If you’re a startup organization, a driving leader, or a parent, complex change is a part of your life.  I’m the parent of a toddler.  Everything she touches she either eats or breaks.  Everyday she is into something new or turning our life upside down (in great ways).  She outgrows her schedule, her clothes, and her appetite for certain foods faster than we can get a handle on what our system is for managing it all.

Startup organizations are a lot like my daughter.  If this is you, you’re into everything, figuring out what you like to do and don’t like to do, and as soon as you figure it out—you’ve outgrown it and have to change.

Leaders who are dominant drivers of forward progress welcome complex change like their people welcome vacation time.  After a busy week, the Driving Leader (DL) is still working on Saturday morning, struggling to slow down into a restful weekend.  After a small respite, on Sunday afternoon the DL’s wheels have been turning about last week’s progress.  Simply put, it was not enough.  The organization has to keep pushing ahead.   The DL says, “If I don’t push us ahead, no one will.”  By Monday morning, the previous week’s work has been pushed aside for a new plan and a new model.  Complex change, here we come.

Welcoming and embracing complex change is a great asset to any organization (or family), as long as one doesn’t underestimate the cost or overestimate the organization’s ability to manage it.

Model Originator Source: The Managing Complex Change Model. Copyright, 1987, by Dr. Mary Lippitt, Founder and President of Enterprise Management, Ltd.

In a popular model, there are five components to managing complex change–Vision, Skill, Incentives, Resources and an Action Plan.  Without any one of these components, five potential pitfalls emerge–Confusion, Anxiety, Resistance (or Gradual Change), Frustration, and False Starts.

Because leaders often underestimate the difficulty of managing change, it’s their key stakeholders who feel the far right column most acutely.

The model speaks for itself, but I have a few annotations to it.

Most leaders who dive into complex change don’t lack vision.  What they lack is communicating it clearly and capturing the vision in a way that key stakeholders can refer to and refer to often.

A great vision without the skills to execute it is like giving the keys to a Hummer to a teenager who’s never driven a car before. No one wants to go on that ride, but you’re telling them, “Hop in.”  Everyone in the room knows a cliff is in the future and driving off it is likely.

Incentives can be difficult.  Sometimes it’s as simple as money, rewards and recognition.  Other times incentives are more complex answers to questions like “Why are we doing this?  What is the benefit?”  Remember, you are what you celebrate.

Without the resources to accomplish the change you have in mind, frustration abounds.  Remember, at this point your people understand the vision, are capable and are motivated.  However, the tools are missing.  If you are a change leader, this is an important part of your credibility in the process.  If your stakeholders see they are not equipped with adequate resources to accomplish the goal, they will wonder why you didn’t see it first.

Finally, the most common error I run into when I work with teams is the lack of a clear and effective action plan.  Ideas live at 50,000 feet but never land.  Stakeholders leave meetings either very excited or very defeated.  An action plan effectively puts the 50,000 feet idea into context.  Think of your action plan like that–a context document.  What do my ideas look like at 15,000 feet, 500 feet and 5 feet?  In my work leading teams through strategy, I know a good action plan is missing when the idea has to live at the conceptual level because that’s the only place anyone understands it.  Set a course and land that plane.

For more on how I can help your team or organization manage complex change, visit Annotate.

I finished that paper by saying:

“Ask for the right help.  Bring on someone who fits your organization.  Not all consultants are alike.  In fact, many of them are terrible.  One of my mentors has said, “The best investment a consultant can make is $35 worth of business cards that say ‘Consultant’ on them.”  His point is–anyone can say they’re a consultant.  Don’t be fooled.  Secondly, just because there are a lot of jokers out there doesn’t mean there aren’t some great coaches and consultants out there also.  So look for the good ones.  Don’t hire the first person you talk to.  Make sure that person is going to fit with your team and your vision.”

Why is fit so important when you are bringing in a consultant?

Trust.  It’s the primary commodity of influence.

Let’s go back to the premise that there are good and bad consultants.  Bad consultants have only two impacts on your organization–they waste your money and your people will think you are stupid for bringing them in.  Good consultants fall into two categories–good and a right fit; good and a poor fit.

Good consultants will ask great questions, challenge you to think outside the box and help you feel empowered to make changes. But if that consultant is not the right fit for your organization, he/she can do horrible damage like a great surgeon with a scalpel who is doing the wrong type of surgery on the patient.  One of my own goals in choosing clients is to make sure I’m not that gifted surgeon cutting on the wrong things.  Fit is just as important to me and my reputation as it should be to you.

So let’s talk about the right fit.

The good consultant who is the right fit will not only ask great questions, but ask you the question you personally need to hear.  The one who is the right fit will not only challenge you to think outside the box, but will keep you in the ballpark of what you’re trying to accomplish.  The one who is the right fit will empower you to make the changes that will serve your vision and your values.

The best consultants I’ve worked with “feel” right.  They have the knack to speak a common language, understand my values and help me see what part of the culture I’m building is actually upholding those values.  Those consultants have felt like an old family friend who is strong enough to tell me the truth, but cares just as much about the relationship we are building.  When you are choosing someone to bring into your organization, understand there are many choices out there, talk to more than one person and trust your gut.

Here are some thoughts you should use to choose the right consultant.  I use a similar process when I think about when choosing a client:

• How many potential consultants do you plan to interview?
• What is your criteria for outside counsel?  What character qualities will be important to you and others in the organization?
• What competencies does this individual have that can serve you or your organization?  Are there others who have these same competencies but might fit your culture better?
• Keep in mind that upon character and competency, a reputation is built.  As a consultant works with you, both character and competency will help your consultant build a reputation that will jive with your organization or create friction.
• Upon a reputation, alliances are formed.  Just as I said above, the reputation being built as the consultant works with you and your team will speak something to others.  Likeminded people will align themselves to that consultant.  Others will create discord.  You have to see this coming and think about the impact it will have.  Both harmony and discord are useful.  The consultant is your tool to help create the right harmony and the right discord.
• When consultants build alliances in organizations, they get power.  This power can be unbelievably valuable to you, which is why trust is so essential in this whole process.  If you are a CEO or top-level organizational leader, the consultant’s power and alliances should be an extension of your own power you want to leverage in the organization.
• Power leads to influence.  What influence or impact are you trying to accomplish?

In a future paper, we’ll talk about power and influence and how you as the leader can think about your own responsibility.  For more information on how I can help you as a leader, visit the Annotate site. 

Everyone.

Why?  Because no one is free from organizational or leadership sickness and no one is fully able to remedy all their internal needs.  If you disagree, think about what you’re really saying.  You’re either saying, “We don’t have any problems,” or “We don’t have any problems we can’t fix on our own.”

Really?  So why haven’t you fixed them yet? And what are you waiting on?  And why not get help?  My thesis here is that organizations and leaders who have had a moderate amount of success are the ones who need the most help but ask for it the least.

Let’s back up first.

What does a consultant really do?  Well, there’s a difference between hiring the type of consultant who comes in and does contractual specialty work for you (which often happens in the IT world), and someone who you hire to take a look at things and give you advice from their experience.

The benefits of either type are many.  Hiring specialists on a contractual basis can allow you to get specific projects done without making a huge commitment.  No benefits.  No long-term contracts.  You get work done and can get systems in place and if you don’t like what you’re getting–done.  Contract over.  It’s like doing the “safe lunch” when you’re on a blind date.

If you’re hiring the type of consultants who are advisors and thinkers, the benefits are this–they will ask questions you are not asking.  They will say things are important that you don’t think are important.  They will have seen things more than once, things that in all likelihood you are seeing for the first time.

Any maybe that’s a good place to start–what are you seeing or trying for the first time?  Make a list.  If you’re an entrepreneur that list is probably long because you’re an innovator.  But the great equalizer is this–people.  Do you have people in your organization?  No matter how innovative you are, what wild and new thing you’re working on, human nature trumps a lot.  That’s why when people read books on leadership or organizational life-cycles, they think “How did this writer nail me?”

Because you’re human (unless you’re Siri, on the new iPhone 4s.  Siri, if you’re reading this–please move my 9am appointment tomorrow).

More often than not, it’s the very weak and very strong organizations who hire consultants.  The very weak have waited too long and are now in desperate help.  They need a complete overhaul, or they are not even sure what they need!  The very best organizations keep consultants on retainer because they know outside counsel is crucial to staying on the front edge of change and success.

But it’s the organizations who have had moderate or waning success who actually need the most help and ask for it the least.  Why is that?

I believe this reality is part of human nature as well.  Success brings pride and can create a false sense of security and stability.  Sometimes not enough time has passed to see that what looks like success is actually not going to be successful in the long-term (see our current economy or the internet boom of the late 90s).

I have seen it time and time again in organizations and in things like professional athletics.  Someone is just good enough to get some accolades and new opportunities, but soon after they stop getting coaching or help those opportunities and accolades dry up quickly.  Then that mediocre talent has gone from being a rock star to being the weak example who is suddenly going to die without outside counsel.  So the choice for the moderately successful organization or leader, in my estimation, is very simple.  Get some help so you can build on those successes or fail slowly.  Stay on the front edge of that wave before it swallows you into the deep.  Don’t be fooled by a slow death just because it’s happening slowly.

Do me a favor.

• Make a list of things you think aren’t going well (then send me that list!).
• Make a list of things you’re experiencing for the first time.
• Think about how you define success or who defines it for you.  Is there a shelf-life to that definition?  Will it change?  Is it realistic to keep defining it that way?
• Think about where you’re at in your lifecycle.  Are you dying prematurely?  Are you a rockstar who hasn’t asked for help in a while?  Have you had some wins but those wins are slowing down?
• Think about your people.  Do you have the right team?  If so, how will you keep them energized and motivated?  If not, how will you fix that?  Do you know what the right team looks like?
• Ask for the right help.  Bring on someone who fits your organization.  Not all consultants are alike.  In fact, many of them are terrible.  One of my mentors has said, “The best investment a consultant can make is $35 worth of business cards that say ‘Consultant’ on them.”  His point is–anyone can say they’re a consultant.  Don’t be fooled.  Secondly, just because there are a lot of jokers out there doesn’t mean there aren’t some great coaches and consultants out there also.  So look for the good ones.  Don’t hire the first person you talk to.  Make sure that person is going to fit with your team and your vision (more on hiring the right fit in the next white paper).

Technical leadership supplies current knowledge to solve problems.  This leadership often sounds like this, “We need a better system,” or “We need to get organized.”  With many problems, it is a sufficient kind of leadership solution.

However, adaptive leadership is about changing the way people think.   It’s about reforming culture, challenging values and reframing things.  Think about the civil rights movement or issues of social justice.  Our first solution is always to change laws, not values.  Did allowing African-Americans the right to vote change the tone of racism in our country?  Maybe for some.  But the real problem was the prejudice that manifested unfair laws, not to mention a host of other injustices.  The problem was the way people thought.

For instance, imagine that you develop a new pipeline to raise up leaders in your organization.  You have all the right books.  You’ve defined all the rules and competencies assigned with different levels of leadership.  But your succession plan doesn’t work because key staff have seen people come and go as the organization has grown, and they don’t want to develop someone who may take their job.  That’s because the real problem in your organization may not be a technical one—it’s that people don’t want new leaders!  They want to save their jobs!

If you want to change the leadership culture in your organization, a technical solution like a pipeline for development cannot be the only solution for you.  You’ve got to get adaptive.  You’ve got to create new ways of thinking about problems.  You’ve got to address the anxieties that poison your organization. You’ve got to change the way people think and work inside it.  Then you can get those with a renewed vision to help you develop strategies and technical solutions that sustain and replicate themselves.

The question is:  Does your organization struggle with a leadership development problem, or a leadership problem.  If you’re suffering from a lack of leaders, the problem may not be the lack of a development process; it is most likely a deeper problem in your leadership organization.

If you want to develop leaders, build a leadership culture—not a leadership manufacturing plant.  Build an environment where people can think like leaders, not like robots.  Focus on people—not just systems.  Figure out what your leadership ailments are–the problem beneath the problem–and start working on them.  Build a new paradigm for your organization where people want to work, share, challenge and champion new ideas.  Get viral.  Then build a framework  to scale it, replicate it, and export it.

1. They are close to high-level leaders, and therefore the impact can be far-reaching.  If I am able to help them, and it helps the executives, that’s getting a lot done with just one person.
2. The assistants have huge potential to grow into high-level leaders themselves because of what they can soak up during their service under executives/high-level leaders.  So again, the investment can have a large return.

A few things have come up recently in talking with some of these guys, past and present, that I thought I would share.

• The first was: Ask a lot of questions.  My assistants have done an amazing job asking good questions.  In fact, most of this post is going to be about the answers I have given to their questions.  They have taken nothing for granted.  When I said something about managing expectations, one assistant asked what that meant.   When I mentioned building a culture of the things I value as a leader, one assistant noticed that when I talked about culture I talked about leading many.  He asked me how you choose between leading one person and leading many people and what the differences look like.  It all fostered great conversation.

• Professionalism is a very real and very important thing.  An assistant represents their leaders, their organization and the organization’s purpose in the way they communicate inside and outside the organization. By speaking for a high-level leader, an assistant holds the power to perpetuate or work against the culture the leader is trying to build.  Most of this comes through communication.  Which is why…

• Communication is king. Communication is the biggest way people know you as a person and a leader (the rest is in your actual decisions, which people don’t always pay attention to).  It’s what you write and what you say.  It’s how you say it, and who you say it to.  Communication is your most essential tool and can be your worst nightmare if wielded irresponsibly.  Assistants must know the importance of timely, essential, clear, and purposeful communication and understand its importance to an executive leader.

• Manage expectations.  Executives have a lot of pressure on them.  They don’t always communicate the entirety of what they need or want.  Asking clarifying questions can make sure you are on the same page as your boss.  Take nothing for granted.  Understand that because communication is so important, there is a lot built into it that is unspoken.  Think about what expectations you might run into.  What situations do you need to look out for?  How can you and others get on the same page?

• Everything you say and do is contributing to a culture that you, your team, your leaders, and your organization is perpetuating at every moment.  Keep that in mind as you speak for your high-level executive/pastor/leader.

• Not everything goes smoothly.  Frustrations arise.  Expectations get jacked.  So don’t let frustration boil under the surface.  Come out with it. Humbly.

• Put your leader in a place to succeed.  In the tension between asking too many questions and going on your own in the wrong direction, fine tune situations to a few possible scenarios with cost/benefit.  Narrow it down to a decision point–right or left.  Up or down.  Then ask, “Is there a third way I might be missing?”  Empower them to make good decisions by understanding and informing them of the avenues they have ahead of them.

• High-level leaders, like pastors and business executives, manage a lot of stress.  They manage it in others and in themselves.  Get a thick skin and a soft heart.  Communicate frustrations with humility.  Understand that your job is to help with that stress–not add to it.  But don’t shy away from conflict because of that.  Trust is key.

Josh
Founder, Annotate, LLC
http://annotategroup.com