Positive Principles Newsletter
January 2006
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“Take time for all things: great haste makes great waste.”
- Benjamin Franklin
“It is by attempting to reach the top at a single leap that so much misery
is caused in the world.”
- William Cobbett
"Patience is the companion of wisdom."
- Saint Augustine
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This month's tip -
Sometimes,
slow is fast and fast is slow.
In a recent discussion with one of my coaching clients, we identified
change management and implementation as his highest priority issue.
As we discussed the leadership and communication implications he needed to
address during the change process, he said that his natural desire was to
do precisely the opposite of what we agreed upon. He said that his
natural inclination would be to "Go in and tell them what to do and expect
them to do it." In fact, the course of action we chose made him feel
like he was sitting still and doing nothing. That's a tough
situation for an action-oriented leader.
This business leader
needs to change both attitudes and behaviors in his team. He is not
in a crisis situation, but neither can he wait forever for people to "get
onboard" with the changes. He is a focused, hard-working leader who
really cares about his business and his people. He needs the change
to happen quickly and smoothly, but not at a break-neck speed. I advised him to
slow down during the early phases of the change implementation to give his
people the opportunity to contribute their thoughts and to
maximize the probability that they will buy-in to the plan later.
The
leader, in this case, has good data and sound insights about what needs to happen
in his business. Unfortunately, his
team does not yet see things like he does. Honestly, I think his
plan will prove to be the best and most direct solution to improve
his business performance. Unfortunately, what he and I think is
irrelevant when it comes to his team accepting and embracing a new way of
doing things.
This situation highlights one of the major dilemmas leaders face.
Namely, consciously choosing to do what "feels wrong" or "seems too
slow" because it pays big dividends later. Delayed gratification comes into play in a
number of leadership situations, but slowing down while driving a change through your organization is vital to
long-term change acceptance. The idea is to personally slow down so
that your organization can speed up.
To
explain my thinking on this topic, I'll share a change acceptance model
for consideration. Every change, whether good or bad, involves loss.
The loss of "the way we used to do things", the loss of comfort, the loss
of security, etc. This feeling of loss triggers something like a grieving
process that follows a relatively predictable pattern. The
pattern goes in this order:
Leaders who push too quickly for
agreement tend to lock themselves in a downward spiral of conflict and
resistance.
Once locked in a downward spiral of bad attitudes and behaviors, making
progress on the change implementation becomes
very difficult.
Leaders who slow down to give people a
chance to process, and contribute to, the change on the front-end, get
better buy-in and faster progress on the back-end. The approach that initially
feels slow and laborious winds up reducing the overall change
implementation timeline.
For
more on this topic, check out my article -
Five Things Smart Leaders Do To Lower The Barriers To Change
So for now, I encourage you to remember this month's tip . . .
Sometimes, slow is fast and fast is slow.
Have a great day,
Guy Harris
The Recovering Engineer
