In a World of Constant Change, Leaders Need to Make Change Work
Hoboken, NJ (PRWEB) July 18, 2013 -- Randy Pennington, author of the new book Make Change Work: Staying Nimble, Relevant, and Engaged in a World of Constant Change (Wiley; July 2013; ISBN: 978-1118617465; Hardcover & E-Book; $22.95), says that most of the people who work for you are willing to embrace change. However, they are just waiting for someone to lead and go first.
According to Pennington, “The answer will almost always be ‘yes,’ when you ask people if they know of something that could change to make things faster, better, cheaper, or friendlier in their organization. The problem isn’t the awareness that things could and should change. It is the urgency and permission to do so. Leaders create that permission when they go first.”
Pennington cites Ford CEO Allan Mulally as an example of leaders going first to make change work.
“CNBC ran a wonderful show called ‘Ford: Rebuilding an American Icon.’ In one segment, it described the Taurus Conference Room where color-coded charts paper the walls showing the status of projects and plans. The show describes the incident where the first executive color coded a project in red indicating trouble. This was unheard of in the legacy Ford culture, and Mulally applauded. And by doing so, he opened the door to making an important change in the culture. Mulally went first.”
Pennington says that companies, teams, and leaders can fall prey to 3D Vision: Denial, Distortion, and Delusion. And when that occurs, the change required to stay competitive in a changing environment suffers.
“One of the most challenging aspects of changing a company’s culture is helping people see that things really are different. People hear our rhetoric, but they watch our actions,” says Pennington. “It sounds simple, but leaders shoot their transformation efforts in the foot when they were unwilling to go first and model the change.”
Pennington offers these ideas for leaders in his book, Make Change Work:
1. Make it safe to tell the truth. Every change will experience bumps in the road. When the leader models open communication and the willingness to hear bad news, it opens the door for the truth to come out. And as we have always heard, “The truth shall set you free.”
2. Tolerate ambiguity as long as there are signs of progress. When it comes to transforming an organization, the shortest distance between two points is often not a straight line. It is a stroll around the block. Not everyone is starting from the same place, and we all move forward at a different pace. You have to keep moving forward, and unless you are in crisis mode, you need to tolerate some differences in how quickly others change.
3. Solicit feedback and work on yourself. We evaluate our own performance based on our intentions. Others evaluate it based on their perceptions of our behavior. The best leaders go first by constantly tweaking and adjusting their own performance to model the change they want.
About the Author:
Randy Pennington is a 20+-year business performance veteran, author, and consultant. He has worked with leading organizations including Transamerica Life & Protection, First Texas Bancorp, SmithBucklin, Hyatt Hotels and Resorts, Texas A&M University, Marathon Oil, Sprint, Albermarle, Progressive Insurance, and DFW Airport in addition to government agencies at the local, state, and national level. Randy is also 15-time teaching excellence award winning instructor in the Cox Business Leadership Center at Southern Methodist University. His ideas and comments have appeared in The New York Times, Entrepreneur, Executive Excellence, on CNN, Fox News, the BBC, ABC radio, and numerous professional and trade journals. He is author of two previous books: Results Rule! which received the Best Book Award from USA Book News in 2007 and On My Honor, I Will: The Journey to INTEGRITY-DRIVEN Leadership.
To schedule an interview with Randy Pennington or to receive a review copy of his new book, please contact Heather Condon, Publicist - WILEY - hcondon(at)wiley(dot)com - 201-748
Visit http://www.penningtongroup.com/make-change-work/
Heather Condon, Wiley, http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/, 201-748-6017, [email protected]
Share this article