Chief Executive, Managing Director, General Manager: Stage By Stage Transformation
Performance Improvement, People and Transition Practice
Stage 1:
The organization articulates the challenges that are motivating it to change. It designs a response and establishes measures for success.
PRESIDENT, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, SENIOR MANAGING AND REPRESENTATIVE DIRECTOR, MANAGING DIRECTOR, EXECUTIVE BOARD:
- Speak the truth.
- Provide brutally honest answers, again and again.
- Why do we have to change?
- Why isn't what we used to do good enough anymore?
- Be friendly, available, approachable and resolute.
- Help management and employees listen and learn in the process of teaching.
- Be attuned to what others are feeling and what assistance they might need from you.
- Hear the truth, absorb bad news, consider the implications, don't take it personally, never shoot the messenger, and achieve accomplishments no matter how risky and scary it is.
- Change the course of the business and organization based on new truths.
- At every occasion, passionately take on the status quo.
- Know when to give directions and when to receive them; everyone has a boss.
- Take charge of change
Stage 2:
Here's where the actual change takes place. It's in the details of this stage that the devil and the unexpected lurk. This stage is one of execution and adjustment to hard, practical realities.
MANAGING DIRECTOR, GENERAL MANAGER, CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER, CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, CHIEF KNOWLEDGE OFFICER, SENIOR MANAGING AND REPRESENTATIVE DIRECTOR, VICE PRESIDENT, EXECUTIVE BOARD:
- Recall repeatedly that it may be weeks or months before the middle of the pack realizes the race is underway. Be prepared to divert from what you had planned to say.
- Remember that change in the behavior of employees, management, teams, control systems, production, and processes only happen when people do it for themselves.
- Face the truth. It is scary, like asking yourself, "Why am I married to this person?" You and your colleagues put so much of yourselves into establishing something that you don't want to ask why.
- Show that your word is your bond. Inquire, probe, and suggest alternatives that recognize people's emotional makeup. Emotions, tension and the uncertainty of outcomes run hand-in-hand with transition.
- Leave behind the one-human-resource-size-fits-all mental model.
- Some employees wish to be treated like free agents.
- Others may seek reciprocal lifetime loyalty between employer and employee.
Stage 3:
The organization reviews what it has "won," "lost" and "undecided." This stage is about acceptance of limitations and adjustment to the new realities of the post-change world.
CHIEF EXECUTIVE, MANAGING DIRECTOR, GENERAL MANAGER, EXECUTIVE BOARD:
- Seek and listen to "tempered radicals" and "loose cannons."
- Craft individual deals with direct reports, key employees at all levels demonstrating leadership, and creative employees delivering outcomes.
- Recognize that work will engulf all your time.
- Examine at least one thing that you do each week and consider how you might do it differently and better, so that more time becomes available. Execute the change and model performance improvement and a learning mindset to the organization.
- Exhibit respect and affection. Reach out and place a guiding and loving hand on the shoulder of workers and contractors at all levels and locations.
- Be reverent in words and deeds. The firm succeeds through the actions of people throughout the enterprise and the will of something far bigger than the President of the Management Board, Chief Executive, Managing Director and the Chief Operations Officer.
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