Us versus Them: Reframing Resistance to Change

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Anyone attempting to lead change in an organization knows to expect some resistance; but this is no less frustrating for being predictable. Over time, you may find yourself gravitating toward those who support the change, and distancing yourself from those who openly or quietly oppose it.

Unfortunately, approaching change with this sort of “us versus them” mindset actually increases pushback. When we think of people as resisters, we tend to discount their perspective, assuming that if we are right, they must be wrong. Yet, in reality, each group is simply paying attention to different things. Change champions generally see the upside of change and the downside of the status quo; so-called resisters see the downside of change and the upside of the current state. Each is right, but only half-right.

Thus, rather than assuming critical thinkers are resisters, we would do better to treat them as “guardians.” Guardians see what needs to be protected. They help keep us honest, asking hard questions, and highlighting risks we need to consider. They recall the promises and values we need to honor if we want to sustain trust. By engaging them with respect, we actually improve our change strategy.

In this post on strategy + business, Us versus Them: Reframing Resistance to Change, I offer a few practical strategies for building a bridge between change champions and guardians, to help you truly advance positive change in your organization.

Tell me what you think!

All the best,

Elizabeth Doty

Three Promises Every Sales Team Needs to Make – and Keep

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Customer loyalty has always been the holy grail of organic growth – yet, as sales models shift toward subscription-based services, longer-term relationships have become more critical than ever before. In their classic study, W. Earl Sasser Jr. and Frederick F. Reichheld found that reducing customer churn by just 5 percent could increase profitability between 25 and 85 percent, depending on the industry.

Why do customers leave? Often, it’s because they feel the company has not delivered on its promises. And who is making these promises? Ultimately, it’s your own salespeople. Marketing may craft your brand promise, but your sales team makes the commitments that count for specific customers — what your company will deliver, when, and with what level of quality.

In the past, your salespeople might have been tempted to promise whatever they thought it would take to close a deal, then move on to the next customer. But sales strategy expert Steve Thompson, who coaches both buying and selling organizations, suggests that “in a world of relationships, a different kind of salesperson succeeds.”  To win in this new world, sales teams need to focus on whether customers are receiving the value promised — and whether your firm is getting credit for the value delivered.

In this post on strategy + business, Three Promises Every Sales Team Needs to Make – and Keep, I take a detailed look at three specific promises Thompson propose can help any direct-sales business build longer-term relationships.

 

See what you think!

All the best,

Elizabeth Doty

Liberate Your Team with Clearer Processes

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I am pleased to share that this post on strategy + business, Liberate Your Team with Clear Processes, has just received a 2018 Azbee Bronze Award of Excellence from the American Society of Business Publication Editors (one of many awards for the magazine).

My goal was to offer a way out of a recurring challenge for many teams: Our aversion to “process” in the sense of checklists and forms, and our desperate need for workflows that work.

I am sure you are familiar with the challenge. Ask any member of your team if they want to institute better processes and be prepared for them to roll their eyes. “‘Better processes’ means ‘more bureaucracy,’” someone will mutter. But ask that same team how much they enjoy doing projects the hard way — duplicating efforts, scrambling to meet deadlines when someone drops the ball, or bearing the brunt of customer fury — and you can expect the floodgates to open.

As a leader, what can you do? How do you walk the tightrope between poorly implemented processes with annoying rules and checklists, and the danger of “winging it” when quality, productivity or safety are at stake?

One solution is to re-frame how you think about “process.” At their heart, effective processes are not about adding red tape — they are about enabling “flow.” Wherever there is an activity that happens repeatedly in your business, there is a potential flow. As a leader, you have the choice to leave this flow to chance, to control it, or to channel it.

In this post on strategy + business, Liberate Your Team with Clear Processes, I explore three ways you can improve processes to generate that sense of “flow” and enable your team to feel more productive.

See what you think!

All the best,

Elizabeth Doty

Learning from the Persuasive Genius of Great Leaders

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In my 20 years as an executive coach and advisor, I’ve found that “framing” is one of the common threads behind great leaders’ persuasive genius – both in formal presentations and one-on-one conversations.  Great leaders do not rely on facts alone to communicate. Instead, they offer new frames for what facts mean, in a way that creates “lightbulb moments” for others.

Simply put, a frame is a lens for interpreting events, a way of making sense of complex, messy experiences, so we can communicate and take action. According to The Power of Framing, by Gail Fairhurst, framing means “defining the situation here and now in ways that connect with others.” Frames provide a shorthand way to orient ourselves and tap into prior knowledge, without having to review every detail of a situation or plan. When a leader says, “we are all in the same boat,” she is helping people recall their interdependencies. Looking for a “win-win” in a negotiation activates more productive, collaborative behavior. And reminding a team “not to get too academic” can prompt them to move to a decision when needed.

Yet as powerful as frames are, they can also create a box around our thinking – narrowing our options, limiting our perspective, and ignoring critical aspects of the situation. Great leaders look for empowering, inclusive frames, that help people recognize and incorporate more of the current situation into their thinking.

In this post on strategy + business, Learning from the Persuasive Genius of Great Leaders,  I outline how great leaders I have observed use frames consciously and deliberately to empower and focus their teams.

See what you think!

All the best,

Elizabeth Doty

 

How to Accelerate Learning on Your Team

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Some years ago, I met an ERP implementation team that was able to deliver tangible business results in just six months, where eight other teams at the same company had stalled. The successful team’s secret? Early on, its members had given up on planning, and instead focused their time on putting live customer orders through a prototype of the software. Week after week, they met with the pilot customer team, listened to their feedback, and iterated on the design.

Many leaders I’ve interacted with have wanted to accelerate learning within their teams, however, money, times and more-so, a narrow-minded approach to learning, have always proven to be their major constraints. An effective measure such as implementing meaningful challenges with a well-designed feedback system can easily help teams learn naturally on a daily basis.

In this post on strategy + business How to Accelerate Learning on Your Team, I explore a few concepts that can help accelerate learning within a team.

See what you think!

 

All the best,

Elizabeth Doty

Five Ways to Reverse the Downward Spiral of Distrust

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A few years back, a VP at a high-tech firm I was working with pulled me aside. “Our division is mired in distrust,” she said. “Teams are not talking to each other. Meetings are more about posturing than work. And no one is taking any real risks. But when I bring it up, I get shot down. Does the CEO not see it? Or has he given up on us?”

This story echoes many others I’ve heard from professionals in a variety of industries. Unfortunately, once a company or team is infected with distrust, it tends to fall into a downward spiral that drags everyone down to the lowest common denominator.

In this post on strategy + business, Five Ways to Reverse the Downward Spiral of Distrust, I outline the warning signs for each stage in the downward spiral, then offer five practical strategies for rebuilding trust — even when no one wants to talk about it.

See what you think!

 

All the best,

Elizabeth Doty

 

Four Secrets for Turning Insight into Execution

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We’ve all experienced that “eureka” moment during a presentation or deep discussion with colleagues – where nifty slideshow visuals or a sketch on the back of a napkin help us see how to take our business to the next level. However, we’ve also experienced how easily these insights can fade once the presentation or meeting is over. Why is that? And what can we do about it?

In “The Neuroscience of Leadership,” published by strategy + business, David Rock and Jeffrey Schwartz explain that an engaging experience (like a presentation or off-site meeting) is a great way to generate new insights and new connections in the brain. But to turn these new connections into repeatable action, they need to be reactivated again and again, until neural pathways become embedded in everyday thinking and decision making.

In this post on strategy + business, Four Secrets for Turning Insight Into Execution, I’ve shared four essential practices to help your team turn “eureka” moments into repeatable action, including real-time documentation, personal commitment management, asking strategic questions, and tracking other people’s deadlines (without micro-managing).

See what you think!

 

All the best,

Elizabeth Doty

 

Starting a Transformation? Don’t Change Everything!

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Some time ago, I was consulting a senior director of a government agency who was two years into transforming his organization to be more customer- and results-focused. He had restructured his 200-person team, launched a few key initiatives, coached his staff on changing mind-sets, and made some difficult personnel decisions. Then, just as these investments were beginning to show results, a new governor was elected. His mission? To transform my client’s organization to be more customer- and results-focused! What could the senior director say? “We’re already doing that” would have come across as resistant or worse. He simply sat quietly as his new boss laid out his plans for shaking things up.

As organizations of all types — in both the public and private sectors — strive to be more agile, they reorganize more often. Executives are asked to take on new teams, merge related teams, or pivot to a new set of priorities. Such challenges can be exciting: As a leader, your mind may be buzzing with ideas, questions, and possible solutions. The pressure is on, and you are eager to put “points on the board.”

Yet, for your team, a reorganization may involve a reset as much as a new direction. How do you get them mobilized and into action as quickly as possible?

In this new business post at strategy + business, Starting a Transformation? Don’t Change Everything, I suggest three conversations to have early in the process with your new or reconfigured team to help you build on the momentum underway. Letting go of the “all at once” approach may help you and your team get results more quickly.

See what you think!

 

All the best,

Elizabeth Doty

 

 

 

 

Why Acting as One Company Isn’t Easy

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A sales manager recently told me about an embarrassing scene that unfolded before an important client meeting. “Two teams from our firm were waiting in the lobby when the client walked in, and the groups didn’t recognize each other,” she said. “What a contradiction of our promise to provide integrated solutions! We looked like the Keystone Kops.”

At many companies, senior executives launch initiatives to encourage disparate business units or newly merged firms to act as one. They envision their employees united around a common brand, coordinating across functions, and going the extra mile for one another’s customers. But their calls for collaboration often fall flat. When it comes to getting a company to act as a unified whole, even the best intentions are often undermined by three fundamental challenges: lack of visibility, too much complexity, and difficulty establishing trust. What can leaders do?

In this post on strategy + business, Why Acting as One Company Isn’t Easy, I offer a few strategies for addressing the challenges of visibility, complexity and trust.

See what you think!

 

All the best,

Elizabeth Doty

 

 

Want Better Communication? Focus on the Listening Part.

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“I used to be the answer man. Now I’ve learned to listen. It is amazing what you learn when you open your mind,” said Gary, chief financial officer of a U.S. firm.

As Gary explains, listening is a very powerful leadership strategy. When leaders are genuinely interested in what others are seeing, thinking, and feeling — not as a way to get buy-in, but because others have information and insights they need — they make better decisions. They break the cycle of endless repetition and predictable responses that slows real communication to a snail’s pace. And they are more likely to get the buy-in they seek, because true dialogue helps everyone see the merits of a plan. Indeed, every major breakthrough I have witnessed — where teams, colleagues, or customers and suppliers get on the same page — has happened when people took the time for more open, balanced, and reciprocal conversation.

So, what gets in the way?

In a new business post at strategy + business, Why Leaders Who Listen Achieve Breakthroughs, I take a deeper look at the outdated mental models that can inadvertently lead us to focus too much on our message, rather than true two-way conversation. For those who want to amp up their listening and initiate more effective conversations, I offer six practical strategies.

See what you think! I look forward to hearing your thoughts or reflections.

All the best,

Elizabeth Doty