Managing The Business - Overview

In the last article, we covered the signs of a toxic workplace, one full of disengaged employees who routinely cause trouble for the company and the leadership. You may have read that list and grimaced upon realizing that indeed, your own company is filled with such people. Fear not! There is hope for you as a leader and there is hope for you to turn your workplace into a bastion of productivity and efficiency. It’s not easy, but it is possible.

My goal today is to share with you an overview of exactly how you can stop your company from looking like it’s from “The Office.” Here, I use a mix of different philosophies from various business experts. I use a dash of “Good to Great” by James C. Collins, a pinch of “Hardwiring Excellent by Quint Studer” and a sprinkle of “The Phoenix Project” by Gene Kim, George Spafford and Kevin Behr. And the piece de resistance is a personality assessment developed for working professionals.

In my experience with overhauling businesses, I’ve come to learn and document different phases in the overhaul processes. These phases are rather consistent, regardless of whether you’re hiring a new worker or rolling out new management methods to the team. Having a keen understanding of what happens in these different phases will help brace you for the many trials that occur during a major overhaul.

Phase 1 – The Honeymoon

What to Expect

The beginning of any major change leads to a honeymoon phase in which excitement begins to build about the potential for growth. In a stale environment, the sense that big changes are coming can lead to a sense of hope that there will be quick fixes for the obvious problems. Your top team members, the top 50% will be excited at these prospects. The high and middle performers will be looking to you to bring real improvements to their workplace and will be supportive, as they have the company’s best interests in mind. These top 50 percent are really your core crew and everything that you do will be for their benefit more than anything.

The same cannot be said for the bottom 50% of your team. These low functioning and unengaged employees will look at the new changes with an air of skepticism. They will most likely scoff and mock the new changes. Some might even go out of their way to sabotage the changes, trying their hardest to cling to the old ways. If left unchecked, they could even bring others down with them. You will have to be prepared to fight against these kinds of employees. They will push back, and some might be more vicious than you realize.

Still, all in all, people will look at the news of change with curiosity. It won’t be until you start to actually implement changes that they will be convinced that things really are going to change. Many companies talk big about new policies, but few actually follow up with their actions. Below is a list of things that you can do to prepare your team for the next phase in your company’s evolution.

Key Action Steps

Build the emotional bank account

• Get out of your office and visit your team
• Genuinely get to know your people

Convince your team they can make a difference

• Share your passion and ask them to be a part of it
• Make them feel included with the changes  

Draw a line in the sand

• Make it clear that changes are coming
• Those who nay-say are welcome to leave

Organize Systems of Work

• Share how much is expected of your team
• Determine where the work comes from
• Where does the work go?
• Determine who the stakeholders are
• Identify silos of work

Phase 2 – Reality Sets In

What to Expect

Once reality begins to set in on the team, you will start to see some problems. An Us. Vs Them mentality may begin, especially when workers are being told to do things differently. Justifications and claims that “we’ve always done it this way” will begin to spring up and bad habits come to light. Even your best employees might surprise you with push back. Why does this happen? Because the reality of change begins to set in and it’s never a pretty thing. People love paintings, but they don’t see the painter making a real mess on the canvas before it’s perfected. An idea becomes much harder to swallow once it demands something from you. People don’t like change. Some will adapt faster than others, and those tend to be the ones you can rely on during the shift.  

Key Action Steps

Increase substance of communication to staff

• Write frequent emails
• Keep a core team educated so they can answer questions

Continue to implement changes

• Have frequent meetings
• Have organization meetings

Record who does what

• Identify those who are performing well but struggling
• Identify those who are adapting quickly
• Identify those who are actively resisting
• Pay attention to power dynamics

Create "To Do" lists

• Work towards results
• Allow your team to make a difference

Spotlight the high performers

• Highlight attributes/outcomes
• Establishes expected behavior/attitude/Quality and Quantity of work

Phase 3 – The Uncomfortable Gap

The uncomfortable gap refers to the stretch of time between implementation of a new business strategy and when you start to see the results. Things will begin to improve, albeit slowly. Remember, organizations are organic. They are composed of living, breathing beings that need sufficient time to adapt. If you make radical changes and expect everyone to adapt immediately, you will just be setting them up for failure.

That being said, you will end up seeing the Wall at some point. This is the hard division between the employees who truly understand your reorganization efforts and those who just won’t get it. It can be a little frustrating because you may see former top performing employees fall on the bad side of the wall. Change is difficult for a lot of people to accept and not everyone is cut out to handle your changes. This is where the wheat is separated from the chaff.

The good news is that you will start to see signs of things getting better. Your team will begin to function better, as the changes you’ve implemented will start to benefit them. Things will be worthwhile, and they will have a sense of purpose again. Morale will increase, and the process will get easier. You’ll start to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Key Action Steps

Determine who’s on the good and bad side of the Wall.

Assess individual performance

• Manager to Team reviews
• Team member to team member (peer reviews)
• Recruit high middle/high performers

Finalize hardwiring

Spotlight the high performers

• Highlight attributes/outcomes
• Establish expected behavior/attitude/Quality and Quantity of work

Have your middle performers work on problems and put your high performers on attractive projects

Ensure that the right people are in the right places

• Are they effective?
• Are they happy?
• Do they have a sense of upward mobility?

Phase 4 – Consistency

Once you’ve managed to get your team through the gap, you should be seeing high performance within your organization. Your team will start to develop a passion for what they do, the right team members will end up in the right places. Ultimately, you will begin to reap the rewards of what you have sewn at the beginning of this process.

Discipline is vital to this phase. Just because your organization is functioning better doesn’t mean they will always stay that way. By adopting a mindset of proactivity and making sure that key leadership has both the discipline and the insight to identify problems early on, you will be able to keep your organization consistently performing well.            

Key Action Steps

Maintain push for innovation

Keep leadership empowered to improve the process

Reward high performers and those who adapt

Fire low performers (if they have not improved)

Phase 5 – Leading the Way - Results

It’s always harder to restructure a company than it is to maintain the changes already made. Once your employees have become suited to working in an organization that has purpose, drive and meaning, they themselves will adopt that sense of purpose. They will enjoy a higher quality of work and will be insulated from the stress of their outside lives, which ultimately leads to a greater work/life balance.

Those who have worked hard in the process should be adequately rewarded with raises, bonuses or promotions. Those who have fought against you should have hopefully been removed at this point. Now there is little left to do other than keeping the course and protecting your organization against the dangers of mediocrity.

Remember, the biggest threat to your organization isn’t from outside forces, rather it is the forces from within. While you can’t control the waves or the wind, you can control the shape that your ship is in and how disciplined your crew is!

Key Action Steps

KEEP IT UP!