His answer is worth sharing with you:

When I started, I viewed my job as three main areas: vision and strategy of the company, development and recruitment of the team to implement that vision and strategy, and the need to communicate all of the above.

Within about four or five years I realized there was something that many of us do not understand when we take a leadership role: culture. Great companies have very strong and great cultures. A huge part of a leadership role is to drive the culture of the company and to reinforce it.

The other thing that has changed dramatically is [a shift] from command and control to collaboration and teamwork. It sounds easy to do, but it’s hard, because you are trained that way in M.B.A. school, in law school. Around 80 to 90 percent of the job is how we work together toward common goals, which requires a different skill set.

Shaping, reinforcing and modeling a strong, positive, open culture. This is the job of not only the CEO but also, collectively, of the senior leadership team.

Top teams need to include in their strategic discussions (1) what the current culture is, (2) what what they want it to be, and (3) how they are, individually and collectively, drive–or retarding–the organization’s transformation to that desired state.

As regards the team/collaboration piece, a manager’s capacity must include the willingness to let go of control and involve others. Nothing new or surprising but, for many managers, it’s still a tough adjustment to make.

Three main themes emerged:

1. The global recession has permanently altered the so-called “contract” between employees and their employers.
2. There is a gap between what employees want and what employers are able to provide them.
3. This is a pivotal time when employers have the opportunity to identify and put in place a more flexible, sustainable “deal” for their staff…before the economy takes off again and we see a flood of unhappy employees packing their bags for greener pastures.

Not surprisingly, the downturn has had an impact on the results in this year’s report. It has uncovered a couple of dilemmas:

• Employees want security above all else (76% of respondents) but only 51% believe it is attainable.
• People continue to hunker down in their current employment, putting having a stable job above the siren call of career opportunity. 81% are not actively looking for other jobs, despite the fact that 48% see no potential advancement in their current job.

News for leaders and managers! Confidence of employees in their managers’ interpersonal and relational (vs. operational) competence is alarmingly low…

• Only 38% think their leaders are sincerely interested in their well-being
• Only 47% see their leaders as trustworthy
• Just 42% say that their leaders inspire and engage them
• 53% question whether their managers have time for the people aspects of their job
• 61% question doubt their managers’ effectiveness in dealing with poor performers.

Clearly we have a woeful shortfall in the people side of leading at all managerial levels. Despite these numbers, TW sees this time as one of great opportunity for employers:

We are at the earliest stages of a significant workplace transformation that will profoundly affect how businesses approach people management and how individuals approach the workplace.

I’ll have some more to say about this in my next couple of postings.

Leaving aside the political issues and possible motives ascribed to each side for engaging in the event, I think Obama modeled an important element of leadership. This is the willingness to seek out and engage in dialogue those who oppose your ideas or have yet to buy in to your agenda and vision.

Many leaders do this as part of their strategy for implementing change. They hold all-hands staff meetings to explain their vision, share the rationale and benefits of the change, and then respond to questions from the troops. It is even more effective if, at the outset, the leader makes it clear that he/she welcomes expressions of concern and disagreement.

There is tremendous power in putting yourself out there among your fiercest skeptics, listening to and honoring their points-of-view, acknowledging their heartfelt concerns, and then responding with the goal of assuaging their fears and inviting them to see things from your perspective.

It goes without saying that leaders in the federal sector are encumbered by all sorts of forces, bureaucratic, political and constitutional. Nevertheless, I think the conclusions the researchers reached offer valid lessons for managers in other sectors of the economy.

They studied 11 leaders–at a cabinet or sub-cabinet level–who sought to make significant strategic change in their department or agency, for example, modernizing their structure and processes or transforming to a new agency mission. For comparison, they set up a control group of other government leaders who had generated solid but average accomplishments.

The leaders who were significantly more successful in implementing change…

1. Used a strategic planning process of some form.
2. Established performance measures to calibrate progress and ultimate achievement. Furthermore, a key to their success was having only two or three goals, ones that were truly strategic, vs. tactical or operational.
3. Built relationships with external interest groups and with Congress. In other words, they reached out proactively to both external stakeholders and potential opponents.
4. Collaborated with employees, encouraging their participation. So, they looked internally as well. In addition, they devoted about half of their time actively working internally on the change.
5. Tied performance appraisal and rewards to achievement of the strategic goals. This included, in a couple of cases, removing executives who were obstacles to the strategy.
6. Were ready and willing to do a reorganization of their structure, if it was warranted. In fact, three quarters of them did conduct a re-org.

Now, here’s the rub. The leaders who were most successful bringing about change were practiced good management behaviors (which includes, of course, the above six) rather than just focusing on classic “change management” approaches.

So, a good change manager is, first-and-foremost, a good people manager. Duh!

]]> http://buildbestbosses.com/2009/10/26/six-lessons-from-public-sector-change-leaders/feed/ 0 http://buildbestbosses.com/2009/09/24/support-for-your-headaches-around-change/ http://buildbestbosses.com/2009/09/24/support-for-your-headaches-around-change/#comments Thu, 24 Sep 2009 11:00:18 +0000 Ian Cook http://buildbestbosses.com/?p=679 One of our associates in Fulcrum Associates, Rick Maurer, does cutting edge work around change and resistance. Recently he launched an exciting new initiative to bring together a wide range of concepts, practical ideas for the management of change and people who are interested in change. The vehicle for this project is a website called the Change Management Open Source Project.

The site is inspired by the “open source” concept made famous by Linux operating system and Wikipedia, among others. Here you will find:

• A free e-book, Introduction to Change without Migraines
• Short videos that explain the theory behind Rick’s approach to change
• Podcasts, half-day training design
• PowerPoint slides to use with the presentation

The site serves also as a social networking venue for people with a professional interest in change.  So, it offers a discussion forum by members. Some topics recently under discussion are:

• Using intuition to create breakthrough
• Measuring change
• Making change stick
• Using Wiki to create change management guidelines in organizations

Membership is free; you can sign up on the site. The membership roster is growing by leaps and bounds, over 200 interested people from twenty different countries.

For those managers who want to be more effective dealing with change, I suggest you check out this site. For a taste, here is a 16 minute audio podcast where Rick introduces his Change without Migraines™ approach.