Tag Archives: Organizational change

Human After All: Organizational Change’s Critical People Factor

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Creating the right organizational chart is just the first step. Behavior change must follow.

Why do companies change their operating model? Often they wish to become more agile. Sometimes they hope to increase collaboration. Almost always it has something to do with behavior. But as the overhaul gets underway, facts and data become the focus instead. And by the time organizational charts are drawn up, rolled out to teams and explained, management is exhausted.

Then someone remembers: We did all this to change how our people act. Oh, and those people are worried. Worried the changes aren’t good for them and that they are going to lose some of their power.

In the end, organizations don’t change, people do. And that tired management team still has a lot of work to do.

Cognitive biases’ role in organizational change

Behavioral science teaches that change triggers biases in the way humans process information and perceive threats. We are averse to loss, fear losing control and tend to view everything as a zero-sum game. We perceive losses more acutely than we anticipate gains. It’s quite natural, then, that any new organizational structure immediately sends employees into an examination of their position relative to peers. The new org chart becomes a scorecard: Some people are winning, others are losing.

Even when we understand intellectually that change is for the greater good, we balk when it diminishes our personal authority. One CEO broke down these tendencies by using a sports metaphor. “We’ve been operating like a golf team,” he said, “but now we have to play basketball.”

Metaphors can be clarifying for businesses in transition. Think of moving from a swim team to water polo, from track to soccer, from instrumental soloist to a jazz band, or even from stand-up comedy to membership in an improv troupe. In each case, strong individual performers shift from an environment that tracks and rewards independent effort to one of interdependence, in which success is determined by cooperation.

This CEO’s company still needed and appreciated great talent, as the metaphor helped make clear, but everyone needed to accept the critical importance of contributing to the team.

Anticipating the tough moments critical to organizational change

For any company to reap the full value of an organizational overhaul, its people will need to behave differently than they did in the old system. If they fall back to their old ways of working, the value will be lost.

Transforming behavior requires focusing on a few critical moments during which people will choose either the new behavior or their old habit. These moments of truth can be predicted and planned for. Leading companies do this early in the process, working with employees to anticipate the tricky moments and then ensuring everything from streamlined reports to employee support is in place to encourage adoption of the new way of working.

When a global consumer products company recently updated its operating model, one of the organizational changes was to bring all digital marketing into a centralized marketing department. It was simply too expensive for each business unit to build its own digital capability. This is quite consistent with the direction many organizations are headed today as they look for ways to build interdependencies and move away from autonomous silos. But it can lead to feelings of losing power and control, especially at the business unit level, where marketers now must turn to the center on digital topics.

The company’s executives and staff carefully anticipated which issues were likely to create discord between the business units and the center, talked them over, and decided how they would address them. Business unit heads understood that the solution rested in their hands: By modeling collaboration with the center, they would set the example for staff to do the same in their own work.

It emerged that the moment of truth for the business unit heads would be when they were asked to referee a disagreement between their team and the central digital team. Would they always side with their team against the center, or would they try to find a constructive solution?

To support choosing the constructive solution, the company created feedback loops that ran the duration of the transition. In that feedback, executives sought not only information about how the process was going but also what they themselves could do better. Over time, a pattern emerged in the data. Leaders who learned from this upward feedback and improved were rewarded with strong increases in employee engagement.

Moving forward

In the New York City Marathon, there is a hill at the 15-mile (24-kilometer) mark—the crossing of the East River from Queens to Manhattan over the 59th Street Bridge. It’s one of the greatest challenges of the race, but as runners finish their descent and head north up First Avenue, they know that 11 more miles (18 kilometers) remain.

For executives who have put months into studying what functions their organization needs, how it will be organized, and who reports to whom, it may be hard to accept that they have only finished the first leg of the race. There are many hard miles yet to go, and getting to the finish line depends on helping the humans in the organization change their behavior, too.

Source: Bain

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‘Be Human’: Marshall Goldsmith’s Best Leadership Advice Right Now

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In any time but the current one, this is the last place Marshall Goldsmith, one of the most in-demand CEO coaches in the world and bestselling author of leadership classics like What Got You Here Won’t Get You There and Triggers, would be. Back in B.C.—Before Covid—Goldsmith was a legendary road warrior with 11 million frequent flier miles, tracking how many nights a year he was at home with his family, rather than vice versa, in the hopes of improving that KPI.

Yet, here he is, with a green screen behind him, chunky Sony earphones locked on snuggly, ready to talk from his home in Covid-subdued La Jolla, California. And, as you’d expect from someone who is obsessed with prepping leaders for change, he’s okay with it. “I’m a Buddhist,” he shrugs. “What is is, so you just make peace with what is and do the best you can and move on.”

This kind of equanimity takes work, of course. Lots of it. In the midst of crisis, Goldsmith is practicing what he preaches, meeting with a group of 50 or so high-performing people each weekend (virtually, of course), talking about issues, feelings—and fears. He’s working with his own coach, trying to improve his behaviors, checking in nightly on how he’s doing relative to expectations. And, more than anything else, he’s listening and trying to help his clients—many of whom are household names in global business—tackle a very, very tough time.

In a conversation with Chief Executive, Goldsmith, who will be the keynote speaker at our upcoming annual CEO Leadership Conference on November 5, talked about how Covid is disrupting his clients, what he’s counseling them and why this period of unparalleled change and challenge is an essential time to work on your own behavior and improve your emotional intelligence. The conversation was edited for length and clarity. Continue reading →

Hiring in 2020 from your perspective

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With the pandemic, the traditional face-to-face interview was suddenly replaced with video conferencing using tools such as Zoom, Skype and Go-to Meeting– leaving many in the interview space scrambling to figure out how to best assess candidates in an entirely new way.

Since everyone is adapting and learning in real time, we thought it would be helpful to crowd source ideas for improvement from our network of professionals. We can all benefit from understanding the challenges you have faced and the actions you have taken to foster improvement around interviewing.

Below are questions to consider. Please feel free to choose from them and/or contribute your own thoughts and insights.

For Hiring Managers

  • What steps have you taken to transition interviewing to a virtual environment?
  • What have you done to set the stage for professionalism in a virtual interview?
  • How have you conveyed the company culture when candidates don’t have the opportunity to see your office and meet your team?
  • How have you made it comfortable for candidates to be their best selves virtually, especially if they are unfamiliar with your conferencing tool of choice?
  • What have you learned by doing virtual interviews? What tips can you offer?

For Candidates

  • What steps have you taken to understand the company that you didn’t need to do for a face-to-face interview?
  • What tips on dressing can you offer to ensure you and your environment reflects a professional image?
  • What have you learned by doing virtual interviews? What tips can you offer?

Many thanks in advance for your contributions and please let us know if you would or would not like us to use your name in our published report.

Thank you in advance for your time and contribution to our blog. We will send you a link when we have compiled the results.

Please email us:

Larry Janis janis@issg.net

Jeff Bruckner bruckner@issg.net

Integrated Search Solutions Group

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The Real Leadership Challenge Of 2020? Creating Cultures Where Everyone Feels They Belong

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We’re midway through 2020, and suffice to say, the year hasn’t gotten off to a great start. But as we look ahead to the next two quarters, leaders across every sector know that while the immediate crises may have abated, the tough work remains to be done.

Now, leaders are not only tasked with trying to stabilize their operations and drive growth, but they also know that in whatever form they seek to rebuild their organization’s culture, it must be with a committed effort toward diversity, inclusion and equality.

It shouldn’t take social movements like #MeToo or #BlackLivesMatter to awaken a collective consciousness around long and justly held grievances or systemic biases, and reactionary responses or promises that pay lip service to the problem as opposed to doing the hard work to forge sustainable and systemic solutions don’t help.

Let’s face it: Despite millions of dollars and years of effort to address diversity and inclusion, most organizations haven’t moved the dial far or fast enough. What’s needed is a different approach. So, as we head back to the drawing board, we’d be well served to change course on a few fronts:

1.   Stop Framing The Issue As A Problem

For too long, we have framed the issue of diversity and inclusion as an intractable problem, debating whether quotas are right or targets are fair. Instead, we need to reframe it as a catalytic, powerful solution, focusing on the competitive advantage our organizations stand to gain if they were made up of truly diverse workforces.

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Pay Inequity Is Still A Thing—And It Matters

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By Maria Colacurcio

In recent years, gender pay equity has become a topical discussion amongst the global workforce. Hollywood actresses and Olympic athletes have shared their stories of unequal pay for equal work; and there has been a slew of class-action suits and corporate scandals revealing discriminatory pay practices. As a result, investors, customers, employees and the law are all calling for progress on wage equality.

Is progress being made? It’s hard to say, but it is probably nowhere near enough as is needed. Some attribute this to the “pipeline” issue. That is, men and women freely choosing entirely divergent professional paths. The theory goes that men choose careers such as investment banking and software engineering and women choose professions such as nursing and teaching whose pay rates have been set (lower) by the natural market forces of supply and demand (or perhaps because of the long history of putting less value on women’s work). But if you look at computer programmers, women used to dominate the industry, then men flowed in. The pay automatically increased and the profession was viewed as more desirable. By contrast, as women flow into historically male professions, pay actually drops.

Some companies have made attempts to address the pay equity issue, but they’re often employing outdated approaches or third-party consultants. Reliable, scalable and accessible solutions have been limited. As a result, many companies have shied away from the issue of pay equity altogether, viewing it as simply too burdensome to tackle. Such lethargy produces pay practices which only perpetuate the gender pay gap. Unfortunately, women (and other underrepresented groups) can be faced with an uphill and solitary battle on the journey to equality.

Any effort to eradicate pay disparity in the workplace must be vigorously supported by the CEO, the leadership team and the board. If a board of directors or CEO is not genuinely dedicated to such an effort, then that effort will not happen, or will eventually fail. As a CEO, why should this be top-of-mind for you and your team?

Well, at a very fundamental level, it’s the right thing to do. When companies commit to equal pay for equal work, they send a powerful message to their current employees, future hires and their customers that they stand for something that is important to all, not just women. Additionally, having a fair and transparent pay process increases satisfaction and decreases turnover. A Gartner study revealed that there is a $16 billion cost for turnover in the tech industry alone.

If your organization does not yet have a robust and ongoing strategy for achieving pay equity, here is a step-by-step guide to help you check for pay disparities and commit to resolving them:

Step 1: You can’t stick your finger in the air as a gauge of pay equity. It takes asking the right questions and conducting detailed analyses. Make sure you have enough resources and technology in place to allow you to examine your data quickly and identify unfavorable trends.

Step 2: Shift the mindset from “protect and defend” compensation data to “find and fix” any gaps. This requires you to have the courage to share the results of your analysis in Step 1, but also the discipline to resolve any anomalies.

Step 3: Companies regularly ensure they are at market, so why not make pay equity a part of ongoing compensation benchmarking? Committing to regular and frequent pay analysis is the best way for companies to ensure they stay on top of this issue.

The CEO should be the catalyst for the organization’s journey to pay equity, but other key stakeholders such as the broader leadership team, the HR function, and middle managers are also key to success. There are many ways to fully involve these groups:

• Make it personal: Research has shown that the pay gap in groups of male managers who have daughters is smaller than amongst managers without daughters. This means that when an issue is personal, behavior changes no matter the gender.

• Make it a leadership issue: If you have a gender pay gap, it is a failure of leadership. Leaders have a role and responsibility to address this. As CEO, you must communicate with HR and managers, articulate the philosophy and strategy to achieve equal pay, and make sure to constantly share metrics and progress with managers and HR, so they can share with employees and external audiences. Commit to a quantitative approach to decide how pay is determined, setting salary ranges for each role, and then make these ranges available to your employees and recruits.

• Make it inclusive: It is not solely an issue to be discussed at a women’s leadership meeting. Make it a key agenda item for your next board meeting and your executive team meetings.

A good first step to kick-start this journey is to run a pay equity analysis leveraging a trusted solution with a vetted methodology. By utilizing a data-science powered software solution, you can determine where there are unexplained pay gaps and where you may need to employ remediation tactics to preserve your company’s culture and maintain legal compliance.

Source: Chief Executive