Lead for a Change: Proven Strategies to Clarify Expectations, Foster Growth, and Achieve Breakthroughs by Ronald S. Glickman

Author:Ronald S. Glickman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781632996404
Publisher: River Grove Books
Published: 2023-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

7Brené Brown, RSA Short: Blame, February 3, 2015, https://brenebrown.com/videos/rsa-short-blame/.

8Tony Buzan, Tony Dottino, and Richard Israel, Grass Roots Leaders: The BrainSmart Revolution in Business (London: Routledge, 2016).

CHAPTER 6

OUTCOMES ARE EVERYTHING

It’s always easier to think that your intentions are just as important as the outcome, but this isn’t true. The outcome is everything. The outcome is what you live with.

—Frances de Pontes Peebles

When I was appointed to my first corporate leadership role, I proudly shared the good news with my father-in-law, a retired executive with a treasure trove of wisdom that he endeavored to share at every opportunity. This time, he asserted that the most important thing I had to do as a leader was define the outcomes I expected my team to achieve. I accepted his counsel as a truism without understanding how challenging it would be to put it into practice. Over time, I learned that a well-defined outcome must be concise and observable. Most notably, it must represent a measurable change in performance or result. The next leadership conversation for meaningful change is about outcomes, or more specifically, a) the measurable results from a portfolio of projects curated to achieve the fruition of a strategic change initiative, and b) the organizational learning and improved morale associated with a job well done. Each project must first qualify to meet or exceed the aspirational, inspirational, and functional expectations stipulated in the P&D (see Figure 5, page 51). Next, it must align with the organization’s current capability and willingness to change. An organization’s capability and willingness to change are defined by individual and collective experiences, know-how, beliefs, and biases. In this context, experiences are the basis of discrete knowledge gained from doing something, know-how is the cumulative knowledge gained from multiple experiences over time, beliefs are perceptions about the way things are currently (as opposed to how they could be in the future), and biases are individual tendencies to lean in a certain direction on a topic (i.e., lacking a neutral viewpoint).

The outcomes and the organization’s capability and willingness to change are depicted in the Outcome Alignment Model (see Figure 7). The tip of the iceberg represents the proclaimed outcomes and observable actions of a strategic project or change initiative. These components are visible. More importantly, they can be strengthened or impaired by the glacial mass representing the organization’s capability and willingness to change. These components are less visible and often misinterpreted or ignored altogether when curating a project portfolio for a strategic change initiative.

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