W. Brent Barron, CEO of NGAGE, pens this guest post. N-Gage is NGAGE is a professional sales organization with vast experience in sales, alternate channels, marketing and business intelligence.
Change is hard.
Especially when you’re leading it.
It’s no secret that uncertainty and ambiguity comprise the new normal for today’s leaders. Although it’s tempting to simply wait for stressful periods of change to pass before making major decisions, thriving in business today requires leaders to continually embrace change. Ongoing adaptation to the emerging competitive environment is the main goal if you want your organization to prosper over the long haul.
My experience in change leadership is drawn from two very rapid business start-ups I cofounded after I was displaced suddenly from jobs I held. I found myself in uncharted territory, but I resolved to forge ahead resolutely despite the challenges involved. Happily, each of those start-ups became successful and I emerged a much more capable leader under crisis conditions. In reflecting on my experiences, I pulled together the lessons I learned into an acronym I call CONQUER:
Count on success – focus only on winning; be determined
Outside the lines – fresh thinking; avoiding the status quo; be creative
Nail the tough calls – fearless decision-making; be decisive
Quickness is key – faster whenever possible; move with speed
Uncomplicate everything – free from bureaucracy and perfection; strive for simplicity
Eradicate adversity – frustrate your adversaries; persevere
Retune – focus on opportunities to improve the odds; be reflective
Count on Success
Several years ago, the company I worked for was faced with closure. A core team of leaders needed to re-envision who we were and what our purpose was in order to have any chance at survival. We set to work and put together a plan to turn the vision into reality. As each day ended, we had countless reasons to believe that failure would be our lot. The only way we knew to face such odds was to focus solely on those things required to be successful. Slowly but surely, there were fewer signs of failure at the end of each day, fewer naysayers, and more reasons to keep fighting for survival. That experience taught me about determination, and to count on success.
The transformational leader cannot afford to expend significant energy worrying about failure. A relentless passion for survival and winning is fundamental to day-to-day survival.
In Born to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathlete and the Greatest Race the World Has Never Seen, Christopher McDougall tells this story: “Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up, it knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re the lion or a gazelle-when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”
This is the thirst for survival that must underpin every single day. When you are living in the Serengeti of change, stopping to worry about failure will turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy of collapse. Exercise determination, focus only on winning, and make every decision as if success is a foregone conclusion.
Outside the Lines
Organizations need more than good products and services to flourish; they require innovative processes, higher productivity, and ongoing enhancements to meet growing customer demands. To meet these challenges, leaders must be creative and eager to consider a variety of perspectives, new possibilities, and ideas.
I was not blessed with a tremendously creative personality. For me, the process-oriented, analytical left-brain is dominant, putting me at a disadvantage in that ambiguous place where rapid change happens. A key is to overcoming this deficit has been surrounding myself with people who are creative.
A second key to creativity is simply having a bias for action. It is easy to become paralyzed by seemingly unattainable goals, but choosing to act upon a hunch or some measure of intuition often releases creativity you didn’t know you had. Lower the self-imposed limitation of only doing those things that necessarily produce improvement, and try approaches that are simply different. Building that frame of mind will ensure that you are constantly considering innovative approaches to old problems.
An important cautionary note is that breaking new ground should never be mistaken for taking the kind of shortcuts that lead to non-compliance with laws or regulations. I have never rushed headlong into any business opportunity without trusted legal counsel at my side, ensuring that my entrepreneurial spirit remains within the bounds of integrity, good conscience and solid ethics. That is especially true when your approach needs to be a nontraditional one.
Nail the Tough Calls
Answers to critical decisions are not found in some dusty procedure manual resting on your shelf. It is a time for getting “in the zone” when it comes to charting a course and making the right calls. I have found success in breaking down key decisions into the smallest common denominator, placing a stake in the ground with regard to each solitary decision, then correcting later whenever necessary. Like strategically placed pitons in mountain climbing, this approach multiplies the number of actions taken, but it has the benefit of allowing necessary risk-taking while ensuring that no fall is lethal. It erodes the fear that comes from thinking every decision might be the one that ends the climb. It also builds courage, a character trait required for those faced with a rapidly changing environment.
One of the toughest decisions I have faced followed the closure of a privately held company. Over one hundred highly skilled employees were out of work. I was leading a small management group busy putting together a new business model. We had to decide whether to hire the displaced team en masse, or look elsewhere to infuse needed talent into the new organization. We decided that each hiring decision must be made individually, based on the merit of each individual. After three weeks, we assembled a diverse team of 75 employees to include many who had lost their jobs due to the closure.
Quickness is Key
In football, a skillful running back is able to make amazing cuts that punish defenders. This nimbleness is exactly what is needed throughout periods of rapid change, especially when formulating strategy and executing tactics in quick succession. Even more, periods of crisis are no time for “group think.” Making many small decisions quickly will help build speed into every process. Someone, as opposed to some committee, must step up and drive decisions to closure over and over again.
In late 2012, the NGAGE team was working hard to build a healthcare sales and marketing company that would serve the radiation oncology market. All of our scarce resources were being poured into the opportunity. Out of left field, an opportunity arose to move away from those aspirations and transition into women’s health and diagnostics. A moment’s hesitation could have cost us the opportunity, and we had very little information upon which to base a decision. We quickly analyzed our choices, and took the decision to pursue the newly presented challenge. Less than three years later, NGAGE is thriving company because of that timely decision.
Uncomplicate Everything
Like many leaders, I struggle with perfectionism. On one hand, we perfectionists are bolstered by the noble exhortation that “good is the enemy of great.” On the other hand, we have Voltaire’s admonition claiming, “perfect is the enemy of good.” We often add complexity inadvertently, so it is imperative to distinguish between essential activities and those that are extravagances during times of crisis. As Peter Drucker famously observed, “Half the leaders I have met don’t need to learn what to do. They need to learn what to stop.” Keeping things simple increases the probability of success, and it is dependent upon the discipline of saying “no” to anything that is not essential.
A deft leader in crisis mode must move between the demand for excellence for critical tasks and an outright rejection of absolute perfection for those actions that require speed. This natural tension requires sound judgment and a willingness to accept the proverbial “eighty-percent solution” (or even less!) on the road to long-term, overall excellence.
Eradicate Adversity
Adversity promises to emerge in many forms. Politics, legal struggles, and financial issues are just a few of the areas in which adversity abounds in an ambiguous climate. In my own experience, an entrepreneurial environment produced the worst kind of adversity: the self-inflicted kind. What I did not know then was that anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts have been shown to occur at a much higher rate among entrepreneurs than among other business people.
It is good to be warned by a journal article, but like most, I had to learn it the hard way, dealing with anxiety and depression first hand. How does one eradicate high levels of adversity, regardless of the source? It comes from putting one foot before the other, every minute of every day until it improves. Life is a “no pain, no gain” endeavor that teaches great lessons to those willing to listen. It comes from learning more about oneself, from being willing to ask for help, from having faith and practicing dogged perseverance. When life feels like a hurricane, one must continually look past adversity and continue to make progress one determined step at a time.
Retune
Bringing order out of chaos demands a clear mind. A break from the relentless pace pays dividends when undertaken on a scheduled, recurring basis. Rather than treating the situation as if it is unmanageable, take the time to step back. Look at the big picture. Meet with your coach. Open your mind and consider all your options.
An important outcome of your reflection is making sure the company is being guided by the “why”; the reason for existence. I like the “Hedgehog Concept” as presented by Jim Collins in classic leadership book, Good to Great. Another suggestion is the McKinsey “Seven S” model which helps analyze how well your organization is positioned to achieve its intended objective.
At NGAGE, we start every week with a leadership “huddle call”. Although it often involves a lot of very tactical topics, it is foremost a time for discussing any strategic corrections that should be made. It is very intentionally an open forum with a light agenda. Similarly, we schedule regularly recurring leadership retreats. The word “retreat” is used as a reminder that this is a time for reflection, and the venue is often chosen to echo that mindset. Whenever possible, we retreat to the mountains or a rural venue. This is our time to step back as team and reflect on our strategic direction.
Be a Leader Who CONQUERs Change
A wise man once said, “There is no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs.” We may respond with exasperation in times of crisis, asking, “Yes, but how many more flights?”
Sometimes that stairway seems to herald imminent defeat, but we must CONQUER our fears and forge on. You need creativity in order to generate fresh approaches so that we are better able to make the tough calls. Decisions must be broken down into their essentials and executed in rapid-fire fashion. In the midst of the chaos and stress, you need to keep things focused and simple so that you open up room to maneuver when adversity strikes. Finally, it’s essential that you take the time to step back and reflect on where you are and what you’re doing—it’s easy to get lost in the trees if you can’t see the forest.
That way you’ll be able make course corrections, navigate your way through the crisis and CONQUER the change you face.