Leadership Makes The Difference

Change in business takes many forms and I have worked with many hundreds of businesses and seen all sorts of change processes being used - from the straight 'Lean on the Factory Floor' in manufacturing to high level strategic planning using Hoisin Planning and Policy Deployment. I have also worked with the organisations who think change is about investing many thousands in new machines, buying MRP/ERP systems or purely undertaking training.

However, the thing that sets apart a successful change programme from a mediocre (or damaging one) is the ability of leaders to set the right tone and direction for the change and their ability to inspire people.

In this short statement we see three key issues:

1. How does a leader set the right tone or create the right environment in which people can feel valued and successful during the change process? This is often a function of the individual's levels of Emotional Intelligence.

2. How do leaders set the right direction for the change process? This needs to take a medium to long-term view as although change can generate results very quickly, the reality is that sustainable change can take up to 12 months or more to become 'embedded' in the organisation to the extent that behaviours change, which is what change is al about. We often talk about the '3 Coffee Shop' measures which will be used to describe success a year from now - meaning that you should imagine you are in a coffee shop with a colleague a year from today and they say to you 'I hear your change programme was great' and you reply 'Yes it was, because.....' - these three measures will follow and will be things like 'Our Productivity Improved', 'Our Costs Reduced', 'Our Sales Doubled' etc. Selecting the right 3 measures will set the tone for the entire change programme.

3. The ability to inspire the team - which combines vision with the ability to communicate that vision and which is a key determinant of success. Someone once wrote that 'Leaders give meaning to the work of others' - as true of managing the status quo as it is of managing change.

These thoughts are things that we continue to develop our thinking in and which influence the way we deliver rapid change as change that is not sustainable is not change at all.