Strategy: A Primer265
Weave your vision into everyday management.
Your employees need repeated exposure to your ideas in order to really in-
ternalize them. “Executives who communicate well incorporate messages
into their hour-by-hour activities,” says Kotter. “In a routine discussion
about a business problem, they talk about how proposed solutions fi t (or
don’t fi t) into the bigger picture. In a regular performance appraisal, they
talk about how the employee’s behavior helps or undermines the vision.” By
orienting employee interactions around your vision, you show your people
how the strategic change will work and why it matters—and that you want
them to take it seriously.
Find the right allies.
People must accept the messenger before they accept the message. Chances
are you aren’t that messenger for everyone, and that’s OK. Find people who
are. Look up and down the chain of command for individuals whose col-
leagues see them as trustworthy and competent, and who themselves seem
open to change. Focus on persuading these people, and ask them to play
a leadership role with their peers. That could mean facilitating a meeting
with the rest of the team, playing backup for you in a Q&A, or simply sup-
porting your plan in regular interactions with their colleagues.
Court the uncommitted.
Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linksy, who teach leadership at the John F.
Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and are in private
practice with Cambridge Leadership Associates, advise that “the people
who will determine your success are often those in the middle.” These em-
ployees don’t have anything against your initiative per se, but “they do have
a stake in the comfort, stability, and security of the status quo,” write Heif-
etz and Linksy. “They’ve seen change agents come and go, and they know
that your initiative will disrupt their lives and make their futures uncer-
tain. You want to be sure that this general uneasiness doesn’t evolve into
a move to push you aside.” To recruit these players, sincerely acknowledge
their accomplishments, as well as the loss and sacrifi ce that change entails.
266Managing the Business
Help them understand the personal upside to adapting to change. Also
make it clear that only those who can and will adapt will have a future on
your team.
Overcoming resistance
Even if you take all these steps to gain support for your vision, your team
members may still have some legitimate reservations. If you’re asking them
to do something new, they may worry about risking failure or about chang-
ing their status from master to apprentice. Perhaps you’re asking them
to throw out comfortable assumptions—that they provide a certain kind
of value to the company, that the work they do is stable and prosperous.
Maybe change upends the established balance of power, bringing some
skill sets and experiences to new prominence and devaluing others.
Dealing with these reactions is tough, but your leadership can survive
some discontent. Here are two approaches you can try:
Cook the confl ict.
While it’s important to confront the fear and doubt that’s driving resis-
tance, you can’t always afford to bring confl ict to a head. Sometimes, open
clashes can help resolve disagreements and channel your people’s passion
in a constructive way. Other times, they simply put too much stress on the
group’s morale.
To balance this delicate equation, Heifetz and Linksy recommend two
techniques: “First, create a secure place where the confl icts can freely bub-
ble up”—maybe an off-site retreat with an outside facilitator, or an on-site
conversation governed by a special set of rules for respectful, open dia-
logue. Insulate these conversations from your discussions about actually
implementing and executing change. That means holding separate meet-
ings, at separate times, with separate agendas. “Second, control the tem-
perature” of the confl ict by pushing people to tackle a tough issue when
you think they can resolve it constructively, and by backing away from
disagreements or slowing the pace of change when the group’s morale be-
comes fragile.
Strategy: A Primer267
Engage others in problem solving.
When everyone is looking to you for answers, you may feel you need to
provide them all yourself. But your employees must own this change, too,
and they need to feel competent in the new regime. That means “forc[ing]
yourself to transfer . . . much of the work and problem-solving to oth-
ers,” say Heifetz and Linsky. If ever there was a time to delegate, it’s now.
Encourage discussion, collaboration, and creative thinking among team
members around specifi c problems or challenges that arise.
Creating a change-ready culture
It’s easier to lead change in an organization that embraces change as a mat-
ter of course. Your company is such an organization if it has effective and
respected leaders, doesn’t luxuriate in the status quo, and is accustomed to
collaborative work. To foster this kind of environment, Harvard Business
School professor Michael Beer has recommended four approaches for chal-
lenging the complacency:
Educate employees about the organization’s
competitive situation.
Your employees may not be concerned about productivity, customer ser-
vice, or costs because they simply don’t know what’s wrong. Share the data
that’s driving your decisions with your employees and explain the short-
and long-term implications for the company.
Solicit input about employees’ dissatisfactions
and problems.
You may be out of touch with weaknesses of the business or emerging
threats—things that front-line employees understand through daily ex-
perience. If this is the case, you can’t be a credible agent of change. To
better understand how your people see the business, ask them what they
think and then communicate that information up the chain of command.
By opening communication between the front lines and the C-suite, you’ll
268Managing the Business
invite your team to think more critically about how the organization can
change and make them coauthors of the new strategy. Encourage your em-
ployees to be open about the challenges, as well as ideas and solutions that
might solve the issues at hand.
Create dialogue about the data.
One-way information sharing is important, but real alignment happens
when employees and management develop a joint understanding of the
company’s problems. Stage conversations where each group can pose ques-
tions and offer ideas, incorporating different points of view in a single, co-
herent discourse.
Set high standards and expect people to meet them.
The act of stating high standards by itself creates dissatisfaction with the
current level of performance. Stage “stretch goals” for your team that are
diffi cult but achievable, and backed up with real resource commitments
from upper management. Your employees need to believe that they truly
can master the new skills and tasks you’ve set for them, and that you’re
committed to their success.
Change management is an important skill in today’s business world, where
strategy-formulation initiatives, reorganizations, and audacious goals are
increasingly the norm. If you lead your team through change success-
fully—at any level—you’ll increase the group’s productivity and deliver new
benefi ts to your organization.
The more you incorporate a strategic mindset into your everyday life as a
manager, the more benefi ts you’ll see in your own career and on your team.
By emphasizing the strategic value of team members’ contributions and
inviting them into a larger conversation about the future of the company,
you deepen the meaning of their work.
Strategy: A Primer269
Recap
■
Although you may not formulate strategy, strategic thought is already a part
of your job when it comes to managing the company’s resources properly.
■
Your role as a strategist will evolve as you assume more responsibility. But
because few companies explicitly train managers for this sort of work, even
experienced managers will benefi t from a review.
■
Strategy aims to develop a business’s competitive advantage and compound
it. The basis of this advantage is diff erence—the unique value your company
alone can deliver.
■
Your company can create diff erence in three diff erent ways: need-based,
variety-based, or access-based strategic positioning.
■
You can evaluate your company’s strategic position by analyzing its business
with these three lenses.
Action items
❏
Begin having informal discussions with customers, suppliers, and industry
experts to learn about how they view your industry and the opportunities
you may have to better partner with them.
❏
Review the major initiatives or projects your organization has launched in
the past fi ve years. What does their success or failure reveal about the com-
pany’s competencies?
❏
Map out the major functions and processes in and around your area of
responsibility. Is this a “system of activities” or a “collection of parts,” in
Michael Porter’s phrasing? How could you reorganize these processes to
better support your company’s strategy?
❏
Block out a half hour in your schedule to draft and practice a short summary
of your vision for a new project for your business unit. Try it out on a mentor,
colleague, or trusted employee.
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