lead your organization through change.
change management leadership development raining and assessment
ChangeMakers
Are any of the following statements true for your organization?:
- You plan to sell your business within the next few years
Your management team is to a sale, merger or succession what location is to real estate: Everything. Yet, often in the pressure and excitement leading up to a major change, this gets lost in the mix. Gaps in leadership can undermine your objectives and blindside you, causing the sale to fall through, valuation to suffer, a merger to be a disaster, or a family owned business to die prematurely.
If your organization is like most, it’s full of smart, talented people with gaps in their leadership skills that can get in the way of your plans. This is common because the vast majority of people in leadership roles have NEVER had any kind of leadership training or development. They’re about to be tested and whether they pass or fail can determine whether your enterprise lives or dies.
Your team needs to be prepared to meet the following challenges the Leading For Successful Change Program was designed to address.
Three ways leaders decrease productivity and stop change in its tracks.
1. Your management team may not be up to the job of merging cultures. You know your ultimate success depends upon people adapting to new rules, agreements, relationships, and objectives. You know how challenging change is for people. You also know that to be successful the new teams must come together and come together fast. You’ve got a lot at stake here. You believe in your management team. But you also don’t know if they’ve got what it takes for extraordinary challenges.
2. The new culture may not be tolerant of your management team. The truth is, some of your managers probably have significant gaps in their skills and abilities. The staff may have gotten away with a lot of waste and misbehavior. Conversely, the employees may have watched beloved co-workers develop into leadership roles, and cut them a lot of slack. New conditions won’t tolerate waste and both new and old employees might not be so willing to tolerate foibles. Change has a way of bringing leadership flaws to the forefront in disastrous ways. And you can’t always run interference.
3. You can’t get by with leaders who can’t understand
what’s needed and then communicate it clearly. You don’t need people who don’t
get it to undermine forward movement. At the same time, you can’t get by
without these people who hold the intellectual capital of your enterprise.
* Understand the new mission. You may not ever have done much with mission in the past. But now you need people to get behind the new mission so they can set clear objectives that keep the organization on track. You don’t have time for detours.
* Pull teams together. Divisiveness is not going to help your company through this fragile time. A bunch of lone wolves won’t get the job done. You want your leaders to get the skills they need to align everyone toward the same goals and inspire the kind of collaboration, support, and individual responsibility that will prevent the venture from coming apart at the seams.
* Create true accountability. While your company might have gotten away with some weak follow-through and finger-pointing in normal times, change requires a shared ownership of the outcomes and a depth of commitment to do whatever it takes. And it takes strong leaders with clear vision to inspire this in an organization.
* Manage key relationships well. You can already see the potential for devastating misunderstandings. You don’t want to see any of your valued clients jump ship. You don’t want to set up trusted vendors to drop the ball. You don’t want to lose valued staff members who get lost in the shuffle. You need leaders who have the sensitivity and the skills to deftly keep important relationships solid.
* Can influence culture. You know that the little things can derail all your plans. What’s common practice in one company is considered rude in another. And people resist change. You need leaders who can see the issues, speak the language, and create bridges between the cultures.
* Can flow with whatever comes their way. Basically you need your leaders to have the foundational skills, tools, knowledge and perspectives so that when the unexpected happens they still know what to do.
Too good to be true? Hardly. Any manager can become
stronger in these areas.You don’t need them to be perfect. You just need them to
progress.
ChangeMakers takes them to new levels in their leadership skills. This comprehensive program gives potential leaders the tools, skills, knowledge and perspectives they need to step up and facilitate change in your organization.
ChangeMakers makes it possible for any manager to step into a leadership role and respond to extraordinary challenges in new and more effective ways.
The ChangeMakers system is built on 4 guiding principles:
ChangeMaker Principle #1: Embodying Leadership Presence
Great organizations begin with great leadership. While some people seem to come to this naturally, it can absolutely be taught and developed. It’s just that the vast majority of people in leadership roles have never had any structured opportunity to develop effectively. Showing managers how to cultivate a leadership presence inspires confidence and direction in everyone.
ChangeMaker Principle #2: Leveraging mission
Mission is not just the paragraph on the first page of an annual report. It’s the backbone of the organization, and when it supports everything an organization does it creates the space for a clarity that keeps the organization focused and on track. Knowing how to move from mission and vision to creating meaningful goals and actionable objectives that facilitate execution is critical for any organization, particularly during times of change.
ChangeMaker Principle #3: Relationships are everything
Nothing happens in business without relationships. All things become possible through relationship. Leaders who can navigate the complex relationships, whether with clients, the board, shareholders, colleagues, employees, vendors, key industry players and the public can both circumnavigate problems and create new possibilities for your enterprise.
The days of blame and finger-pointing must end. It’s time for a new definition of accountability. When your organization comes to understand that accountability equals commitment to success whatever it takes, it means being responsible to each other for commitments and agreements. It’s a different way of doing business essential to coming through change not just intact, but better than ever.
Other benefits of ChangeMakers:
* Investors see you as a better risk. There’s nothing like a strong management team to inspire confidence.
* Leaders stick around. They appreciate being supported and developed. Replacing a leader is hugely expensive so longer tenure is a very good thing.
* There’s less turnover overall. People don’t quit companies, they quit their direct supervision. When your leaders develop their skills, their direct reports do better as well and stick around longer. Which saves you even more on staffing.
* Situations are better set up so there are fewer problems. Problems are surfaced earlier and dealt with before they become crises. If a crisis happens, it’s dealt with immediately before it becomes a disaster.
* Morale improves. Stress is reduced. Sick days decrease. It just feels better to be in your environment.
* You become a talent magnet. Your organization becomes a model. People want to work for you. People want to work hard for you.
* There’s little if any dead wood. With new skills, difficult conversations are no longer avoided. Non-producers get coached or let go.
* You turn meetings from huge time, money and energy drains into productivity generators. Ineffective meetings cost millions and millions of dollars. Effective meetings have the potential to generate millions and millions of dollars. You choose.
* You hear a lot less complaining and have to do a lot less babysitting.
* You develop the ability to continue to change. This change won’t be your last. Very few companies are doing what their founders envisioned they’d be doing. Change occurs constantly and the ability to adjust to changing marketing conditions is necessary to the long term viability of an organization.
How the program works:
ChangeMakers is a comprehensive 6-12 month program; a hybrid of coaching, training, consulting and assessment offered exclusively in-house for groups of up to 20 participants.
• It begins with assessment. Our ChangeAble program sets clear direction and makes the learning personal
• Twice monthly group meetings focus on one topic at a time, allowing participants to put concepts into practice, fine-tune, problem solve and make them their own successfully.
• Private coaching 2x per month per participant, allows us to address specific challenges unique to the individual
• Follow-up 360 at culmination measures ROI
• Quarterly meetings with key stakeholders to report progress
• Coach availability between meetings to support integration of concepts into the workplace
• Can be delivered live or virtually
How ChangeMakers differs from other Leadership Development programs:
* It’s integrated into the day-to-day business
* We work with one topic at a time giving participants the opportunity to put concepts into practice, fine-tune and problem solve, increasing integration and success
* ROI is measurable: we start and finish with 360-degree feedback to measure impact and returns.
* We focus on essential areas other programs miss: meetings, presence, mission/shadow mission, culture
Is ChangeMakers a good fit for you?
ChangeMakers is effective for managers at all levels of your organization. It can also be very valuable for high potentials you’d like to see take on more responsibility
If you’ve read this far, your next step is a free strategy session to explore how ChangeMakers could work in your organization. If so, I invite you to contact me for a complimentary Strategy Session.
In your Strategy Session we’ll explore the specific
challenges facing your organization, what kind of results you’d like to see
instead and how this program may be of help. Whatever the outcome, you’ll leave
the conversation with greater clarity about the issues you’re facing and
excited about what’s possible. The conversation takes about an hour and can be
held in person or by phone.
Click here to book your ChangeMakers
strategy session now.
Click here to evaluate
your leaders readiness
for major change.
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