primary test of leadership

Grading the importance of various initiatives in an environment of finite resources is a primary test of leadership.

Derek Lidow

"A Better Way to Set Strategic Priorities," Harvard Business Review. February 13, 2017

clear priorities

Leaders who execute focus on a very few clear priorities that everyone can grasp. Why just a few? First, anybody who thinks through the logic of a business will see that focusing on three or four priorities will produce the best results from the resources at hand. Second, people in contemporary organizations need a small number of clear priorities to execute well. In an old-fashioned hierarchical company, this wasn't so much of a problem - people generally knew what to do, because the orders can down through the chain of command. But when decision making is decentralized or highly fragmented, as in a matrix organization, people at many levels have to make endless trade-offs. There's competition for resources, and ambiguity over decision rights and working relationships. Without carefully thought-out and clear priorities, people can get bogged down in warfare over who gets what and why. 

A leader who says "I've got ten priorities" doesn't know what he's talking about - he doesn't know himself what the most important things are. You've got to have these few, clearly realistic goals and priorities, which will influence the overall performance of the company. 

Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan with Charles Burck. 2002. Crown Business, NY, NY. p. 69

prosecute with rigor, intensity, and depth

Businesses that execute... prosecute with rigor, intensity, and depth. Which people will do the job, and how will they be judged and held accountable? What human, technical, production, and financial resources are needed to execute the strategy? Will the organization have the ones it needs two years out, when the strategy goes to the next level? Does the strategy deliver the earnings required for success? Can it be broken down into doable initiatives? People engaged in the processes argue these questions, search out reality, and reach specific and practical conclusions. Everybody agrees about their responsibilities for getting things done, and everybody commits to those responsibilities.

Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan 

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done by Larry Bossidy & Ram Charan with Charles Burck. 2002. Crown Business, NY, NY. p. 23

organizations launching multiple change programs

What should organizations launching multiple change programs do differently? First and foremost, they should take the holistic view. The top management team (TMT) orchestrating change management should draw up a map of all the initiatives, planned or ongoing, occurring within the organization. This map should incorporate all of the vantage points that matter: not only the perspectives of top management, but also those of middle management and front-line employees. Middle managers and employees may perceive inconsistencies among these change initiatives more clearly than TMTs can, and they may well offer practical ideas about how to address inconsistencies upfront.

Once the organization has mapped out all employees’ perceptions of inconsistency in various initiatives, it should consider how to address these inconsistencies from the start. TMTs can stay ahead of the game by preparing a clear, consistent communication narrative explaining the necessity for multiple initiatives as opposed to one, detailing exactly how they fit together. Such a narrative can preempt the perception of inconsistency on all three levels: content, procedure, and normative expectations.

The timing and pacing of each initiative are additional key considerations. TMTs should have a clear idea of which initiatives can be wrapped up quickly and which may take years — and when to launch or stop each one. With a clearer time frame, they can ward off inconsistency by ensuring, for example, that one team isn’t assigned two conflicting tasks at the same time or that teams aren’t saddled with a storm of changes that could overwhelm their capacity.

TMTs should also monitor whether each key initiative has been allocated adequate resources. Remember that strategic change is exhausting, and periods of high activity should be followed by intervals of rest or less-intense work. The alternative to careful timing may well be burnout, which is an even greater threat to change performance than inconsistency.

Ultimately, successful change managers shift their focus from single initiatives to the dynamics among multiple initiatives. A successful transformation typically does not rely on any single change initiative but emerges from the careful management of multiple, integrated initiatives that interact and reinforce one another over time. One key success factor is to be alert to emerging inconsistencies among various initiatives regarding content, procedures, and normative expectations. These emerging inconsistencies can cause initial supporters to resist change, ultimately undermining the initiatives. Instead, taking the deliberate, comprehensive approach described here can drive your success in leading change.

Quy Nguyen Huy, Rouven Kanitz, Julia Backmann, and Martin Hoegl

"How to Reduce the Risk of Colliding Change Initiatives," MITSloan Management Review. June 3, 2021

multiple, simultaneous efforts

Most prescriptions for organizational change have focused on how to launch a single change initiative. This made sense in a stable world in which undertakings were planned and executed gradually and sequentially — like controllers directing airplanes taking off on a single runway, one at a time and well distanced from one another. However, the challenges of coping with dynamic markets, global crises, and advancing technologies are forcing organizations to transform quickly, which can require multiple, simultaneous efforts on several fronts. When time-pressured controllers launch many airplanes in close succession, the risk of collision increases significantly. Yet change managers have a very limited understanding of how such “collisions” happen or how to reduce those risks.

Failure to manage interrelationships between change initiatives can generate poor overall performance in three ways. First, it can lead to a large number of seemingly discrete initiatives with unclear prioritization and insufficient resources allocated for implementation. Second, it creates misaligned incentives for managers whose concern for their own key performance indicators inhibits cooperation across departmental siloes, when cooperation could better generate the desired benefits. Third, it prevents managers from perceiving connections between their own initiatives and those occurring elsewhere in the organization, creating unexpected conflicts about resource allocation or the timing of implementation. These conflicts undermine each change initiative and decrease overall corporate performance.

Quy Nguyen Huy, Rouven Kanitz, Julia Backmann, and Martin Hoegl

"How to Reduce the Risk of Colliding Change Initiatives," MITSloan Management Review. June 3, 2021

he had money as well

No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions - he had money as well. 

Margaret Thatcher

Television interview, 6 Jan. 1986. Quoted in: Times (London, 12 Jan. 1986).

response-ability

Accountability breeds response-ability. Commitment and involvement produce change. In training executives, we use a step-by-step, natural, progressive, sequential approach to change. In fact, we encourage executives to set goals and make commitments up front; teach and apply the material regularly; and report their progress to each other. 

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. 

Stephen R. Covey

Principle-Centered Leadership. 2009/ RosettaBooks.