Leading Change by Seth Kahan

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Change Management in 4 Steps

When you are kicking off a new change initiative, the highest leverage activity bar none is face-to-face engagement with your key opinion leaders.  Don't make the mistake of writing emails, designing brochures, putting together PowerPoints and sending them out into the change-o-sphere unescorted. Change is interactive. Here are the four steps to master:

1. Create enticing events that bring people together to discuss what you are up to.  Don't show up to tell them. Don't broadcast. Involve them. Ask them. Engage them.

2. Be a good teacher. This means you do these things extremely well:

*Connect with the audience. Become adept at listening and learning. Talk only about what your audience cares about. Everything else... they don't care about.

*Honor political realities. Know when to speak, when to shut up, when to defer, and what to do to ensure you are not blacklisted because of a political faux pas.

*Tell great stories. People are not won over with facts or functionality. They are won by desire. Good storytellers make people want to know more. Facts and function follow, carried along in the current of desire.

*Push back on substance when needed. Know your program. If a listener gets it wrong, correct them...tactfully and graciously, of course.

At the center of every extraordinary, exceptional face-to-face event is a great teacher. Teachers know how to listen. They are great storytellers. They know how to draw people out. They know how to draw people in. 

3. Learn from your partners. Take what you learn from these worthwhile interactions and use it to improve your plans and actions. Every good change team lives in continuous, rapid improvement. Lessons from the front are required. If you're not learning, nothing is changing.

4. Grow your relationships. Go back to the people you just spoke with and let them know their contribution matters. Show them how you changed as a result of their invaluable feedback. Do this fast. Have another conversation with them. They're on your side now.  Grow that relationship. 

There you have it:

1. Create enticing events that bring people together.

2. Be a great teacher.

3. Learn from your partners. 

4. Grow your relationships.

Repeat Cycle

- Seth Kahan, VisionaryLeadership.com

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WorkLifeSuccess: the Secret to Doing More with Less

When it comes to personal performance the secret to doing more with less is rhythm.  If you have ever tapped your toes to a beat you have experienced what every good drummer relies on: the power of the groove.

First the groove lays down the beat. Once the beat is established, there is more energy to stay with it. Once you’re in it, it’s hard to get out, easy to stay in.

The groove makes it possible for powerful improvisation – the stronger the structure, the more impact the solo.

Your grooves come from the rhythms of your life. This is where you get to do more with less. Without a rhythm, every little thing takes its own, individual effort. With a rhythm, you ride on the pulse and take care of the basics without breaking a sweat.

Once you have a rhythm you carry out the basics systematically and consistently. Then you direct energy toward riskier propositions. When you are ready to rise to a new level, your vigor is channeled into a surge that raises the bar: your solo. Then you use your groove to maintain a higher level.

There are many rhythms to use like this. The rhythm of the day: morning has its own special energy, as does mid-day and evening. Get to know them, work them.  Some people start the day clearing their inbox, others head to the coffee shop to greet colleagues. If you know what you are doing, you can make it work harder for you. More from less.

Nature provides the rhythm of the seasons, the changes in the weather. I live in North America. Here the winter months are the time to plant seeds, dream up new ideas. The spring is when I build on those seeds and turn them into new works.  Summer is for steady growth, and fall brings the harvest. I always do a review of my year in September and then turn my lessons and successes into a final effort that brings new bounty before winter.

Use your man-made rhythms: the fiscal year, the annual review, strategic planning, and so on. If you use them like a groove, you will be amazed at what able tools they are, enabling you to take your performance to a new level. Instead of feeling weighed down by the bureaucracy of it all, prepare for these regular events and work them to new ends… your ends.

Enjoy the rhythms in your life… use them to do more with less effort spent.

- Seth Kahan, VisionaryLeadership.com

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WorkLifeSuccess: Harvest Time is Here

The new season is here. Kids are back in school. September starts tomorrow. We are one month away from the last quarter of 2009.  

This is my favorite time of year, and not just because the summer heat in Washington DC begins to recede. No matter what kind of a year you have had, and many of us have had difficult ones in 2009, this is your chance to make it all worthwhile. 

In North America, it is the harvest season. Now is the time to gather everything you have learned in the last 8 months. Spend September collecting your hard-won lessons and put them into play. There is still time to make 2009 your best year yet.

There is time to reassess your goals and shoot for more than you anticipate achieving. There is time to call together your favorite planning pals and ask everyone what they are going to do to finish 2009 with a BIG success. There is time to set your sights on the major wins and do what's needed to execute at the top of your game. There is time to convene your champions and execute one more grand push. 

Imagine January 2010, looking back on the end of August 2009 and saying, "I achieved all that... and more." Now, what will it take to get there? Today's the day. Make it so.

- Seth Kahan, VisionaryLeadership.com

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Find the Time to Save Your Life

I was working with a change leader who was nearing exhaustion because his work was demanding so much. I told him he needed to get some rest. He told me he didn’t have time. He’ll get his job done. But, it might cost him his life.

He could pay the ultimate price, but I wasn’t referring to that. If he gives up his most important needs – health, spirituality, family, friends – he may find his life isn’t worth living. If you’re a workaholic, think of time off as the unique component that makes your effort sustainable.

Change leaders require a customized approach to self-care. In contrast to those carrying out pre-defined work, they put their efforts into shifting the status quo, arousing and inspiring, marshalling collective intelligence and facilitating a coordinated response from disparate parties, all the while staying in touch with changing circumstances and shifting tactics to maintain strategy and achieve results. This requires a very effective form of self-care.

The biggest obstacle I hear: Time. Here are three techniques for making time. Get serious about them. They are your lifeline to sustained performance.

Three Techniques for Making Time:

1. Devote yourself to the question: How can I be more effective with less effort? You will be amazed at the miracles this question can generate.

For example, when we were developing communities for the World Bank’s Knowledge Management (KM) initiative, we realized that we needed a person to support each community. We had no resources.  We found an intern program at George Washington University that supplied a graduate student in the KM field for $500 per semester. So, we convinced each community  to fund an intern and in short order had interns for almost every one of our 100+ groups. Then, we needed someone to manage the interns, so bought an intern to do that. We reaped extraordinary returns with relatively little effort.

2. Become expert at customizing your experience to suit your needs. 

For example, if you work out every morning, move next to a gym, learn which hotels have the facilities you need, develop routines that do not require equipment, manage the time required for your exercise, build a home gym. 

3. Trim the fat from your life.  

We all waste time.  Time is the one resource no one can give you more of. Identify the behaviors and routines with which you waste your time and cut them without mercy.  Best technique: learn to listen to your gut feeling. If your intuition is saying you don’t need to do something, find a way to jettison it, fast.

Four Percent for Performance

If you put these three techniques to use today, you will easily save 4%, over 30 minutes, each and every day. That’s just 1/25 of your waking hours. Make that a habit and you’ll save over 180 hours this year – an extra month. What could you do with an extra month? Find time to hang out with your family, say a prayer, go for a walk in the woods? That, and more.

- Seth Kahan, VisionaryLeadership.com

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7 Ways to Delight Clients

I recently caught up with leadership guru, Steve Denning, author of award-winning books like The Secret Language of Leadership, and asked him about his new ideas on delighting clients.

Seth: So Steve, what’s all this about delighting clients? Why is this important? 

Steve: Delighting clients is central to the future of any project or firm. Delighted clients support you, buy from you, stick with you through thick and thin, are waiting eagerly for your next offering. They tell their friends and colleagues about the wonderful things you do. They act as positive information radiators, They are the core of your client base. 

If you’re not delighting clients, it means you are going to have to work harder for your current clients to stay. Merely satisfied or disgruntled clients are easily picked off by competitors. When clients are not delighted, they are not telling their friends and colleagues about the wonderful things you do. 

Seth: What’s involved in delighting clients?

Steve:  The seven most important things to do are: 

1. Commit explicitly to delighting clients as your goal, not just pleasing or satisfying or serving people, or worse, merely delivering products and services.

2. Decide who your clients are and keep a sharp focus on them.

3. Work in teams that are focused specifically on delighting clients.

4. Work in an iterative fashion: delight clients early and often.

5. Explore multiple options, rather than sticking to the first thing you thought of.

6. Listen, listen, listen.

7. Give the teams a clear line of sight as to whether and how clients are being delighted.

This is a fundamentally new way of thinking about work. For most of the last hundred years, the object of a firm, or a project or work itself was seen as “producing goods or services”. You still see management books and experts saying that. This is about a fundamental re-conceptualization of the goal of work: The purpose of work is to delight clients.

Seth: As an example, can you apply this to organizing a conference or workshop?

Steve: Sure. Here’s how the principles apply:

1. The goal is to delight the client. 

With a traditional workshop or conference, the object is to provide a service, i.e. to hold a workshop or conference. In the new thinking, the goal is to delight the client, whether by holding the workshop or by any other means. The workshop itself is no longer the goal. It becomes a principal means to achieve the goal, but not the only means. 

2. Repeatedly ascertain what the client wants and doesn’t want. 

By survey, by telephone, by planning sessions in the workshop itself, put the client in charge. Let the client drive. Participants can say they want more of this, and less of that. And they can change their mind, as the workshop unfolds. They can say they have had enough of this, or even drop elements altogether. 

3. Work in cognitively-diverse teams.

Delighting clients isn’t easy or simple. Thinking of all the different ways that are available to delight clients requires divergent thinking. Studies show that cognitively diverse teams do much better at this than individuals. 

4. Work in an iterative fashion.

Iterative design offers multiple opportunities to find out what the clients want, and to delight the client before, during and after the workshop. Instead of only focusing on what happens during the workshop, iterative design offers multiple opportunities to delight the client. 

5. Use radical transparency to give the clients opportunity to steer.

Enable the class to participate in ongoing decisions as to what the workshop will focus on and to see how decisions are made. 

6. Create planning processes that are light, quick and fun.

Use “planning poker.” This makes it possible for a large number of people to quickly make complex priority decisions in an engaging way. 

[note: Planning Poker is a quick vote procedure taken from agile software development – see more here - Steve uses a version where people vote with their fingers instead of cards, rating ideas as a 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 - I have seen him do this - it is fun for participants and fast.]

7. Measure results in realtime and adjust as needed.

Find out during the workshop whether clients are being delighted and where the trouble spots are, so that they can be fixed on-the-fly, rather than appearing in the final evaluations when it is too late to do anything about it.

Seth: Have you written more about this?

Steve: There is more about this on my website. I wrote a piece specifically about workshops and another in which I share lessons I learned in a French village about delighting clients.

Steve Denning and I will be putting these principles into practice in the next seminar we offer, Getting Change Right through High Performance Teams, Washington DC,  July 30-31. Register to participate and experience it for yourself.

- Seth Kahan, VisionaryLeadership.com

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Scouting, Reconnaisance, and the Avant-garde

Maps are a good thing. They help you avoid difficult areas, or prepare for them. They make it possible to weigh the advantages of the long route vs the short one. And when you are faced with unplanned interruptions, they can get you where you need to go in short order.

Mapping the territory of change is easier said than done. An adequate representation must take into account varieties of intelligence: individual and collective, logistical and political, cultural and technical. 

The best way I know to get a good layout of the land is to talk to people.  I prefer a systematic approach to help me get a grip on what is where.  I also rely a great deal on intuition, my own and the people I speak with.  I like to scout, gather intelligence, and explore the periphery.

Scouting is about exploring the way ahead, going into the unknown to discover a safe way forward. Reconnaissance is gathering information useful to achieve advantage for the sake of engagement. And avant-garde, in its common English usage, refers to those who are innovative and experimental.

All three are about preparing for the future, seeking to understand what is coming up ahead.
Scouts deliberately go into the frontier. They take risks so their people can prepare for what is likely to come, including progress along the trail.

Conducting reconnaissance in the military sometimes means going behind enemy lines, a risky proposition to say the least. But, it justifies the effort and potential high cost with a wealth of information that generates significant advantage.

The avant-garde is known for it strange forays into the fringe, where glimpses of the future can be caught mingled with false starts and random bits of creative expression. Experiments in art provide new and different perspectives that foreshadow social trends, innovations, and new ways of being.

Purposefully venturing into unknown to gather useful perspectives is not for the feint of heart, but the payoffs can be immense. 

By talking to people who see things differently, offer other perspectives and critiques, you can map the territory of your change as it is perceived by your most valuable players. This allows you to chart challenges and opportunities, describe what may be needed to successfully navigate relationships, negotiations, and results.

- Seth Kahan, VisionaryLeadership.com

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8 Ways to Juice Your Meetings

Meetings are a core ritual in today's work world. Everyone is trying to figure out how to do them better. There is this temptation to think, 'if only I follow this easy-to-understand guide, my meetings will once again become useful, under control, relevant, well-organized.'

But, people don’t work that way. We are inherently messy. Anyone who has ever been tasked with leading a change initiative knows that conversations are difficult to map, people respond to new ideas and questions in ways that are not rational, guided by emotions and unvoiced concerns. 

Yet, it is through interaction, conversation, that we share our ideas, decide what they mean, and build the understanding that ultimately guides our behavior. So, meetings are not to be given up on. 

As a matter of course, in all my change efforts, I deal in meetings. In fact, I go after them with a hunger to learn and hear from as many points of view as possible. Here are eight principles I live by when it comes to meetings:

1. Identify all the people who are major players and contact them regularly. This is straight out of Marketing 101. Convene those who understand and support what you are up to, your evangelists. Meet with directors, project managers, and all those who have the most to gain from your work.

2. Meet with everyone, everywhere, at every opportunity.
Bring in key players whose participation can make or break your most important efforts.  Create working groups. Do dog and pony shows. Meet with clients and members. Visit other agencies that are doing what you are trying to do and bring them in to visit your team. Even meet with - gasp! -  business gurus.

3. Turn everyone on your core team into an expert presenter.
Enroll them in toast-masters, teach them how to lead engaging conversations, get them up on the stage, in front of the board room. Send them to conferences to present. Without a doubt, they represent your project. Make sure they do it well. Leverage them to expand and scale your reach.

4. Meet regularly and often with detractors. 
There is an old, Native American saying, "Bring coyote (the trickster) in the front door, or he will come in the back door and bite you in the @#$!" Here are three benefits detractors will bring to your initiative:
i. They will educate you on your weaknesses.
Then you can fortify and bolster your position by addressing the areas they identify.
ii. Some will convert and become staunch supporters.
iii. Simply by associating with them you will gain respect and build political clout.
Others will appreciate your efforts and you will become a magnet just by virtue of your desire to meet with critics. Some of your detractors will respect you for this as well. Though they may not support your efforts, they will become partners in other helpful ways. 

5. Share Your Excitement at Every Opportunity.
We live in a river of conversations that never stops.  The dialogue, like a river, spreads and flows to parts unimagined and permeates the tiniest crevices. Everything is wet with juicy conversations, gossip, new ideas, hot innovation.

As a result, everywhere we go people are thinking about the next coolest thing, what it means to them and their work, how they can become involved and the benefits it can bring to their day-to-day life. Insert your ideas into these coversations.

6. Aim for candid conversation that generates real solutions, even as situations are difficult and complex.
The value of authentic conversations is immense. If possible, get it out in the open where everyone can benefit, and momentum can be generated. But, if required, I'll go to the cafeteria, the bar, even the smoking room. Take me where conversation is real. Authentic talk is the currency of change.

7. The desire to listen is paramount; demonstrate it through your behavior.
Encourage and praise everyone you speak to for joining in.You will be surprised at who has something valuable to offer. Many people are asleep because their work, their boss, their program is dull and uninviting.  Make them welcome. Listen to what they have to say.

8. Share what inspires you most profoundly about your work.
Every successful change leader I have worked with is good at lifting peoples' eyes up above the horizon, to a larger, greater goal.  They are expert at inspiring, getting people to engage in a grand venture, and contribute as if all their professional expertise mattered.  That's when meetings come alive.

- Seth Kahan, VisionaryLeadership.com  

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7 Lessons for Getting Change Right

Between 1995 and 1997 I participated in two distinctly different change initiatives at the World Bank, both called Knowledge Management. The first one never took off. The second one changed the organization, and the world, in two short years, demonstrating how a bureaucratic, geographically distributed, multi-national, public sector organization can reinvent itself faster than anyone could have planned.

What made the difference in these two initiatives? I identified seven important lessons from my observations, which I use in my work leading world-class organizations through major change.

The first Knowledge Management team I joined was comprised of a few select, world-class thought leaders who drew on a dedicated budget to design and implement a powerful new tool they hoped would revolutionize the way business was done. We met in closed meetings, witnessed remarkable demonstrations, and marveled at the power of the Internet to spread knowledge.

After a year, I found that the enthusiasm around this initiative was still confined to the original small group and a few others who had recently joined. It seemed to me we were going nowhere, and I made up my mind to end my brief tenure with this group.

I was staying late one evening, writing my letter of resignation, when Steve Denning stopped by and asked what I was doing. I told him and he asked me to give him an hour before I turned in my resignation.

Later that same evening I had a new job, on loan to a new team at the World Bank led by Steve Denning. His team, in contrast to the former, had no funding and no resources, except for a half-time assistant.I joined another staff member, Lesley Schneier who was also on loan to Steve.

Two years later, our little team had grown to six people, and spawned over 120 communities to champion our program. Thousands of people were deeply involved not only inside but also outside the World Bank, pushing the knowledge management agenda forward on multiple fronts in a giant social network.

Steve worked with bits and pieces. He cobbled together resources here and there. We did much more with bits and pieces than the first team accomplished with a dedicated budget. Whether we knew it or not, we understood what engagement was how to use it.

Our working style was the polar opposite of the first, secretive team. We told everybody what we were up to. In fact, we spent a good deal of time in the beginning figuring out how to tell as many people as we could, as fast as possible. We even met regularly with our detractors, as their input was sometimes needed the most.

The dialogue flowed like a river, and often penetrated parts of the organization our team had not formally reached.

Within two years, we achieved international prominence, receiving recognition from independent evaluation organizations and regular visits from business gurus. Our program obtained $60,000,000 in annual allocations.  

More than that, we influenced hundreds of lending projects, impacting perhaps millions of lives. These changes happened so fast, it was often disorienting.

The Seven Lessons
In retrospect the second team did a lot right, even if by intuition and accident as well as by design. We also made a lot of mistakes. Daily, perhaps. But what we got right trumped all. Here are those seven lessons.

1. Communicate so people get it and spread it.
The "it" is not a pre-cooked, hard-boiled message. Instead, it is a conversation that spreads, a dialog that arouses the social network. We learned to spark cascades of conversations.

2. Identify and energize your most valuable players.
People are at the heart of change. We always took the time to engage. We went after people and gave them exciting ways to be part of the action.

3. Understand the territory of change.
Every organization has a different culture, different ways of figuring out how to go forward. I systematically listened to others for five important indicators:
i - Red flags - showstoppers
ii - Yellow flags - potential obstacles
iii - Educational deficits - information gaps
iv - Themes - common concerns
v - High-value opportunities - options that provide dvaluable returns

4. Accelerate evolution through communities.
We built "Thematic Groups" that advanced our cause, creating systemic pull.

5. Blow through bottlenecks and logjams.
Obstacles, hurdles, challenges are all part of a change initiative. We had a SWAT Team mentality.

6. Create dramatic surges in progress.
Special face-to-face events accelerated our program. We created gatherings that brought players together in high-value, high-leverage experiences designed to push things forward in leaps and bounds.

7. Keep your focus when change comes fast.
Things happened so fast it was sometimes disorienting. Our small team used each other and people in other organizations engaged in similar initiatives to keep our focus.

- Seth Kahan, VisionaryLeadership.com

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Shine Bright in Dark Times

This column is called Leading Change and is written for people taking the reins in their hands, whether by choice or not. In organizations today it is often the latter.

Circumstances are not what we would like them to be. Profits are down. People are being laid off. Leadership is forever asking us to do more with less. We are in the process of systematically and persistently discovering what can be dispensed with and what is critical.

There are days when simply making it through without a catastrophe feels like an accomplishment.

How do you deal with change when imposed from outside, whether by leadership or an unfriendly environment? How do you screw your own head on differently so you are up to the task, and help others do the same?  How do you move from stress to engagement? What opportunities are there in a mess like this?

I worked in a large, decentralized bureaucracy for thirteen years. This situation came around in some form or other every few years like the moon cycling around the planet, causing the tides to ebb and flow.

Those of us who were in it for the long haul recognized the cycles of stress and developed our particular ways of coping.

Some put their heads down and got to work, thinking the best way to avoid a layoff was to be busy generating real value, demonstrating our worth through actions. Mostly it worked. But, sometimes the axe came through without regard for rationality, common sense, or even political correctness.

It is a time of real stress, and that must be dealt with.  Many turn to distractions that are less than healthy: drink more, smoke more, party more.  That is a cycle that leads to personal health crises, eventually creating more problems than it resolves and even permanent damage.

Get support and make it the kind that works deep magic on your psyche. Spend more time with your children and close friends. Go to the gym more often, or take long walks. Get into music, painting, dance, poetry, theater. Turn toward your soul.

At work, look for the unique opportunities presented by stressful times. Believe it or not, once you get past the anxiety, there are real silver linings in these dark clouds, and a few can be cashed in personally.  Here are some:

Innovate
When many are anxious or down, they are distracted and their energy is low. It is an excellent time to move forward with new ideas, to be seen as a champion. Almost everyone is trying to fade into the woodwork, and those who want to shine have ample opportunity.  Standing out in the crowd can help your career in more ways than one.

Make Your Move
We are in a reshuffle in the marketplace. The same is true inside organizations. Those at the top are hauled off or disappear. Those at the margins move into the mainstream. Some who were barely known are suddenly major players. What’s your move? Now is the time.

Even if you do end up in the job market, why not go out in a blaze of glory? If departure is inevitable, now is the time to push through that radical idea you want to be known for. Then add it to your resume and include it as a given in your next job, which will be that much more interesting. And if, by chance, you stick around, you will have used this time to shift perception, raise your esteem and your position.

Master the Basics
Whether we like it or not, work gets boiled down to what is essential. This can be a time of great discovery as the fundamentals surface. They are, after all, a real platform for growth. Do you know your basics? Are you a master of core practices? Now is the perfect time to get your chops up. This will help you in every aspect of life.

Find Yourself
Develop a rhythm. Get to core progress. Raise your performance. You will be noticed… most importantly by yourself. But, others, too, will recognize new leadership. Everyone’s looking for rising stars. Especially in dark skies.

- Seth Kahan, VisionaryLeadership.com

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In a Tight Spot? Destroy Sacred Zombie Cows!

At this point in our economic distress cycle, most have trimmed so much fat they are in danger of cutting muscle. Yet, the challenges continue. A good friend who works at the Fed reminded me yesterday at our sons' soccer game that the Great Depression was a multi-dip experience. Jeez, I thought, what's a guy to do?

David Gammel, an expert helping organizations succeed online, introduced me to sacred zombie cows.  A plain, vanilla sacred cow is, of course, anything that is immune from criticism. The term grew out of the Hindu religious esteem for cows.

But, David has gone where no metaphor has gone before, imbuing the holy domestic bovine with a new dimension appropriate to those cattle who walk among the living dead.

Gammel says, "Sacred zombie cows are programs that not only do not produce sufficient value, they are impossible to kill even when their inherent constituency no longer supports them or doesn’t exist any longer."

Why is David talking about sacred zombie cows now? "In this economic environment, you are free to create massive change. Boards will consider things that were anathema to them a mere six months ago.

"That program that was the darling of a beloved past president who has been retired for 10 years? No one will blink if you give it the axe. Use the disruption of today to get rid of some bad cows. Then redirect those resources into value producing activities aligned with current needs."

Cut Useless Expenditures Now
Muhtar Kent, CEO of Coca Cola said recently, "Don't waste this crisis. Be thoughtful about your expenditures and be sure to focus only on what delivers value."

Look around and see what resources can be converted to higher return activity. Follow Gammels' advice and use this unique window of time to take out the brains of initiatives ordinarily immune from harm.  (According to the Zombie Survival & Defense wiki , zombies "can only be stopped by destruction of the cerebellum or the brain stem.")

After Pruning Resource Leaks, Build Capacity
For every sacred zombie cow that goes down, resources become available. Redirect your savings to achieve growth, returns, efficiencies, and increased performance.

Make It Personal
Are there activities that you spend time on because you have always done it that way? Now is the time to reevaluate your schedule, your commitments, your focus.  You may find pursuits and passtimes long overdue for some paring.  Use this as an opportunity to become lean in the best sense of the word.

No time is good for zombies.  They should be rooted out whenever they appear. But, when times make it easy, go after them with a vengence. Make your streets safe to walk again.  Your customers will thank you. Your members will thank you. Your employees will thank you. Your ROI will thank you.

-- Seth Kahan, VisionaryLeadership.com