Monthly Archives: May 2012

Why Do Change Initiatives Flop Far More Often Than They Fly?

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Published in the Business Newsday May 24th 2012

As the business owner or leader of your team what is your most important job and focus? I want you to think about this question carefully because in it is the answer as to why the changes you want to see aren’t sticking. Sure any change that is driven by a bull pistle on its behind will happen but it will also have to be a change process that will involve you expending an enormous amount of energy telling, controlling and directing people every day. This is not something that you can sustain over a long period of time. And chances are you’ve resorted to statements such as “I am not here to parent people. Why can’t people do what they’re told? I’ve told them to do this countless times – I’m not telling them about this again!” Yet you do – the very next morning!  Because while you are fed up it’s your ultimate responsibility and you need your people to act in a certain way and your only method so far is to tell them. So have you concluded that your main focus is to just keeping telling and telling your people what to do until that magnificent day when they finally “get it”?

Ask any owner, team leader or entrepreneur what she wants for her business and she’ll talk about financial success, competitive products and services, a fabulous team culture and all that good stuff. Compare that to asking a new parent what she wants for her child and she’ll say “I want him to be healthy.” And I do remember my best friend giving me this exact response when I asked her if she wanted a girl or a boy. She went for healthy baby.

Ok. I’ve kept you in suspense long enough! Your job as the leader of your organization or team is to take 100% responsibility for keeping your company healthy so think back to my example in the first paragraph and ask yourself “is this approach a healthy one?”

Going back to the parent analogy – the real job of parents is to give their children the environment and the tools they need in which to thrive and to prepare them for the world which is full of uncertainty, paved with unrelenting disappointment and untold of joy and everything else in between!

In his new book ‘The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business’ author Patrick Lencioni says “Ultimately, parents can neither predict nor control how their kids turn out, but they can give them a life free of unnecessary dysfunction and stress – and clarity about boundaries. Similarly, the head of an organization has to make it healthy. The key is to create an environment where people can thrive, without unnecessary dysfunction, confusion and politics. This requires a cohesive team at the top, clarity, communication, and reinforcement through human systems. By doing this, owners can provide their people with the opportunity to succeed in ways that even they couldn’t have anticipated.”

Change initiatives flop usually because

  1. There is no clarity:
  • What are the challenges that we face?
  • Are these the REAL challenges or are other things contributing that we cannot see or have not addressed?
  • What specifically needs to change?
  • Are we being honest about the changes we say we want or are we saying one thing and acting in ways that are totally contradictory?
  • Can we agree that these are the changes to be made and that this strategy is the best one for us and one we can uphold with integrity?

If you are not clear or your leadership team is not clear how in God’s name do you expect your staff to be clear?

  1. There is no belief

It’s one thing to be clear but do you believe in the change goals that you’ve set for yourself and your team? If you don’t believe then the first person to sell on the change initiative is yourself. Your employees will smell your lack of conviction a mile away and respond to THAT more than anything you TELL them. And even if you believe it can happen, you must believe that it will because your present employees can carry it through. If you don’t believe that your employees are capable then whose fault is that? If you didn’t hire them or spoke up regarding your concern about your company’s hiring policy you might have a different situation on your hands.

If you do not understand your company’s culture any change initiative will false-start.

“Where is the culture of your business? Is it in the building, the equipment, the intellectual property, in your products and services?” Of course not! It’s in your people. But where in the people is the culture? Your answer needs to be “in their hearts and heads.” Culture is the sum total of the emotions, experiences, beliefs and expectations of everyone involved in the organization. This is the collective mind. Until you figure out how to change this – NOTHING WILL HAPPEN.

Of course you can change your culture in a day by firing 100 percent of your people!

  1. There is no consistent and compelling rationale for change

In ‘The Seven Arts of Change’ David Shaner says “The need to change is usually met with resistance. Most people value predictability, even if it’s predictable mediocrity. If the leader of change cannot offer a consistent and compelling rationale for change, he will fail to win the collective mind of the organization and change will not happen.”

This compelling reason to change must not only be due to the urgent business crisis or because you are the boss and you think that it’s best. It must also include a commitment to support and enable each individual to grow and develop personally.

So for all of us who keep thinking that our parenting skills are only for home – think again! If the workplace is not a vehicle for desirable personal growth and development then forget about pursuing any change initiatives.

Only when people can trust you, when they understand their roles and can participate meaningfully in the direction of the business, when they can participate in the rewards that accompany superior achievement – then and only then will you have an organization that will undergo transformation with people who know why they are giving you 120%!

A Change in Business Starts with a Change of Heart – YOURS!

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Published in the Business Newsday Thursday May 17th 2012

“You see what I have to deal with?” one business owner said to me recently, frustrated with an employee who was struggling with what he figured was a simple arithmetic problem. I empathised, shook my head and returned to the crux of our discussion.

Lately I find I am seeing more of what’s wrong than witnessing what’s going good in businesses. I’ve transformed from a “good” finder, that Zig Ziglar asks all of us to be and have become a “problem discoverer” kind of like the dog whisperer but not as sexy or charming!

Of course if I didn’t see challenges faced by businesses I’d be out of work…there’d be no need to consult with or seek my coaching guidance.

What I’m talking about though is not just identifying the need but constantly seeing the flaws and the faults as if playing some kind of game where the person who spots the most deficiencies wins.

Does this kind of approach work though? Just as bestselling author Mike Litman has said many times over in his audio presentation “Greatness Held Hostage” let me end this short paragraph with his phrase “who does it help and who does it serve?”

The answer to both questions is of course “no one.” Now that we’ve accurately identified all that’s wrong: what now – what next? Do we resign and say “you see what I have to put up with?” without figuring out how we can rectify the situation?

A friend of mine called recently to share with me a telephone conversation she had with one of these sky box companies. She was asking the customer service representative if by chance they were going to be opened on the Saturday before Mother’s Day (asking this only because she remembered them doing so in the past.) The customer service representative told her “no” and when she said that she knows for a fact that they had opened before in a similar case on a Saturday, the representative raised her voice and again said only one word “NO!” But this time with the voice of “how dare you question me, I’ve already said no!” My friend was in disbelief and then I asked what she thought was an important question: “how did someone with such a poor attitude get to be answering the phones on behalf of this company in the first place?”

This young lady may have been trained but how long ago? When last was she provided with any feedback on how she was doing on her job? Was she the right hire in the first place or was she just a square peg in a round hole feeling the pain on a daily basis of having to do a job she hates? Did she know what the company’s goals were, or understand the owner’s vision?

In order for any business to make changes you have to be prepared to look at things as they are but not worse than they are.  Quit engaging in constantly over-dramatizing your situation with stories of exasperation and frustration. This route will only ensure that you remain sans solution and doubtful that change is possible.

Check your heart. Not medically (although regular checkups are recommended) but check within to see how you truly feel about your business. Is your heart in it or have you lost all the fire and passion that got you started in the first place? If you find yourself just going through the motions, detached and uninvolved then STOP!

Take a mental health day. Away from the office of course! And nothing is going to happen. If things are already bad, they can get worse and they WILL if you keep doing business the way you are right now, disconnected and robotic. So take the time out for you and for the sake of saving your business.

Get back to basics. Decide what is important to you now. Don’t go down nostalgia lane, reminiscing about how good things were. The times have changed, your customers have changed, their problems have changed and you have changed. All these changes call for a completely different approach.

What does your business need to look and feel like NOW to solve your customer’s present day problems? Be very clear about your intentions. Now ask yourself “Do I truly believe that this is possible? That I am capable of seeing the changes through to the end where I am satisfied and my business is earning a profit again?” If you don’t fully believe it, keep selling yourself on your new ideas. If you are not sold then how are you going to lead the others in your business towards your new vision? They are going to hear your words but more importantly they are going to feel your conviction and if that is lukewarm there’ll be no buy in.

Get clear about you values and write out in long hand your new strategic direction. There’s something about putting pen to paper that makes a connection with your heart. This way not just your head will be involved but your heart will understand what you wish to accomplish as well.

Now you’re ready to get back in the game.

And please remember that if you continue fault and flaw finding, you will continue to make poor choices or worse – no choices and then you will not be the only one suffering. Your brand and your customers will be the victims of your poor choices as well so consider a change of heart. It may be exactly what you need right now to transform your business profitably.

“Without hard work, nothing grows but weeds.”

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I saw this quote by Gordon B. Hinckley and it literally grabbed me behind the ears and pulled me in. You see I’ve been attempting to develop a couple spots in my yard and hopefully one day be able to say that I have a garden and am gardening.

After a months holiday (December 2011 to January 2012) I returned to find quite a number of weeds in a tiny area that I created just for jump up and kiss me’s and in an area that I actually paid to have landscaped.

I set about one Saturday morning to try to salvage what I could, till the soil and replant the survivors.

Man was I proud! The very next day I saw a pink flower emerge and I smiled to myself. I’d done it! I have the green thumb just like my mother and my grandmother. I saved the plants. The other colors will emerge soon. Good job Gis! Mission accomplished!

Don’t ask me why I thought that my work was finished.

Yes, I knew I had to water the plants but the rainy season seemed to be upon us so I was comfortable.

As I came down my driveway yesterday I glanced at the jump up and kiss me bed and realized that I could not tell plant from weed. Didn’t I “just” weed this patch? “Just” of course being a month ago :) . It was evening so I waited until this morning to go see the condition of the bed.

This is what I saw…

My jump and kiss me bed is covered  with weeds. You mean I have to go pull them out again??!!!! I don’t want to. I want a bed of beautiful flowers.

But isn’t that how I treat my own life sometimes? Ok – MOST TIMES! :)

I do the “work” whatever that work is – one time and then think that this is all it would take to create lasting change. One shot at hard work and I’m done.

If however I don’t regularly pay attention and remove the weeds when they’re manageable, like once a week, then I am going to find that eventually the weeds WILL take over my garden. If I don’t pay attention to when the weeds reemerge in my own life (the habits that don’t help but hinder) and work at keeping the good habits in place so that my talents and passions (the beautiful flowers) are not crowded out then before I know it I would slip right back into behaviors that take me backward and towards becoming my best self.

So it’s back to weeding AGAIN! Of course I was a little dramatic and said that I would pull up everything and start over. But then I saw that there were still flowers and probably potential flowers that I am not seeing. So I will just keep what I have, weed today, and weed again in two weeks time.

And so it is with life. The flowers are an indication that we have done some work – we are making progress, replacing self defeating behaviors with more positive fulfilling ones. And while we continue to nurture those that we do see we must continue taking out the other weeds so that they don’t grow so profusely that we no longer see our gifts and lose hope in ourselves.

First jump and kiss me pic from http://www.caribbeangarden.blogspot.com the other two are from ‘ahem’ MY GARDEN! :)

 

People are NOT your most Important Asset. The RIGHT people are!

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Published in the Business Newsday Thursday May 10th 2012

“Despite all our gains in technology, product innovation and world markets, most people are not thriving in the organizations they work for. They are neither fulfilled nor excited. They are frustrated. They are not clear about where the organization is headed or what its highest priorities are. They are bogged down and distracted. Most of all, they don’t feel they can change much. Can you imagine the personal and organizational cost of failing to fully engage the passion, talent and intelligence of the workforce? It is far greater than all taxes, interest charges and labor costs put together!”

Sobering words from Stephen Covey in his book the 8th Habit yet oh so true and as relevant today, as when the book was first published in 2004. Perhaps the situation has got worse. I have no data to support this bar what I observe on a daily basis as I work with small businesses and the other stuff that I do in any given week – go to Hi-Lo, fill up with gas, go to the mall,  etc.

I see employees assemble dutifully at morning meetings and go through the motions, handling everything efficiently with expressionless faces and no passion. Cashiers cash. Gas station attendants fill cars up with gas. Vendors vend.

Are they doing as they ought? Of course! But they are almost robotic in their actions not trying to connect, build relationships, advance as a team…it’s as if when we arrive at work we are asked to leave our hearts at the door, pick them up on our way out as we clock our cards and wave goodbye to the place we must come to again tomorrow, not because we WANT to but we MUST.

In his book ‘God is a Salesman’ bestselling author Mark Stevens describes the usual versus the exceptional taking place in a furniture store. You walk into a furniture store and you could almost feel the sales associate eyeing you and then the well-practiced pounce –

Sales associate: “May I help you?”

You: “Perhaps. We need a kitchen table.”

Sales associate: “Very good. I’m sure I can help you. How much do you want to spend?”

This was of course “the usual” experience

Mark describes his exceptional experience this way “When my son and I walked into Kurt’s store on a snowy February, he asked if we’d been skiing earlier in the day.

‘Oh yes, perfect day on Mt. Mansfield.’ And then Kurt connected the dots. ‘And now you want to find the ideal table for those equally perfect après ski dinners with your family. Am I right?”

Mark: “Bingo”

Kurt: “Wonderful. I love to hear that. The greatest thing about skiing is the way it brings families together. You’re not really looking for a table, per se, you are seeking the ideal centerpiece for sitting down with the people you love and sharing stories of the great times you have together schussing down that mountain. All of the tables you see here would be great for that, but let me show you an antique table that captures the spirit of what you are after.”

Kurt had the gift, the insight and knew not to sell a product.

My question: Can we train for this behavior?

Winning organizations have figured that not any kind of person will do except if that person is RIGHT for your business. The right people are those who would exhibit desired behaviors anyway, as a natural extension of their character and attitude, regardless of any control and incentive system.

The challenges for most businesses is not to train all people to share your core values but to find people who already share those core values and to create mechanisms that so strongly reinforce those values that the people who don’t share them either never get hired or if they do, work their way out of the job i.e. decide to leave on their own.

Begin listening to the PAIN signals within your business. Do you regularly hear yourself or your employees say any of the following:

“I’m in a rut”

“I have no life; I am burned out and exhausted.”

“I’m not making a difference.”

“I’m stressed. Everyone wants EVERYTHING yesterday!”

“I’m here just killing time.”

“I’m sick and tired of all the backstabbing and politics in this place!”

Covey’s 8th Habit is about you finding your voice and helping others in your business find theirs. Sometimes their voice may not be the one you need in your choir. No matter how much training you provide they would not fit in. So the first step is to acknowledge that you are feeling pain and then begin to look for where you’re feeling that pain and finally take steps to heal.

This is a creative process. You can of course get great ideas by looking at what other businesses are doing but the best solutions are idiosyncratic adaptations. And remember not all solutions are to be created by your management team. Invite other members to participate in the ‘best solution find.’

Author John Gardner said “Most ailing organizations have developed a functional blindness to their own defects. They are not suffering because they cannot resolve their problems, but because they cannot SEE their problems.”

I’m hoping that you’re already seeing your challenges and if not feeling the painful effects of those challenges enough to do something about it!

You Need WILL-INGNESS and Not WILL-POWER to make Changes in Your Life.

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Published in the Express Woman April 29th 2012

“If only I had more willpower, I could change…”

Have you ever said those same words to yourself on more than one occasion? You may have wanted to make a really important change in your life. You would have tried many times in many different ways to change without success. And so the only conclusion that you can come to is that you need either more willpower to do it or just don’t have any willpower at all!

Well I have great news: it is not willpower or the lack of it that is holding you back!

Breaking any habit that is not advancing us in the direction of us being our best selves is going to take some time. The question is – how much? If you do a Google search you will find somewhere between 21 and 28 days. The “it takes 21 days to change a habit” may have come from the book, Psychocybernetics, published in 1960 by plastic surgeon Dr. Maxwell Maltz. He noticed that amputees took, on average, 21 days to adjust to the loss of a limb and he proposed that people might take the same amount of time to adjust to any major life changes.

The truth is that it takes far longer to change a habit. Think about how long it took for you to develop the habit in the first place. Don’t you think it would take more than just 21 days to replace it with a better one?

Let me suggest that you remove the 21 day pressure to change from your life immediately. It might be more beneficial to work towards change in 21-day chunks, reviewing your progress after 21 days and adjusting to suit based on what’s working and what’s not.

In 2009 psychological research on how habits were formed was published in the European Journal of Social Psychology by Phillippa Lally and his colleagues from  University College London. The question was asked after how long did it take for running 15 minutes a day  to become automatic? The answer was, after about sixty six days, it seemed to become a habit.  The research also suggested that:

  • Missing one day did not reduce the chance of forming a habit.
  • Some people took much longer than the others to form their habits
  • Other types of habits may well take much longer…like those that involve addictive substances.

So I’m not letting you off the hook since whatever you’ve been working towards is beneficial to you in the long run BUT you need to understand what tools you need in order to effect long term sustainable change. Think about willpower like a proverbial hammer when you consider Maslow’s quote: “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.”

In ‘Change Anything,’ authors Patterson, Grenny, Maxfield, McMillan and Switzler tells us of Six Sources of influence that affect our daily decisions and how we can make them work in our favor toward achieving our goals:-

  • Source 1 – Personal Motivation – whether you want to do it.
  • Source 2 – Personal Ability – whether you can do it.
  • Source 3 – Social Motivation – whether other people encourage the right behaviors.
  • Source 4 – Social Ability – whether other people provide help, information or resources.
  • Source 5 – Structural Motivation – whether the environment encourages the right behaviors.
  • Source 6 – Structural Ability – whether the environment supports the right behaviors.

So how would you apply these 6 sources let’s say to losing weight?

  1. Personal motivation: Do you want to lose weight? For example, if you don’t really want to lose weight, you’re not really going to try. It can’t just be for other people. It has to be for you.
  2. Personal ability: Do you have the skills, knowledge and techniques that work for you? Chances are you may know the patterns that work for you, or at least the patterns that don’t work.
  3. Social motivation: Do your friends want to go out drinking every night or encourage you to eat a lot at your favorite hangouts?
  4. Social ability: Is there somebody in your social circle that might have the knowledge or resources you need to help you get an edge?
  5. Structural motivation: When you go home, are you greeted by a big bowl of candy or a big bowl of fruit? Your environment can motivate you in a good way or a bad way.
  6. Structural ability: Do you have a way to workout at home? This can give you a big advantage in the long run.

I hope this example helps you see the power of the Six Sources of Influence.  You can substitute whatever resistant or persistent problem you want to change.  A keen supporter and advocate for the ‘Change Anything’ Process, J.D Meier says, “Walking the frame will help you quickly see where you can get your best leverage or where you might be stuck the most.”

Our challenge has just been thinking that all we needed as a tool was our trusty hammer – willpower to effect the changes we want in our lives. But what we really need is the willingness to leverage multiple tools – the Six Sources of Influence – to our advantage. The more we do this, the more we’re likely to succeed at and create lasting change.

Is the Life you’re leading Worth the Price you’re Paying to Live it?

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This article was published in the Business Newsday May 3 2012

Do you think that you perform better when you feel healthier and happier? I am almost certain that your answer would be “Yes!” So my next question would be “Do you regularly invest in your own health and happiness and does your business invest in your people’s health and happiness?” Very few when faced with this question can mouth a truthful “Yes.”

Take a step back as you read this and examine your own life. Is this what you saw for yourself? The picture isn’t very pretty is it? Are you working long hours and feeling as if you have not got the luxury of stopping right now? Do you arrive home at night with very little energy left in you? Do you (with good intention) say to yourself that “this” HAS to change, that you can’t continue like “this” for much longer but yet you do AND continue as if unable to stop yourself from the maniacal ride.

What is it going to take for you to reconsider that perhaps HOW you’re working and how you have your team working ISN’T working?

CEO of accounting firm KPMG, Eugene O’Kelly lived exactly like this. “My calendar was perpetually extended out over the next eighteen months. I was always moving at a hundred miles per hour. I worked all the time. I worked weekends. I worked late into many nights. I missed virtually every school function for my younger daughter. My annual travel schedule averaged conservatively, 150,000 miles. Over the course of my last decade with the firm, I did manage to squeeze in workday lunches with my wife. Twice.”

In 2004 at the age of fifty-four, O’Kelly was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumour. During the final months of his life, he wrote a book entitled Chasing Daylight, about the life he’d lived. “What if I hadn’t work so hard?” he wondered. “What if, aside from doing my job and doing it well, I had actually used the bully pulpit of my position to be a role model for balance? Had I done so intentionally who’s to say that, besides having more time with my family, I wouldn’t also have been even more focused at work? More creative? More productive? ….But I didn’t. Not in the many years I was pushing. It took inoperable late stage brain cancer to get me to examine things from this angle.” O’Kelly died shortly after writing those words.

So I ask you again – a little more seriously: “what is it going to take for you to reconsider that perhaps HOW you’re working and how you have your team working ISN’T working?”

I remember hearing some friends discuss ‘duty travel’ – i.e. travel for work – their bosses got to leave several days earlier than they did for the same conference. They got to rest and recuperate before the start of the event while the employees attending the same conference flew in the night before with an early seven am start of the proceedings.

Many executives can usually tell you which time of the week is best to fly, which hotels you should stay at, and how to schedule meetings so that you fit two in the same day though in separate cities.  Yet many executives are overweight. They rarely take time to exercise while on the road, they skip meals , never get a full nights rest and spend hardly any time just relaxing and recuperating.

Consider these facts from a the Well-Being Journal Blog Post by John Harris, VP and Chief Well-Being Officer for Healthways, Inc. called – Is your Boss Making you Fat?  “While we don’t yet understand exactly how this works, it seems to go something like this.  People who have emotional or social burdens, such as a frustrating work environment, lack of time to spend with their friends, care-giving responsibilities for a close relative, financial problems, or marital strife simply have less time, energy, interest, and propensity to follow the behaviors that result in a healthy weight.  So, a less than supportive boss may not make you fat directly, but it is a factor in an employee’s ability, or lack of ability, to take good care of him or herself.”

Think about that…if you are not supporting your own self in following behaviors that result in a healthier lifestyle how can you even begin to think about this for your staff? Without you even speaking they will usually follow what you do except in the case where bosses clearly communicate that they are MORE important than staff are and as such are entitled to a much better way of life as in my friend’s bosses above!

In their book Be Excellent at Everything, Tony Schwartz with Jean Gomes and Catherine McCarthy PhD described a talk given by a company CEO. He opened his remarks with a story about how he’d returned a few nights earlier from an extended overseas business trip and landed back home at 4 a.m. “It was dark outside, and I could have gone home to get some sleep, take a shower, and change clothes,” he explained exuberantly, “but I realized that this was an incredible opportunity to go straight to the office and get a couple of hours of work done, with no interruptions, before anyone else arrived. And that’s exactly what I did.”

The thing is we cannot change what we do not notice. For this CEO this might by fine for him. For someone else – this way of operating just will not work. Too often we almost seem to let our egos drive us with an insatiable desire to create mini clones of ourselves. What is the point? What will happen when we collaborate if we are leading robots – expecting them to follow our “not always good” lead?

Find out what it takes for you to be healthier and happier. You’ve already said you perform better when you’ve aced both. Then help employees find out how they could be healthier and happier too. You’ve already said that their performance will improve when they’ve aced both.

And now I look you in the eyes and ask once again…just in case you haven’t yet realized the gravity of the question: “what is it going to take for you to reconsider that perhaps HOW you’re working and how you have your team working ISN’T working?”