Not All Employees Welcome Change: Don’t Let that Stop You
Great Managers Keep Their Employees Uncomfortable!
Most managers feel they should keep everyone on their team happy and comfortable. But, we have found such managers usually have poor long-term job security. They are secure for a period of three to five years, then they are let go or moved to a less significant position by the organization. Why are they moved to positions of less influence? Because the whole world rapidly changed while their focus was on keeping people happy and comfortable. Major problems in the areas of customer satisfaction, quality, timeliness, or cost-competitiveness have usually occurred.
To be successful, your focus needs to be on staying ahead of your competition. The problem with rapid change is that it usually makes people feel uncomfortable, unhappy, and fearful. The following recommendations can help keep your people “uncomfortable” while ensuring your department or firm’s long-term success.
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Read the writing on the wall. Higher customer demands. Faster service requirements. Increasing quality standards. The economy. Technology. All of these changes are going to have a significant impact on your department’s or organization’s success.
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Raise the bar! What are you doing to raise the bar for your employees in areas such as customer and employee satisfaction, quality, response time, etc.? If you do not significantly raise the bar, who will? To not raise the bar, even for six months, means the world around you moved forward during that slice of time…but your team did not.
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Over-communicate the need for change. Managers and leaders usually see the need to change before the general workforce because they have more available information. The more information you provide your employees with regarding your industry, the economy, environment, and your customers, the more people will understand the need to change.
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Implement fast change…not slow change. Fast change is easier to implement and more accepted by employees than slow change. As one CEO recently stated when faced with the need to rapidly realign the needs of her firm to the competitive environment, “The people are going to change or we are going to change the people.”
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Hold people accountable for results. Don’t give people the opportunity to blame others for the lack of achieving results. Ensure that everyone is clear about what results are expected from them and in what time frame.
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Re-define loyalty. In the past, a loyal employee worked for you a long time and followed an informal corporate motto that stated, “Keep your nose to the grindstone and don’t make waves.” Today, the employee who is out there chopping the water-demanding that we change fast to stay one step ahead of our competition-is the loyal employee. The individual who complains that we are not changing fast enough to the new environment is now the loyal employee.
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Get passionate and excited about change. Talk to customers; talk to the employees on the front line; talk to people in industries different from the industry you are in; read books that talk about innovation; and go out and talk to your competitors. All this will result in an information base to help you become more confident, passionate, and excited about the need to change.
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Filed Under: Leadership, Leading Change, Peter's Blog on February 18th, 2010
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