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Posts Tagged ‘change management’

Want More Innovation In the Workplace? Make It Safe to Tell the Truth

You’ve either seen the video or heard about the group think that happened before NASA’s Challenger exploded in 1986. One engineer felt strongly that there was a defect in the Challenger’s design. He spoke up, others disagreed. He continued to speak up, until it became very uncomfortable to do so.

Most employees don’t even get that far. Many employees are afraid to speak up at all, feeling that it’s not ok to have a counter point of view, and that those who disagree with ‘management’ are eventually fired. I honestly am not sure where this comes from. It hasn’t been my experience, and yet the fear of speaking up is pervasive. I hear it in almost every organization with which I work.

innovation

If it’s not ok to express different opinions, your organization will deliver the same-old products and services you always have. If staying the same works in your industry, great. But stagnation is detrimental to most organizations.

If you want more innovation in the workplace, you have to make it safe to speak up and offer a different point of view. Saying new, different, and even controversial things must be encourage and rewarded.

Five Ways to Encourage Innovation In the Workplace:

  1. Ask for new ideas and different points of view.
  2. Wait until you get both. Don’t allow a meeting or discussion to move on until you get new, opposing, and different points of view.
  3. Positively acknowledge people who risk and say something new or different from the norm.
  4. Ensure people with new ideas and different points of view are allowed to finish speaking before they’re interrupted or before someone else tries to negate their ideas.
  5. Create a few new awards in your organization and announce winners publicly and with great fanfare. You get what you reward.

Create Awards to Encourage Innovation In the Workplace:

  1. Acknowledge the person who fails massively trying something new.
  2. Award the person who brings new ideas to the table, regardless of what happens to those ideas.
  3. Celebrate the person who willingly gives you the worst news.

The fear of speaking up and saying something new or different will destroy your innovation efforts. It will also squelch your employees’ ambition and ability to be creative. Make it safe to tell the truth, even when the truth is hard to understand or unpopular, and see what happens to innovation, creativity, and employee productivity and morale.


Make It Easier to Talk About Fear at Work

In all of my years of working in and with organizations, I have never heard anyone say the words, “I’m scared” at work. I’ve heard: “I’m concerned” and “I’m uncomfortable,” but never the words, “I’m scared.”

These are scary times. It’s scary to go to the grocery store, to know who it’s ‘safe’ to stand next to, and to travel.

Make it safe for employees to talk about their fears.

One of the first things I teach when I talk about change management is letting people express how they feel – their worries, hopes, and concerns. The people you work with are likely scared. They may be wondering if their job is secure, what happens if they get sick, and are they doing enough work from home with their kids present.

It’s hard to talk about fear because we think doing so makes us appear weak. Leaders and managers need to normalize the conversation. Make it ok to talk about how people feel at work.

Here are four steps to make it easier to talk about fear at work:

  1. Leaders and managers – admit what you’re afraid of. People will take your lead. Admitting how you feel demonstrates strength not weakness.
  2. Tell people it’s ok to be afraid and it’s ok to talk about fear at work. Sanction the conversation.
  3. Give more information about contingency planning, budgets and work from home and time off policies than you think you need to.  Communicate, communicate, communicate.  Then do it again.
  4. Create a forum for people to talk about how they feel about recent events and changes. Managers are not therapists or dumping grounds, but you are coaches. You can help people work through their work-related fears when you know what those fears are.

I’ve always believed that demonstrating our humanity at work is a strength. Being authentic makes people want to work for and with you. Admitting concerns makes you approachable and real.

Your employees and coworkers don’t need to know the details of your whole life, but they do need to see your humanity and be able to relate to you. Talk about how you feel and open the door for others to do the same.


Be A Change Agent – Make It Easy to Tell You Yes

Concerned about something happening in your workplace? Don’t just tell someone about the problem, propose a solution. It’s fine to raise challenges. It’s better to raise challenges you’re willing to do something about. If you think two departments don’t talk to each other, bring them together. If you think a process is inefficient, propose a different way to get the work done. If you’re dissatisfied with software you’re using, offer to source three potential vendors and set up a demo. You’re doing the legwork and asking for a small investment of time.

When we ask for something at work, our request often requires time, money, or both.  Thus when an employee asks for something, it’s easier for a manager to say no than it is to say yes. “No” requires no work and no financial outlay. A “yes” may require both.

You make it easy to say yes to requests when you’re acting as a change agent:

  1. Propose a solution to a problem.
  2. Offer to do the work to solve the problem.
  3. Ask for small things that are easy to approve.

If you’re overwhelmed and want to hire an additional person, but your boss isn’t convinced you need the headcount, ask for a temp for a finite number of hours. It’s much easier for a manager to say yes to a small and known investment amount than to the long-term commitment of hiring someone new.  The point is to ask for something that is easy for your manager to approve.

The word “pilot” is your friend. If you want to make a major change, pilot a scaled down version of your proposed solution in one or two locations, rather than in your organization’s 10 locations. Again, asking for something small makes it more likely that you’ll be told yes.

The bottom line is to be part of the solution – as trite and overused as that phrase is. Don’t be the person who says, “That’s broken” without also saying, “and here’s how we can fix it.  Can I give it a try?”


Be A Change Agent – Make It Easy to Tell You Yes

Change agentDespite what you may think, your manager has enough to do. So when you drop a problem at her door, she finds it annoying. Rather than just alerting your manager and the leaders in your organization to the things that need to be fixed, go one step further, and be a change agent by offering a solution yourself.

It’s fine to raise challenges. It’s better to raise challenges you’re willing to do something about. If you think two departments don’t talk to each other, bring them together. If you think a process is inefficient, propose a different way to get the work done. If you’re dissatisfied with software you’re using, offer to source three potential vendors and set up a demo. You’re doing the legwork and asking for a small investment of time.

When we ask for something at work, it often requires time, money, or both.  Thus when an employee asks for something, it’s easier for a manager to say no than it is to say yes. “No” requires no work and no financial outlay. A “yes” may require both.

You make it easy to say yes to your requests when you’re acting as a change agent:

  1. Propose a solution to a problem.
  2. Offer to do the work to solve the problem.
  3. Ask for small things that are easy to approve.

If you’re overwhelmed and want to hire an additional person, but your boss isn’t convinced you need the headcount, ask for a temp for a finite number of hours. It’s much easier for a manager to say yes to a small and known investment amount than to the long-term commitment of hiring someone new.  The point is to ask for something that is easy for your manager to approve.

The word “pilot” is your friend. If you want to make a major change, pilot a scaled down version of your proposed solution in one or two locations, rather than in your organization’s 10 locations. Again, asking for something small makes it more likely that you’ll be told yes.

The bottom line is to be part of the solution – as trite and overused as that phrase is. Don’t be the person who says, “That’s broken” without also saying, “and here’s how we can fix it.  Can I give it a try?”


Indecision is Worse Than Making the Wrong Decision – Decide!

Indecision plagues many of us at work.

  • Hire the person or source additional candidates?
  • Let the employee go or keep him?
  • Launch the software implementation or wait?
  • Gather more technical requirements or move forward with the information you have?
  • Ask for different responsibilities or look for a job?
  • Announce upcoming organizational changes to all employees or just to the leadership team?

We meet and discuss, meet some more, discuss some more, and still don’t decide. Endless meetings, discussions, and indecision exhausts and discourages employees and costs money.

Indecision

Do your due diligence:

  • involve the people closest to the work in making the decision;
  • gather enough information to make an informed decision;
  • get key stakeholders’ buy in;
  • then decide and act.

And if it’s the wrong decision you’ll know soon enough and can course correct.

The indecision is often worse than making the wrong decision. My friend and colleague Steve Shapiro author of Goal Free Living would say that the only wrong decision is not making one.

But we know there are decisions that have negative consequences, which is why we’re often hesitant to make decisions. If we make the wrong decision families, careers, and companies are impacted.

So we wait and discuss, dialogue, and debate, over and over and over. Follow the steps above regarding due diligence and decide. Don’t wait too long or stay too long. It’s not good for anyone, especially you.

Indecision


How to Become a Leader – Moving from a Doer to a Leader

There are things in our lives that bug us, but we put up with them.  They’re often little things like a burned out light bulb or a messy drawer in which we dump stuff that doesn’t have a real home. Maybe the bulb has been out or the drawer has been a mess for so long that we no longer even notice it.

Our workplace isn’t any different. There are things in your organization you’re tolerating. Perhaps a process or software is inefficient, but you don’t say anything to the people in your organization who can do something about it. Or maybe you said something a few times, but you didn’t feel anyone listened and you gave up.

Organizations are comprised of doers and leaders.  And organizations need both. If everyone wants to lead, you’ll have trouble. If no one leads, you’ll have even more trouble. Doers keep things going from day-to-day.  Leaders create opportunities, fix problems, and upgrade existing conditions.

I’m often asked to coach managers in organizations. The coachees’ boss tells me, “He’s a great employee.  But if he wants to move up in this organization, he needs to be a leader.”  And more often than not, the employee is confused by what the manager wants. Coachees say things like, “I give my opinion in meetings.  I volunteer for stuff. What else does my boss want?”

I tell my coachees the most straightforward thing I know to transition from a doer to a leader –improve processes and look for opportunities to fix things that are broken.

How to Become a Leader

Want to know how to become a leader in an organization? Ask these questions regularly:

  • What in the organization frustrates people? What could we do differently to ease people’s frustration?
  • Where do we have mediocre results? What’s the breakdown?
  • Where are we wasting money? Where are our costs too high? Where are we losing revenue?
  • What processes take longer than they need to? Or where is there a lack of process?
  • Where do we have inefficiencies and redundancies?
  • What practices work in one department that could work in another?

Leaders in organizations are always looking for ways to make things better. They look for opportunities and (picking their battles) pursue solutions. Pursuing a potential change does not mean asking your boss or department leader once or twice.  It means telling someone in a position of formal authority about a missed opportunity, asking permission to make a change, and then doing the work required to make it happen. Leaders do not tell their boss about a problem and walk away. Leaders suggest and implement a solution.

 


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