Don’t just do something! Sit there!

One of the recurring themes that I experience as a change catalyst in organisational change is the propensity for leaders of change to go for the quick fix. And yes, very often this is the advice that I give them for reasons I provide below.

But Mark, we've got to move now!

I can understand this response when leaders, new in post, have a limited time in which to make an impact. 100 days seems the popular norm for making significant impact. This is why I believe many change leaders go for “quick” and “easy” solutions. The result: the old faithful reorganisation.

OK, maybe a reorg isn’t the first response, but the point here is the pressure that is placed upon leaders to make that early impact. Knee-jerking to do something quickly will cause the organisation much harm if sufficient time isn’t given to improving the quality of decision making and thinking that support the proposed direction. I understand the emotional element of the knee-jerk response and also the psychology of those individuals who have a preference for “doing over thinking”. (See diagram below)

This shows up on a regular basis in the learning groups that I run for organisations who are looking to evolve their culture where the “Doers” become frustrated with us “Reflectors”. (Please excuse the stereotyping, trust me I know it’s not as simple as people are either reflectors or doers; there are no boxes to put people into, but sometimes it helps to recognise people’s preferences for one type of response over another).

All change is political

There is no doubt in my mind that there is a significant political element to all change driven by the need to please the paymasters and to be seen to be doing something. In my experience most of this reorganisation is carried out by new incumbents of the senior role who aren’t yet fully acquainted with the organisation that they have already crafted their solution for. It would appear that the sentiment is “well it worked in my last place, why wouldn’t it work here!”  

I admire those leaders who take the time to thoroughly assess the current set of change initiatives when they join their new organisation. But those are rare leaders indeed. As I say in the title of my book “… it’s not how you finish ... it’s how you start!”.

This wise leader knows and appreciates that an organisation is a complex system and that one aspect of working with complex systems is that there is always a time lag involved in all and any change initiatives. All too often new leaders want to make their mark, as is their prerogative and often the change that has previously been delivered may not have been given a chance to run its course and land its benefits.

This is why I always recommend that any incoming leader take the advice of the title of this article to heart and practice patience and due consideration. Of course, the leader won’t just sit there, they are expected to do something. But what can they do rather than follow the usual three envelopes? (my article on the 3 Envelope Story) One thing I recommend is hiring trusted advisors to carry out a health check. This is an assessment on the organisation and its current initiatives, assessing their impact against pre-determined measures. This may be difficult (uncomfortable) to do but it has so many side benefits. 

One of those benefits being gaining the trust of the organisation’s members. I know from experience that the members will be sitting there waiting to see what the “new broom” will sweep up. It is a rare leader who is emotionally aware of the impact their arrival signifies; a mix of fear and anxiety with hope and relief, varying on a daily and maybe hourly basis.

What if that new broom wasn’t a broom at all?

What if the broom was a duster? Rather than sweeping out the old and dusty, instead it gets a polish. This to my thinking is a better way of evolving the organisation. It’s more humanistic and compassionate and responds to the reality of “what is”. While there may be a need to replace what clearly isn’t working (the objective evidence provided by the Health Check), the incoming leader needs to be more aware of the longer-term impacts of their big sweep. 

What makes the big sweep even more detrimental is the fact that the new leader may have their eye on an even bigger prize ... their next role: they'll be gone in 18months to 3years! This means that they won’t even be around to feel consequences of their big change, but the poor suckers left behind will certainly feel the effect. Maybe the wiser course is to sit there and to observe for a while, reflect a while longer and then plan in an agile fashion before jumping in to make those bold moves. 

(As an aside, I feel that getting leaders to take a form of Hippocratic oath would be a very useful thing to do: do no harm and see out your changes before moving elsewhere!)

Who knows?

But who knows with regards to the current change portfolio; maybe the preceding leader was right and maybe they left because their paymasters were impatient with the speed of change;

Or maybe there was a shinier token urging the leaders to leave the organisation to continue their ambitious rise to the top (nothing wrong with ambition, often it may be harmful to the current followers who have put faith and trust in the leader). Who really knows?

Maybe the idea here is that people don't really know, but yet they may kid themselves and others into thinking they know. Organisational change is hugely complex and by its definition is full of "Unknown Unknowns" with much unpredictability. I would be scared if my leader was acting so certain about some of the changes they propose.

In summary

Rather than jumping straight into action as expected (or pressurised) to do, how about investing time on improving the quality of ones thinking and building greater awareness of the what the organisation really needs?

How do I do that you may ask ... are you expecting me to sit in the lotus positional and chant OM?”

No. Instead I invite you to be the most Agile leader you can be; if you have the awareness that you are action oriented as a great many leaders are, then you could spend a bit more time in reflection rather than doing.

And on the subject of awareness, do be aware of your own and your teams cognitive biases (bias-for-action, confirmation bias, Dunning Kruger effect, halo effect and ostrich bias to name a few) If you aren’t cognizant of these patterns, then you could do worse than to hire an experienced Executive Agile Coach to hold a mirror up for you and your team. Again, this is another habit of the Agile Leader, they look to develop themselves, regardless of how good they already think they are.