Clients frequently don’t want to take the time to assess their organization’s leadership alignment. My experience is that the assessment always provides some new insights. One such client was a division of a large conglomerate. The 2008 economic recession had hurt their industry particularly hard. The CFO had been aggressively cutting costs and the business began to implement new systems from SAP to support their business.

When asked, “Why are you implementing SAP,” nearly 100% of their top management had one of two answers. “Our corporate parent wants us to standardize on a common system.” Alternatively, “The finance department needs better reporting to help us manage our costs better.” Both answers, however, were wrong.

This business had already cut its costs nearly to the bone and was under no pressure to standardize. The CFO was enabling the business to have a more vertically integrated supply chain. They needed a new supply chain so they could compete more effectively with imported product. Their huge effort wasn’t about costs, it was about revenue.

Had the client not uncovered this misalignment, their leadership would have faced significant challenges. The team would have been working to deliver the wrong business model and processes. With this new understanding of how the leadership was oriented to think, the business was able to head in the right direction a lot sooner and with less friction along the way.

First things first: the right people can make any organization structure work, but these situations are usually the exception. The general rule is that an organization aligns to a common set of objectives, and those objectives can be in conflict with another organization’s objectives. An easy way to think about this is a sales team wants to sell many units at any price. A marketing or finance organization is more interested in selling units at a profitable price.

In thinking about an I.T.-oriented change initiative, there is a similar tension between organizational objectives. The Information Technology group is typically driven by objectives such as cost, project timelines, information security while they meet the needs of their internal clients. Those internal clients, frequently the owners of a particular business process, place a lower value on I.T.’s objectives. Process owners are most concerned about employee effectiveness and efficiency. A process owner will frequently trade away short-term costs for long-term gains in productivity.

In thinking about a typical organizational change manager’s work, it is clear that they are most closely aligned with the process owner. It goes to follow that having the change manager report to the I.T. organization mis-aligns interests. It becomes too easy for the cost and time-driven IT manager to stifle input from the change management team. The voice of the organization is never heard.

It makes far more sense for the change manager to have a direct reporting relationship to the business sponsor that is accountable for the success of the project. Granted they typically don’t want multiple project direct reports, but it has been my experience that they will be much more interested in talking about business and organizational issues than the status of integration testing and data cleansing routines. The sponsor needs to play an active role in leading the project and needs to be constantly up-to-date on the business and organization issues being caused or cured by the project. There can be no better place for the change manager to be.

Consider putting these checks and balances in your next project governance structure.

It must be fascinating to work at US Airways.

Did You Really Need to Take the Miles Back?

Okay – I agree the headline is over the top, but I couldn’t figure out a simple way to communicate a simple topic. If you’d like to know a bit more about change management and how its concepts could apply to your situation, drop us a note at blog (at) thebrooksidegroup.com. Your response might be a little slow if you are a college student working on a paper, but if you have a real challenge, we can both gain by having a conversation.

I might be the last person on the internet to see this video, but this video should be frightening to somebody in the early stages of their career. How will they possibly keep up with the pace of change?

Did You Know?

In the midst of a major transformation initiative, senior managers are frequently surprised by what employees say in response to open-ended survey questions. As a result, we are big fans of making sure senior management hears these comments. We are also big fans of ensuring senior management acts visibly and appropriately in response to what they hear.

A while back, our company was retained by a client in the midst of a reorganization. The 7,000 employee business was moving from a single corporate entity to a divisional structure along product lines. It had been widely stated that the moves would not cut headcount except for a few senior-level positions. The economy was healthy and this company was meeting its objectives when this was underway.

We ran a survey to assess the situation, and here are a few of the comments we received:

• Give the big picture. As people become aware of this, then you can start drilling down into levels of detail.
• It appears we are doing a lot of explaining without a lot of information being revealed. Rumors, speculation and anxiety grows while we wait. I would have done more “behind the scenes” work and made the changes less visible to the organization until we were ready to make the change.
• I would like to see more “personal” meetings with senior levels. Although the communications are effective, they speak to a broad audience. I would like to see members of the executive team go to each site and personally speak to smaller groups of people to explain the rationale and changes.
• The communications have improved from senior management. There should be a weekly bulletins.
• Be open and honest. The rumor mill is rampant about 20% head count reductions. The change was not communicated this way in the beginning. There is even less communication now than ever. Associates want to know the dates when they will find out about their destiny. The vision about accelerated growth has disappeared. There is next-to-no communication about process changes unless you are directly involved.
• Keep up the good work.
• Set an exact timetable. We keep hearing conflicting dates.
• My manager has done an abysmal job of explaining this to our group, has shown no compassion and seems disinterested in our concerns. The process is too slow and is killing our culture. We hear very little from the executives and they don’t do any “walking around.”
• Will these moves really change the company and break down silos? Or is really a financial restructuring that will enable us to sell off parts of the company?

What are the takeaways:

1. Rumors fill vacuums.
2. Leaders can’t over-communicate. Be visible. Some people want more detail and some want less. There is no way to make everybody happy.
3. Have a plan and communicate your plan. Set expectations and then meet them.

I’ll post more soon.

Ok. Back to writing.

I recently took my daughter off to her first year of college, and picked up a pearl of wisdom from her Residence Hall Advisor.  I’m not sure I’ve fully processed it yet, but he may be on to something.

I was standing in the common room of my daughter’s suite. She was unpacking her clothes in the bedroom. Another father was in the common room with me. His daughter was in the other bedroom. We were cleaning out our Blackberries while waiting for our next command.

In comes the R.A.. “I bet everything in this room is just perfect,” he announced.

We concurred.

He continued, “I love the dads of girls. They are the best.”

“Why is that, and who is the worst?”

The gist of his response: “Moms of boys are the worst. They are incredibly involved. They don’t let their sons do anything. I had to referee a disagreement on closet space between two moms! They don’t realize the stuff will be on the floor in no time. Moms think their boys are completely helpless. And they are – but the boys don’t care.” He continued on, “Fathers of girls are the best. They know their place. Help if asked. Stay quiet otherwise.”

We can leave the nuances about fathers of boys and mothers of daughters to another day. We can also set aside the fact that I agree with anybody who thinks I am the best at anything. A few questions come to mind however:

• In this dorm, the girls’ fathers felt their work was done. The boys’ moms were getting one more parenting lick in. In a work setting, when is it right to just let the action happen? When do you stop “helping” and let people do things for themselves?
• Are America’s youngest working generation impacted by how their parents have been parenting? Are America’s young women more prepared for college and the workforce than America’s young men? Are fathers not helping on move-in day because they know their daughters are already capable? Are the boys truly incapable?
• My generation experienced gender roles in a particular way. If I remember correctly, no male contemporary of mine would have allowed his mother to arrange his dorm room. Does today’s middle-aged manager understand that the 20-something worker has a completely different mindset than a 40-something? Does the 20-something worker expect mom-like help? Is the middle-aged manager prepared to mother the boys? What about the girls?

I’m sure one R.A.’s off-handed observation isn’t as good as a well-researched dissertation. It certainly isn’t adequate to create a new field of thinking about managing across generations. But kids do say the darndest things….

I just got a phone call from somebody who needed to cancel a meeting we had scheduled for next week.  A few days ago, he and most of his department were let go. He walked out the door without a badge or laptop, but still holding his Blackberry – loaded with emails, contacts, etc…  Two days later the Blackberry has not been wiped. He is using its data to professionally cancel appointments that nobody from his old employer intends to fulfill.  As an aside, he is also using that information to network a bit for his own benefit.

Needless to say, his previous employer’s equity has taken a hit in my eyes. We won’t be doing business. He, on the other hand, did me a favor by respecting my time and I’m inclined to repay the favor. The winners and losers in this conversation could be have reversed if the employer had a workforce reduction plan that respected its people, customers and suppliers. It isn’t hard, it just takes effort. Let’s put aside whether they are cutting “fat” or “muscle.”  They cut at least one of their opportunities for future growth.

Think about it if you are doing the cutting.

It sounds so simple. Determine goals, establish rewards, measure performance, and recognize achievement. These four steps seem almost too basic to merit a blog posting. In reality, however, many organizations forget the basics. WorldatWork’s Sales Compensation Practices 2008 report, a survey of over 400 compensation and human resources managers, tells the story. 

According to the study, 76% of companies change their sales compensation plans every year. This wasn’t a surprise to me. Additionally:

• 58% of these organizations communicate these changes directly to front line sales managers.
• 14% communicate directly to the salesforce.
• 13% take a decentralized approach.
• 7% do nothing.

The fact that 42% of companies don’t communicate these changes directly to front line sales managers was a shock to me.

I share the following thoughts, not as a change management practitioner, but as a former salesperson and sales manager.

• Salespeople are reward-driven. Granted, so are lots of other people, but salespeople live and breathe for their rewards. Do not keep the potential for rewards a secret.
• If a salesperson thinks you want dohickeys pushed and widgets are a second priority, you will get it. If you changed your mind, tell their managers that compensation is now tied to widgets and not dohickeys. Don’t let there be any confusion about priorities.
• Everybody’s most important point of contact is their manager, but in sales, the point is magnified many times over because of their “remote” nature. Show the manager respect and it trickles on to the salesperson. Leave the manager out of the communication loop, morale will suffer.

I’m a little biased, but many managerial rules of thumb are magnified in sales. Salespeople are willing to achieve great things for your company, but need management basics executed particularly well. Your revenue stream and customers deserve nothing less. Leaving managers out of the communication loop makes no sense.

A lot has been written about Web 2.0 applications and their ability to build employee engagement. I agree – but my eyes are wide-open regarding publicly viewable sites. There are some less-than-noble people who are exploiting Facebook for their own purposes. Let me explain.

My daughter was recently accepted to a college on an early decision basis. One of her first moves was to search Facebook for her new class / school group. Interestingly, there were two. As it turns out, one group was formed by some new students. The other group was formed as part of a viral marketing campaign by a company interested in targeting college students. Not only had this company formed a group at my daughter’s school, they had formed a group for over 200 schools.

If you would like to see how Web 2.0 really works, this post shows how the company behind the viral marketing campaign effort was “busted.” A group of students and administrators worked together to identify, investigate and expose the program in a matter of hours. It is a fascinating read. It took the Journal of Higher Education quite a few days to catch on.

A few thoughts:

• Think twice before you start to bend the internet’s rules. You will get caught and you will be embarrassed.
• Know that somebody will be targeting your employees. A Facebook group for General Electric Finance is filled with recruiters looking for candidates and “students” looking for information about “business models.”

“Managing the message” is incredibly hard in a Web 2.0 world, but ignoring what is happening out there is not smart. Somebody in your organization needs to be responsible for watching what is happening and acting appropriately.