Category: Change management

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The mission comes first

You have a set of tasks to complete, a to-do list that just seems to get longer and longer. And there’s a horde of people waiting to speak to you.

The phone never stops ringing.

The email keeps pinging, demanding your attention.

There’s yet another meeting, just around the corner.

If you’re not careful, you’ll get sucked into day-to-day activities.

Add a few big projects to the list – getting ready for that exhibition, developing that new product line, working on a new marketing campaign – and, before you know it, you’ll be wondering where the years have gone!

It’s easy to lose sight of the overall objective of the business.

It’s easy to spend time looking at all the mundane things that cross your desk. It’s even easier to get caught up with projects that are exciting and demanding.

If this is what’s happening to you, what’s happening to the people who work for you and with you? Their situation will be even worse.

I’ve often used the simple question ‘Why?’ when considering different activities in a business. Why are we having this meeting? Why are you doing that? Why are we going to this exhibition?

Controversially, I’ve also been known to ask, ‘Why does this job exist?’

Mostly, the answers can be summarised as, ‘We’ve always done it that way’.

If you can make time to ask the questions and dig through the initial, rather facile answers, you then need to make time to absorb the real answer.

You may find that individuals have forgotten the real answer. They’ve forgotten the real mission of the company.

It’s worth taking a step back to remind everyone why the business exists: What’s our purpose? What’s our mission?  Then make sure every activity is directed towards the fulfilment of that mission.

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Deadlines are not optional

A word that’s often misused by businesses is ‘deadline’.

The dictionary definitions of a deadline are:

1) A line drawn within or around a prison that a prisoner passes at the risk of being shot

2 a) A date or time before which something must be done

2 b) The time after which copy is not accepted for a particular issue of a publication

Definition 2 (a) ‘A date or time before which something must be done’ is the one that’s applicable to business (unless you are a publisher, in which case 2 (b) would also apply).

I have often observed that people’s attitude towards deadlines is such that they overlook the word ‘must’, as detailed in the dictionary definition. The ‘deadline’ is treated as a target date, with few or no consequences being imposed for missing that target.

Incidentally, I would not remotely suggest that the consequence for missing a deadline, or overstepping one, should be shooting someone – although I must confess, I have been tempted!

If there are no consequences for missing a deadline, it’s very likely that people will develop an attitude indicating that deadlines don’t matter or are unimportant at best. So shipment dates are missed and projects are delayed. One of the oldest adages says, ‘Time is Money’. And time wasted is money wasted.

Deadlines attaching to projects are particularly important. Projects are often multi-stage, with phases that rely upon the results or output from the previous stage. If you miss the deadline for one stage, everything after that stage will also be delayed.

Changing people’s attitude towards deadlines is vitally important. This will take time but involves only two steps.

The first step is to identify who owns the project or process: who has ultimate responsibility for the deadline?

However, there are many situations where accountability isn’t clear – it may be shared, with no single manager owning the process. This is messy and can lead to a blame culture in which ‘It’s someone else’s fault’ is the underlying theme. Someone has to take ownership. They are then empowered to hold the other contributors to account.

The second step is to hold the owner to account. That doesn’t mean a public roasting is required.  Just maintain the emphasis on the deadline.

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The past is the past so focus on the future

Many of the circumstances that existed before the Christmas break will still be the same now the New Year is getting underway. For example –

  • You’ll probably be interacting with the same people
  • The business will face many of the same opportunities and challenges
  • You will react in the same way

Old habits die hard!

That makes it really easy to feel as though nothing has changed. You’ll get dragged back into the same old things. There’s a cynical saying that goes, ‘Same s**t, different day’.

All those wonderful plans you’ve been thinking about, all the great things you were planning to do at the start of the New Year are likely to get overwhelmed by the wave of history. You get dragged back into day-to-day battles and your plans sit in the drawer gathering dust.

In a year’s time, you’ll probably reflect on how little progress you’ve made towards your goals and feel really frustrated.

Or else you can take proactive steps today to break with the past, leave all those old habits behind and focus on new plans and opportunities.

To do this is easier said than done – but that’s usually true of anything worthwhile!

A tip that will help – and can be applied to any change project – is to set short-term goals and deadlines. These will act as milestones or staging posts towards your longer-term plan.

Hold frequent progress meetings. Try to avoid calling them ‘review’ meetings, as that tends to imply you’re reviewing what has happened, rather than focusing on the development of what has yet to happen.

Remind everyone involved that you can’t change the past.  You can, and should, learn from the past; but change only happens by looking to the future.