THE CHANGE WIZARDS

THE CHANGE WIZARDS

Changing People And Transforming Organizations

Victor S.L. Tan

 

To get people to change, leaders must first understand how people become change-shy and develop strategies to eliminate this phobia.  Victor mentioned about the two critical ways in leading change that is adapting to change and creating change.  Leading change is about adapting to change when it is necessary and creating change when it is opportunistic.

Many leaders today are becoming irrelevant.  They do things that have little impact on their organizations.  They run from meetings to meetings, continuing the old ways of doing things.  To stay relevant in a rapid changing environment, leaders need to take strategic roles.  Besides releasing the trapped minds of individuals, leaders need to move forward by changing their mindsets to align to the realities of the environment.  Leaders need to get people to question outdated assumptions which were true and relevant in the past but are no longer so now.  Leaders can no longer wait for opportunities to come before they start their improvement initiatives.

MOTIVATING PEOPLE

The important role of leaders are to energize the workforce and help fine excitement, growth and meaning in work.  Leaders need to really understand the corporate culture of the organization and must realize that the power to motivate people goes beyond monetary rewards.  To motivate people is to know ways to motivate them. The workplace can be stressful if bosses do not know how to manage people in a joyful manner.  Empowering others by learning to let go and let others do the work.  There’s more joy in managing people when you get them to produce better results with lesser intervention.  In leading people, getting things done requires touching the hearts, minds and passion of individuals.  Persuading and convincing will be a better way.

DEVELOPING PEOPLE

The most misunderstood concepts in the corporate world are professionals and professionalism.  Professionalism is all about one’s practice with regard to knowledge, skills and experience including one’s character and conduct.  Credibility of leadership comes from professionalism.  It was found that the leader’s professionalism is actually what really motivate and inspire the employee.  There are ten key characteristics which are most desirable of a leader’s professionalism:

1.    Have an open mind and are good listeners also encouraging people to speak out without fear will help to uncover the ‘blind spot’;

2.    Objective and impartial;

3.     Competent and committed;

4.     Have great interpersonal skills and treat people with respect;

5.     Inspire and encourage others to act;

6.     Calm and collected during crises;

7.      Provide direction and support;

8.      Develop and reward people;

9.      Committed to positive and productive change; and

10.    Courageous to take the necessary action to achieve the desired goals.

The differences between leaders who are knowledgeable about good managerial practices and leaders who really practices them:

1. They know that they should smile more BUT they often show glum faces;

2. They know that they should be patient BUT they interrupt in the middle of sentences of their subordinates;

3. They know that they should listen for explanations BUT they shoot first from their mouth before asking;

4. They know that they should praise people in public and reprimand them in private BUT they do the opposite;

5. They know that they should ask the opinions of others BUT they only keep giving their own opinions.

There’s this famous expression ‘you can lead a horse to a river but you cannot force it to drink’.  But a good trainer knows that while he cannot force the horse to drink, he can make the horse want to drink.  Managing people professionally is more than just getting people to achieve goals effectively and efficiently, but also requires the leader to grow and develop people.

One of the most common causes for unproductive competency is that people are not given the opportunity to put to practice what they know.  There is a gap between know something and actually doing it.  Therefore it is the role of leaders to understand what kind of competency individuals have and seek ways to fully utilize them.  This is because, the key strengths of an organization lies in the competency of its people.

SUCCESSION PLANNING

A recent survey of Asian organizations indicated that 86% of them do not have a succession plan in place for top positions.  14% said they have a succession plan but more than half of the 14% do not implement the leadership development programs.  Today succession planning has become a critical issue again.

Succession planning can be defined as the ongoing process by which top management identify and groom the right people to be ready at the appropriate time to manage the company successfully.  Succession planning allows smooth transition of leadership and it also helps organization identify the potential talent pool.  Early identification allows time to develop these talented people and help strengthen corporate culture.  The key success of the succession planning is to identify the critical leadership success factors that is the competencies and qualities required.

SELF DEVELOPMENT

The greatest tragedy in the corporate world is there are not many leaders.  Most just follow, comply with rules and regulations and maintain the existing practices.  No improvement is done despite the compelling forces all around requiring change.  The managers or so call leaders are afraid to be open about things and they are wimpish in addressing disciplinary issues.  The great error is to approach the disciplinary issues in a soft manner.  These so call leaders are risk adverse person, usually hiding under the cloak of management and do not utilize their authority.  They are slow to take on more responsibilities, lack confidence and like to embrace the status quo.

Leaders in organizations are required to increase their level of Leadership IQ which actually refers to the ability of leaders to lead people to achieve goals and at the same time create happy customers and employees.  There must exist a balance between performance, customers satisfaction and employees well-being.  There are twelve ‘I’s that leaders must learn to increase their quotient in order to achieve overall effectiveness that is inspire, illuminate, illustrate, involve, innovate, inform, impart, influence, initiate, inquire, improve, and implement.

Excellence is defined as the condition of excelling or surpassing some standards of expectation.  There are four key areas of excellence which are process excellence, product excellence, policy excellence and people excellence.  However, the most important is the people excellence since without them the organization will not be able to have the other three excellences.

One of the greatest values of the human resource as an asset is the ability of people to learn, improve and grow.  Attitude is also important because with positive attitude there exist more enthusiasm and energy to make things happen.  Upgrading one’s knowledge and skills in various areas of work is a fundamental way to achieve excellence.  Since excellence is a moving target, everyone in the organization has to possess the sense of adaptability.  Another area which must be addressed is the ability to appreciate.  Appreciating what they already have and stop asking for more.

The simple illustration of accountability can be shared through the EVERYBODY, SOMEBODY, NOBODY and ANYBODY story.  Four members of a team, EVERYBODY, SOMEBODY, NOBODY and ANYBODY were asked to work on an important project.  EVERYBODY was sure SOMEBODY would do it.  ANYBODY could have actually done it but NOBODY did it.  SOMEBODY got angry because it was EVERYBODY’s job.  EVERYBODY thought ANYBODY could do it but NOBODY realizes that EVERYBODY wouldn’t do it.  It ended up EVERYBODY blamed SOMEBODY when NOBODY did what ANYBODY could have done