The Powerful Instigators – How change creates Success
It happened, and it changed everything – my outlook, my attitude, my timeline. I told myself to be careful about my thoughts, because they can come to pass. I could see what needed to be done, but I didn’t want the job. I’m excited to do other things, and assuming the presidency of a company wasn’t on the list. But I was asked, and I knew I was probably best suited to get the company through this transition period and situate it to effectively move ahead. Some will probably say I took this job to feed my ego. That’s the furthest thing from the truth. It made sense, and since I care about the people there, it was nearly impossible to say no. Besides, I was up front about this being a transitional position. I’ve put it off long enough. I’ve followed my plan. In six months, I’m moving on to other things.
The company is a classic story – a strong-willed sole proprietor of a 40-year old business sells to an equity investment firm that doesn’t really understand what it’s buying. The few business systems in place are antiquated and defined work processes are virtually non-existent. Continuity has been a problem. A string of leaders have come and gone over the last several years for a variety of reasons, including death. I’ve been here 2-1/2 years as head of Engineering. I have sought to update engineering practices and import templates of tried and true business processes. But company-wide, change met with plenty of resistance that subverted any traction. There were silos and people who were not team players, whose presence was a cancer to the whole company.
Over and over, it has never ceased to amaze me how resistance from one person can effectively clog and stymie an initiative. When they are removed it’s even more amazing how others awaken and the whole enterprise takes off. Everyone becomes a powerful instigator of constructive change.
Getting the right people on the bus is crucial to being successful. Due to the politics of change, both good and bad people here have fallen victim to the recent turmoil. There are one or two I wish we could have back, and a few I couldn’t wait to see go. Unfortunately, ridding ourselves of the cancer was worth losing some of the good ones. The results are bearing that out. Every single one of the remaining employees are not only stepping up to do more, but are blossoming into proactive team players, neither of which we had before the changes. It proves the point that doing the right thing often means doing the hard thing.
My style is to lead by empowerment, by leveraging the skillsets of our people. They are much smarter than me; they know more than me; they don’t need to be told how. I’m there to create the environment in which they can be most successful. I’m a facilitator, a cheerleader, a mentor, an advisor. I try to clear the path. I don’t do other people’s jobs, nor do I pretend to know how. I’ve found if I’m doing my job right it can be pretty easy. Everyone will be pulling together, departments will be running efficiently, problems will be openly discussed among all concerned parties with courses of action generally decided before I, or if I, ever get involved. I’m supposed to make sure it stays that way by keeping everyone locked on to our purpose, to our goal, and by them knowing the only way to get there is by teamwork.
This is an opportunity to re-shape ourselves, to institute mutually beneficial disciplines that will make us more efficient and free us to be more creative. The right level of discipline will make the best use of our financial resources and maximize the profitability of existing products. That will free resources to concentrate more fully on developing new products. Along with new agreements with our current partners, these initiatives will secure the company’s near future and set a course for further success. Creating a culture of collaboration, communication and fearless contribution is the goal. We need people to step up and do their jobs without fear of retribution, to know a mistake is not the end, it is merely a challenge to overcome with the help of others in a team environment. Not caring who’s wrong or who gets the credit, and learning from mistakes is how we win and keep winning in the most productive way.
But despite all the right intentions and efforts, it takes time to right a listing ship, steer it onto the right course, and begin seeing results. It takes some courage, and maybe some stubbornness, to stand by those commitments. There will be a few things that end up not working, or not working out. From there, we will make more decisions based upon what we have learned, not upon worrying about being wrong or failing. For me, having a short duration to effect that change both lifts the fear of retribution and creates a sense of urgency. It’s my hope others take up that sense of fearless change. I want it to be a motivating factor for them to habitually begin doing the right thing.
Equity investment companies are not my favorite business partner, far from it. I’ve never met one I really liked because their single motivation typically has no tolerance for a strategy that might delay an increase in the bottom line, no matter how good those changes might be for the company over the long haul. The long haul is not their driver. Turn and burn is where they make their money. It’s usually counterintuitive to a company’s welfare, but it’s also temporary; equity investments are rarely held for long. That means other opportunities will exist down the road.
The job of a company leader, then, usually means protecting as best he can the interests of the company over the parent investor. It’s a bit surprising, but they don’t always align. It can devolve into a constant battle of staving off the negative, the risk-averse, and the status quo to promote constructive change.
In the meantime, we have five more months to get this wagon train hauling butt again, and everyone is excited to make it happen. Despite the overseer mentality of our equity investment parent, I think we will get there. Did I mention part of my job requires being an optimist? I bet you already knew that.
