Change / Dilemma Management
Problem Statement
Leaders often face dilemmas where they must make tough decisions that could have significant impacts on their team or the entire organization.
Solution
Support leaders in navigating complex dilemmas with a framework for ethical decision-making and strategy adjustment. Our coaching emphasizes balancing various stakeholder interests while maintaining integrity and corporate values.
Swapping Out Teams
An organization needed to build a team to provide a capability which current did not exist. The executive responsible for the results, decided to limit the hiring budget for building the team. The manager provided a true assessment of what the results were going to be if no additional budget was provided to hire higher quality talent. The executive stood their ground, keeping the budget in place. The manager was able to attract some amazing talent at the budgeted price point. Over the course of the year, the team was people, data, processes, and tools were built and the team significantly exceeded expectations, keeping pace with growth. After a year of tremendous success, just as the manager has provided in their assessment, the team plateaued, but plateaued at a much higher level than expected do to the fortunate hiring of talent. At this point the executive came to the manager and demanded that the team be swapped out, and hire the originally intended higher quality talent. As the manager, what do you do? How do you best move forward in this situation?
Change fatigue is real
A semi panicked leader was calling in, the tone of their voice was serious, and they were at their wits end. For the past three years, the customer has tried to adopt modern processes and tools, creating a new way to create their product and provide services supporting the product. Although they have had limited success in various areas with different techniques, they were unable to scale across the organization. Working with the customer and their executive leadership team we were able to adjust their culture and mindset, empower the people, centralize the critical data germane to the product success, modernize their processes and tools. As the project was nearing success, they asked the question; “How come you guys were able to successfully lead our change, and we were not?”
Change fatigue is real, people becoming numb to change is real, especially when leaders and organizations have tried to change and fail, or continuously change in ways which are burdensome, not well thought out or planned, and are not understood by those who are impacted or being asked to execute the change. On page 30 of our book Transact, Transform, Transcend, Becoming a Thoughtful Leader: Stories from the Journey we provide leaders a technique to use to help them understand, focus on the key change elements, and help them be successful as they leading change. The ability to lead and manage change is no longer a luxury, but a requirement for all members in today’s workforce… some may even say life itself with how fast and furious changes are occurring in the environment around us.