Mastering the Challenges of Leading Change. James Dallas H.

billion when I left 22 years later. When I joined Medtronic in 2006, revenues were around $10 billion. They grew to more than $18 billion in the seven-plus years I was with the company. My point here isn't that I created all that growth, but that the growth made the ability to lead change a job requirement.

      At both companies, I brought people and processes together to leverage what was common and maximize what was unique. I led upward of 15 acquisition integrations, 10 enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementations, 10 shared services implementations, 5 quality and customer service improvement programs, and over 300 various other projects. I also created three innovation centers.

      My track record in all those initiatives wasn't 100 percent, but I feel comfortable (if not exactly modest) putting it at 90 percent – not over my entire career, but certainly during the past 20 years after I had honed the methods I lay out in this book.

      Throughout my career, I've paid attention to a powerful tutor called “trial and error,” making a conscious effort to turn every misstep into a revelation. In my early days, that kept me busy. But once I got out of my head and shifted my attention to the people whose lives I'd be changing, leading came naturally.

      We all come from unique circumstances that give us particular skills and abilities. I'm an African-American male who was born in 1958 in the South, raised by a mother and grandmother whose household was rich in wisdom (especially my grandmother's, as she told us often) but poor by traditional metrics. Speaking from where I am today, you could say I started beating the odds at a very young age.

      As a kid I played the violin. In my neighborhood, that wasn't just unusual, it was freakish. I did it anyway. Being in orchestras led me to interact early on with people from other walks of life. Quickly I became a very astute observer of what made the people around me tick – an invaluable skill when you need to convince others to change their thinking when the status quo suits them just fine, thank you. So while most of the stories and tactics in the book come directly from my career, I've also included some “life stories” that I've found particularly instructive over the years.

      The bottom line is that leading change isn't easy because it is not totally a science. That's why the failure rate is so high. Managing each initiative requires science and art, because the people dynamic is always unique. What I can promise is that you will increase your success rate by paying attention to those dynamics and respecting the “people” part of the equation. This book provides a wealth of tools to do exactly that.

      Experience will still be your greatest teacher. I'm sharing mine to give you a jump-start and to let you know that you are not alone in the trials and travails you have experienced or will experience when leading change. Most important, I'm sharing them to let you know that the art can be learned and that you can overcome and benefit from any obstacle that you encounter.

Part I

      Priorities

      Chapter 1

      Set a Course for Change

      I truly believe that the ultimate success or failure of any change initiative isn't decided along the way, but right at the outset. Unfortunately, most traditional project management methodologies set you up to fail. They almost invariably start with a focus on the problem statement. They teach you how to do the analytical work required to define the problem (a.k.a. opportunity). By analytical, I mean taking a structured approach to gathering the facts and making them as quantifiable as possible.

      Of course, defining the problem is necessary, but the purely analytical approach ignores the most important data you'll need up front in order to succeed. Before you can set a course for change – in other words, set your priorities – you first need to understand the existing priorities of the people who you'll ask to change. That's the most important information you need to lead change successfully. Your priorities will never become their priorities without understanding their starting places, which is exactly why most change initiatives fail. Understanding others' priorities upfront – both their daily issues and the underlying cultural impulses of the organization – will help you craft a far more accurate problem statement.

      It starts with a shift in perspective, which is the cognitive equivalent of a person taking his glasses off: get in close and rely on others to see. I started practicing this long before I wore a tie to work for the very simple reason that I was born nearsighted. I could only see in the radius of a few feet, and as a result I learned to use what was in focus to maximum advantage. For example, on the basketball court, I became hyperaware of what the other players around me were doing, a skill that made me MVP even though I could barely see beyond my own arm. (I never played in my glasses.) I could learn more about what was going to happen by watching the people than I could by watching the ball. I also realized that getting close to something – like the chalkboard, for example – was the best way to make sense of it.

      So it goes with defining any new initiative. When you get started, go into the engagement with the attitude of a learner, not of an expert. Listen more than you talk. You'll get better answers and invest people right from the start. Once you understand what people's current priorities and practices are, you can begin to set a course to changing them.

The Three Questions

      A good friend always said to me, “Data is objective; however, the interpretation of that data is subjective.” More specifically, people look at and interpret data through their own lenses, not yours, so your discovery process starts with them. Their version of the data is as important as the numbers or facts themselves. Therefore, the first data I gather when I come into a new situation is via a survey of everyone involved.

      I ask the following three questions to my direct leadership team and to the key internal and external stakeholders, in particular customers, to whom we are providing services or products:

      1. What are the top three things we are doing well?

      2. What are the top three things we are doing badly?

      3. What are the top three things we need to do to fix them?

      The questions are simple on the surface, but they provide very powerful insight not only into the problem(s), but also into the existing priorities and how well the team is delivering on them. Note that I ask the questions in person instead of sending out a survey for people to complete. I center the discussion around a meal, and I go to them instead of having them come to me. This helps me get the best answers and starts building engagement early.

      Often you'll find that by the team's own metrics, they're doing great. “Our success rate is 80 percent,” they'll tell you. “We have a track record of finishing projects on time and on budget.” But that's just part of the story. You get the other part by interviewing the clients or end users – enough of them so that you can spot outliers and see the pattern. Often, at that point, an entirely different story emerges. While a project may have been finished on time, it didn't meet the end user's needs. In the course of these surveys, you'll find out very quickly where there's alignment and where there isn't.

      As you review and interpret answers from the team, you're getting a sense of the people and their individual priorities first. But you're also looking for a guide to the organization's practical problems. Primarily these will be:

      • Operational issues. Are we having customer service issues, quality issues, supply chain issues, employee issues, regulatory issues, or ethical issues that are adversely affecting our customer relationships, employee relationships, brand, and so on?

      • Lags and shortfalls. Are we behind on meeting the quarterly and annual budgets, behind time- or dollar-wise with key projects, behind on meeting regulatory commitments, and so on?

      • Strategic direction. What ideas should we pursue, what impact could they have, what will success look like, and what might be the priorities, politics, and people dynamics involved?

      Finally, your interviews will yield one more set of key data: team wins. Keep watch for what the team is truly doing well. You need to know so that you can leverage those strengths and also celebrate them. People feel much more positive about change when they know their value is recognized.

Assessing the Culture

      As you