This is an Original
Consultant article
Putlished on www.firstbiz.com
August, 1996

Managing Change With Common Sense

"Common sense is very uncommon." - Horace Greeley

by Henry J. Mantz

Managing change is the most significant challenge facing business today and for the foreseeable future. Many techniques, processes, concepts and methodologies have been proposed to "help" managers deal with change. The most popular appears to be reengineering. Despite the fact that everyone seems to be Reengineering today, it may not be the right thing for your company. An obvious statement? Perhaps. A setup to lead you to one of the other management fads or "designer processes"? Definitely Not!

Both Reengineering and TQM have not lived up to expectations. Yet each of these have very notable success stories. Neither TQM nor Reengineering is always the right thing to do. "The process a CEO selects should depend on the financial health of his organization and the amount of time and radical change necessary to regain financial health and shareholder confidence," says Mr. Ray Seibert, Vice President of Corporate Human Resources for the Martin-Brower Company. Mr. Seibert has participated in the leadership of both Reengineering and TQM processes.

This article will lay out the first step in the common sense process for determining what actually needs improvement in a company, how much improvement is needed and what processes, if any, should be used to facilitate the improvement. As with many applications of common sense, there may not be any stark revelations, but you'll probably ask "why aren't we doing that?"

The common sense process involves three principal initiatives that must be objectively assessed - Visioning, Focusing, and Operationalizing. The three initiatives should be addressed and improved in order, as each area provides the necessary foundation for the next. Special situations do exist that require modification of the sequence, organizations in Chapter 11 proceedings for instance.

This article's objective is to introduce the Visioning initiative of a common sense management approach to business improvement that is useful to most organizations and businesses. Like most things of significance it will take dedication, commitment, hard work and time, but the results will be significant and the improvements will be permanent.

Visioning, the process of developing and integrating a cohesive vision into an organization, is the first of the four key initiatives ...

Did you just moan? If you did, it's no surprise. Vision has been used to describe some of the most worthless creative writing projects in recent history. Like it or not, Vision is playing a key role in your organization at this very minute. Every function and person in your organization is implementing a Vision of what your organization is about. The critical concern is that every function and person may be implementing totally different Visions - perhaps even opposing Visions. You have only two choices, you either manage your organization's Visioning Process or watch it erode your organization's potential.

Let's illustrate how you can verify that every function and person is implementing a Vision. If you ask most employees what the Vision is, you'll probably get a response like "beats the heck out of me!" or perhaps "I'm not sure, but it's posted on the bulletin board." But ask them about the elements that make up the Vision and the answers will change. Ask employees to respond in terms of what they see and believe to be guiding the business - not what they have been told. Ask questions like the following:

• What do you believe the business is trying to do or accomplish?
• Why do you think the owners keep the business instead of closing it or selling it off?
• How does the business expect employees to behave toward other people such as other employees, associates, managers, owners, suppliers, regulators, influencers, purchasers, consumers and users?
• What traits do you believe the business is looking for in the people it promotes or hires as managers?
• How important does the business consider the contribution of employees, associates, managers, owners, suppliers, regulators, influencers, purchasers, consumers and users?
• What kind of things does the business reward and punish people for?
• What project, function, activity, person gets the most attention and support of top management?

If the employees feel they can answer candidly, you will get serious answers to most of these questions for each person. These types of questions are used to learn what is called the "Practiced Vision." If you ask these questions to people across your organization, you'll probably begin to see the shadows of the various Practiced Visions that exist in your organization. Don't be surprised if you get a lot of different, even conflicting responses. Most businesses do not have a common Practiced Vision unless they have gone through a Visioning process.

STEP 1. Understanding The Practiced Vision

For a Vision to be a useful leadership tool it must be based in reality. Getting an understanding of the Practiced Vision, as described earlier, is the first step. The responses must be collected and analyzed by management. The organization's leadership must determine if the Practiced Vision (or Visions) is an acceptable base for responding to the change dynamics in the marketplace - now and anticipated for the future. Common Sense tells us that in order to determine if something is acceptable, we must have a standard to compare against. This creates the need for a well understood Desired (or Target) Vision.

STEP 2. Exposing The Desired Vision

The Desired Visions can only be drafted by those leaders directly responsible and accountable for setting and steering the future of the organization on behalf of the owners. The Desired Vision is not created by this step because it has always existed. It is a reflection of what those leaders really believe and are actually committing the business to achieve. This is not a creative writing project, but the definition and solidification of the Visionary aspirations most leaders have for their organization. This Desired Vision should provide guidance in the following key areas:

• The Organization's Mission - Why it exists, What it will do, Who it will do it for, Implication of how well it does it now and How well it will do it in the future.
• Values and Guiding Principles - the core fundamental truths and principals that everyone in the organization is accountable to follow and are often related to money, profit, costs; quality, value, customer satisfaction; treatment of employees, suppliers, customers, owners; or interactions with the community and environment among others.
• Strategic Critical Goals and Priorities - the major goals and priorities felt to be essential in achieving the Mission (and consistent with the Values and Guiding Principles). Goals and Priorities must be expressed in terms that allow measurement or recognition of the achievements.

The Desired Vision must be real. The Leadership must be committed to integrating every aspect of the Desired Vision into the day-to-day operation and decision-making. If the Desired Vision does not provide guidance and direction to management decision making and if the leadership does not insist that the Desired Vision be followed, it is worthless.

Once the Desired Vision has been defined, we can compare it to our earlier findings of the Practiced Vision.

STEP 3. Determining The Gap

If there are several Practiced Visions, then there are inconsistencies and incompatibilities (I'm trying to use polite language here) within management. The Practiced Vision is the direct result of the policies, practices and examples set by all levels of management. If the gaps or discrepancies between the Desired Vision and the Practiced Vision are significant enough, changes must be effected through the organization's "Support Systems."

STEP 4. Closting The Gap

Every organization has Support Systems regardless of size. A Support System is any consistently applied manner of getting something done (including policies, procedures and practices), whether formal or informal, that has an effect on people's attitude, behavior, desire or ability to achieve a desired result (in this case, the Vision). Since essentially every policy, procedure or practice has some effect on people, we need to identify the most significant Support Systems. Typically the following areas yield the most significant Support Systems:

• Wage and salary administration
• Granting of Bonuses and special monetary awards
• Promotion and advancement
• Hiring and transfers
• Budgeting and Capital Authorization
• Office space and equipment allocation
• Any practice that reflects reward, recognition, power, influence, or status.

Each significant Support System must be reviewed for its effect on achievement of the Vision. If short-comings are found in evaluating the Desired versus the Practiced Vision, typically the gaps can be traced to the Support Systems. In any case, if the Practiced Vision needs to be brought into line with the Desired Vision, modifying Support Systems is usually the most effective tool to use along with the example of the Leadership. Support Systems are the principal way in which the behavior is shaped in an organization.

The approach for utilizing Support Systems for shaping the organization's Practiced Vision requires a disciplined process. Each Support System must have clear objectives defined as well as methodology for accomplishment. Many Support Systems were originally created without any thought to their impact on people's attitudes, behaviors or desires. Their focus was to maintain effective control of such things as inventory, capital equipment, purchases, petty cash, salary increases, etc. It will be very foreign for some managers to look at these procedures from the perspective of Support Systems. You should also realize that within the Support Systems are enshrined some of the most "sacred cows." Objectivity and open-mindedness are essential for anyone involved in reviewing Support Systems.

Visioning Summary

Vision is impacting organizations daily regardless of management's attention. The Vision actually practiced by organizations is shaped by management's policies, practices, procedures and example. If the organization's senior leadership has not clearly established the Vision for the organization, then each manager (at each level) will establish guidelines for behavior based on personal beliefs about what the organization is trying to achieve, how they need to manage to be judged successful, what their people should be doing, and what the priorities are. Obviously, this opens the organization to conflict, stress, high levels of wasted effort, negative politics and low morale. An effective Practiced Vision is essential to any type of business improvement process from Reengineering's radical change to Total Quality Management's continuous incremental improvement.

• Customer Perceived Value
• Product Identify
  • Main-Line Products
  • Collateral Products
• Identify "Real" Customers and "Theoretical" Customers
• Customer Expectations (NEW's)
• Level of Customer Satisfaction
• Competitive position relative to Value
  • Price Wars, Commodities,
  • Sole-Sources and other tough situations

• Translating NEW's in to Operating Requirements
• Rallying people behind improvements that help sales and profits
• Exploding the training myth
• Shirt-Sleeve Management and other bad practices
• .and others