I love the fact that the comments my readers leave on the BrandBuilder blog are an endless source of topics for me to write about. I am seriously considering devoting one or two posts per week to either giving your brilliant opinions more exposure and/or answering your questions. And in that vein, why not start today, right now?
Here’s an astute question from Sonny Gill: in regards to characteristic n.8 in my post about “Becoming P2P: Principal characteristics of the new social business“:
Company/organizational culture is something I love getting into and am still learning a lot about.
One point of interest that intrigues me – and what you mentioned – is empowering your employees. Giving them not only the tools and structure to succeed, but empowerment and reinforcement from internal leaders – the attitude that not only spreads throughout the company but outside of the office also (as we all know, work/life intermingle so much). I say it’s intriguing because it’s such an integral part in making this culture change and a P2P business a success.
The biggest thing that companies will be asking though when reading this post, let alone your upcoming book, is ‘how the hell do we accomplish this?’ It sounds/is great, as how businesses function – internally and externally – is evolving, quick. But there’s definitely got to be a huge buy-in and sense of what a P2P culture looks and feels like.
The best way I know how to answer that question:
Don’t sell change. Ever. Instead, sell results. That’s what execs really want anyway
As always, the old adage about leading horses to water stands firm. First, you have to realize that “companies” aren’t what you’re working with. What you’re really dealing with are people. In other words, companies don’t make decisions. People make decisions. Particularly, leaders in this instance. If the leadership within a company refuses to commit to the type of change that will yield greater success for their business in the future (and starting immediately), I can’t help them. Heck, even Tony Robbins, Zig Ziglar and Dr. Phil can’t help them.
What’s important here isn’t to sell change. Nobody likes change. It’s scary, it’s risky, it’s unpredictable. You’ll never get very far selling fear, risk and uncertainty. Especially to that crowd. So you have to approach change from a very different angle: From the end result. From what they actually want to accomplish.
First things first: Uncovering the true objectives of an organization’s leadership team
Before you do anything, you want to uncover the leaders’ specific objectives (or wishes, even) and then create a picture of what the company (as an organization) will look like in this “fantasy” version of the future. This takes more work than it sounds. You would be amazed how many CEOs have absolutely no idea where they really want to be in 5 years. They’ll tend to throw around numbers that sounds good but aren’t based in reality, like… “We’re at $8.3B in revenue this year. I want to be at $12B by 2012.” Because $12B in 2012 sounds cool and the investors will love it. But that’s bullshit. It’s all about swagger, not reality.
In cases like this, when you ask the CEO how they’re going to get there, you get an equally nonsensical answer like, “we’ll sell more stuff” or “we’ll expand into new markets” or some other such generalization. No specifics. No action plan. Nothing but pipe dream. That’s dangerous and counterproductive. What you need to do is get them off the cowboy plan and get them back to reality: You have to get specific about their goals. These types of sessions aren’t about impressing anyone. They’re about getting down to business, which starts with getting back to reality.
If they want to hit $12B by 2012, fine. Work your way backwards from that. What’s it going to take? Probably some key acquisitions, first and foremost. Is that even possible? Are they in a position to pull it off without risking too much exposure? Does it even make sense to try and grow that quickly? What else do they need to do? Look for strategic partnerships? Expand distribution? Capture more market share? All of the above? Okay, you have 24 months. Show me on a 24-month schedule/timeline how you currently plan to accomplish that.
And guess what: Most of the time, that plan doesn’t actually exist. It got as far as being turned into a few bullet points on a slide in someone’s powerpoint presentation six months ago. So you have to start from scratch and see what’s realistic and what isn’t. You have to work out all of the contingencies. It isn’t rocket science, but it takes work. And it takes organization. And it takes commitment. Before you can even get to how a company is going to address empowering their employees through a real cultural change, before a company is ready to actually pull this off across all of its departments as a matter of policy, it has to know exactly where it wants to go and what it will take to get there. Not only that, but the leadership team has to both understand and accept that such empowerment is one of the ways they will get there.
Second: Mapping out the start, the “finish” and everything in between
Growth, change and success are hard. You have to map it all out, starting with where you are, where you want to go, and all the points in between if you want to have a shot at actually pulling it off. So change management, which is really what we’re talking about here, starts with that process. And that process starts with painting a crystal clear picture of what you want the organization to look like at the end of the process. (More like a milestone than a finish line, but that’s a topic for another day.)
Now, in order to hit the numbers the CEO threw at you, you really have to be able to create a detailed snapshot of the company in this specific future. What it looks like. Where it operates. How it operates. How it is structured. How it executes on its activities. You have to not only create a snapshot of what it looks like on the outside, but also on the inside, layer by layer, like a CAT scan.
Understanding changes in cultural dynamics and the evolution of technology, you can then zoom in from the portrait/snapshot of the company to its structure, then to its processes, then to the skills of its members. From there, you can reverse-engineer the adaptive phases that the company needs to go through. To be realistic, the example I gave you (24 months) is too short when it comes to true cultural change for a company that didn’t have much of a culture to begin with. It takes time for organizations, especially large ones, to develop the kind of social and emotional sophistication to do this well. It takes maturity, and maturity takes time. It isn’t something you can accelerate or optimize.
In this example then, the company’s strategy would focus a lot more on acquisitions and partnerships than growth through cultural change. But it isn’t to say that a cultural evolution couldn’t begin to happen during that time period. In order for the strategic changes to be a success, a lot of internal work needs to ensure that these changes won’t become a liability when it comes to simple things like customer service, customer experiences, internal communications between divisions, brand erosion, etc. You can’t divorce culture from infrastructure. Companies that don’t understand that always fail at creating efficient (and sustainable) versions of either.
Basic Lessons to keep in mind:
Anyway… Long story short: The most important thing when trying to get buy-in is to help clarify exactly where the company wants to be in 5, 10, 20 years. Not pie-in-the-sky bullshit, but specifics. Once you have that, you can paint a clear picture of what the future of the company NEEDS to look like. Now you’ve flipped change on its head. Instead of selling uncertainty, you’re selling clarity.
Knowing where you’re going is 90% of getting there. Most company execs are so focused on meeting numbers this month and this quarter that they just aren’t able to look beyond the here and now long enough to actually drive their businesses anywhere. They’re too busy reacting to the next pothole or turn ahead. By helping them see 1 year into the future, then 2, then 5, than 10, you can help them impact their numbers now, this quarter, this half, this fiscal year, by giving their performance context in relation to where they want to actually take their business.
That’s a big part of what I do, and everything has to start with that. Before you can get to cultural change management, you have to make sure the leadership team knows where it wants to go and what it needs to do to get there.
The caveat: Lazy execs and the reality of horses that just won’t drink
But with all of that, if the CEO and the COO and the VP of this and that just don’t want to change their ways, if they are more committed to their game of golf and corner office and third McMansion than to the success of their business, there isn’t much I can do to help them. I already know I can’t fix stupid. I’m pretty sure I can’t fix lazy either.
People have to want to be successful, and it can be hard to convince a late career exec making seven or eight figures and eying retirement in five to ten years that success is about more than the wealth they’ve already amassed. Success is a frame of mind they either want to have or not. The biggest lesson for them is this: Success doesn’t live in the past. Memories do. Success lives in the here and now and tomorrow. It really doesn’t matter what you accomplished ten years ago. What matters is what you’re doing today, and what you’ll accomplish next. Anything else is just ego. Throw away the plaques and the trophies. They aren’t who you are.
A guy who just wants to enjoy the trappings of success but isn’t willing to work his ass off to perpetuate that success is a guy who’s given up. That kind of individual is completely worthless to me, and more importantly, to his/her organization.
Unless the rest of the management team and I can appeal to their sense of pride and self worth, and tap into the ambition that fueled them in their youth, they’re basically in the way. Folks like that either have to get back in the game or move on if you want the organization to evolve. I can’t light a fire under their ass every single day. I can do it for a while, but eventually they have to step up and want to run the ball all on their own.
So, all this to say that you won’t win them all, Sonny. Execs who have grown complacent, live in denial and refuse to accept that their companies are headed straight to the crapper in ten years are beyond being reasoned with. I’ll only get so far with them before I move on to someone who won’t waste my time.
In the end, I can’t help people who don’t want to help themselves. And since organizations are really collectives of people, you either find leadership teams made up of people who are willing to do whatever it takes to save and/or make their businesses kick ass, or management teams made up of people who are happy to pretend that everything is golden even though their business is either stalled or in the tank. Usually, the latter are the first to blame the economy or cheap imports or whatever else they can throw a cat at to explain slow, flat or negative growth rather than take the blame themselves.
I’m not a miracle worker. I wish I were, but I’m not. I help people who are serious about making their business truly successful and are looking for good honest help. The rest, I try not to waste my time with. It’s far too precious as it is.
At some point soon, I’ll actually go over how to create really solid internal cultures both from the top down (trust, leadership, mentoring and hiring practices) and from the bottom up (trust, engagement, tribe mentality, alignment with the organization’s belief system), so don’t go too far. We’ll visit this topic again.
Thanks for giving me my topic today, Sonny. Cheers.
Brand Building and Online Marketing Blog 
Olivier:
First, I appreciate you looking to your readers, and myself, for inspiration on your blog. Second, I just felt like we had a 10 minutes discussion over coffee after reading your post 🙂 OK, on to the good stuff…
I can’t tell you how much I was nodding my head and reliving a past experience in my career as I read through your post. Without knocking anyone, I’ve personally experienced a setting where your words could have been posted on every single wall in the building. You talked about knowing where you’re going and the steps needed to get there from where you are now. Well, the latter isn’t fun and saw first hand how NOT to try to accomplish this and how attempting it in this fashion doesn’t get anybody on board. Not the executives, not the leadership team, and certainly not the day-to-day employees who the aforementioned tried to basically coerce into believing such a ‘shift’. Aside from this backwards thinking, it’s the thought that culture change can be accomplished in a matter of weeks and with a few 30 minute meetings. And unfortunately, for myself and others who saw this, there was no swaying that upper team who was behind it.
I bring this up, not to bash or put down any one/company or anything I’ve experienced in the past – it’s certainly made me a better professional and person, but to put things into perspective from an actual business setting where the opposite of what you talk about was attempted and was swiftly unsuccessful.
Obviously I’m sure there are tons of examples similar to this one, as it’s a firm reminder for myself in not only my learning and understand of culture shift, change management, p2p business, etc., but to know even more so what I want and expect out of my next company I get on board with.
Thanks a lot for this one, O. Looking forward to the additional pieces to this.
Rock on, Sonny. I think we’ve all been there. Anyone who has worked for a real company has probably experienced this.
I think it stems from human nature. We can naturally work in teams of up to 6 people flawlessly, just like we can have a conversation at dinner with up to about 6 people per table. But make the group bigger, and it splits into smaller groups. We just aren’t wired to naturally be good at managing large numbers of people or connecting them with each other. More than work, it takes a certain level of awareness to recognize that limitation to start with, and then try to do something about it. 😉
That coffee conversation is coming, brother. Thanks a bunch for the comment.
Nice. Clear-eyed. Incisive. Well done.
The “change management” industry has always been a bit suspect to me. Change is not a buisiness goal, just as “branding” is not a business goal: it’s a means to an end.
As a branding guy, every time I talk to a company I’m dealing with some kind of major corporate change that has led to urgent talk about the brand. And quite often, I have to talk executives down from the same ledge: 1) don’t focus on the mechanics of branding OR change; focus on the results. 2) Plot the course. Then 3) as a leader, don’t be lazy: you OWN the responsibility to make this change take root.
Dennis, damn it, you just distilled my post into 2 paragraphs. Now why can’t I manage to do that?
😀
Thanks, man.
Olivier,
Thank you for your participation at Clemson’s NetworkBash. I’m showing your blog to some of my English 304 students who were unable to attend.
–Alex
The pleasure was all mine. 🙂
As long as you remind your students that everything I write could be edited down to about 3 paragraphs, they’ll be all right.
“You can’t divorce culture from infrastructure,” and yet, our traditional organizational structures, almost always represent a deep and often impassable schism between culture and the *official* structure in which it’s supposed to operate.
How many times have we seen organizations where there’s the official power structure–in the form of hierarchy–operating quite separately from the informal one? I can’t think of a single organization where they’ve been one and the same.
But how long can that really last? Is it possible, as I suspect it is, for organizational structures to be built culturally, not functionally? Can “human” businesses be structured any other way?
Thanks, as always, for opening a new path for my thoughts to follow.
Right. In many cases,a cookie-cutter “corporate” structure is wrongly applied to an organization that requires a greater level of customization based on the company’s unique culture, MO, and business model.
Great observation, Tam.
And, more commonly, in direct opposition to the personalities that fill the positions. Traditional corporate structures strip the humanity out of the positions they so neatly organize into hierarchies. But wherever you place them in organizations, people are people…and behave as such.
The ideal, of course, is to find a way to match the informal power structure to the formal one.
Right. That structure works for military organizations because the culture is so mission-driven and accepting of… tough love. But in an environment where people aren’t jazzed about being yelled at and treated roughly, that type of command structure loses its effectiveness fast.
In the world of training & development (Corporate Learning), the toughest situations are when we’re brought in to fix a “performance” issue in a vaccuum. It’s such a recipe for disaster and a waste of organizational resources. The best training in the world is wasted when it’s not directly applied to achieving specific business results.
The tough part is getting leaders to define those specific business results. When we’re building training, we like to start with a clear picture of optimum outcomes and compare those to what’s actually being produced. The YTD metrics are always readily available and never good enough. The leaders always want the numbers to be better but they rarely have a realistic sense of what that means (your 12B by 2012 resonates so well it’s scary). We’re given vague notions of a desired state and then told to “train the managers to coach better” or “teach the sales guys to sell more strategically.”
You’ve stated the solution so succintly: “Before you can get [to cultural change management [or performance changes], you have to make sure the leadership team knows where it wants to go and what it needs to do to get there.”
The greatest challenge of our careers as consultants is to earn the trust, build the credibility, and have the chops to be firm with the leaders in client organizations. It takes a strong consultant to say to the people signing the checks, “We’re not jumping into a training program (or marketing or branding etc) until we crystallize a 1yr, 2yr, 5yr plan that includes realistic measurable results.”
This post is like an “MBA in a nutshell.” Whenever I feel that I’m “losing my chops,” I’m going to re-read this for reinforcement!
–Nicole (@ndefalco)
Awesome, Nicole. Thank you. Whenever I feel like I’m losing my chops, I’m going to re-read your comment. 😀
Having the chops to be firm is (at least in my mind) the easiest part of the job. It’s much easier when you’re a consultant than when you’re an employee. Basically, you’re the authority. You’re the expert who’s been brought in to save the day because the company/client is either on its ass or heading there. So in my mind, it’s simple: I know how to do this. I know how to fix the problem(s). And I know how to train the client to fix their problems and make sure they don’t come back. So, there’s zero confidence problem on my end. I know what I’m there to do, and I know I am the best guy to do it.
Now, if they want to argue with me and tell me they’re right and I’m wrong, that’s fine if that’s what they want to do. And when they’re done feeding me their excuses, I have no problem telling them that’s the kind of attitude that got them in the trouble they’re in in the first place, and that it isn’t the attitude they need to have in order to get back on track. I’m not there to argue with anybody. I’m there to do a job. More to the point, I’m there because they haven’t really proven that they can actually do theirs. So they can either let me help them or I can leave and go work with a company that actually wants to get back on track, not just talk about it. 😉
You could never do this as an employee, even at the VP level. The only way you can do it is as an outside consultant. If you truly are good at what you do, and you know that you’re good at what you do, don’t ever let someone you are there to help intimidate you. People with excuses are great salesmen. They’ve been selling excuses their whole lives. Don’t fall for their emotional bullying. You’re the expert. You’re the brain surgeon. You’re the one thing that can get them kicking ass again. Their catalyst for success. If you let some scared, egocentric little dumbass talk you out of that certainty, you’ve done yourself (and more importantly your client) a huge disservice. Don’t fall for that BS. Learn to recognize it for what it is, and deflect it when it shows up. Hell, expose it. I like to provoke it out of the management team early so I know from the start who I am dealing with. Once you know, once the cards are down, you have the power in the room. You know who the scared little egocentric problem managers are. From that moment, you can take control of the situation by a) putting them in their place, and b) spending a little extra time correcting their bad behaviors in a constructive way. It’s always tough love with them. Harsh when you have to be, and encouraging when they step up to the challenge. There’s no neutral mode for them.
But that’s a whole other topic. 😉
Thanks for the comment. Much appreciated.
I used to work with a guy who would play the Braveheart soundtrack in his office to gear up for tough meetings and conversations with difficult people. I’m going to put these lines on an index card and read them before I walk into client meetings:
“People with excuses are great salesmen. They’ve been selling excuses their whole lives. Don’t fall for their emotional bullying. You’re the expert. You’re the brain surgeon. You’re the one thing that can get them kicking ass again. Their catalyst for success.”
Far more inpsiring than William Wallace!
Thanks!
–Nicole
I’m going to take your endorsement to my next pitch to a publisher. 😀
It’s been awhile since I read a topic about strategic management particularly change management. This is really a good one. Lengthy but worth reading. I learn a lot today.
You are sining to the choir on this one. Great post. I am a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt so when you start talking in terms of mapping a value stream I am right on the same page. It ceases to amaze me that more companies don’t take the time to understand their value stream from the perspective of sales and marketing. The real key is when they do this, it creates clarity!
Great points.
Some sharp thoughts and strong words here, Olivier. Well done. This is some of the most poignant observations I’ve ingested since I recently read 4DX (http://bit.ly/covey4dx). Your approach is very invigorating, and I personally feel more motivated than I have in a long time- thank you!