There seems to be one constant in business: change is inevitable.

Whether we are implementing something new with AI, restructuring processes, pursuing a new direction, or any combination of things that would necessitate change - one thing is certain: no industry is safe and most organizations will need to make changes to keep up or risk being left behind.

The question I am pondering is: How can people be at the center of this change?

Peter Drucker once said “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” and I would tend to agree with him.

No matter what promises we made to our board, how rosy a picture could look if we just made this one change, or how dire our situation is, if the people being asked to implement the change are not onboard with the change, it is never going to happen.

Does this mean that we should only change if our people approve of the change? Not necessarily. But it does mean that if we are going to make a change, our people must know what is in it for them and that result must be substantially better than what they currently have.

The purpose of change is typically for one of two reasons. Either:

It is typically easier to create a compelling why to the team in the first reason: if we don’t make this change, we all could be out of a job and if we like our lifestyle and the life our jobs currently afford us, then we should all be bought in to make this change. This requires a level of vulnerability from the executive team but is typically pretty compelling. This message does lose its luster if repeated too often as our people will go to a state of emergency with us but they will not live there (e.g. the lifestyle their work affords them won’t be worth it if they are constantly feeling like if they don’t make immediate changes that the company will go under).

For the latter (making a change that has the potential of improving the business substantially), most organizations struggle to create a clear and compelling WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) for everyone. If a CEO says that making this change will increase EBITDA which will help position the company for an exit - if the employees of this company don’t have equity, they don’t care about achieving an exit because there is no upside for them.

The company must create a compelling WIIFM for everyone involved. This takes a lot of time and effort. But it needs to happen for change to occur. Otherwise, the company will have to hire a consulting company who will charge an obscene amount of money to do the exact same thing and then leave once they gave the company the blueprint of everything they need to do to right the ship.

To align purpose when implementing change, everyone must be accounted for with a WIIFM to get the buy-in necessary for the change to be successfully implemented (and the WIIFM should be catered to people on a person by person basis, not a departmental one because what motivates one person could be different from another person, even if they are in the exact same role).

One final note on purpose, especially if it is for a brighter future instead of avoiding business failure, even if an organization successfully implements a change one time, they need to be mindful of stacking changes. Every change creates a cracking of trust that needs time to repair. The more frequent changes you ask of your people, the less receptive they will be to subsequent changes.

When it comes to aligning leadership during change, it is critical that everyone is on the same page. One of the most common hurdles companies have to overcome is misalignment of organizational goals and priorities. 

The goal: the CEO sets a direction and everyone follows suit. 

The reality: the CEO sets a direction, 25% of the team immediately follows suit, 50% of the team follows the old direction because the new direction wasn’t effectively communicated to them, and 25% are still following the previous direction that hasn’t been the direction for years but because of poor communication and a belief that the new changes will be backtracked and an overall lack of people holding others accountable, they are still following the old and outdated direction.

To align leadership during change, there must be a mechanism for holding people accountable and helping the executive team quickly and effectively understand when there might be a misalignment of priorities.

For example, if the CEO, with the guidance of her board and executive team, decides that the company is going to change the way they operate and transition to a new system that should be more efficient, cheaper, and minimize mistakes - there must be a way for her to know that the rest of the organization is picking up the change. If her VP of Operations says that he understands and to her face shares that he is onboard, and even sets goals in alignment with the new change, but if his team is setting goals not in alignment with the VP of Operations, the team will be working really hard to make very little progress. In this scenario, the VP of Operations thought he did a good enough job communicating the need for change to his team, but obviously he didn’t do that good of a job or else their goals would be in alignment with this new direction. 

The VP of Operations reports back to the CEO that he has done an *effective* job of communicating this change and she takes him for his word. The issue with this is that most people, especially middle managers in an organization, believe that their communication skills are far more effective than they actually are. She takes her VP of Operations for his word and then 6-12 months later, some major balls drop, people quit or get fired, the VP of Operations is blaming his people saying they are incompetent and that he needs his CEO’s support to increase headcount for his team and the CEO is left wondering “where did I go wrong?”

At Ambition In Motion, we created a tool called AIM Insights that evaluates the goals of cascading levels of leadership in an organization and reports throughout the layers of leadership, in a one page format, which teams’ goals are in alignment, which are high/medium/low impact, and which are accomplished, and ultimately provide guidance for what each level of leadership in the organization can do to improve the impact, alignment, and achievement of their reporting structures goals.

Whatever tool is used, it must be easy to digest, updated regularly, and those using it must be receptive to the feedback and willing to make adjustments when they discover their are opportunities for improvement. 

Ultimately, profit will be achieved when the purpose of change is clear and has accounted for what is in it for me for every person in the organization and leadership has a system for understanding and better holding the team accountable for the goals/expectations being set, their prioritization of those activities, and their willingness to change their leadership style when they discover that their are opportunities for improvement.