When it comes to leading enterprise transformation, everyone knows that the odds of failure are high – most research studies cite 70-80% of them fail. Of all the countless forces that torpedo transformative endeavors, none is more agonizing to watch than those leaders inflict on themselves. We continue our series on the habitual rationalizations that grab hold of leaders and undermine their efforts. The rationalization we are covering this week is: Going native – losing your edge for needed change and accepting dysfunction as the “new normal.”
Rationalization: It is what it is, and I can’t overcome it. If I stick with it long enough, eventually they’ll come around.
Reality: It is what it is because the past is creeping over your vision and sufficient force isn’t being exerted to evict the dysfunction.
One of our COO clients had been with their organization for nearly a year. He was growing weary and perplexed as to why the organization was not “getting it.” Boardroom meetings were filled with sentiments like, “you should understand how to drive out that cost!” and “we should already be reaching out to customers that way.” What was once a message of hope and possibility was now one of resentment.
One such executive team meeting began with the CFO’s presentation covering unexpected costs that threatened to put an end to their yearly national marketing campaign. It was the classic battle between finance and marketing. Traditionally, the company did not place assets behind marketing because of the finance function’s desire to keep costs low. The newly-hired COO had seen this battle throughout his career, but also understood the dangers of starving your markets and brands of needed market positioning and messaging. With this in mind, the COO asked the room if they had considered revising the plan to focus on key regions and demographics and calendaring out the marketing spend from a consumer and customer perspective. The room sat silent. No one said a thing. The COO, tired of their incompetence and that his vision for the company wasn’t taking root, stormed out of the room, kicked a hallway recycling can over, and yelled toward the boardroom that the organization was “headed to the dump!”
The response in the room was not one of shock. They had seen it all before. The unpredictability. The temper tantrums. It was the same behavior of the former CEO, and it reinforced their company’s complacency toward change and avoidance of risk. The new COO had gone native. Believing he was upholding the vision of the CEO who hired him, he became increasingly impatient with the lack of change while remaining deceptively tolerant of the actual lack of progress. The more pressure the CEO put on him, the more the COO became angry instead of resolved. Without realizing it, he had lost hold of his own vision and fell victim to the dysfunction of the previous regime and the current team. Now this actions were not examples of the change that he wanted to see, but evidence that nothing was transforming at all. This left some employees grumbling, saying “bring back the old guy. At least we knew he was always going to be upset.”
Going native can sneak up on you, but is rooted in the rationalization that the present dysfunction has been and always will be, and the subsequent denial that, with time, it will get better. A common sentiment of our day is “it is what it is.” Costs exceed projections? It is what it is. New hire didn’t work out? It is what it is. Leave work and come out to a parking ticket? It is what it is. It truly does not matter the magnitude of the circumstance, we often respond with a lazy linguistic cop out. The goose is cooked. What’s done is done. It’s over and done with. Rather than ask how we got here, we accept dysfunction as normal and justify our inaction by presuming there is nothing we could have done about it. Leading transformation is a battle against the old guard. The fight becomes even more difficult when it feels like you have to defeat the ghosts of the volatile previous CEO or other destructive leaders. It leads many leaders to unconsciously raise the white flag, surrender their plan, and say “change is just going to be harder than I thought. We’ll just keep going and see what hapens. It just is what it is.”
Whether you are joining a brand new company or you have been tasked with leading change in your current one, you have been charged with behaving in a way that is different than the status quo. Like a doctor in a leper colony, you are to see beyond how dire things are to how healthy they could be. This requires a great deal of differentiation. In psychology, differentiation is a term often used to describe how unique or different a child is from their childhood environments, relationships, and traumas. To have a fully-differentiated self is not the goal; rather, the goal is the ability to see the world and act in ways that are more independent. In an unhealthy organizational context, differentiation may look like avoiding getting caught up in the water cooler drama, maintaining poise when peppered with questions in the boardroom, or staying positive in the face of negative industry trends. The goal of self-differentiation is to be sufficiently independent so that you can become part of a union. If there is a loss (or not knowing to begin with) of your own values, ideals, and vision prior to a merger of yourself with another organization’s values and culture, it is likely that your own convictions will be gobbled up by those of the organization.
In order to remain differentiated, it is helpful to take on two practices. We refer to this work as decoding and encoding.
Decode
What is missed in the “it is what it is” sentiment towards life’s calamities is that “it is what it is” often becomes “it is what it was.” Leaders of change must unearth the reasons for organizational dysfunction so as not to repeat it. A sign of mature leadership is being aware of how present behavior is likely about more than our present circumstances. This is decoding. We must become familiar with the reptilian, natural reactions to things. Do people overreact to feedback? Why is that? Is there more energy at the “meeting after the meeting” than during the meeting? When did that begin? Decoding the biases and beliefs of your organization will help you better see what it is you are up against and help ensure you won’t catch the unhealthy viruses while reinforcing the healthy ones.
Encode
In his book, One From Many, Visa founder, Dee Hock, says that we should not only look at how things were and how they are (decoding), but we should take time to think about how they could be and ought to be (encoding). In order to avoid going native and remain differentiated, you must have a concrete sense of how things ought to be. Your organizational culture is one of pessimism. There is a habit for over precision based on fear. But is this as it ought to be? Do you believe in the power of optimism? Do you believe in creating a safe place for failure? In order to create your intended future, you must be able to articulate, model, and hold tight to the required values and beliefs to succeed.