The question invariably comes.  “How long will this ‘transformation’ take?”

The client is thinking that, like the children of Lake Wobegon, the employees of this company are above average, so it won’t take long. But whether it is a merger integration, a change in direction or a large-scale reorganization, it almost always takes longer to achieve the vision than the client would like. The reason is simple: it takes time to move a group of people to do anything, and moving a group of people takes work.

Take this example from my vacation: seven people deciding on lunch. The conversation started at 11:30 and covered the following topics: choice of food, best place to obtain, who would drive, relevant allergies, how the choice would mesh with the dinner choice, what would be for dinner, confirmation of location, take out or pick up, getting a menu, what the kids would eat, the need to make a quick phone call, the need to change shoes, cleaning the back seat of the car, forgetting the cell phone, and who would sit in the front seat. The cars left the driveway at 12:10. It took 40 minutes to accomplish the simplest of tasks.

Granted, part of this debacle was the effects of Parkinson’s Law: work expands to fill available time. Given that it was vacation, time was aplenty, the adults weren’t truly hungry, and the kids weren’t screaming. The debate stretched on because it could. Unfortunately, decisions at work can drag on as well – and so does the transformation.

So what is a change leader to do? The answer is simple: cut the available time. When establishing goals for a transformation, a leader cannot just set the long-term, visionary goal. A leader also must set milestones along the path, and hold people accountable for achieving the interim goals along the way. The change leader must create a sense of urgency by helping people move from milestone to milestone as quickly as possible. The leader must break the long visionary journey into a series of discrete, focused trips.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 6th, 2008 at 3:05 am and is filed under Change Management, Leadership.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.