As funny as it is to watch the play on words and Lou's frustration and confusion, it isn't so funny when I'm involved in a major redesign or transformation initiative, and the phrase who's on first comes to mind.
Redesigns and transformations are pervasive today. Do you know of an organization that isn't changing? Those changes are supposed to improve execution, often against revised strategies. The leaders I've worked with are sharp business people who perceive a critical need to change. As they contemplate the actions necessary to do so, I've seen them struggle with some key, critical questions. How do I best use my current staff? What decisions do I share? When do I include others? How do I justify inclusion and exclusion?
One of their most difficult challenges can be releasing control over the change -- in essence sharing their power with the people they are leading. It feels risky. Will everyone understand what we need to leverage and why? Will they believe the new success factors are necessary to differentiate us? Who knows how to build these new core capabilities?
In today's highly competitive global environment, there has always been a burning need to move, a need to do it first or catch up quickly. This results in an impatience with stopping to plan some of the murkier aspects, like people's roles during design and implementation. Nevertheless, I've found that the most successful initiatives start with stopping to carefully consider and plan who's on first and why, as well as second, and third. That planning enables action.
Any redesign involves changing minds as much as it involves shifting business processes, strategies, and tactics. The way to reach those minds, as well as produce the right solution, is structured involvement. But it isn't easy.
- I've seen leaders include too many people, and, more frequently, too few.
- I've also seen transformations that balanced the involvement level very well. Yet I've seen the same leaders, who have managed one transformation beautifully, encounter struggles and issues in a different business situation.
When I merge the best of the best practices I've seen, the leaders produced a plan that resolved the following issues at the start:
- How do I want to use the current leadership team?
- Who has the knowledge most critical for this emergent change?'
- Who will understand and champion key new elements?
- Who will implement the change?
- What is the right team size for involvement at various stages?
How do I want to use the current leadership team?
All of the leaders I've worked with have strongly believed that they needed to include all of their direct reports in planning the change, regardless of current or future role.
The questions to resolve are whether all have equal involvement, how much design power to share with them, and how much they can be expected to achieve without involving others. The leader's direct reports are essential in determining direction, but they have limited bandwidth since they need to keep the current business model running until the new one is in place. In addition, most don't have all the detail necessary to make the best design trade-offs.
Further, if the leader expects changes in this group, then there's the challenge of managing expectations. This varies depending on the specific business situation and the leader's style. Nevertheless, the most effective solution I've seen has included open discussions in which the leader is candid about the situation and asks for proactive involvement, coupled with individual sessions addressing concerns and interests, and offering support.
Who has the knowledge most critical for the emergent change? Often the knowledge about details that will make or break a redesign reside in people who are not directly reporting to the leader. Should some of them join the design team? Sometimes. How will they fit in? They may need support and encouragement from the team. Do they join the implementation team? Certainly, but how many and in what sequence? And these decisions need to be part of the communication plan, so their roles are clear.
It is also critical to set up a mechanism to ensure dialog between all teams and with all people who will be involved in the design and in the implementation plan. This is especially true if teams are formed at various hierarchical levels or in silos. Two-way discussion is crucial horizontally and vertically – progress reports or reviews don't encourage needed debates about the issues. The people involved in design and implementation need to share their thinking and hear the thinking of the leadership team members. The leadership team needs to benefit from their questions and ideas.
Who will understand and champion key new elements?
Sometimes a few people within the organization are natural champions – others are influenced by them. Or sometimes the changing direction includes concepts that are so new and different that they need focus. I've seen the formal creation of one or more champion roles serve as a great enabler.
Leaders have effectively included these champions in the early design stage. This is the easiest way to transfer knowledge to them and gain from their valuable perceptions. While it can seem like an extra step to explain their role to the leadership team, design teams, and organization, the effort will be rewarded. When the leader trusts the people in the organization and is open about expectations of the new direction, the act of establishing and announcing a champion or champions advances the vision, demonstrates serious support for it, and aids the champion's performance in that role.
Who will implement the change?
I've always found it a bit scary when the new, well-planned design is launched and the people in the organization start changing the way they work. No matter how well planned, a well-managed transition will include changes. The extent to which people have been involved in the change, particularly through design participation, the smoother the transition. Always. Yet as the new ideas roll out, some will need changes for the organization to perform well.
While it is sometimes hard to think about this aspect at the start, starting by creating a plan for implementation roles results in fewer issues later. These plans need to include how changes to the plan will be managed during implementation.
At the start is also a good time to plan the sequence – as the design moves toward implementation, where are the hand-offs, who stays with the project, who joins – essentially what are the anticipated stages and who is involved in each?
What is the right team size for involvement at various stages?
People in the business – certainly the people I've worked with -- want the firm and its leaders to succeed. They want to be involved in ensuring success, and, consequently, they want to know who is playing which role, how to provide information and ideas that will help, and when it is their turn. An important success factor in involvement plans is to structure roles and teams as simply and as clearly as possible.
If the change is large, it makes good business sense to involve many teams and people. Yet I've seen initiatives where too many people are involved, charters of various teams are unclear, communication is vertical and not horizontal, and everything slows down. These large change situations need solid team designs and structures, including roles and discussion mechanisms. A sequential plan can be critical for a large change -- what will be tackled first, second, and so on.
If the change is small and simple, then communication can substitute for involvement, perhaps. Yet I've seen many situations where complications arise because too few people were involved in what seemed to be a simple change – simple to the organization's leaders. It is important to ensure some involvement beyond the leadership team.
Businesses don't succeed when people waste cycles asking themselves who's on first and what's on second. When they are reacting with Lou Costello's frustration, the business isn't performing.
As a consultant, I've been pulled into situations that lacked up-front planning and essentially plunged into the middle of a mess. It is possible to regroup and get things moving mid-stream. But it is harder and slower -- positions may have become entrenched, credibility has suffered, and pace and commitment take time and attention to re-start.
As a member of an organization, I've at times thought I was on the outside of a key change, and been uncertain what I could to to help the business. I've watched the leaders make mistakes and felt so helpless.
Yet there are many great experiences that stand out in my mind, where these were done well. All of these great experiences started with careful planning and decisions, not only about the new game rules, but who's on first, and who's on second, third, etc. In these great experiences, the entire team understood and was involved in playing the new game, and we were free to focus on winning.
