Leading Change: How to Prioritize

Let's see if this is a familiar scenario:
You've been tasked to lead an organizational change. Maybe you are taking on a new role, or a new career path at a new organization, or maybe it's an internal challenge that's been handed to you. Regardless, you are assigned with changing the course of your business through whatever operational unit is under your leadership. Somewhere deep inside, you whisper, "Oh boy".

Facing Reality
Of course, change is hard! Change is often complex, with so many potential moving parts that it seems impossible to wrap your mind around the whole thing. And upon first blush, any change - no matter how small - seems to have a wide-ranging effect throughout the business unit or even across the enterprise: pull one string, and the proverbial sweater looks like it might unravel.

This makes leading change seem daunting, or even overwhelming. Where do you start?!

I have a suggestion. Like most suggestions, it's going to involve a bit of oversimplification, and few assumptions, any one of which can be questioned. I will argue that you've got to start somewhere, and when it's hard to decide how and where to start I like to rely on a rational rubric or schema. You might even call it a conceptual framework.

This schema is based on four essential pillars that support any successful organization: People, Vision, Focus, and Process.

I will try to put this into a narrative form: in order to be successful, an organization needs to hire excellent employees, provide a meaningful purpose for their work, ensure that the projects they work on are important and in support of the vision, and use methods that are effective and proven/professional. In priority order, you've got to look at Who, Why, What and How.

In the perfect world, all four pillars are operating at 100%. As I think most of us agree, the world is not perfect. 

So back here in reality, we as leaders are likely to inherit operational units that are achieving some level of excellence in each pillar. Let's look at this through a hypothetical situation (note to anyone who has worked with me: this is not a real-life story, I'm making it up to illustrate the approach, there is no reference to any of you in here, honestly).

In this new challenge you've been given, you start by taking a hard, disciplined, as-objective-as-possible look at what you've inherited. In this hypothetical, illustrated above, you've got a decent team, almost half have the potential to be strong contributors. However, and despite the fact they do have at least a few good projects underway, the truth is that there is little unifying vision to speak of, and the approach taken by each team and/or individual looks like it's basically ad hoc. By assessing this as your current state, you can decide where to turn your attention as you implement change as quickly and effectively as you can. You need to attack your areas of weakness, in the right order, but of course you can't do so while ignoring any of the other pillars, because extreme weakness in any of them will put stress on the others.

To be more concrete, even if you go on a super-lucky recruiting binge and bring in a contingent of fantastic new employees, as soon as they learn that there is no real vision and really poor practices, they will under-perform and (worse yet) abandon ship quickly. (I'm exaggerating for effect here; one other possible scenario is that those very same fantastic new employees will demand - and then lead the effort to implement - a clearer vision, better focus, and improved methods. But I digress.)

It starts with people. In the seminal and highly-influential Netflix Culture Deck, slide number 20 sums it up as "Great Workplace is Stunning Colleagues". In fact, when it comes to employee performance, many of us have seen that even one bad apple is capable of spoiling the whole barrel. If you have any weaknesses in your personnel, you've got to start there.

While you are recruiting, you will quickly find it impossible to hire the great ones until you can tell them why your organization exists and where it hopes to go. That requires a vision statement that is true, concise and meaningful (dare I say pithy?). Entire books have been written about crafting vision statements, I won't try to offer step-by-step instructions in this short blog post, I'll just emphasize that it's vital and ranks right up there after people.

Looks like your team(s) have a few good projects going, and that's great because those can be used as examples to inform upcoming project decisions. In other words, once you're moving the talent in the right direction and they are inspired by the vision, make sure that the work they do is right in line. I'd argue for allowing as much self-direction as possible in this effort, but perhaps that's a topic for a later post.

Finally, even when talented & inspired staff have rewarding assignments, if you can't ensure that the tools and methods available to them are at least up to par, the entire effort is bound to fail. Teams should be able to define what they need, but it's also part of your job as a leader to challenge methods and provide ample learning opportunities for your team(s) so that they can enter a cycle of continuous improvement.

The course for your role as a leader of change is now set. You've got to work on people and vision, while keeping an eye on projects and methods - allowing the new blood to contribute to those (and giving them credit along they way).

Now let's jump one year ahead in time and see how you've been doing (remember, this is all hypothetical, so time travel is possible). You've been diligent and focused, working on the pillars in priority order. Time to take another hard, honest look at where you stand, so that you can reset your plans for the coming year. This exercise, done regularly, can help you know where to mete your efforts to help your organization succeed.

Looks like you've made some good hires. More than 50% of your team is seen as talented. And you did the right thing by focusing on the vision, making a great deal of progress in getting alignment and inspiration - although clearly you've got work left to do (and that could be related to the staff, you may have some holdouts who are just plain resisting). You've added a few good projects, and methods are getting better. Nice.

A Couple of Final Thoughts
I prefer to share these types of visualizations with my entire operational unit. I believe in radical transparency, and in being honest. People appreciate honesty, and (sadly) they aren't accustomed to it in their professional careers. By being open about this process and about your perspective on where things stand, you'll help your increasingly-talented staff get on board - and take an active role - with the other changes that are taking place.

Expect some fits and starts. This is not some kind of magical formula that solves all ills. It is also not exactly math or science, it's just one way that I've found to offer an effective guide to making decisions and setting priorities throughout the process of leading change. Onward and upward!

The Importance of the First Follower

There is no such thing as a leader who does not have any followers. According to dictionary.com, a leader is " ... a person who guides or directs a group". Even the most-brilliant new idea, even the smartest person to have ever lived, even a self-important narcissist ... none of these will be leaders until they have followers.

I'm not the biggest fan of the term "follower", because I think it may evoke an impression of blind faith or unquestioning obedience. In this case, I'm only distinguishing leader from follower in the formal sense; the leader guides the group, the group is made up of followers. Each follower may be a leader of one or more other groups, so in this case follower is not in any way disdainful. Frankly, we all follow, it's our nature.

All leaders need followers. And in actuality, it's the first followers who - in essence - lead the rest of the followers to follow. Hmm, that sounded rather tautological.  Allow me to illustrate by an example.

My favorite - if somewhat silly - interpretation of this is the widely-shared YouTube video titled "First Follower: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy". Have a look:

Forgiving the poor-quality video and the goofiness of the visual presentation, there is so much great stuff in this short video, I'm not sure where to begin. But (of course) I'll try. Here are aspects of the video and it's narration that really resonate with me in my ongoing pursuit of learning how to lead.

• Want to lead? Be easy to follow. Be accessible, share your vision, invite participation. 
• When a First Follower decides to follow, the leader succeeds by immediately embracing him or her as an equal. It's so important for the leader not to make it all about him or herself. Remember: without followers, you are not and cannot be a leader.
• A First Follower is TRANSFORMATIVE. He or she changes a "lone nut" into a leader, by choosing to follow. Emphasis on the choosing part - the First Follower has chosen to take the risk of believing in the leader. This concept is widely under-appreciated. 
• The First Follower is the LEADER of the next set of followers! "New followers emulate the follower, not the leader" - in other words, as leaders we can rant until we're blue in the face AND try like crazy to lead by example, but guess who everyone is ACTUALLY watching to see HOW to follow? It's the early followers, of course. 
• It takes a lot of courage to be the First Follower, perhaps more courage than to be the innovative leader. Innovative leaders already believe in their idea or project or direction; First Followers have to buy in BEFORE ANYONE ELSE HAS DONE SO. That's taking a huge risk, because if the First Follower is wrong, he or she will be ridiculed for making a bad choice.

As leaders, it is incumbent upon us to invite, encourage, recognize and show deep gratitude for our First Followers, and the first circle of additional followers that he or she might bring in. The temptation, of course, is to believe that it's all about us, we drive the team, right? In many ways, that's a false and ego-centric conceit. Imagine giving your big strategic pitch to a room with nobody in it!

Your First Followers are actually your true leaders.

Thank you to anyone who has taken the risk of embracing one or more of my crazy schemes. Without you, I'd be nothing important and certainly not a leader.