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Change is the Name of the Game

Change management can often be seen as delivering discrete activities towards a defined outcome. A series of changes in any organization requires a plan of action for delivery, which once complete, means we can get back to the day job.

Yet that’s just the time to think of change again.

The principle of change is one that can mean concern and worry for anyone. However grounded, confident and flexible we are, the thought of change – especially where it’s imposed on us – can be daunting.

Because of the inadequate manner in which change has so often been imposed, many employees see change management as one of those activities managers and leaders get involved in that can only bring distress and pain.

Good managers know that the clichéd ‘change is a constant’ is the best attitude and that there are ways to embody the spirit of change in a positive and developmental way. Thus changing the perception of change almost entirely for their fortunate people. The way it can be.

By taking active steps to deliver change management initially on just one single occasion to be inclusive, flexible and open, whilst retaining the outcome goal required, managers can change the reality of change to be a fun, engaging and empowering activity for their people.

So, once a manager has become much better at managing change and their people come to trust them and where they are going, a whole new opportunity comes along.

You see employees like best to be challenged in their work. They like to learn new stuff; they enjoy being stretched; they love to take new risks. Indeed they want to come to their work to enjoy their day and be fulfilled in what they do.

This does not come from delivering exactly the same stuff each day. The sausage-machine mentality doesn’t work well for most employees.

A manager good at helping change become a fun and exciting activity, where risk is minimized and the edginess of fear removed, can bring the two together.

Engaging a team in seeking change that will make a difference makes for exciting workplace. It makes individuals work much more effectively and enables outcomes to be extraordinary.

Where the status quo is the safer option, these amazing teams will actively hunt out change opportunities to create even better results than before well, just because it’s a fun and creative thing to do.

‘What can we change for the better?’, will become their mantra, every day in every way.

By leveraging the energy that change can precipitate when change management is delivered in a good way, a manager will be able to radically magnify the performance of any team.

Not only will results be exceptional and out of the box, but their people will be engaged and love to stay, contribute and do even more of this stuff. And as manager who is captaining this ship, what a testament to their capabilities too.

© Martin Haworth 2011. This is an expanded version of just one of many change management ideas, from Resilience in Change. For your free – downloadable today – ‘Managing Change’ Super-Simple Success Tips e-book, visit http://www.ResilienceInChange.com

Delegation – To Whom? When?

In a recent interview, Ron Dennis of the McLaren Formula 1 team said,

“I’m the executive chairman, but if I delegate a role, I’ll step away & let that person get on with it”.

When we lead and manage teams, we cannot stand alone and do it all by ourselves on our own. Our role is to get the best from the many…

Delegation is all about clearing our own desks of the ‘stuff’ that comes at us and giving the tasks to others. We do this for a number of vital reasons:-

1. We delegate to others strengths

Low confidence is one of the biggest challenges that organizations face. Helping others to see their greatnesses is a big step on the way.

So we give them work they are good at, love to do and can deliver perhaps even better than we can ourselves.

‘Catching others doing things right’, is a great mantra for any manager or leader.

2. We delegate to others weaknesses

Now, where this works it’s a great solution on all sides. When we show confidence in others to develop their weaker skills – as long as we hold their hand on the way – it builds capability and also team capacity.

Care is needed that we acknowledge exactly where these are not weaknesses just because they haven’t had the time to develop – they simply are a weakness.

And we don’t push something that will only reduce confidence and a sense of failure.

3. We delegate our own weaknesses

Why struggle with talents we don’t have? Where we know that we simply aren’t good at some things why keep trying?

Great leaders give their own areas of absolute weakness or ineffectiveness to others who are not only more capable, but also will benefit from showing their capability too.

4. We delegate our own strengths

Of course there are some elements of work where our role requires our personal skills and usually leaders are recruited because they are good at it.

Where succession planning, employee development and motivation would find it valuable, delegation of areas where a leader is very skilled is a worthwhile activity.

It also helps leaders from staying within their own comfort zone too – just doing what they are good at – which can be synonymous with what they ‘like’ to do.

5. We delegate to develop people

We might pick out specific activities that we usually deliver ourselves and pro-actively choose people who would benefit from having these delegated to.

This is part of structured development planning where the delegation is a focused ‘gift’ from the leader to the individual.

6. We delegate for efficiency

As highly paid leaders, we can, of course, choose what we do. Because of this, we need to be fully focused to ensure our organization gets full value from the higher reward the role gives to us individually.

In effect, we delegate everything we possibly can where – very honestly – we decide whether an activity can be delegated with no loss of performance in the organization – sometimes in the longer- rather than the shorter-term.

We can then get on with our own job description and let others get to theirs.

A couple of key points on delegation

As Ron Dennis said this week in the article in the Mail On Sunday Live magazine, delegate and leave them alone to get on with it. There is a rider to this. Be there, at least at first where they might need support.

Delegation is not about closing the door and letting them struggle.

Great leaders keep a watchful, supportive and distant eye on those to whom they have delegated.

How far can you go with delegation? Well, probably much further than you think.

Dealing with Business Changes

Change is all around. It is something that no-one can avoid, especially for those in the corporate world, because business change is always looming around the corner.

Whether it’s your most awaited promotion, being a part of a new team or being sent to work for a branch of your company in another location, it is truly certain that the only thing constant in anyone’s life is change.

So how do you deal with business change and the feelings that accompany it? Do you sulk in a corner and complain about how unfair life is? Or do you stand with your chin up and face it head on?

If your answer is the former, here are a few tips to help make your answer the latter instead.

Given the experience of change people often have, it’s quite understandable for many to feel uncomfortable simply hearing the word ‘change’. However, instead of tending to looking at the negative side of things, it can be much more productive to look for positives instead.

By doing this, changes ahead can be much less daunting and instead of trying to resist, embracing it with open arms can be of great value indeed. Once people know that change is going to happen anyway, it’s not worth wasting time and effort evading it.

The sooner most individuals get familiar with the said change, the sooner they’ll find the exciting new possibilities that come with it.

Even more important, is that whenever business change happens, no-one is ever alone in handling it. Building a support system for one another will strengthen bonds and make professional relationships work in a more collaborative way.

Lastly, be patient when change happens. Yes, it may take quite a while to get used to the new challenges, but over time, yesterdays change becomes today’s norm. So, by taking control and avoiding the seemingly endless and uncertain period take its toll, everyone will gradually be able to adjust and move forward.

When there is little control, business change is feared by many because of the feelings that they encounter when faced with it. Yet, with enough preparation and proper knowledge, all these worries can be found unnecessary.

Following the tips and ideas above can make business change much more interesting – and much more successful too.

The Purpose of Team

‘No man is an island’, or so said John Donne back in the early 17th century. Never more relevant than today. Never more relevant than in the field of business, a team is the vital component to deliver success.

Whilst there is a value in quality management – or we would not need managers at all – their capacity to produce results that are the required outcomes simply cannot be delivered alone, however good any individual is.

The true quality of managers is to leverage the numbers. To produce the synergies of their people where they engineer performance that is more, much more than simply a sum of the parts.

Blending together the varied components of a team is the artform that the best managers have been able to harness. Using the most effective man-management skills to generate collaborative performances by team members that go way beyond individual and isolated capacities.

That’s what managers do.

Groups of individuals, brought together to achieve a common purpose; bring different skills; varied experiences; wider potentials and more, that enable volumes of work to be delivered that individuals simply cannot. Groups do this.

Teams are more.

Teams are enlightened individuals who understand, appreciate and are engaged by the opportunity to work together for the shared outputs and have been able to step aside from personal interest and ego.

Great managers are able to motivate, engage and fulfill the potential that the individuals in their team offer.

And in doing so, they create results that are more than firstly they as one person – and secondly their people as individuals could possibly generate.

They leverage the synergy of the possibilities that teamwork is able to provide.

The purpose of ‘team’ is to be deliver more – be more – than is possible with isolated individuals, however gifted they may be. As inherently social animals, we cannot deliver outstanding results alone.

We need to be more than one. We need to bring together the many to be even more than they could individually contribute. In a place where 1+1 equals more than two.

Sometimes much more.

Under New Management

My football club has a new manager. So I set to thinking about just what he might be doing on his first day.

Clearly, there will be a need to be introduced to all the key people on his team – and not just the players – so that he has at least got some sort of idea of who does what and where each of them lies within his remit of management.

Of course his behaviours will come under quite a bit of scrutiny too and how he comes over will – at least for the beginning of his reign – create an environment which is very important for the early days.

Now, managers have an obligation to deliver results – none more obviously than a football manager. Positive results will be great if they are instantaneously successful and they will also need to stand the longer test of time, during which overall team performance will be judged.

Like in a race, position in a league gives an obvious assessment of how they do and by definition, how their manager has delivered too.

In the cut throat world of football management, managers are only judged on results and, perhaps sadly, not really how they deliver them.

So there are managers out there in the industry whose attitudes and behaviours run the whole range. From out and out dictators, to the highly approachable ‘people-persons’. There’s no simple template that sorts out the winners from the has-beens.

On that first day, there is probably one asset that will be second-to-none for this new manager.

In his interests too, listening carefully to what each and every member of his extended team say will build relationships and trust in him – with the added benefit that the longer he listens, the better he will understand the individuals who will have to perform their duties – often on his behalf as they cross that white line onto the pitch each week.

Best wishes then to Eddie Howe at Burnley FC!

For an extended range of activities that the best managers focus on on their first day, here’s a link to an article I wrote a while ago http://supersuccessfulmanager.com/blog/10-things-better-managers-do-on-their-first-day/

Goals – Bring ‘Em On

For many managers, career development is about putting the hours in, developing performance and skills and then moving up the ladder when the opportunity comes along.

The next rung to climb may, depending on the organization (and how organized they are) be structured to bring the best out of the potential that manager seems to have, dictated by the outcomes of assessments, performance reviews and consequently ‘noticed’ possibilities espied by line managers, project team leaders and others – often in random ways.

The next opportunity comes along on a wing and a prayer and suddenly you’re in the thick of a new challenge, trying to make the best of what you inherit. That can be an established team running well; a poor team who are struggling (‘Where did our last boss go, anyway?’) or a new project where the sheet of paper is blank.

The temptation to get in the thick of what you find is very attractive.

Heads down and see how things show up is an easy attitude to have. Being really busy from the off, shows the team your style of hard work, focus on the short terms and, above all, role-model the level of effort you expect from them real soon.

Smart managers are a lot cleverer than this. They DO invest their early days creating excellent relationships with their people. They show interest in them, listen a lot to show that they care and show they want to learn and understand about them.

And from a very early stage, they use the language of ‘goals’ and ‘expectations’ so that this becomes embodied in the culture of how the team will operate.

Some caution in the goals created will be necessary, of course, to ensure the direction taken is fully aligned with the outputs expected too. That said, there’s nothing wrong with creating goals together from early on in the relationships – and then together tweaking them as necessary.

The alternative of blindly drifting along, is a recipe for only one outcome, a vague set of results achieved with people who are puzzled with what they are supposed to be doing and disillusioned all the more because of this.

Better to have clearly focused goals to start and then refine together, than have ill-defined (if any) goals and no real direction.