In business, or in a non-profit, one thing that bugs me is when a group of individuals agree on a vision, but very few want to see it through to implimentation. Oh yes, there are excuses, but the result is still failure. The business culture destroys the vision.
Gardini, Guiliani, and Marricchi’s article, Finding the right place to start change discusses change in a business culture. They say, “Our recent experience at a European retail bank shows the benefits of starting to implement change by focusing on the employees who have the most influrence over the daily work that needs to change.” The article discussed how they bank struggled to get bank managers to change. So, what was the article take away? The authors suggested the a company take two concurrent steps to change the company structure:
- Change the pivotal people first.
- Build a comprehensive program.
This article didn’t really say much and at first glance it looks like it regeritaged Jim Collin’s book, Good to Great. In that book, Collins emphasizes to get the right people on the bus(the wrong people off the bus), and then figure out where to drive it. His theory differs from the article in that once you get the who you can decide the what. The reason is because a company therefore can then easily adapt to a changing world. Secondly, Collins argues that if you have the right people on the bus, the motivation problem goes away. Lastly, the wrong people on the bus will sabotage any advances you try to make.
So how do you know which people to have on your bus? That is really the tricky question. One way is to lead by example as a “Level 5” leader. Collins defines these leaders as those who are ambitous for the company, and not themselves. In other words, a humble, but ambitious leader.
So, the trick to changing any business, small and large, is to change yourself and the leaders around you. Once you do that, you can find those who emulate these qualities as the riders on your bus, and the most likely group to impliment your changes.