According to Mike Aroney’s article, “The Non-Technical Side of Reliability,” disengaged leadership is the first of three common errors organizations fall into when they try to implement change.
“. . .Disengaged leadership delegates the performance initiative to subordinates. This is usually because leaders believe they are too busy [to become directly involved]. It is paramount that leadership shows commitment to the project, not just support. A committed leader takes time to participate and communicate the change initiative’s importance to the participants and the organization. Too often, the leadership team tries to be efficient and empowers their focus teams to make the necessary changes. The result is that leadership sends coded signals to the organization that the change isn’t really important to them. If it were important, and a strategic business initiative that will transform the organization, they would certainly act differently. If it is perceived to be unimportant to the leadership, then it becomes of secondary importance to those charged with implementing the initiative, and they will treat it accordingly.”
At COMPROSE we have seen this scenario played out over and over. Well-intentioned focus teams and project managers cannot implement change on their own without active leadership support and become frustrated. The most successful organizations are the ones with committed leaders who stay personally involved in the process of streamlining business processes and standardizing operations. A key aspect of the COMPROSE
Operations Mapping method is to chart the direct relationships between strategic business goals and individual business systems, tasks, policies and procedures.
All levels of organization, strategic, tactical, and task must understand the system and their roles in it. Unless the Executive Leadership team is actively engaged the chances of lasting transformation suffer greatly.