Five Things Smart Leaders Do to Lower the Barriers to ChangeLearn Management Articles on management-info.biz. Five Things Smart Leaders Do to Lower the Barriers to Change article will help answer your questions on Management Articles.We at management-info.biz specialize in Management Articles. Management Articles at management-info.biz provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
Let’s look at five things smart leaders do to lower the barriers to change. 1. They sell more than they tell Smart leaders are comfortable selling their ideas. They understand that “telling” someone what’s going to happen is very different from “selling” them on the idea. I do not suggest that smart leaders use so called “high-pressure” sales tactics. By selling, I mean that they look for ways to get people emotionally committed to the change. They paint, and re-paint, the vision for people. They focus on the benefits, not the costs. They understand that people need time to adjust, time to accept the change. They work to inspire buy-in rather than compliance. 2. They help people tune-in to WII-FM Sales and marketing professionals talk about the radio station that most people tune-in to on a daily basis. They know about WII-FM (What’s in it for me?). If it’s true about people in the marketplace, then it’s true about people in the workplace. Smart leaders know how to answer the question on every employee’s mind: “What’s in it for me?” Dr. Aubrey Daniels, noted behavioral analyst and author of Bringing Out the Best in People, makes two great comments regarding change acceptance: * “People don’t resist change, they resist being changed,” and * “People don’t resist change if the change provides immediate positive consequences to them.” Smart leaders know that people are generally more willing to do things that bring personal benefit than they are to do things that benefit the organization. They take a pragmatic, not a cynical or negative, view of human nature. They see people for who they are and work to adjust their strategy to go with -- not against -- the natural drives of people in their organization. 3. They work through the “head grapes” Every organization has a grapevine -- an unofficial communication channel that often moves faster than official ones. You might call the people who other people listen to, and therefore influence the grapevine, the “head grapes.” Smart leaders are not too impressed with themselves. They recognize that the head grapes have more personal influence within certain employee groups than they do. They understand leadership is about trust and relationship; it is not about position. Recognizing this truth, they seek out influencers in the organization. They strive to get the influencers onboard with the change. They understand the power of relationships, and they put that power to work. They work with the head grapes to affect change so that they don’t have to push against the head grapes’ resistance. 4. They break the change into “bite-sized” pieces Smart leaders understand that people need both information and time to accept a change. They also realize that they can’t wait forever to get everyone onboard. So, they break big changes into small pieces that people are willing to accept more quickly. By moving in stages, smart leaders move their organizations with steady forward progress instead of periodic quantum leaps. 5. They build positive momentum By breaking big changes into bite-sized pieces, smart leaders set themselves up to build positive momentum. Smart leaders know that an early failure or setback can create more resistance later -- even if they overcome the initial setback. Building a record of quick, early wins helps people accept the upsets that will happen on the way to success. Smart leaders understand the power of momentum -- either positive or negative. They break changes into small pieces then pick their first move because it has a high-probability of success. Copyright 2005, Guy Harris You may use this article for electronic distribution if you will include all contact information with live links back to the author. Notification of use is not required, but I would appreciate it. Please contact the author prior to use in printed media.
Guest post by Paul Laberge, Developer Advisor, Microsoft Canada There is a sea change happening in the enterprise today – employees are deciding to bring the technology they are comfortable using at home to work and using it to be productive. Many people call this the Consumerization of IT, and in essence, it means that IT departments everywhere are scrambling to support devices and form factors they never had to before. IT policy is adapting to the employees, rather than the other way around which is a 180º turn from the way it’s been for years. Microsoft understands this sea change and is itself adapting to it. With Windows Phone 7.5, there are a number of ways the enterprise can support employees using Windows Phone devices, allowing employees to have a truly immersive consumer experience while at the same time allowing those same employees a number of tools to make them more productive than ever before. As a consumer, your employees and co-workers have made choices to bring devices they traditionally would have used and left at home and have consciously decided that these technologies and platforms will be there preference for being productive in the workplace as well. This is very different than what we have seen in the past and has caused IT departments everywhere to change their own support and management strategies. This change is known as the Consumerization of IT.
The answer for IT and the enterprise itself is not to fight this trend but to embrace it. The flexibility for employees to use the types of form factors and platforms they feel will make them more productive is empowering, making them happier and making better decisions for the business. Microsoft sees this revolution and has embraced it. Probably the best example of this is the new Windows Phone platform. Windows Phone presents a change in Microsoft’s mobile strategy. The consumer experience it provides is clearly front and center, being a smartphone platform that is fun to use and geared towards helping its users get the tasks they need to get done more quickly and with less indecision. In essence, Windows Phone is a “Glance and Go” platform – the user can see information quickly without even having to get into an app or service in order to make a decision on what to do. So how does Windows Phone make employees more productive?
But in order to understand the business case for extending your line of business applications to the phone, the business case for having Windows Phone as your mobile solution must be made. To do so, consider the following: Scenario: Employee ProductivityConsider the example scenario below. Michelle is a sales executive for a large company and needs access to email, calendaring and server-based resources on the go to do her job effectively. Everything in the story can be accomplished easily using Windows Phone.
Access to Outlook (email and calendaring) is an easy concept to understand. With Windows Phone, you have more access to the features of Exchange than any other mobile platform, including features like conversation view, rights-protected email and others. Windows Phone also supports multiple calendars, including multiple Exchange calendars as well as third party calendaring systems such as Google calendar. Office 2010 and Lync for Windows Phone are also incredibly powerful tools as you saw in the example above. Every Windows Phone includes Office 2010 (Excel, PowerPoint, Word and OneNote) that allows you to view and edit documents on the fly and synchronize those changes with central repositories such as the corporate SharePoint system, Office 365 (Microsoft’s cloud-based Office solution) and even SkyDrive, Microsoft’s consumer-based Office-in-the-cloud solution. Scenario: IT OperationsArmando is someone who works in your IT Operations department. The Consumerization of IT just made his job and the jobs of his department a whole lot more complex with the introduction of new devices that his team was not originally prepared to support. Windows Phone allows employees of the company the freedom of a great consumer experience while allowing Armando and his team flexibility in how to support these devices.
Without the need for extra licensing, knowledge of new mobile devices or new management tools, your IT department can effectively manage Windows Phone devices within the enterprise. Your employees get the best of both worlds as a result – a world class smartphone experience and productivity, and the ease of manageability for the IT department. Scenario: Corporate DeveloperOne of the main concerns of development departments in large organizations is maximizing the quality of custom-built systems and minimizing the time-to-market for those systems. Consider the scenario of Joe, the corporate developer:
The platforms and skills that your development teams in the enterprise use and know are transferrable to the development of apps on the Windows Phone platform. On the Next AlignIT Manager Tech TalkAs you can see from the above, Windows Phone goes beyond email and calendaring to deliver productivity to the enterprise. Mobile access to corporate applications like Office and SharePoint come out of the box, but line of business can be extended to the phone using skills and tools your infrastructure and developer teams already have. Join Ruth, Jonathan, and myself, Paul Laberge, for a discussion around how you can leverage Windows Phone to extend your line of business applications to the phone and enable a productive mobile workforce. Thursday, February 9, 2012 Watch LIVE >> | Add to Calendar >> About AlignIT Manager Tech Talk
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