Here’s how to lead as a newcomer and keep people on your side. Read the full article by Samuel Bacharach on Inc.com.
Tag: keep them on your side
Although it is politically correct to talk about teams and group efforts with gusto, if you take that rhetoric to the extreme, you end up denying individuals some of their basic needs at work. So, you need to make sure that you are giving individual group members some individual responsibility, which will enable each person to define their role, to tie their work to the broader agenda, and allow each individual to realize, and have some degree of control over, their successes and failures. Talk of teamwork is nice but it is by no means the only key to leading a successful group over the long-term.
Remember Tommy Lasorda, manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers (1976-1996). Lasorda is famous for saying, “My heart bleeds Dodger blue.” Put in a more academic context, Tommy Lasorda’s identity was intertwined with the Dodger organization. He didn’t simply identify with being a major league baseball manager. He was the manager of the L.A. Dodgers. Lasorda tried to create a community where the Dodger players also “bled Dodger blue.” It was that sense of community, in part, that pundits pointed to as a key to the Dodgers’ highly successful string of world championships and World Series appearances between 1976 and 1996. Lasorda was able to keep the players on his side by reinforcing their common affiliation with the organization.
Lasorda understood that free agency was flourishing in major league baseball in the 1970s and 1980s. New players would arrive each year and some well-liked and valuable players might leave. Lasorda didn’t try to create a collective in the sense that each person grew inextricably close to one another to the point that specific players might not be able to play well without each other. That would have been a disaster for the organization and for Lasorda’s ability to effectively lead the group over the long-term. Instead, Lasorda focused on the Dodger brand (uniform) as the unifying source of affiliation, where being part of the organization was, in effect, being a valuable part of the community and leaving the organization was unfortunate, but not crippling to the team’s sense of community.
When establishing cultural momentum your best bet is to recognize the individual within the group. Think of a jazz band. There is a pretty set protocol on stage. The group gets up there and they play the melody or the “head” of any given tune. Then, in turn, each does their solo, first the bass, then the saxophone, then the piano, then the drums. Then they come back together and play the head again. There is something in this image that is a lesson in sustaining momentum. The individual gets credit but the group doesn’t lose its identity. Within the parameter of the collective, there is opportunity for creative rejuvenation and breathing room.
In managing the organizational culture for momentum, you may want to pump up the collective. Talk about “we.” Keep on heralding, “Together, we’re moving forward.” The collective will spur them on and give them strength and courage. The collective is where momentum lives in its most mystical sense: the sports team, the political party, the cutting-edge R & D group. That sense of collective demands loyalty and adherence to norms and expected behaviors. Because of the danger of taking the group too seriously, the fear of criticism, and the inertia of groupthink, the collective may be the very place where momentum dies. They won’t be on your side because it all became too much about the “we.” In sustaining momentum, a managerially competent leader pumps up the collective but never forgets the individual.
(excerpt from my 2006 book KEEP THEM ON YOUR SIDE: Leading And Managing for Momentum)
DoD photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Chad J. McNeeley
The art of getting things done is all about building coalitions, and the art of building coalitions is all about developing personal credibility and identifying the people you will try to get support from. You might be thinking, “hey I’ve accomplished all these difficult tasks! I’m home free, which way to Easy Street?” Not so fast.
Now you have to justify to your potential allies the need to take action. You have to persuade them that there is a need for action. To do this, you are going to have to prove the timeliness of your ideas. This is going to be a question of carefully selecting the best scenario to convince your targets for initial support that the time has come to act.
In trying to enlist people to join you in your effort, you should consider the four scenarios that you can use in making your case.
Rational Scenario: “Look at the numbers”
By using a rational scenario, you present a logical justification for change. Implicit in this argument for action is the assumption that you’ve arrived at the decision to take action through careful analysis, detailed cost and benefit projections, and a well-structured presentation of alternatives. You look at the numbers as they relate to money, time, and resources. Some might refer to you as “up-tight”. You prefer “thorough”.
A rational scenario is calculated. You have to quantify both the costs and the benefits, and then subtract costs from benefits. If the benefits outweigh the costs then you have a good reason for taking action. A rational scenario emphasizes the payoff to the organization, whether it takes the form of additional profits, a lower cost structure, or superior market position. You propose voluntary action based on sound data and logical projection. It is a great way to take raw emotion out of the equation but it also has its drawbacks. There may be a strong contingent of people within your corporation who disagree with the rational scenario. They will challenge your assumptions, no matter the strength or accuracy of your calculations.
Remember the problem of not having the “perfect answer.” There is usually not enough information, resources, or time to gather every last bit of data or conduct all of the analysis necessary to solidify an argument. In most cases, there are actually unquantifiable or subjective costs. Lastly, there’s sometimes a difference between the magnitude of the numbers and the meaning of the numbers. Certain costs may not be significant in dollar terms but are strategically important.
You may be most successful in using a rational scenario—“Look at the numbers”— to call for action in an organization with a strong planning culture or firms where rigorous quantitative analysis is required before any decision is made. It may work less well for you in mission-driven organizations—where qualitative factors often play as important a role as numbers. The rational scenario may falter in highly changeable situations where projections of future costs and benefits are difficult to quantify with any degree of accuracy—such as any initiative that relies on a forecast of the company’s stock price. In highly volatile times, a rational scenario is much less persuasive.
Mimicking Scenario: “Everyone’s doing it”
Where the rational scenario uses hard facts and logic, the mimicking scenario relies on visibility to reduce the perceived risk of the change initiative and to improve its legitimacy—“This has been done in other organizations, so we must do it, too.” The “everyone’s doing it” argument may seem simplistic, but it is often quite a sensible response, especially in those instances when you find yourself in a situation where you don’t have the time or resources to experiment with an array of alternatives. Why not hitch your wagon to what appears to be a successful best practice? Would you jump off a bridge if your best friend told you to? You might if your friend had double digit growth over the last 3 quarters.
Sometimes, mimickers will identify processes of key competitors that need to be replicated. Other times, mimickers will choose other organizations that have achieved “best-in-class” status for certain processes. Think about how many service organizations have copied Disney’s customer service processes and training as the gold standard for their own dissimilar industries.
The downside of mimicking is that in the context of uncertainty, it’s not clear what goals, products, technologies, structures, and processes are most appropriate.
As a result, many organizations often end up adopting a change by simply copying it, without any concept of its appropriateness or effectiveness. This goes a long way to explain organizational fads and fashions (e.g., re-engineering, zero-based budgeting, job enrichment, etc.)
The mimicking scenario is an easy target for critics. Some will call the initiative unimaginative. Others may thwart a mimicking scenario by examining the mimicked company’s stock performance. For example, how many organizations pointed to Enron as a best–practice company for processes from innovation to business reinvention? Or, others who pointed to Xerox’s R&D activity as a best-in-class process. Despite the fact that Xerox may, indeed, have a world-class R&D activity, critics may point to the beating the company’s stock has taken over the last few years and ask, “Why would anyone want to mirror that performance?”
The mimicking scenario—“everyone’s doing it”— may work best for you in larger organizations and in planning-oriented environments. Larger organizations are more likely to feel an affiliation with other large, best-practice companies. Smaller firms rarely compare themselves to large organizations and value originality more. If you are a Traditionalist or a Developer, you may prefer to use mimicking as a justification for adopting a change strategy, as this justification has a visible end-point as a target—making it plannable.
Regulation Scenario: “They made us do it.”
Laws or regulatory changes occasionally require an organization to change its processes and/or the way it operates. Consider how units within a telecommunications provider needed to change when the federal government lifted restrictions on providing local and long-distance service. There are plenty of organizations that use regulation as a reason for change.
With a regulation scenario, there is a strong third-party mandate for change. It is not difficult for you to obtain information about rules and regulations particular to an industry to determine whether the regulations actually require changing operations. Though not always quantifiable, regulations are nearly always accompanied by a body of written documentation that can be easily accessed and cited when necessary.
Regulations are not always clear—and are subject to interpretation. Regulation-driven change frequently is tied to a time frame for compliance. People may say, “We don’t have to comply with that for another four years,” as a way of delaying the change effort.
You may find that using the regulation scenario—“They made us do it”—may often have limits. Acquiescence to regulation and pressure does not mean that the organization becomes more effective. Rather, submitting to regulation may bring the organization into compliance with external governmental pressures, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that compliance serves the most efficient end of the organization. Many industries may see regulatory changes once every decade, while changes in their business take place annually or every couple of years.
Standards/Expectations Scenario: “People expect it of us”
Sometimes you may want to justify the need to take action on the basis of normative expectation. What would the community expect of us as an organization? What would the customers expect of us? What would our colleagues expect of us? When justifying action on the basis of the standard/expectations scenario, you are purporting to act in concert with the expectations of the greater community. While you may recognize that in the short term, this may not be beneficial to the bottom line, you believe that taking action that meets community expectation will have long-term benefits, such as customer loyalty, community trust, etc.
Regulation provides an explicit measure to justify change, while standards or external expectations provide implicit reasons for change. When you use the standards/expectations scenario as a reason for legitimizing your efforts, you are not proposing that the organization has to do something, as much as you are suggesting that if the organization doesn’t do something, the organization will be at a disadvantage. Or, that if the organization does act, good things are likely to happen as a result.
This becomes most obvious in the public sector, when government factions are perpetually trying to justify taking action as a means of addressing the needs of others. In the public sector, officials are seeking the high ground of moral justification, maintaining that their actions are predicated on the very expectations of the public. For example, for a government to eliminate poverty or provide security allows the initiator of the action to say, “I am doing this because it is expected.”
Taking Stock
Mobilizing a coalition is all about your ability to gain legitimacy—within and beyond the organization. People want to get behind an idea or a person who is going to win or, at the very least, is not going to look like a loser. It’s human nature, people love a winner. This early stage in coalition building is all about establishing your credibility and building the case that will move others to support your effort. Think of it as a foundation on which you are going to build your initiative. Without a base of support, it is unlikely that you’ll ever develop a strong enough critical mass to push your initiative through.
Choosing the right strategy for gaining potential supporters involves one of three approaches. You can try to utilize like minds, co-opt specific leaders, or incorporate groups. To choose the right strategy, you’ll need to carefully consider the people you are seeking support from, their role or position in the organization, or the people they influence. Once you’ve gotten meetings with the people you need to get behind you, you need to make the right pitches. Are those prospective supporters rational, data-driven people? Or are they concerned with best practices? You need to tailor each argument to address the concerns of your prospective supporter. Your success—especially early on—will depend on choosing the appropriate scenario.
If you’ve done your homework right and executed it well, you should now have initial support or support your coalition and focus on getting the actual buy-in.
Motivation has to do with how you help others answer the question, “Why should I do it?” On the surface this “why-should-I-do-it?” mentality smacks of the cheapest form of Machiavellianism and seems to be a model of calculated opportunism. However, all social relationships are inevitably sustained by the answer to the “why-should-I-do-it” question. Implied in this question is the notion that we have some degree of volition—some choice. You can choose to continue a relationship or leave it. You can choose to continue working on a project, or drop it. You can choose to go to the beach or stay home. A managerially competent leader who is successful in motivating others can get others to stop asking, “Why should I do it?” and get them focused on what needs to be done.
When you motivate others, you instill in them the feelings, the rationalities, and the drives that can energize them toward specific goals. Leaders who can motivate give people the sense that they’re in the right place at the right time for the right reason. A successful motivating leader is able to get people to stop wondering why they are doing something and is able to get them to focus on what needs to be done.
The academic literature on motivation suggests that motivation is cultivated on two fundamental mechanisms: extrinsic and intrinsic reward. Motivation built on extrinsic rewards is generally thought of as the pursuit of material resources and financial rewards. It implies a rational calculation: “If I do this, the consequence is that I will receive something of value in return”; or, “If I complete this project on time, there will be a bonus in it for me.” Extrinsic rewards generally consistent of material resources and incentives and are described in terms of pay and benefits. When you sustain momentum using extrinsic motivation, you’re implying a formal tit-for-tat exchange: You put in so much effort and you get so much in return.
Motivation based on intrinsic rewards recognizes that part of the payoff is derived from the activity itself and that there is something satisfying about the process you’re engaged in. Intrinsic rewards include a sense of self-esteem, a sense of collective, a sense of prestige, and a sense of involvement. Unlike extrinsic rewards, intrinsic rewards tend to be less quantifiable. With intrinsic rewards “feelings” count more than “commodity.” When you sustain momentum on the basis of intrinsic motivation, you can’t reduce everything to a formal tit-for-tat exchange. You have to appeal to people’s emotions and give them a sense of purpose.
While it is well and good to build motivation using extrinsic rewards during a growth period, how do you build motivation when things get tough? How do you motivate when there is no bonus or when you’re downsizing? What you need is commitment based on intrinsic rewards. Only with intrinsic rewards can you hope your project will go the distance.
Organizations that have problem solving cultures customarily discuss work-related problems. Suggestions, recommendations, and comments are valued in an problem solving culture.
Problem solving cultures will aim to ask the following questions:
1. What happened during the task–how did it go?
2. Why did the things that went wrong, go wrong?
3. What went well?
4. What helped these successes?
5. What can be done differently next time? What can be learned for the future?
6. What should be done just the same, as it was such a success?
Of course, these questions can be asked in different ways, with different agendas, and with different purposes.
