What would happen if you swapped out your tenured executives for all-new leadership for a year?
By Liza Hummel
“Just missing the mark” is a dangerous place for a company to be. It means that no one is enjoying the fruits of success, and the gloomy threat of failure hangs overhead. At the same time, things aren’t scary enough to spur on company leadership to make major changes.
In my experience as a leadership consultant, it’s likely that a company will stay in that phase for a long time, until something goes radically wrong. Quite a few of the organizations I’ve coached in the past year are struggling to meet their goals, and they aren’t sure exactly what’s wrong. They aren’t leaking revenue like the Valdez, but they aren’t seeing the numbers they’d like. Most of the time, they’ll tell me that the problem is something like this: “Our business model doesn’t work in this new, technology-based and ultra-competitive world.”
Wrong. The problem is your people.
Faced with the task of innovation, most organizations turn to their “A-Team,” usually the same go-to group of tenured executives, many of whom have spent decades at the company.
But what if your real “A-Team” is the one sitting on the bench — the people who have been keeping their ideas to themselves because they have no power to change things, or the highly qualified leaders who applied to your company but you had to turn away because there were no openings?
Think about the difference: The senior group might have a deep and valuable knowledge of the company, but their long tenure at the company means they have all spent significant time in the same culture and developed many of the same habits. Meanwhile, every new leader’s perspective encompasses different history, brings different pain points, and sees different possibilities and outcomes. In short, new leaders are primed to be innovators.
What would happen if you put your company in the hands of new leaders for a year?
Let’s try a business experiment to imagine what might happen if you let new leaders take the steering wheel of your organization. What would be different at the end of that year?
New leaders are closest to the ground-level practices and customer realities in an organization, so they see where changes could be implemented. Their new perspective inherently helps them discover challenges and question assumptions, meaning new leaders can analyze people and processes to make their lives and the lives of their teams easier.
Those monthly department update meetings that take all morning? Cancelled and replaced by weekly 15-minute team stand-ups.
That manual shipment tracker? Gone and replaced with scanners and software.
New leaders aren’t going to have a bias against dropping low-performing products, nor will they be disposed to preserve current solutions that aren’t working to full potential. Sheena Iyengar cites increases in sales when companies cut extraneous, redundant products. All this creates focus for your workforce, and less juggling means leaders are more likely to get into flow.
And fresh ideas are brought in at a higher point in the chain of command. Think: no more running ideas up the ladder, spending hours building your case and gaining buy-in at each stop. Practices would be disrupted at the decision-making level. Think it, do it, move on. This would greatly affect the productivity of those at the lower levels, eliminating redundancy and tediousness with a single idea of simplicity.
Without fear of rejection or dismissal and with the power to implement change, imagine how your new “A-Team” might blossom into advocates for innovation and advancement.
Make It Real
Of course, it’s unrealistic and in many ways unwise to turn out all your experienced leaders and replace them with new leaders. But it’s not unrealistic to consider where your organization could go and what it could accomplish if you were to think and act like an organization of new leaders.
Here are some ways to start:
- Put your ear to the watercooler. Listening to employees can bring sweeping changes to your business model, revenue streams, and retention and engagement numbers. Each person brings with them a differing perspective and ideas that can push your company in cost-effective directions.
- Start with the culture. Build a culture that is open to change and innovation, where ideas can be freely shared and listened to across all levels of the organization. around to see what doesn’t make sense in the current landscape. What processes or decisions haven’t been challenged lately?
- Replace behaviors. To realize this utopia of ideas, try sharing concrete behaviors people can use to open their minds and gain their buy-in for doing so. “It’s much easier to start doing something new than to stop doing something habitual without a replacement behavior,” says neuroscientist Elliot Berkman. Telling people what they can do to replace their old habits is better than simply telling them to stop certain behaviors.
- Explain your reasoning. “People who want to kick their habit for reasons that are aligned with their personal values will change their behavior faster than people who are doing it for external reasons such as pressure from others,” says Berkman. Just because your company says to change, doesn’t mean everyone is suddenly intrinsically driven to do so. And the longer a behavior has been around, the harder it is to break. They need to know why the new way is better.
- Dig deep into your workforce. Focus on engaging and involving people who aren’t leaders across the company. Find out what matters to people. Why do they come to work every day? What would make their jobs better?
- Charge loyal leaders with helping new leaders navigate risk and test ideas for success. For those especially resistant to change, try focusing on their legacy. How do they want to be remembered? Do they want to be seen as someone who coached others to success, sharing their life lessons, a leader to aspire to? Or as someone who kept the stage for themselves, asserting their views onto others.
- Seriously consider every new idea. Learning from others is a valuable development experience that can shape your company’s culture and foster collaboration, not to mention drive down conflict between workers. Jot down ideas — any idea — on a whiteboard before you dismiss it. Even when you are alone. This will help you get into the habit of analyzing and reviewing before moving on.
- Be the change. Pin pictures on your walls of images that remind you what you want to be. I want to radiate a warm, positive attitude, so I have an image of a friendly cup of hot cocoa with heart-shaped marshmallows at my desk. I look at it any time I’m feeling less-than-generous. There’s also a picture of a Formula One car and a Ferrari quote: “What’s behind you doesn’t matter.”
It’s easy to get caught in an echo chamber, relying only on a few talented team members to solve every problem. But those sitting on the bench may be ready and able to contribute, even if they’re not replacing the team’s stars. They just need an opportunity to be put in the game.
Liza Hummel is a consulting associate in leadership development at DDI. She is a roller coaster enthusiast and has ridden numerous record-breaking coasters. None compare to the ride that is being a people leader.
