Installment #6 continued from:
Driving Change with a Samurai Boss(1)
The Anatomy of Productivity(4)
It’s tough enough introducing change into a monoculture organization–although it’s hard to imagine such an animal even exists today in our global economy. But let’s face it, people of all cultural persuasions resist change.
Let me rephrase that: People of all cultural persuasions resist change that’s forced on them. And this is really the crux of the matter.
To use an extreme example, suppose I’m living happily in my home back in Chicago, and suddenly the government knocks on my door and tells me they’re going to build a highway right through my living room, so I have to move out. Needless to say I’d be ticked off and resistant to leaving. If I really loved that home I might even chain myself to a tree when the bulldozers arrived. Or worse, hire a lawyer.
On the flip side, if I were living in the same house but decided on my own to move to, say, Hawaii because I’m sick of shoveling snow, then the decision to change would be mine, and therefore a good thing.
The moral of the story is that forcing change on people breeds resistance. The optimum way to work around this human flaw is through education, engagement and involvement. You educate employees–especially the resisters–to understand the current situation and that there’s a better way; you have them collect the data, help them understand what it means, and challenge them to come up with their own solutions to improving their own work areas. If it’s their idea, they are more likely to put it into practice than if it’s yours.
But whether change is forced or not, when you throw different cultures and languages into the soup, introducing change gets exponentially more challenging. Not only do you have to cope with the normal resistance all people have to change, but you’ve also got hidden culture gaps messing with everyone’s heads. The logical approach then is to find and tap into common values and motivations that can keep the different cultures “glued” together. The good news is that once common ground is established and the team properly educated, multi-culture workplaces rock with the best of them.
Pulling It All Together
Hope it’s clear by now that the point of my ramblings isn’t about factories and industrial engineering. It’s about applying the broader principles that drive and nurture positive change in any organization.
And to that point, a brief recap:
Improvement starts and ends with structured teams of competent, educated, and motivated employees led by leaders with dirty hands.
In getting the team to embrace its mission—whether it’s productivity improvement or developing an on-line marketing campaign—it is persuasive and therefore effective to start with the big picture before burdening the troops with details. Context is critical for a shared understanding and eventual buy-in. In my experience, the “deductive” approach has been effective in communicating with cultures around the world.
And while it’s necessary to provide context, ultimately the team has to own the project for any good to come of it. They own it by doing the work, from data collection to analysis to brainstorming through implementation and follow up. The leader’s job is to advise, support and catch folks when they fall. And occasionally roll around in the mud with ‘em.
But if you do just one thing right, make sure it’s building solid relationships up, down and across the organization, accomplished by generously sharing knowledge and being humble enough to learn from others, especially the folks on the front lines who are creating value for the organization.
My years as a manufacturing consultant weren’t much fun. But I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It broadened my understanding of business and management, taught me how to strategically approach improvement, and hooked me up with some quality people who are still friends today.
Thanks to all my great Japanese mentors–even the crazy samurai mentors–it shouldn’t surprise that my management style has a distinct shoyu flavor. And yet, as much as I respect the improvement approach used by these mentors, it has, as my Japanese boss liked to say, “much room for improvement.”
We’ll revisit the “big picture” in a future post, next time from forty-thousand feet. Coming soon.
Copyright © Tim Sullivan 2012
