When companies strive to restructure or gain greater efficiency, experts warn that moving too quickly or failing to carefully implement changes can be detrimental to the process and ultimate result. First, executives or other players in the firm need to assess potential risks and stir up a sense of urgency among workers and stakeholders in order to generate the motivation to spur change within the firm. However, this sense of urgency has to be strong enough and perpetuated by outside analysts, consumers, and other voices in order to propel change forward. Once change is identified as the best solution to market share, profit losses, or other catalysts, leaders throughout the organization have to band together to guide the transformation process, and these leaders can include board members, consumers, union leaders, executives, chairmen, and others. The group then coalesces to create a shared vision for corporate change, and this vision should go beyond the normal five-year forward looking plan generated at most firms annually and be easily communicated and clear. A clear vision should also include transformation steps that are coordinated and propel the organization toward the overall goal, and these visions should be communicated in not only words and speeches, but also actions of managers, supervisors, and executives. The transformation of a company should also include short-term goals that can be tracked to show executives and workers that progress is being made toward the ultimate vision and that the long journey will be worth it, even in spite of short-term job cuts for instance. Experts warn, however, that transformations can take between five and 10 years to complete, and should not be declared as complete until the company culture has transformed to meet the vision. Leaders will know to tackle other processes and structures reflecting the old culture of the firm and to engrain the new behaviors and procedures into workers in order to make the change complete.

 

Perceptive, decisive leaders must possess strategic networking skills in order to achieve success, but a considerable amount of resistance must be overcome in order to acquire such skills. Leadership transition is based on three different but interdependent kinds of networking: Operational, personal, and strategic. Operational networking helps in leaders' delegation of current internal duties; personal networking augments their personal development; and strategic networking--which is almost always underutilized--offers leaders a window onto new business avenues and the stakeholders they need to court. Operational networking is about performing work efficiently through strong working relationships with relatively nondiscretionary players oriented toward current needs. Contact relevancy in an operational networking scheme is highly transparent since contacts are prescribed mostly according to the task and organizational architecture. The enhancement of personal and professional development via personal networking is largely concentrated in the provision of referrals to useful information and contacts, who are discretional for the most part. These contacts are primarily external and are positioned toward current interests and future prospective interests, and a key behavior of this form of networking is making overtures to contacts who can make referrals. Determining future challenges and priorities and getting stakeholders to support them is the goal of strategic networking, which is focused on both external and internal contacts who are oriented toward the future. Strategic context and the organizational environs dictate the key contacts to make, although specific membership is discretionary. Leverage--the skill for mobilizing information, resources, and support in one network sector to generate results in another--is central to a good strategic network.

 

Successful organizational leaders are often delusional about their professional skills, contributions to projects, and their standing among peers, which can make it difficult for them to understand that they need to make some changes in their behavior. Such changes would likely make them even more successful. Their self-confidence tends to allow them to become successful, and it is their success, and not their failure, that often leads them to overestimate their achievements, status, and contributions. Successful people tend to believe that since they have accomplished things in the past, they will continue to do so, and that they have earned their success. They also tend to believe that they can succeed no matter the task, and that similar to the way they decided to be successful, they can also choose to change their ways. When challenged to change, successful leaders are likely to employ a denial mechanism that consists of viewing the other party as confused, downplaying the criticism, and attacking the other person. To change their behavior, successful leaders first have to acknowledge that it is difficult to change and realize that they can only change what they choose to change about themselves. They have to constantly question themselves about the reasons for their achievement; ask key people how they can improve; and take a positive, focused, and quick approach to making any needed changes.

 

Is professionalism or lack thereof a problem in your firm? Are revenues below expectations because of a perception that your company is less than professional? Is worker output sloppy because of a casual atomosphere? If you or your team experience any of these examples, learn about EDSI’s award-winning course, Professional Presence in a Casual World [click here].