change to achieve a desired outcome. Change competency is an organization’s ability to react to and manage change over and over again. It's an enterprise-wide capability to apply change management practices successfully and routinely.
Second, while change management can be taught and learned, change competency requires a fundamental shift in culture and values. It must become part of day-to-day operations and cannot be simply demonstrated in training or instructional materials.
Finally, change competency must penetrate every level and facet of the organization, from the executive leadership to people on the front lines. An organization may have change management expertise in sponsors, consultants, and change management practitioners. However, the people who must work with the changes every day are the focus of much of the change management activities. In change-competent organizations, these people are key players. To build change competency, and organization must give individual people impacted by change the perspectives, tools and techniques they need to move through their transitions quickly and successfully.
"Defining Change Competency," Prosci Blog. Accessed on December, 5 2022
I think it's about time that organizations and their senior leadership really start taking accountability for their culture. There has been a war for talent for years now, but it’s only getting worse. It’s easy for the finger to be pointed towards recruiting or human resources, or towards broken processes or compensation and benefits not being correct, but overall, for many organizations the culture of leadership needs to seriously be addressed. Research has shown for years that money is not what motivates most people. It definitely contributes to attraction and retention of course, but one of the biggest drivers of retention is leadership and accountability within a culture. Until leaders start turning inwards and reflecting on their own behaviors, stop leading from a place of their own fears and insecurities, start setting expectations upfront with employees, have open, direct and honest conversations, address issues immediately, focus on removing roadblocks for employees to get their jobs done instead of creating more roadblocks, and ultimately be objective enough to support their development and career progression (including giving the tough feedback with their best interest at heart), then the revolving door of talent will continue to become an even larger problem for organizations.
Is Quiet Quitting and Quiet Firing really a new phenomenon? LinkedIn Article. September 10, 2022.
Suffer, survive or thrive in organizational culture? - Leadership & Change Magazine
For humans, exposure to one stimulus influences how a person responds to a related stimulus later. Our brains are adapted to process information more readily after being exposed to something related. We can use this in change management by developing an all-pervasive culture around the change in question using multiple, frequent and small stimuli related to the change. That might generate propensity to process the change more readily as the project progresses. And research tells us that the use of images, taglines, mission statements, posters, logos, images and branding are all great ways to achieve priming.
10 Tips From Psychology Every Change Leader Should Know by Al Lee-Bourke. Prosci Blog. Accessed on August 4, 2022.
Organizations are drowning in unproductive meetings, and part of the problem is the fact that we refer to them all in the same way. Vague and imprecise language obscures the true purpose of these gatherings, making it difficult to know how to optimize for their success. It also makes it harder to distinguish the worthwhile ones from the worthless.
In order to have fewer, more purposeful meetings, we need a more robust vocabulary to describe them. So let’s do some renaming, starting with three common “meetings” that you’ll soon realize aren’t really meetings at all.
Now let’s address a few types of meetings that are difficult to justify if you name them correctly.
Finally, we come to the decision-making meeting, a total misnomer as is it implies that the meeting itself is making the decision. But meetings don’t make decisions, leaders do. Group discussions can help support that process, of course, so let’s call them decision-supporting meetings to remind the leader that it’s her job, and hers alone, to make sure action follows...
Imagine a culture where people regularly talk about meetings using this kind of precise language. Picture someone pushing back on a meeting invitation by calling it a formality meeting... Better language isn’t the only step you must take to transform your meeting culture, but it’s a powerful start.
Denial is the ultimate comfort zone.
Tell yourself the truth! That you’ve wasted enough time, and that you have other dreams that will take courage to realize, so you don’t die a @#!$% %$@!*&.
Pain unlocks a secret doorway in the mind, one that leads to both peak performance, and beautiful silence.
When you think that you are done, you're only 40% in to what your body's capable of doing. That's just the limits that we put on ourselves.
Our culture has become hooked on the quick-fix, the life hack, efficiency. Everyone is on the hunt for that simple action algorithm that nets maximum profit with the least amount of effort. There’s no denying this attitude may get you some of the trappings of success, if you’re lucky, but it will not lead to a calloused mind or self-mastery. If you want to master the mind and remove your governor, you’ll have to become addicted to hard work. Because passion and obsession, even talent, are only useful tools if you have the work ethic to back them up.
Be more than motivated, be more than driven, become literally obsessed to the point where people think you're !$#@% nuts.
Only you can master your mind, which is what it takes to live a bold life filled with accomplishments most people consider beyond their capability.
Examples:
Organizational change fails when companies move too quickly... skipping fundamental elements such as aligned vision and culture. They run to their death and the change process eventually stalls.
"9 Navy SEAL Sayings That Will Improve Your Organization's Ability To Lead Change," Forbes. July 23, 2018
Career is about work: having a job that provides autonomy, allows you to use your strengths, and promotes your learning and development. It’s at the heart of intrinsic motivation.
Community is about people: feeling respected, cared about, and recognized by others. It drives our sense of connection and belongingness.
Cause is about purpose: feeling that you make a meaningful impact, identifying with the organization’s mission, and believing that it does some good in the world. It’s a source of pride.
These three buckets make up what’s called the psychological contract — the unwritten expectations and obligations between employees and employers. When that contract is fulfilled, people bring their whole selves to work. But when it’s breached, people become less satisfied and committed. They contribute less. They perform worse.
In the past, organizations built entire cultures around just one aspect of the psychological contract. You could recruit, motivate, and retain people by promising a great career or a close-knit community or a meaningful cause. But we’ve found that many people want more. In our most recent survey, more than a quarter of Facebook employees rated all three buckets as important. They wanted a career and a community and a cause. And 90% of our people had a tie in importance between at least two of the three buckets... We’re all hoping to find a what, a who, and a why.
Lori Goler, Janelle Gale, Brynn Harrington, and Adam Grant
"The 3 Things Employees Really Want: Career, Community, Cause" Harvard Business Review. February 20, 2018
Reporter: Following the huge win against the Pelicans we saw this team take to the court, take the locker room, go to the weight room – and that was after a big win. What has this team’s emotion and reaction been like after the Clipper’s loss?
Coach Monty Williams: It’s been the same approach…. One of the culture pieces we’ve tried to implement is we don’t let win’s and losses dictate the atmosphere and the culture we feel like we are establishing…. That’s something that I’ve learned over the years, I cannot change – no matter what happens on the floor our gym stays the same. We want everybody here excited about coming to work, and I think that allows for us to have a level of consistency in how we approach development. The most important thing is that people are excited to come to work. Nothing changed. Yesterday was the same as any other day…. We teach, we grow, we get after it.
Reporter: You’ve been preaching staying in that middle ground for a while now. When did that mentality really set in for you?... Why is that such a key in order to get this team where you want them to go?
Coach: …Listening to the guys that I had coached before, they didn’t always feel excited about coming to work because they thought that I was going to push them in a way that diminished their talents. I really had to take a deep look at my approach. It was one of my prayers that if God ever gave me a chance to be a head coach again I wanted to be excited about work everyday myself, but I also wanted the players to have the same feeling – when they got up out of the bed they felt really good about coming to work…. I had some straight, black and white conversations with guys that I coached, and what I heard back – I was ashamed to be honest with you. I didn’t realize it and that’s why the communication with those guys was really important for my growth.
Monty Williams
Post-Practice Media Availability. 1/5/2021. https://www.facebook.com/suns/videos/163428998468163
If you want to overcome the pull of the past - those powerful restraining forces of habit, custom, and culture - to bring about desired change, count the costs and rally the necessary resources. In the space program, we see that tremendous thrust is needed to clear the powerful pull of the earth's gravity. So it is with breaking old habits.
Breaking deeply embedded habits - such as procrastinating, criticizing, overeating, or oversleeping - involves more than a little wishing and willpower. Often our own resolve is not enough. We need reinforcing relationships - people and programs that hold us accountable and responsible.
Remember: Response-ability is the ability to choose our response to any circumstance or condition. When we are response-able, our commitment becomes more powerful than our moods or circumstances, and we keep the promises and resolutions we make.
Principle-Centered Leadership. 2009/ RosettaBooks.
The truth is that resiliency is much like a muscle — over time it grows stronger through effective leadership. That’s not to say a workforce constantly exposed to adversity will eventually become more resilient. Rather, leadership needs to create a culture where hardships can also be seen as an opportunity to evolve both the individual and the organization.
Resilience can also be misinterpreted as overconfidence. People who are resilient are often seen as tough, self-reliant, and unaffected by the same stresses and negative emotions others might face. This can lead others to believe that resilient individuals don’t need any help. Not only does this stifle collaboration, but it can have a negative effect on the mental wellbeing of resilient individuals.
It’s important that leadership understands how these misconceptions can be detrimental to their organization. Furthermore, leadership has to realize that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to building resilience in the workplace. Rather, it requires a robust strategy.
"5 Ways to Build Resilience in the Workplace" FTI Journal. October 2020
Set the Stage
1. Create a Sense of Urgency
Help others see the need for change and the importance of acting immediately.
2. Pull together the Guiding Team
Make sure there is a powerful group guiding the change – one with leadership skills, credibility, communications ability, authority, analytical skills, and a sense of urgency.
Decide What to Do
3. Develop the Change Vision and Strategy
Clarify how the future will be different from the past, and how you can make that future a reality.
Make It Happen
4. Communicate for Understanding and Buy In.
Make sure as many others as possible understand and accept the vision and the strategy.
5. Empower Others to Act.
Remove as many barriers as possible so that those who want to make the vision a reality can do so.
6. Produce Short-Term Wins.
Create some visible, unambiguous successes as soon as possible.
7. Don’t Let Up.
Press harder and faster after the first successes. Be relentless with initiating change after change until the vision is a reality.
Make It Stick
8. Create a New Culture.
Hold on to the new ways of behaving, and make sure they succeed, until they become strong enough to replace old traditions.
