Posts Tagged ‘making change’

Leadership is in many ways a marathon rather than a sprint. Despite this we often see organisations continually chopping and changing:

• The leadership team
• The focus
• The priorities
• The direction of travel

While it might seem sensible and logical at the time, it might not be the best option long term for the following reasons:

Reason 1: There Is No Magic Potion

• Yes, making change might achieve some short term bursts of enthusiasm or motivation. At the same time the issues or challenges that were there previously don’t evaporate into thin air. The reality is there is no magic potion to change things overnight.

Reason 2: You End Up Going Backwards

• You might, in the longer term, make huge strides forward, which is great. On the other hand, in my experience you often end up going backwards or covering old ground in the short to medium term. Ask yourself, is it worth it?

Reason 3: You End Up Losing Good People

• People want to be part of a success and if you are forever chopping and changing you reduce the chances of success. When this happens many of your best people will vote with their feet and move on.

Reason 4: You Can Easily Stop Just Before A Breakthrough

• You might well have set out the plans, made the key decisions, taken the action and only seen small improvements so you quit too quickly. The consequence is that you miss out on a huge breakthrough.

Reason 5: Morale Falls Through The Floor

• If you are continually changing your mind, your people, your priorities, then staff don’t know where they stand and which way to turn. Faced with this there is a distinct possibility that morale will hit rock bottom.

The truth is there will be times when change, and even change on a major scale, is needed. At the same time, make sure you are not changing just for the sake of it.

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. He invites you to take advantage of his free audio e-course Leadership Success at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk

Change is just part and parcel of business these days. No organisation, no matter in what industry or sector it operates, can rest on its laurels and take its foot off the gas.

Often when it comes to change initiatives, all of the attention is on the structures, processes and tools.

The trouble is that while this is important to take care of, it is really people who make change happen.

Sometimes organisations assume that because people are highly skilled in a particular field that they will somehow just know how to make change.

When I worked in the NHS I was surrounded by highly talented people. The flipside was however that many of them had no specific experiences to draw on from outside their own area of expertise or training on how to deal with major scale change.

As a result many initiatives fell by the wayside, not because of lack of effort but often because people had never been equipped to deal with major scale change.

So if you are serious about delivering major scale change, don’t just pay attention to the tools and processes. Focus on equipping and enabling people to make the change a reality.

The Bottom Line: Remember that people in organisations are really a huge asset. The question is, do you want to maximise the return on the investment you make in your people assets?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. He invites you to take advantage of his free audio e-course Leadership Success at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk

Managers and leaders like you have many demands on their time. In this situation it is all too easy to fall into the trap of trying to do everything and becoming overloaded. The fact is we all only have 24 hours in a day. How you use that time is what sets you apart as one of the best. So what are the 5 simple steps to greater success?

Step 1: Know your deliverables

• Everyone has job descriptions, most people have some form of appraisal and some idea of what is expected of them. On the other hand, how clear are you on your key deliverables? These are what you are ultimately going to be measured on. Performance against your key deliverables impact on your salary, your promotion potential for example. Yet surprisingly, people often do not know what their key deliverables are. If this applies to you, make it a priority to find out today.

Step 2: Analyse your time

• I often have clients keep a record of where they spend their time over a 2-3 week period. In many instances they discover that the bulk of their time is going on activities that do not directly contribute to key deliverables. Once you are clear on your key deliverables, do this for yourself and see if you are spending your time on what really matters.

Step 3: Make changes

• Once you have analysed your time and identified mismatches between your deliverables and activities, it is time to do something about it. This might mean that you delegate more, get more selective about meetings you attend or how you deal with e-mails.

Step 4: Make time for planning

• As a leader, planning is an important part of your role. You and your team need to be clear where they are heading over the coming months. Start with a plan covering the next quarter that subsequently breaks down into monthly, weekly and daily plans.

Step 5: Monitor results

• Plans deliver results when they are executed. Sometimes you will get the results you expected. Other times you will get different results than you expected and may not even get any results. Make sure that when you execute plans you have a process in place to check progress and make changes where appropriate.

At the end of the day we all have 24 hours at our disposal. The question is how smart do you want to be in using this?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to become highly effective leaders and managers. He invites you to take advantage of his free audio e-course Leadership Success at www.goalsandachievements.co.uk

Today we are looking at the letter C.

C for me is all about:

• Caring about others
• Controlling your emotions under pressure
• Cost control
• Communicating clearly and concisely
• Changing what’s not working
• Customer focus

What else would you add?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps accountants and health professionals to achieve success and realize their professional potential through being highly effective leaders and managers. For more information and to sign up for his free audio e-course click here

The need for change, transformation, new ways of working and innovation to name just a few is never off the agenda.  Yet the realities between the desire and the delivery of change are somewhat different.  So what realities do you need to face up to when making change?

Reality 1: Most folks don’t like change

Sure we all have to adapt a little bit all of the time and in the main do this without thinking.  On the other hand talk about any sort of significant scale change and chances are that the barriers will go up pretty quickly.  We all to a greater or lesser extent thrive in consistency and stability.

Reality 2: People focus first on what they will lose

Think about a time in the past when you have had to consider making change.  Chances are that people’s initial reaction was not to focus on the opportunity or challenge.  They are more likely to focus on what they will lose.  It is human nature and almost a sort of safety mechanism.

Reality 3: People will feel isolated

People might normally feel that they are part and parcel of a team of supportive people.  Then a change comes along and it can be easy to feel isolated.  This is even more likely if you are the person who is leading the team.

Reality 4: People all have a different level of readiness for change

Some people thrive on continually having new challenges thrust in their direction while for others it will feel like a huge burden.  As the leader the challenge is to be aware of the fact that everyone responds differently and that you will need to test readiness for change.

Reality 5: People worry that they won’t be able to do it  

One or two might be sceptical but change is still possible.  On the other hand if there are many all starting to doubt the ability, skills or resources to make change then there is a potentially big problem.  As the leader you have a key role in supporting people through these times of doubt.

Reality 6: People have only got so much capacity

Even the most enthusiastic can suffer from change fatigue from time to time.  There is a fine balancing act between challenging people and burning them out.  Be alert to the fact that people may only have so much capacity so don’t overload them with change initiatives.

Reality 7: People need to fail safe

Whenever you are considering change you are asking people to take some risk.  They will only take those risks if they know that if it does not work out that they will be acknowledged for having a go.  Remember without some form of risk taking nothing ever moves forward.

Bottom Line – The natural tendency is to resist change, so what are you doing as a leader to help other achieve success when it comes to making change?

Duncan Brodie of Goals and Achievements helps professionals to become better leaders and managers.  For more information click here

Change is happening all the time in the business world.  From time to time, all organisations will find themselves in a situation where it has to implement a more structured and more radical change program.  This might be due to factors such as:

• Competition

• Loss of stakeholder confidence

• An adverse event impacting on business reputation

• Technological advances

Change programs are common but it is claimed that up to 70% of them fail.  While there are multiple reasons here are 6 reasons why change programs fail.

1. Communication

It might be that the organisation is having problems delivering the tough messages.  Alternatively it might be inconsistency in the message delivered by members of the leadership team.

The problem might not be with what is said but listening effectively to differing views and ideas.

2. Top Down

Senior people might lead the organisation, set the direction and put the plans in place.  Yet in reality they are not the people who can make it happen.  People at lowest level of the organisation determine whether a change program delivers.  They need to be involved.

3. Lack of space and support

Changes impact on individuals in a very personal way.  If organisations do not provide the space and support to individuals who are impacted by the change, the chances of success are greatly reduced.

4. Unclear objectives

The objective or outcome of any change program needs to be clear.  Ambiguity makes it impossible to get across the reasons and benefits of the change.

5. Lack of performance measures

Change is usually about improvement.  Unless there is a clear set of measures that can let people know whether they are on or off track, that are monitored and people are held accountable for sustainable change is unlikely.

6. Underestimating emotions

While everything on a spreadsheet or project plan is highly rational, it is important not to underestimate emotions.  Few relish change and see it as an opportunity.  This is neither right nor wrong it is just the way it is.  Awareness of people’s emotions can make a huge difference.

Change is a fact of business life and by taking some simple steps, the chances of success can be greatly enhanced.  What’s your top tip?

Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that change is difficult or requires some special skills which you might not have.  In reality, we are dealing with change every day.  The weather, how we are feeling, new food in a different restaurant, visiting new places are just a few examples.  The next time you are faced with a major change, ask yourself the following questions:

What are you resisting?
Why are you resisting?
What are you afraid of?
What is the cost to me of not changing?
What benefits are there?
What would I need to do to make the change?
What is the first step I could take?

So what gets in the way of you making change?

Whatever organisation you are working in right now, there is likely to be some form of change happening. You might be:

• Restructuring
• Acquiring another business
• Cutting numbers of staff
• Implementing new working practices

Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that change is difficult or requires some special skills which you might not have. 

In reality, we are dealing with change every day.  The weather, how we are feeling, new food in a different restaurant, visiting new places are just a few examples.  The next time you are faced with a major change, ask yourself the following questions:

What are you resisting?
Why are you resisting?
What are you afraid of?
What is the cost to me of not changing?
What benefits are there of changing?
What would I need to do to make the change?
What is the first step I could take?

Contrary to what we all think we are much more ready and able to make change than we believe.  So what’s the first step for you?

Leading is challenging at the best of time.  In the current economy, the need to make change is even more pressing for many organisations and those working in them in management and leadership roles.  The big barrier that managers and leaders need to overcome is not about process or project management.  So what is it?

Getting others to see the need and importance of making change

So how do you address this big barrier?

1. Explain in very clear and simple terms the current situation.
2. Outline the likely consequences for the organisation and individuals of doing nothing.
3. Set out what needs to happen and by when to address the situation.
4. Gain support from a sufficiently large cohort of the workforce and their representatives to make it happen.

What else would you add to the list to remove the biggest barrier?