Three Key Factors for Leaders to Remember

Here are 3 key factors for any leader desiring a change in their organization to remember These actions are critical in any transformation.

First, leaders must recognize that the power of a plan or vision comes from the people understanding and adopting it. But, contrary to what many believe just having that ‘compelling vision’ is clearly not enough alone. Where things fall short is often the result of a combination of factors, including the inability of the leaders to demonstrate their commitment to employees.

Over-delegating and falling victim to magic ‘silver bullet’ cures fail to drive the proper communication throughout the organization. In addition, the necessity to convey the vision/strategy/plan to win both understanding and buy-in of all in the organization is paramount.

Second, employees will see through any in-sincere and / or lack of leadership commitment. It’s necessary for executives to truly commit to personal leadership of a change initiative. Without the top leaders showing the right level of personal commitment it is nearly impossible to expect the next level of leaders to do so. This idea cascades down from there building a culture in the organization.

Third, leaders must provide ways in which the employees (ie. The people who must adopt change) are allowed to experience “insights’ at a personal level. Not only must the vision be understood and seen as important by the CEO, that person must also experience the vision on a personal basis. This will facilitate the adoption of new lines of thinking by all.

Upon reflection, the last point here is the ‘secret sauce’ that we never learn about in management school and are missing in all the ‘transformation models.’ In the cases of most the successes the top leader or CEO is the difference maker. By making the process personal in a genuine way, everyone in the organization understood.

It is very important to think critically about how the ‘personal touch’ can be accomplished on the part of the top-most leaders. As with anything else in organizations, there is no silver bullet cure for success. However, the absence of these key inputs correlates highly with failure. At the end of the day organizations are made of people. Winning their hearts to fully embrace the vision of the organization and embrace change is decidedly a personal decision and builds a successful culture.