The Surgeon Model of Employee Engagement

If you were facing a serious operation and you were offered a choice between different surgeons, all equally technically qualified, what other information would you like to have?

If you were told that research has shown that there was one important data point related to the surgeon that could predict his performance – would you like to know?

What if you were told that the hospital did not investigate this parameter? How would you feel?

This is in reality what happens in most companies today. Companies relentlessly measure employee (and customer) satisfaction as it allegedly predicts employee retention and productivity – or at least it used to in the old industrial ages. Today most companies have high average satisfaction levels and satisfaction is not a competitive element anymore.  Employee satisfaction does not predict performance.

Gallup research has shown that organisations with high Employee Engagement outperform organisations with low Employee Engagement on all financial parameters, have lower absenteeism and fewer accidents and quality issues.

 Still very few companies have started to measure Employee Engagement and the ones that do, have difficulties in translating the results into actionable strategies. In average engagement levels are 15 to 30% depending on country and industry. This is much more difficult to deal with than the normal employee surveys that yield 80% satisfaction levels and cement Status Quo.

             

The difference between highly engaged people and the rest are has a significant impact on performance. With 50% less accidents and 41% quality defects you might be interested to know what level of engagement your surgeon has.

The 4 different levels of engagement:

I am a hostage (Hope your procedure is really simple)

The actively disengaged employees are company assassins; they are actively trying to sabotage the operation. The main drivers of dissatisfaction are often the direct manager, pay, fairness, personal values versus company values or individual incidents. People often want to leave but cannot for some reason. They stay on as hostages which is good for the HR retention KPI but lethal if they deal with customers. Their focus is escape

It is a Job (Don’t get operated near a shift)

This is normally the highest group of employees. They are satisfied employees and believe there is a fair balance between what the company asks and what they deliver. They are however not inspired to do their best and will try to do the minimum acceptable activity to keep their job. They see their job as a way of financing their leisure time in which they can express themselves themselves with something meaningful. Their focus is self interest

It is a career (Hope you don’t have an interesting condition)

The engaged employees have a high degree of focus on personal and professional growth which gives them great potential. They will however put their growth and their mastery ahead of the company and its purpose whenever there is a conflict. When dealing with customers their focus can be more about being right (which they are most of the time) rather than winning the customer relationship and the order. Their focus is Mastery

It is a calling (Hope this is your surgeon)

The actively engaged employees are closely connected to the purpose and values of the company. When dealing with customers they create strong customer engagement and directly impacts revenue and profit levels, especially in a service environment. Most companies do not utilise this great resource but treat their service departments as a cost and outsorce it to a cheap jurisdiction. As a customer you want to be serviced by actively engaged employees as they focus on you. Where would you prefer to invest?  Who do you want to be operated by?

“One great employee equals three average employees” 

Kip Tindall, Container Store

They are willing to go the extra mile and even break the rules to do the right thing for the company. Focus is on helping and providing value to others

How is Engagement created?

The current HR toolbox of “processing people” does not work well when the aim is to increase engagement. The main reason is that engagement is not an attribute of the employee – you cannot hire and fire your way to Employee Engagement. Engagement is an emotional relationship between the organisation and the individual and needs to be addressed at an organisational level.

Another issue is that the creation of Engagement is different from company to company and from situation to situation. The starting point has to be a survey evaluating the individual drivers of Engagement combined with interviews of select employee representatives to understand what really goes on.

Once the situation and drivers are understood for each individual group and engagement level in the organisation, the strategic development can begin. It is quite important to involved people in the strategic process. Far too often the senior management team close the door and cook up a strategy that has no connection to people. By involving people in the strategic development engagement is created and the implementation of the change process will be easier. For more on the strategic process: You cannot separate strategy and implementation

“Employee Engagement is not about changing people – it is about changing organisations”

Top 10 dangers in your BIG is BEAUTIFUL Strategy

To want to grow and become a bigger company is a normal objective for most businesses, but in some companies it becomes the main purpose – above and beyond becoming a better company and creating value for the company’s stakeholders. 

Like revenue and profit, size is really an outcome – it is a measure of how much your customers are willing to pay for your services and how inspired your employees are. Both are shaped significantly by the way the company treats its other and often weaker stakeholders.

If customers and employees are just plankton feeding your corporate whale you can use the shortcut of an acquisition strategy.

Unfortunately the BIG is Beautiful thinking has been accepted as a commandment in the corporate religion not to be challenged – only good things comes out pursuing BIG. It is well documented that large companies have scale of economies and can do a lot of things cheaper than smaller companies. 

BIG companies can compete more effectively in traditional markets and squeeze smaller players out of the distribution channels and outspend them. This has worked in the industrial age and to a degree in the knowledge age – but the global business environment is changing:

• The average lifespan of an S&P 500 company has declined from 70 years in the 1920s to 15 years today. 

• More than half the S&P500 companies from year 2000 have disappeared. 

• There are 40% less public companies in the US than in 2000. In UK it is 50% less

If large corporations were a species – we would call it endangered - Lynn Stout, UCLA

If companies manage to get into fortune 50 they are almost guaranteed not to grow. So treating  growth and size as a married couple is wrong – they are not even dating!

Contrary to the BIG is Beautiful thinking it is not the asset builders that have dominated the most recent future – it is time to look at the dangers of being big.

Top 10 dangers in your BIG is BEAUTIFUL Strategy

1. Takeover targets are not just about tangible assets anymore.

To buy acquire a company you have to pay more than it is worth and find synergies (short for axing management and all staff functions, marketing and sales). This worked well when assets mainly where brick, machines, products and other tangibles but this has been overtaken by intangible values like knowledge, brand, engagement and networking capabilities. 

2. Asset hoarding is not the most effective business model anymore

The companies with the most effective business models seen from a revenue and profit perspective is not relying on the traditional logic of buying competitors or squeezing them out of markets. The new network companies like Google, Apple (in its app store driven version), Amazon and their likes are connecting manufacturers and suppliers with consumers and buyers in a massive scale.

The central goal was not to buy their way to big but to create massive value for users with radically useful products. Big was certainly an outcome.

3. Acquisitions are not as profitable as they used to be

 Few in numbers the network companies normally create markets rather than fight the incumbents in their well-defined little market sandboxes with set rules about who own the toys. In the process of creating new markets they destroy old markets. The incumbents in the mobile phone market fell as a result of the appstores – not the smart phones. The newspaper industry lost half its advertising revenue to Google in a few years and Amazon is closing brick and mortar stores. 

Being big in a market that is being disrupted does not protect a company; it just means a larger and more smelly carcass.

It is also well known that acquisitions are a reset button that can mask a company’s true performance. When the balance sheets merge the CEO gets a new lease of his corner office making it impossible to really measure the value of an acquisition.

Asset builders are not the largest animals in the jungle anymore and the networking companies don’t want to buy them or even compete with them. They will be outmaneuvered.

4. When you buy intangibles they might not work in your company.

This became obvious when McDonalds bought Chipotle and although they expanded the chain dramatically the Chipotle sustainability brand grew faster outside McDonalds. From a valuation of 1.5B$ in 2006 when it was sold to 23B$ today – this McDonald could not unlock. As knowledge become more generally available more value is locked in the engagement created with employees and customers. Both can walk out the door at any time.

5. A takeover destroys massive amounts of value

If an acquisition is driven by being “BIG” rather than synergies with the existing organisations the value extraction process becomes painful as cannot buy a company for what it is worth – you have to pay more. The headcount stripping exercise is only seen as impacting cost when in reality it affects all areas of the business – people have a lot of knowledge that is not captured in systems. A long time after the CEO declares the acquisition a success and completed customers and employees are still suffering from lack of knowledgeable people that could have intervened when the poorly integrated systems fail. Before the systems are up running the next acquisition will be lined up.

Synergies are often internally driven not market driven

If an acquisition was treated like a product 

6. Measurement often destroys more value than it creates 

The growth imperative often forces organisations to take a very short sighted approach. Acquisitions and other “getting big” initiatives have to be successful and results demonstrated immediately. Anybody that has been through a merger knows that it often take many years before the merger is settled – not quarters.

Large organisations also tend to measure the wrong things. Typically the focus is on the easy rather than the important measures which lead to a cost centric culture. Creating value and innovation is a long term process that cannot effectively be managed through cost control. Finally large companies tend to use the measurements for the wrong purpose. Measurements are typically used to control people and not to develop and motivate them.

“No measure does less damage than wrong measures or measures used for the wrong purpose” Jeffrey Pfeffer

7. Innovation and creativity declines as corporation grows

Most of the truly innovative companies of our time did not exist a few years ago and they claim to fame is not innovative products it is innovative business models and thinking. This kind of innovation rarely happens in large corporations.

Larger corporations also have difficulty tapping into their people creativity as the executive suite gets isolated from their people, from customers and society at large and frankly they often don’t believe in the organisations value capabilities

In a survey of 400 CFOs 80% stated “they would reduce discretionary spending on potentially value creating activities in order to meet short term earnings targets”   The Boston Consulting Group

8. The illusion of bigger means more diversified and lower risk

The prevailing wisdom is that when companies diversify they also lower risk although the financial crisis should have eradicated that assumption it still lives on. Markets are not safe isolated lakes where the larges fish rule – disruptors empty these lakes fast. 

Many companies rely on some commodities that seriously impact their business either as raw goods or as finished products. These markets used to follow demand and supply models before the derivatives markets started to dominate. Today every $ of commodity traded Is multiplied by hundreds of dollars of derivative contracts that are controlled by algorithms rather than people – perfect bubble economy conditions.

9. Corporate Silence, Effectiveness & Psychological distance

The larger a corporation becomes the more it follows the conventional wisdom it has created. There is no consent and all views are convergent with the logic of the corporation and its industry. This is coined corporate silence. 

In large scale organisations efficiency becomes the focus rather than actually investigating if processes create the desired output. Effective is forgotten and finally the psychological distance between large corporation managers and ordinary customers and customers becomes so large that they really fail to understand each other.

10. Large organisations have lower engagement

As Gallup has demonstrated, companies with a high level of engagement outperform their low engagement peers on all revenue, profit and quality parameters. 

At the same time they can demonstrate that there is a significant correlation between size and engagement levels.

Is it time to rethink your BIG IS BEAUTIFUL strategy?

Interesting data about your Employee survey

Officevibe has some very interesting data on the view of employee data. It is obviously not enough just do a survey.

• 25% of employees think that their manager views an engagement survey as a tick box exercise

• 30% is the average response rate for employee surveys

• 20% is the abandon rate for surveys longer than 8 minutes

• 29% of employees found the survey pointless

• 80% did not believe their manager would act on the information

• 47% of managers spend less than 5 days a year related to activities of their surveys

• 20% said their managers never responded to concerns raised

• 27% of managers never reviewed survey results

• 52% of managers reviewed results but took no action.

• 48% of senior managers found surveys highly valuable

• 45% of employees found little or no value in surveys

http://www.officevibe.com/blog/employee-surveys-infographic

Interview with Sir Richard Branson Founder of Virgin Group by Christina Lattimer

Interview with Sir Richard Branson Founder of Virgin Group

By Christina Latimer
Full article here: http://peopledevelopmentmagazine.com/2014/09/03/sir-richard-branson/

This is the final interview in this wonderful series about the 6 Challenges identified by CEO’s across the globe, highlighted by the Centre for Creative Leadership in their Report in 2013.  When I turned my attention to who I would want to interview for this important final issue,  the first person who sprang to mind was Sir Richard Branson.  To me Richard epitomises the ultimate combination of brilliant leadership and business skills.  Richard has successfully, transparently and wholeheartedly lived his values which have been demonstrated time and time again both in his unique approach to business and in his attitude to Virgin’s many faceted global success.   So you will no doubt understand how delighted and grateful  I felt when Richard confirmed he was willing to contribute to this month’s magazine.   I hope his wonderful words of wisdom, as always, help you our readers and contributors alike, I think you will,  like me, be delighted!

Here is what Richard had to say:

1) What do you consider is the biggest challenge for CEO’s and leaders in the business world today and what can be done? 

Business leaders and CEO’s have a responsibility to inspire their employees and run their business in a sustainable way.   This is difficult for CEO’s as they are judged on their performance in the short term and any long term initiatives do take time to come through.  Shareholders and stakeholders need to modify their expectations of CEO’s from short-term profits and back the leaders of businesses to create long lasting plans that will grow their businesses and tackle many of the world’s issues at the same time.

2) Can you describe your leadership culture in Virgin and why it works so well? 

When selecting people for leadership roles I believe you should have an open mind and be prepared to look out for talent which others may have over-looked.

It is extremely important to employ business leaders who are passionate about their particular area of expertise and understand that part of being a good leader is having the ability to listen.   Listening to your people and giving them the opportunity to act on any ideas they have helps foster passion in your people and deliver on their ideas, which is beneficial to your business.

3) Given your vast experience in business what is the single biggest piece of advice you would give to leaders and CEO’s reading this? 

If you look back at the most successful businesses of the past 20 years – Microsoft, Google or Apple, they all played a part in shaking up their sector by doing something that hadn’t ever been done and by continually innovating. They are now among the dominant forces.

Not everyone will achieve such great worldwide success but a good start is to create something that everybody who works for you is really proud of. Businesses generally consist of a group of people, and they are your biggest assets.

4) What is the most inspirational event, person or situation you’ve encountered so far in your career?  

I have been fortunate to have had a long and successful career in business, meeting many inspirational people along the way and attending some fantastic events full of fascinating people.

I have long admired Nelson Mandela and was so upset when I heard the news of his passing. He showed amazing courage and conviction overcoming an evil political system. Wherever he went he would make people smile, laugh and feel completely at home. A young friend, Peta-Lynn, found Madiba in the galley on a Virgin plane to New York a while back. He offered to make her a cup of tea. What an extraordinary man.

5) What is the most exciting project you’re involved in you’d like to share? 

Going into space has always been a dream of mine. I could think of nothing more exciting than looking at our planet from space. Virgin Galactic is pioneering the space tourism industry and making great progress. Our spaceship has successfully completed three powered flights, breaking the sound barrier in the process, and our mothership – WhiteKnightTwo – has flown over 150 flights. The project is looking promising and I get so excited every time the Galactic team update me on another milestone the project passes.

6) How can our readers’ best benefit from the work you are doing and how can they best engage with you (and Virgin)? 

I have been fortunate that over the years we have developed an incredibly strong management team to run the Virgin companies. This has allowed me to dedicate the majority of my time to Virgin Unite – the not-for-profit arm of the Virgin Group. Virgin Unite have incubated a number of organisations dedicated to tackling specific issues such as conflict resolution (The Elders), climate change (The Carbon War Room), ocean protection (Ocean Elders) and sustainability (The B Team). I would encourage anyone to try to engage with these organisations and be inspired by what they are trying to achieve. Go out and start something yourself that reflects what they stand for.   Virgin Unite, and Virgin.com, has a very strong digital presence and I update my blog daily at www.virgin.com/richard.

More about Sir Richard Branson

Sir Richard Branson is the Founder of Virgin.  Virgin is one of the world’s most intriquing brands and has a well known diverse and unique portfolio of companies.   There are now more than 100 Virgin companies worldwide, employing approximately 60,000 people in over 50 countries.  Sir Richard’s hallmark has been one of innovation, challenge and bravery.  Click here to read Richard’s full and inspiring biography on Virgin.com

The Virgin Way by Sir Richard Branson

Even though I asked Richard’s team if he wanted to promote or mention anything within the interview, Richard didn’t feel the need to mention or advertise his new book , which  doesn’t surprise me.  But because it looks so fantastic, I wanted to mention it here anyway, so readers were aware of it.  ” The Virgin Way”  is due to be published on the 8th September and you can find out more details by clicking on the image:

Will purpose and transparency kill your business model? Better create a new one fast.

The traditional approach to employee and other stakeholder engagement activities has been addressed predominantly on an operational level  with a focus on what the corporation is doing. By changing practices it is indeed possible to impact engagement but only if your stakeholders believe that you are doing it for the right reasons and in the right way.

Stakeholder engagement  strategies should follow Simon Sinek's golden circle model – always start with the why, followed by the how before you even start thinking about the what.

The Why

Stakeholders will forgive you for mistakes done for the right reasons – not for perfect products created by the exploitation of others. Although most companies have been started to serve a specific purpose or create value for stakeholders, the same companies often over time transform their value focus to a cost focus. A transformation that narrows the value creation to one single stakeholder – the shareholder itself. Many senior managers proudly declare their purpose as serving the shareholder – even when the other stakeholders are listening.

“Problems are just businesses waiting for the right entrepreneur to unlock the value.” Jay Samit         

Assuming that taking from the environment, society, the customers and the employees to give to shareholders is in the best long term interest of the shareholder is not logical. The shareholder will benefit when all other stakeholders benefit in a way that creates long term sustainable competitive advantage.

Most companies start like disruptive wolfs hunting apathetic market sheep busy competing for grass. Over time they themselves become sheep anxiously scanning for disruptive predators while protecting their patch of grass. Not a purpose that is likely to engage stakeholders.

Preserving or recreation of the purpose of the corporation will be increasingly important with the wave of millenials taking over as the prime stakeholders. It will be important to have a ”why” that serves many stakeholders simultaneously in what is know as super alignment.

"Make yourself sheep and the wolves will eat you" 

Benjamin Franklin                                       

The How

The rise of the millenials also makes it important how corporations operate not only as a corporate citizen with respect for society, the environment, customers, employees and other stakeholders but also with transparency.

The concept of corporate transparency is developing rapidly and can be a major source of stakeholder engagement. From being a spotlight you only pointed at the cleaner areas of the corporate exhibition halls the social media revolution is illuminating everything, including dirty laundry. Transparency is not a strategy anymore – organisations will have to work on creating sustainable business models that can withstand light rather than try and sugarcoat the existing business model.

”Transparency may be the most disruptive and far reaching 

innovation to come out of social media”           Paul Gillin

Transparency normally stops when getting close to the business model and the supply chain. Traditional companies are not comfortable disclosing their internal costs of manufacturing and similar. The official reason is that it is proprietary information that needs to be held from competitors but it could also bet that  customers would be furious knowing how they get robbed. And the other sheep are probably experts in grass anyway.

A few brave companies are taking this next step and disclosing internal costs to their customers. The company Everlane in the fashion industry have given full disclosure in a market where 8x markup is common. No doubt they will attract unwanted attention to the other sheep in that marketplace and has the potential of becoming a wolf.

It is uncomfortable for most leaders to address the why and the how of their strategy. ”Why cant we just focus on the shareholder like everybody else”? ”Why can’t we hide the true nature of our operation so we do not attract uncomfortable questions”?

Unfortunately addressing the why and the how of the strategy is seen as a negative that adds costs and not as having the potential to create significant engagement with the company's stakeholders.

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”

                                                              Alan Kay

Shareholder focus kills employee engagement.

Corporate view of motivation

The modern era of HR is predominantly dominated by a Maslowian view of motivation: The individual is driven by a motivation to ffulfill increasingly higher needs depending on the completion of a lower level of motivation. Although still useful, the Maslow Hierarchy, used in an organisational setting, creates a division between the employee and the company. The company has to deliver a lot of elements to the employee or risk the employee leaving. This creates thinking where every dollar that is given to the employee is seen to come out of the shareholders pockets - a zero sum game. This has become evident in the pre Financial Crisis age where companies relentlessly have reduced headcount to meet cost targets, completely ignoring that the same employees had a positive impact on revenue. If the logic of employees only affecting cost was true, corporations should have no people at all.

Purpose driven motivation

A more useful model for human motivation is what is known as the 3^rd Viennese school of psychology based on Viktor Frankls work on Logotheraphy.  In opposition to the first two – Freud’s view of human motivation as search for pleasure and Adler’s search for power, Frankl work points towards humans being motivated by a search for meaning. Rather than seeing people’s motivation as a result of external stimuli he believes that motivation comes from within and is based on your subjective view of what meaning is. Despite meaning being subjective and situation bound, Frankl suggests that meaning is often associated with doing good for others, with love and with the freedom to choose your attitude in any given situation – even in hopeless situations.

A survivor of the Holocaust, Frankl got plenty of experience of humans in hopeless situations and found that the people surviving rarely where the physically strongest but more often somebody that had a strong purpose and a reason to survive. He captured it in the phrase:

It is not what you expect of life that is important; it is what life expects of you.

Frankl’s motivational model is becoming increasingly more relevant as corporations are starting to understand that employee engagement is crucial to the creation of sustainable competitive advantage. The traditional employee satisfaction surveys show the same and predictable results independent of it is conducted in successful companies or the opposite. Employee engagement is strongly impacted by purpose – both the purpose of the individual’s contribution to the corporate purpose and to the corporate purpose itself. And a good purpose isn't about making money!

Corporate purpose is important

The financial crisis killed the real and initial purpose of many corporations – a purpose often focused on bringing value to one or more of the company’s stakeholders. Instead a relentless shareholder focus took over in a way that would have made Milton Friedman proud. Making bosses and owners wealthier is not a noble purpose that engages employees and unlocks productivity. Jack Welsh ex Ceo of GE calls shareholder focus the dumbest concept he has ever heard of and Kip Tindell of Container Store says that shareholder focus alienates all other stakeholder groups including employees and customers.

A new and engaging way of creating value

Leading companies have found that creating strategies that serves the needs of many stakeholder groups simultaneously in what Tom Gardner, CEO of Moetly Fool calls super-alignment creates a strong purpose that engages stakeholders to support the company in a way that creates competitive advantage. The beauty of stakeholder alignment is that it also increases the value for the shareholders – a company loved by its customers and employees will not fail completely.

Talking against shareholder value is often seen as an attack on capitalism and the free market and a defense of totalitarian systems. Reality is that no company became great because they wanted to make money – they became great because they created value for others. Somewhere down the line it was forgotten that capitalism is a social experiment focused on value creation for others and not ugly exploitation of often powerless stakeholder groups to satisfy the greed of a few.

Golden Circle Strategy Development

Golden Circle Strategy Development

Does your company have a strategy or does it only have a strategic goal? This simple question can reveal the strategic thinking process in an organisation. In some companies strategies starts with defining a number that will generate a nice bonus for senior management and a number that will preserve status quo. The number is carved up into business unit numbers, into group numbers and eventually into individual numbers. From that a myriad of actions plans are developed in support of the divine number and execution starts. Exceeding numbers will be rewarded, failing to meet numbers punished - a strange kind of logic given the strategic goal often is the result of wishful thinking. Selecting the divine target number did not change anything in the company or its competitiveness.

Defining Strategy

Although many different definitions of strategy exists, there is consensus that Strategy is about the future, it is about winning and it is about creating sustainable competitive advantage. The financial goal is not a strategy - it is an outcome of a strategy. So the key strategic question is not how much, the key question is why.

The relentless focus on financial return to shareholders has resulted in many companies forgetting why they exist? Why the where founded in the first place. This purpose of the corporation is focused on creating value for one or more of the corporation’s stakeholders. When this purpose is forgotten and not honoured, the corporation loses a significant source of motivation, not only for employees and customers but also for other stakeholder groups.

Simon Sinek’s golden Circle

The best communication strategies to stakeholders are using Simon Sinek’s golden circle: People don’t buy what you make, they buy why you make it. Communication should be created from the inside out of the circle.

Rather than using communication and marketing to create a favourable (but often distorted) image of the corporation to persuade customers to buy, it is better to change the corporation into the desired image.

Leaders should spend less time creating a favorable image of their corporations and more time transforming the corporation into that image.

A useful way of creating a strategy that will be easy to communicate to all stakeholders is to use the Golden Circle for strategy development.

Start with “Why”

It is important to start the process not by focusing on shareholders or value for the corporation - nobody will buy from you just to make you prosperous.

The most important element of the strategy is to try and answer the Why question. Why do you exist?  What is the purpose of the strategy? What kind of value will the strategy create for what stakeholders? If many stakeholders can benefit from the same strategy you have what Tom Gardner of the Moetly Fool calls a super-aligned strategy and what he has identified as resulting in superior returns. If you believe that you can create value for others and be able to monetize it above and beyond cost – then you have a viable strategy. The viability analysis has to be late in the process or you will limit your thinking. You can also choose to ignore viability which Google is known for doing: Make it radically useful and we will figure out money later.

The “How” is going to important for implementation

The next stage of the strategy development has to have a high degree of focus on implementation. Most often senior managers go to a nice place and pull the plug to the world while they develop a boxed plan that later will be presented to the stakeholders. Most people don’t enjoy being told without the ability to influence so not surprisingly most large strategies fail to deliver the intended results. How you develop the strategy is going to be a lot more important that what you actually do. Open up the dialogue to a significant stakeholder groups and allow their representatives to be part of the strategy development, this will ensure that even if their needs are not met, they at least feel heard. Expanding the group will also increase the expertise that the possibility of a more innovative strategy that create value for more stakeholders at the same time. The participants will keep their groups informed and act as ambassadors. You will also be warned about what could be unacceptable to stakeholders and avoid potential trouble. Being part of something creates significant engagement.

“Don’t confuse people’s resistance to change with their resistance to be manipulated.”

The “What” - what you are already doing well.

Delaying the normal wolf pack fight over prey or organisational development as some like to call it will increase the probability of a successful strategy and implementation. You cannot remove managers beliefs that they need to have most power, assets and people reporting to them. However if the why is crystal clear and many representatives has been involved in the process, it is much less open for interpretation. The strategy will also have many fans that can help take corrective actions should it be hit by unforeseen trouble.