Some questions asked by roundtable participants:
· Are your goals clear?
· Are problems identified/managed more top-down or bottom-up?
· What made the training at your previous employers successful?
· Do you view the culture as changeable?
· What has made past training successful?
· What portion of your employees’ reviews depends on exhibiting the behavior desired?
· Have you put any signs up? (refers to marketing on the walls regarding goals, safety or performance goals, etc.)
· What other communications initiatives have been tried?
· Are your peers’ goals clearly defined?
· Were business reasons for change/corporate goals and strategies set communicated?
· How are you planning to publicize/reward someone when they do something good?
· Have you taken time to find out what employees want, need, how they feel, etc.?
· Have you identified who the “potential” leaders are?
· Are possibly too many goals set/trying to be achieved, or are they possibly misunderstood?
· What percent of decisions brought to you should be made by supervisors?
Some experience shared by participants:
· Cultural change can take a long time
· Weekly or monthly meetings can help advance the change you’re looking for
· A line-leader program can relieve supervisors of paperwork, equipment adjustments and repetitive requirements. These are long-time employees who are identified leaders on the floor. In sample program, dividends were reaped in third year.
· Once-a-month employee meetings to share information. Use TV break-room to communicate. You’d be surprised of the power of a smiley face on a chart!
· Some decisions can be turned over to front-line supervisors
· Ken Blanchard books on leadership, coaching, team-building
· Culture of small company can be one of “micro-management” compared to a larger company. Empowering line leaders and supervisors can take time when shifting power to them.
· When the list of initiatives is daunting, a manager could select the top three that will have the most impact. Then talk about and preach only those three both to the employees and with the executive management team.
· Assure employees that it’s OK to make a mistake.
· Communicate principals you want your employees to follow in decision making (Covey’s principal-centered leadership) http://www.amazon.com/Principle-Centered-Leadership-Stephen-Covey/dp/0671792806/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1234197683&sr=1-1
· “Comfort is the enemy of change.” Are you willing to use “positive” stress? See comment below
· Ritz-Carlton case study: moved from 200% employee turnover to virtually none by identifying the type of employee needed in the job and then recruiting for it. http://www.quality.nist.gov/Ritz_Carlton_Hotel_Co.htm
· Develop a matrix that shows accountability
· Identify the most important tasks to mid-management team’s function.
· Sharing information to many levels is key (goals, strategies, methods, training, how performance will be measured and rewarded or not, etc.)
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This on Tom Harvey from Dale Flowers:
ReplyDeleteNotes on the Tom Harvey Tape
“Motivating People to Change”
© 2008 A. Dale Flowers, All rights reserved.
Tom argues on this tape that in order to motivate people to change, you must be “strategic.”
He then discusses the four strategies listed below as all being necessary for successful change.
1. Celebrate resistance – so you can understand where it is coming from and deal with it. He cites
research that showed ~10% of companies were ready for change, 30% were engaged in minor
cosmetic change so there was no real resistance (rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic), and
55% engaged in the “parking lot syndrome.” You can’t do anything about this 55% that
undermines the change efforts in the parking lot. That’s why you have to encourage people to
tell you why something will NOT work, so you can learn the source of the resistance and develop
a strategy to overcome it. He uses an example of resistance by teachers to the introduction of
the computer into classroom activities, where the resistance came from those who could not
type.
2. Comfort is the enemy of change – Stress is a necessary pre‐condition for change; it leads to
change, change does not create stress. He talks about EU stress that is “healthy” stress since it
helps induce positive change. He says research shows that 70% of employees fall in the low
stress area, in spite of the fact that they may complain a lot. Most employees will have to be
stressed in order to facilitate change. This means that leaders have to create this stress and may
therefore not be the most popular people in the company at all times!
3. People have to believe in themselves – “If you believe you can, or you believe you cannot,
you’re right.” Research shows that 70% of middle managers believe that got to where they are
by faking it (they believe they have only about 3 skills). This means that they may not believe
they have the capacity to implement the change that is needed. The “theory of small wins” may
be an effective strategy to help change efforts. It breaks tasks down into small subunits, and
then expands to incorporate more and more of the change. The example given was entering
customer orders directly into the computer rather than writing them on cards and then
transferring them at the end of the day. The small success of entering just a few at first
ultimately lead to entering all of them every day directly into the computer.
4. Payoffs are critical to success – Don’t focus on why where we are now is bad; focus on where
we want to go. Articulate clearly where you want to go, and then provide payoffs to get there.
“Those things that get rewarded, get done.” Figure out rewards that are meaningful to the
people who need to implement the change. Categories of rewards include: money,
achievement, recognition, responsibility, interpersonal relations, security, and facilities.
SUMMARY – You have to use all four strategies to be effective. Using any less will not get you where
you want to go.