Maximizing the Human Potential

Thriving During Change

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Another month of social distancing and staying home has passed. I sincerely hope you and your family are well and we all get through this quickly. This has been a learning experience for my family. We’ve had to adjust to working from home, and home schooling. It seems every day is the same routine. While there is a lot of talk about a “new normal” when the economy re-opens, business fundamentals won’t change. Sure, some social constructs might change. Handshakes might be less frequent, and people might be washing their hands more frequently (which is good). But the underlying fundaments of selling, producing and delivering a service or good will remain constant. Today’s post will review how your business can continue thriving during change.

Thriving During Change

Companies that will have the strongest recovery – and THRIVE as business norms change – are those that can best adapt to change. This is true now as we deal with the effects of COVID-19 and true under so called “normal” conditions. Businesses are either growing or dying, and growth means change.

The steadfast truth is things are always changing. Market trends change, consumer behavior and desires, technology, all change. As a business leader, it is YOUR JOB to manage change. How well you deal with change, and how well you can enlist your team to embrace change will determine how successful you’ll be in a post pandemic economy — thriving during change.

Responding to Change

When it comes to change, you basically have three typical ways to respond.

  • Proactive: Proactive companies generally cause change through market innovations or anticipating and creating consumer needs. Companies like Amazon and Apple, who drive consumer behavior, would fall into this category.
  • Reactive: Reactive companies typically respond to outside changes. Their ability to survive is dependent on how quickly they can react.
  • Non-Active: These are the companies that resist change, pretty much to their own demise. Their motto is “We’ve always done it this way and we’ll die doing it this way”. Which is an unfortunate truth.

NOTE: I have seen companies that were in the proactive category, get complacent and quickly find themselves in the non-active category. Don’t let that happen to you!

The COVID-19 pandemic is causing change on a massive scale.  This is a life defining moment for you and your company. Most business leaders I know have some contingency plans for when things get tough.  I haven’t met a business leader yet, who anticipated a global pandemic that was going to shut down the world economy.

That’s the bad news.  The good news is that EVERYONE, including your competition, is dealing with the same problems. Everyone is reacting to the current economic situation. How you react will separate you from your competition.

Role of Leadership

There is a sense of urgency here.  Companies are ALREADY DYING. You cannot wait until things recover to act.  You must be doing it now.  You must strategize, adapt, and execute FASTER than your competition or risk BEING LEFT BEHING AND DYING. It is that simple.

Your businesses future and your career could very well be at risk here. It is your leadership and your team’s ability adapt to change that will determine how successful you are moving forward.  So, what do you need to do?

  • First state your vision by describing what recovery looks like, in clear terms that everyone understands and can repeat.
  • Identify what needs to be done to fully recover. Develop a strategy and a roadmap.
  • Share how everyone contributes. Your employees and team members are along for the ride. Make sure they understand how they can contribute to the recovery.
  • Build on Individual Strengths and your existing culture to separate you from your competition. Your competition can mimic your products and compete on prices. The individual strengths and culture of your company is what differentiates you from your competition.

That is all the leadership part.  That is all on YOU, and your leadership team.  Don’t do this in a vacuum. How you make decision, and how you get stakeholder commitment will be key to making change.

Maximizing Your Team

Now is time to execute.  To talk about this, I am going to pull a page from Entrepreneurs Operation System or EOS.  You can learn more about this system by visiting their website. https://www.eosworldwide.com/. I can help connect you with an EOS consultant if you are interested.

One of the pillars of EOS is getting the right people in the right seats.  They use a tool called GWC.

  • Get it – Does he or she get the ins and out of the job?
  • Want It – Does this person genuinely want to do the job?
  • Capacity – Does the person have the mental, physical, spiritual, time, knowledge and emotional capacity to do the job?

Having people aligned with the tasks they need to perform helps with increasing motivation, drive, productivity and profits. You’ll also see better results and a more committed and dedicated team.

This Month’s Challenge

The unfortunate truth about the economic impacts of this pandemic, is not all companies will survive. What you do now will not only help ensure your survival but will help you continue thriving during change in the post pandemic economy.

You’re not in this alone, we’re here to help.  We can help you come up with strategies, execution, processes, tools, or whatever help you need, we’re here.

As always, if you need help, please contact us to learn how we can help!

I encourage you to check out the Thrive Performance Group and join the discussions Tuesday afternoons.

Dealing with Change

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andrew shaffer consulting dealing with changeBy now the kids are back in school.  This has an impact in my family.  We have new morning routines. As the kids are starting in their schools, they are meeting new classmates and teachers.  Although it is familiar, it is different. It is a change, and for anyone that has or has had kids, they know that there is an adjustment period.  Even if you don’t have kids, you will notice that there are new traffic patterns as parents with kids are adjusting their schedules and commutes around bus schedules and school drop offs. There is no avoiding it, change happens, and we have to adjust. Today’s post is all about dealing with change.

Dealing with Change

“No plan survives first contact with the enemy. What matters is how quickly the leader is able to adapt.”

– Tim Harford

Every business is constantly dealing with change. Change ranges from problems encountered in new product development, responding to the competition, or it could be a radical shift in your business model. When you think about it, your business has to be in a constant state of change (or evolution) otherwise you’ll soon find yourself obsolete. Competitive landscapes and consumer needs all change and your business needs to change to keep up with a changing landscape. Successful leaders, and businesses become quite effective in dealing with these changes and evolutions. Here are some common characteristics of change, and how to navigate them successfully.

Conflict

When there is change, there is almost always conflict. Conflict can be constructive or destructive. What is the difference?

Destructive conflict is just that, destructive. If allowed destructive conflict will kill careers and if destructive conflict has become part of the culture, it will kill your company. Destructive conflict looks a lot like finger pointing, passing blame, and avoiding blame. It is not a pretty road, and nobody wins in the end, well maybe a consultant when you finally hire one to help save your company.

Constructive conflict is very helpful. I learned early in my management career to welcome constructive conflict. I had one engineer on my team that would “argue” with me about almost everything.  It wasn’t a hostile argument, but he challenged almost every decision I would make. I would ask him to come to my office whenever I was trying to work out any challenging issue. And together, through his challenging questions, and my responses almost always came up with a stronger solution than either one of us would have on our own. Through this “conflict” we were able to improve the productivity of our team by up to 50% in some areas.

Communication

The key success when dealing with change in conflict is communication. I don’t know how many times a company was going through changes (restructure, mergers, buy out etc.) and there is absolutely no communication, or worse poor communication!  No communication and poor communication just lead to rumors and assumptions on the part of your employees.  I can tell you firsthand, that the rumors and assumptions are almost ALWAYS worse than reality. It causes fear and distrust among the employees and leads to destructive conflict, even when it isn’t necessary.

Trust and Respect

I had the unfortunate position of being in a job where we lost a significant amount of our workload. Suddenly I was faced with having not enough work for the number of people I had on my team. Uncertainty was everywhere, and there was the constant threat of layoffs.  People came to work everyday not knowing if it would be there last day. Ironically, during this same time, my team’s morale actually improved. How? I was constantly communicating, openly and honestly with my team. And, prior to that I had a developed a relationship based on mutual trust and respect.

To ensure you have effective communication there has to be a level of mutual trust and respect. When you think about this, your best relationships with a spouse, best friend, children, whomever is based on mutual trust and respect. When that trust is broken what happens to the relationship? It deteriorates and eventually disintegrates.  Why would companies treat their employees any different? Companies often demand or expect loyalty from their employees on one hand, and then hide information or poorly communicate company strategies on the other. The rationale for this is because “we don’t want people to panic.”

This Week’s Challenge

How is your company culture structured? Are there silos and finger pointing, or communication based on mutual trust and respect? Are all stakeholders brought in for decisions or are people just told to live with decisions being made?  Creating the right culture, and integrated culture, will dramatically improve your bottom line!

Give us a call for an assessment and consultation and see how you can start improving your bottom line.

If you would like to discuss more ways to help your business grow or if you feel you have a specific problem that needs to be addressed, please reach out to me.