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Novice communications professionals love to write goals along the lines of, “Create 100% awareness of the benefits of Initiative X.”

Don’t do it. Never make the goal 100%. Let me explain with a story.

On February 23, 2007, The Wall Street Journal published a piece on how the Census Bureau is planning for the 2010 census. Question number 3 will be, “What is this person’s sex? (Mark ONE box).”

You would assume that 100% of people should be able to answer this question correctly. This would be a bad assumption. In a 2005 field test, .05% of people asked checked both answers. Extrapolated out, 150,000 people in our country of 300 million would answer this question incorrectly.

If you choose to pursue 100% of anything – even the most basic communication goal – you will fail. Just think about the 150,000 confused folks among us.

So what is realistic?

• If you don’t have 70% of people prepared to move in a particular direction, the group will take an inordinate amount of time to go. 70% is your awareness tipping point.
• The high 80s begin to become problematic. You are spending lots of resources for the last few points of awareness. Perfect will become the enemy of good.
• If information is fairly basic, low 80s is a reasonable, yet challenging goal. If the information is more complex, 75% is reasonable.

Don’t forget, new hires, vacations, leaves of absence, travel schedules all get in the way of achieving super-high awareness numbers. It won’t be your efforts that are the issue; it will be the changing nature of your audience. 

Remember, the internal communicator’s job is to broadcast messages to everybody, and management’s job is to narrowcast within their area of responsibility. The two efforts need to work together. Practically speaking, managers will be picking up “loose ends” that don’t get addressed during your broadcasting. On the other hand, recognize you must reach that 70% minimum. Without it, management’s initiative will be fighting an uphill battle.

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to speak to a business process management organization and a human resources organization about leading transformational change. The groups share three attributes:

1. They both help design the organization’s future,
2. They both see somebody else as responsible and accountable for implementing those changes.
3. The press that covers these groups is frequently discussing the question, “Why don’t we have a seat at the CXO table.”

A Facilitator Ran This Road Crew

Many I spoke to saw their role as facilitators. I absolutely believe in the value of a good facilitator. Unfortunately, facilitators, by definition, are more focused on the process than the outcome. People at the CXO table care about outcomes. I didn’t share my story about a particularly frank CFO adapting an adage about lawyers. When confronted with a huge problem and an army of consultants, he turned to his team and said, “First, let’s shoot all the facilitators.”

Stewardship has many definitions. In biblical times, the steward was a servant that managed the master’s household affairs. It was a position of honor and earned through trust. Today, stewardship refers to a mindset where a person takes responsibility for something that the person does not own. Environmentalists use the term to refer to the appropriate usage of the earth’s resources. Stewardship is a proactive mindset that says, “Count on me to do the right thing.” Anybody can be a steward.

I turn off the lights when I leave a room in my home, and in hotel rooms. I’m a mini-steward of the environment. I try to teach my children to take responsibility for things they don’t directly control. With basketball season upon us, my comment became, “Instead of criticizing her for missing free throws and the fact that you have to run more, invite her to work out with you and show her how to shoot better shots.”

Think about the working world. There are people you work with that regularly stand up and say, “I can make sure that happens.” The task at hand has nothing to do with the person’s job description. They make things happen by influence, not force. (The best thing about those people is that they frequently don’t say a thing; they just do it.)

The next time you want to see change happen, don’t say, “I can’t do anything because I don’t control the situation.” Ask yourself, “What is the number one thing can I influence?” One light in one hotel room won’t stop global warming, or lower my price on the next visit, but it did make a difference. My daughter has yet to realize that the coach is going to make the team run and she will never get to avoid it. She might as well have a teammate who can shoot.

I’m sure you will find you can influence at least one thing in a positive direction. The best part of stewardship is that practice it makes you better at it. The more you act as the steward, the more you will want to, and the more others will want you to. You can influence a tremendous amount just by ignoring your job description and saying, “count on me to do the right thing.”

Monday’s post on the need for leaders to communicate during the economic crisis has been buttressed by some recent research. An October survey of over 500 working Americans by Weber Shandwick showed that:

• 62% were expecting difficulties in meeting corporate goals.
• 71% believe their company’s leadership should be communicating more about the economic situation.
• 54% had not heard from their company leaders on the impact of the crisis on their company.

Now is the time for leaders to be most visible. Visible leadership enables stability, stability turns into productivity, and productivity turns into dollars. Abdication to the company rumor mill is a wasted opportunity.

Disclosure statement: Monday’s post quoted from the CEO of Weber Shandwick. Today, I quote from one of their research documents. I have no affiliation with the company, but find it interesting that they got the same message to me through two different channels. Kudos to the public relations company – you seem to know something about executing PR.

The current economic crisis offers plenty of change, but little in the way of change leadership. Harris Diamond writes in an Op-Ed in the October 14, 2008 edition of The Washington Times…

“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” The immortal line from the movie “Cool Hand Luke” is especially apt these days.

The systemic failures plaguing our banking and financial system are real and have caused genuine pain to millions of Americans. But the problems have likely been made worse by the public’s reaction, or overreaction, to the systematic failure of our nation’s political and financial leaders to communicate effectively with us since the crisis began.

At every step along the way, we have been told that the most recent government initiative taken to resolve the problem was sufficient and would be successful. And, within a matter of days or weeks, the claim was proven wrong. As a result, the banking crisis has morphed into a crisis of confidence in our leaders, our institutions and, in no small measure, in the free market system itself.

There are many rules to follow in the practice of crisis communications, but two are inviolate: when in crisis, communicate; and don’t do anything to undermine your credibility. The people who run our government and financial institutions have violated both.

(The whole piece is available at this link: http://washingtontimes.com/news/2008/oct/14/a-crisis-of-confidence/)

I saw the effects of this leadership crisis on Saturday night during a dinner with several friends. One of these friends is a nationally-known investment manager. (Our children go to school together and you may have seen him on the television.) He told a story about eating dinner with somebody even more well-known – a general of the financial industry and a political appointee of the highest level. It wasn’t a good story.

Much like we were waiting for some form of comforting wisdom from our friend, he had had wanted to hear similar wisdom from this uberexpert. The general’s answer to the question, “how do we get out of this,” was relayed to us with just one degree of separation, two days of aging and three measures of nervousness: “pause…. pause…. clear throat…. pause…. I’m not sure if anybody knows.”

We were crushed. If anybody could have provided us wisdom and comfort, it would have been our friend. Instead, he gave us cause to worry well beyond his own pedigree.

Whether it is a dinner among friends, or a meeting where a VP says, “I don’t have time to worry about preserving productivity, I need to cut heads quickly,” our leaders are showing fear these days.

I’d suggest a “cool hand” is far more necessary in times of crisis. People who look up to you are basing their actions on yours.

The first Obama-McCain debate hit on one of my favorite topics – the difference between tactics and strategies. Between the two candidates, they managed to say the words “strategy” and “tactic” about 35 times – all in reference to the Iraq troop surge. We even got the perennial zinger, “I’m afraid Senator X doesn’t understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy.” (I’m intentionally avoiding a conversation over who might have been right or wrong. If you want to form your own opinions, a transcript is available at this link. This is post about two words – not two candidates.)

A little Googling shows disagreement over the word “strategy” is not new to our presidential debates. George Bush and John Kerry were debating virtually the same topic in 2004.

BUSH: I listen to our generals. That’s what a president does. A president sets the strategy and relies upon good military people to execute that strategy.

GIBSON: Senator?

KERRY: You rely on good military people to execute the military component of the strategy, but winning the peace is larger than just the military component. 

A little more Googling yields some text (claimed by quite a few different authors) on the differences between military strategy and tactics:

Broadly stated, strategy is the planning, coordination, and general direction of military operations to meet overall political and military objectives. Tactics implement strategy by short-term decisions on the movement of troops and employment of weapons on the field of battle. The great military theorist Carl von Clausewitz put it another way: “Tactics is the art of using troops in battle; strategy is the art of using battles to win the war.”

Strategy and tactics, however, have been viewed differently in almost every era of history. The change in the meaning of these terms over time has been basically one of scope as the nature of war and society has changed and as technology has changed. Strategy, for example, literally means “the art of the general” (from the Greek strategos) and originally signified the purely military planning of a campaign. In the 19th and 20th centuries, however, with the rise of mass ideologies, vast conscript armies, global alliances, and rapid technological change, military strategy became difficult to distinguish from national policy or “grand strategy,” that is, the proper planning and utilization of the entire resources of a society–military, technological, economic, and political. Tactics have always been difficult–and have become increasingly difficult–to distinguish in reality from strategy because the two are so interdependent. (Indeed, in the 20th century, tactics have been termed operational strategy.)

Now that nearly everybody has weighed in, let me: One person’s strategy is another person’s tactics. It all depends on the relative position of the people involved and how the objective is being defined.  Let me give a personal example.

I have an objective to retire at a reasonable age. To meet my objective, I have a strategy to limit expenses and maximize savings. Within this strategy, I have a tactic, called: “turn off the light when you leave a room.” This tactic is emphasized to my children on a regular basis.

If, however, you ask my children, they will tell you that turning off the lights is clearly a strategy. To them, turning off the lights results in a marked decline in dad’s crankiness. It is a major maneuver – a surge, if you will – in the balance of power and peace within the house. Their objective is different than mine. In short, strategies exist to meet an objective and tactics fit within a strategy.

Bush and Kerry were talking about different things: winning a battle and winning a peace. McCain and Obama were also talking about different things: McCain was answering a question about “the lessons learned in Iraq” and Obama was talking about broader issues.

It will never happen, but I wish I would hear more people say, “You mention ‘strategy’ and ‘tactics.’ Could you define what you mean by those words so we all have the same understanding?” Now that would be unbelievable change!

I’ve put up the posters, posted the articles, blasted out the emails, stuffed the envelopes and hosted the lunches, but some messages don’t seem to reach the right people. I’m not the only one who is having the difficulty.

As you are no doubt aware, analog TV is being unplugged nationwide in February 2009. You’ve probably seen the public service announcements. What you might not know is that Wilmington, NC has been a test market for the cutover to digital. The city television stations unplugged their analog signals earlier this month. The result? Even with saturated media, some people will miss the message.

On the first day of cutover, almost 800 people called the government helpline. Over 400 called on the second day. (An FCC document on the subject is available here.) Granted, this call rate represents less than one-half of 1%, but with over 100 million households in the country, the FCC needs to be able to answer about 500,000 calls on cutover day in February 2009.

So what is the takeaway? If you can carpet bomb an audience and still miss 1% (adding the two days together) and you are impacting their television, imagine the effort required to convince 100% of your employees to participate in yet another major change initiative. 

Communication will only get you part of the way there. It raises awareness – but participation will only come when the leaders in the business actively engage their teams in the process.

John Kotter, one of America’s most influential business gurus, has hit the presses recently with a piece on urgency. I always find Kotter’s material a very clear reminder of the basics that make change successful.

In this Change Manifesto, he speaks about:

• The environment we find ourselves in today is changing faster than ever. Although this is not a new observation, it can’t be emphasized enough.
• Change is no longer episodic, it is continuous. As a result, the ability to manage change well – and quickly – is now a fundamental requirement.
• Managing change well is all about creating and managing the right kinds of urgency: focused urgency and not wasteful cycles of activity.

His piece is worth reading.

On November 12, I will be speaking at the IT and Business Alignment Forum at the Red Rock Resort in Las Vegas. The Forum is actually three conferences in one: Enterprise Architecture, Business Process Management & Enterprise Web, and Portals & Collaborative Technologies. In short, these conferences are designed for the people who design and implement processes and technologies to improve the way people work. Our focus is on the people side of implementation.

In similar previous conferences there has been a lot of conversation along the lines of: “We have designed something great, but nobody wants it.” As it turns out, people are usually resisting the changes – not the new technology. In short, if people are not aware of change well in advance, understand the rationale for the change, and participate in creating the change – the risk of resistance will remain high. The much easier path is to actively lead the change process and help impacted people accept change along the way.

I’ll be posting my materials from the conference in mid-November. If by chance you are interested in attending and would like discounted admission, feel free to use discount code SPKRITBIZSR.

Transformational change results in lower productivity. People are worrying about jobs, who is getting which job, how they will work in the new job, and a gazillion other things. Every level in the organization is wondering, “What’s in it for me?”  The wondering and worrying translates into lost productivity – and large opportunity costs. What value would employees create if they weren’t worrying about the big change?

It would probably take a doctoral study to analyze the numbers comprehensively, but some directional assumptions point toward a scary story. The spreadsheet below takes some average numbers for revenue and costs per employee, and estimates the value created by each employee.

The logic continues that if the average employee’s productivity falls 10% during the change, the company has foregone $2,070 in value. Because the employee contributed 10% less, less value was created. People aren’t creating new products, selling to new customers, analyzing trends for opportunities, negotiating better prices, etc… They are too busy wondering and worrying.

Carrying the logic all the way out, if the change program lasts 12 months and the company has 1,000 employees, the company has an opportunity cost of nearly $25M. 

$25M is a big number, and one would naturally ask, what can be done to reduce it?

The two options are “faster” and “better.” Faster says: get the 12 month project done in 11 months. Better says: get the project done in a manner whereby productivity is preserved. (This productivity preservation requires change management approaches.) Based on the assumptions I used, “better” is clearly – well… better.

A couple comments in closing:

• To repeat – these numbers aren’t an analysis. These numbers are directional estimate based on some reasonable assumptions. Using the mildest of assumptions, however, shows that productivity losses extrapolate into some large foregone value.
• If you would like to try your own numbers, you may download an Excel version of the Change Initiative Cost Estimation Worksheet.
• The figures regarding revenue and costs per employee in the spreadsheet come from PriceWaterhouseCoopers – Saratoga’s 2007 / 2008 US Human Capital Effectiveness Report.

I was recently asked by a Human Resources professional how he could help their company become better at managing change.

I felt a little bit like the doctor answering the question, “I have a bad headache, what’s wrong with me?”

Without a lot more information, the answer will be simple, “Take two aspirin, and call me in the morning.”

Resisting the urge to encourage him to call my office, I gave my diagnosis-free prescription: “Improve senior management leadership capabilities.”

Without a doubt, the approach will help. As detailed in a prior post, CEOs believe senior manager skills and experience stand in the way of implementing change. Not only are senior manager skills an opportunity, but improving their capabilities will give you leverage in future initiatives.

The better diagnosis would come after some frank conversations in the C-Suite. Six topics should be covered:

1. Please tell me about the largest change initiatives you have gone through in the last five to seven years.

2. What went well with those initiatives, and what did not go as well?

3. How likely are we to go through large-scale change in the next three years?

4. How likely are we to repeat the positives and negatives of your previous experiences?

5. How well prepared are our senior and middle managers to lead future changes?

6. What should we do now to best prepare for the future?

After having this conversation with each member of the C-Suite, I would identify the common themes and report back to them as a group. The report would have three elements:

• What did they say?
• How does their collective view compare to best practices and experiences in other organizations?
• My recommendations to address the opportunities.

Those recommendations could cover a wide range of options, but people-related opportunities are likely to dominate. The best part of approach is that the go-forward plan will be largely of their creation. They will give you a charter to prepare for change and become your guiding coalition in that journey.

Perhaps I should give my acquaintance a call and give him some new advice. He needs to go have a frank conversation with the C-Suite.