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In this eighth and final post, based on Nick Anderson's book, Focusing Change to Win, we highlight contributions from 1072 business leaders. This post provides conclusions on how leaders create thriving organizations, as well as a summary of the lessons from the previous posts. 

Why should leaders focus on their organization’s essence?

An organization’s essence, what they stand for, is the fusion of mission, vision, values, intent and ethics. These components should be the focus of aligning and realigning people, rather than delivering the corporate directives after a strategic planning retreat. Sustaining an organization’s essence is a dynamic that requires everyone’s engagement to define and redefine under changing situations.

It’s only by leaders “inter-reacting” that they can develop the shared clarity of others about the organization’s essence – “what we stand for!” From shared clarity comes confidence, from confidence comes cohesion, and from cohesion comes the freedom to decide and act. That’s how organizations will stay on track today. It will be the result of many people making many decisions true to their organization’s essence.

It’s also to be expected that some employees (including some executives) will not “buy into” an organization’s Essence once it is clearly defined. Leaders should then be prepared for those employees and managers to transition out of the organization where they will benefit from a better fit, and organizational cohesion is maintained.

What are the dangers of using technology to increase control?

Technology increases the illusion of greater control which can feed a leader’s “Control Addiction.” More measurement equals more control, or so some think. But measuring what is easy to measure can have the very opposite effect. The problem is that most of what is easy to measure has already occurred. What is difficult is dealing with the factors that are difficult to measure and with forecasting what is likely to happen down the road. We can’t spend more time looking through the “rear view mirror” when we have a winding road ahead of us. Technology’s reasonable cost and accelerated speed feed this addiction with the past and “looking in the rear view mirror” by accessing ever more data and information, but at the cost of gaining knowledge and wisdom.  There is no value in relearning what is already known.

Why do we have difficulty developing leaders that can thrive in today’s conditions?

Today’s conditions are not good proving grounds for the leaders we need. Doing more with less, multi-tasking, and the growing doubt that we may be doing the wrong things all mean that decision-making and expectations are now more compressed. Consequently, entrenched expediency leads us into solving one problem so quickly that we find we have now created five more problems. We are so busy trying to solve problems, there’s no time for “Where the hell are we going?” These conditions are not good for selecting or developing leaders who can work well under fluid and complex conditions.

How do we develop leaders that can thrive?

The tension between what leaders want to achieve and what exists as their current culture prevents traditional leadership training from making a significant impact. For example, many leaders’ previous training has left them feeling that they could do a better job by doing the job themselves. Not only is that an ineffective concept, but there is little sign that they have addressed their junior leaders’ performance issues, either. The consequence is that leading up to a change, they lack confidence and skills to handle the natural uncertainty that change creates. Consequently, they default to avoidance and expediency, and as a result, staff resistance rises and morale suffers. 

The conclusion is that Leaders need to develop a better framework to assess their competence to lead people and implement the next and subsequent changes more effectively.

A Final Thought

Our position is that it’s only by energizing people and harnessing technologies better than anyone else that organizations can survive and thrive. Genuinely aligned, empowered, and collaborative people will outperform the competition every time. A leader’s role is to create successful change that fulfills people and avoids human casualties. Leaders need to create working relationships that are rewarding, not just superficially productive. 

Focusing Change to Win Summary

• Organizations must change with the times to remain successful and maintain competitive advantage
• However, change failure rates currently are above 60%
• To find out why, we analyzed 6000 business leaders’ comments from 80 countries related to their experience with change management
• Failure is caused primarily by people-related factors; organizational change can be traumatic and resisted by those involved, and when it is, change fails
• Leaders need aligned employees that support and trust change in order to stand any chance of success.
• Once Leaders recognize that change resistance causes stress (and vice-versa) and identify their specific stressors, they can be more effective in reducing it

To attend a webinar on this topic or other topics covered in Focusing Change to Win, go to http://focusingchangetowin.com/webinar/. Use the comment form below or email us directly at admin@tbointl.com to ask a question or to open a dialogue with the author or one of our other team members.