The WInter Coat

When I first arrived in the USA, my job was to standardize the computer systems in 14 countries for a global financial services firm. At 31 years old, I had no idea how to even scope out this task. I did realize I had absolutely no control over system owners and standardizing them would probably be the last thing on their priority lists.
Asia Pacific was the smallest region and had a great reputation for sound management and novel ideas. The VP there was about my age and close to me demographically. I would get no traction in his region without his help.
About three months after I met him, he called me up one day and asked if I could help arrange some flights to Canada so he could visit relatives during a business trip that fall.
I did and he was very grateful. During our conversation, he asked, mockingly, what the weather had been like in New York – being summer in Australia, it was 90o in March.
A week later I called him back. “Do you own a winter coat?” I asked him. He didn’t, saying in his part of Australia, there was no such thing since the temperature rarely got down to 40 o in the winter. I told him it would probably be freezing or below in early November in Montreal and offered to get a coat for him. He accepted my offer and I sent him the coat a couple of weeks later.
By August that year, I’d figured out a standardization strategy but it would have huge impacts, particularly on the smaller regions. I called my Australia contact one night and shared the strategy. He wasn’t well pleased at first – it might result in his job being eliminated, which I had realized already. Once I explained it to him, he understood what I was getting at and reluctantly agreed to be a prime mover for me in implementing this strategy.
Over the next two years, that VP worked hard to align his region with the strategy, convincing his business partners of the benefits and showing leadership to other regions of the world that they found hard to ignore.
I returned to England two years later. About the last thing I did before I left was to present a global IT reorganization strategy to the company president which he approved.
Without that winter coat, I don’t believe the strategy would have gotten off the ground. The VP in Australia wouldn’t have been willing to buy into the strategy; he wouldn’t have stepped up to lead into it; he wouldn’t have been prepared to give up his job and the global financial services provider would be left, today, with a jumbled bag of systems and databases in no fit state to support the service mission of the firm.
I had accomplished my goal by stepping outside of my role. I had gotten one-on-one with a key leader, bought (yes bought) his support with a personal favor then collected from him to further my strategy. In hindsight, this looks like the careful planning of a wise man. It wasn’t – it was a rookie’s luck but it sure gave me an influence model that worked beyond my wildest dreams.

Putting People First

“Putting People First” is the brand name of a program first implemented by Scandinavian Air Service (SAS) in the 1970s. It was intended to change ground- and cabin-staffs’ behavior so they would provide better customer service. Since then, the title has been used for many corporate programs. There are books, three-day training classes, and blogs. There’s almost a science now to putting people first.
In much of this, though, the principles have been lost. We think it’s just something you need if you’re in customer service; it’s only applicable in the work world or it’s something everyone else needs to do.

Bible scholars will tell you that “Love thy neighbor as thyself” is a critical concept for Christians. You’ll find much discussion about who my neighbor is but less about what loving them means.

Think of loving thy neighbor and putting people first as the same thing. Loving someone means, in practical terms, putting their wants and needs ahead of your own, all the time. We serve each other.

In business, everything we do results in an action that affects at least one other person. It may be a customer or business partner; it may be the person downstream from us on the product- or service-line that needs something we produce. It may be the unknown person on the phone who’s calling a wrong number. It may be a nervous candidate for the new job on the janitorial staff.

Success in business, particularly in business transitions comes from respecting the people we deal with and learning to “love” them. (“Love” is in quotes because for some this may seem a strange business concept!)

As you begin an interaction, do whatever you can to put the other person at ease and get them comfortable. As you leave an interaction make sure the other person knows what the next steps are. Make sure the interaction is always a pleasant one for them. As you design that new business process, think about the people who are downstream from you and make sure you’ve understood their needs – really understood them and played them back so they know you’ve understood them.

Three Legged Stools

Have you ever noticed how many strategies, methods and procedures use the “three-legged-stool” analogy? (Network Marketing, Human Resource, Development, End user authentication, Business Transition and Improvement Projects, to name a few).

If you Google “People, Process, Technology” you’ll find over 40 pages of diagrams trying to portray this approach to business transitions.

One leg common to many of these three-legged strategies is labeled “People”. Usually that means some mix of organization development, leadership, personnel selection and roles/responsibilities.

Rarely does the “people leg” include culture, language, influence or behavior. Because of these missing pieces, this leg is invariably much shorter than the others. The result? Business transitions are rocky. Transitions are successful when they bring the three legs of the stool back into balance.

What does this mean?

First, it means business leaders must adapt to globalization and new styles of business collaboration. They must understand how to integrate. They must be able to negotiate agreements that their staff can actually execute. Participants in change must be able to lead, influence and motivate each other, regardless of their cultural norms. If their behaviors and styles conflict, barriers are built very quickly.

Focusing on top down organizational change does not by itself create an environment where multi-cultural staff can be successful. And we’re talking about corporate as well as national and tribal cultures here. Leaders must bring new knowledge and techniques to their transition teams early in the process, before new cultural barriers have had time to solidify.

If people can’t relate to one another, that three-legged stool may well topple over Sound leadership and understanding can eliminate this risk.

Late before you start?

In my 30-plus years leading and consulting for large multinationals, I've seen many attempts at major transitions fail before they even start.

It's mid- January and the Chief Marketing Officer asks you to re-launch your firm's leading product line. Your current positioning is stale and the media thinks it’s "old-hat". Your job - reposition the product line and show an increase in sales by 4th quarter this year. Spend up to $15 million and use whatever expertise you need, inside and outside the company.

You have the money and the date. Easy, right?

Now it’s late March and you haven’t had your first brand brainstorming session yet. It’s taken almost three months to overcome the political barriers, gain some priority for key resources and identify all the people who’ll be affected. Sales is resisting because they have to be retrained: Finance is objecting because this seems too high-risk, despite C-level agreement back in September.

When you got the job, it seemed like you had a short year to get the CMO’s repositioning done. Now you realize that 4th quarter means Sales has to be re-trained before Thanksgiving and you can’t get IT resources before mid-May. You’re late before you even start.

What if you had 25% more time to get it done?

Actually you already did. You’ve spent 10 weeks already, spinning your wheels in politics, resistance and conflicting priorities.

There’s a saying in the world of change management – change programs get late one day at a time. It’s quite true. So, one of your keys to success is to get moving on day 1. And be doing productive work on day 2 and day 3 and day 10.

Have you ever tried to throw together a great appetizer when unexpected company shows up? What was the most important thing you had to have – a recipe and ingredients, right?

Wouldn’t it be great to have a recipe and the ingredients for that re-branding program on day 1?

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