LeadAbility Group

Others will play their part if you listen, respond and let go!

I recently developed and implemented a strategy for a government department. It is a great strategy (if I must say so myself) that positions the department in question as a leader in the area. Not only that, having worked with business areas to embed the strategy within day to day activities, the implementation progress is far more advanced than anyone involved thought possible.

Amid this sense achievement for a job very well done, I reflected on what was different to other stories we hear about change. Here are my tips on what drove this great result.

1. Listen, I mean really listen

I tailor every consulting engagement to the culture and environment of the client. While I have a bunch of models and practices in my kit bag that I will dip into as the need arises, the one thing I never change is ‘listening’.

Sometimes we struggle with this. We walk into an executive’s office for the first time and we want to prove we should be there so we have a list of things we want to convey to demonstrate why we got the gig, and how smart or worthy we are. And that is the problem. Not only does your audience stop talking, they also stop listening to you. All the while they are thinking here we go again, another consulting group with a ‘model’ telling us what we need.

In planning the initial round of consultations, I worked with the in-house team on a series of one-on-one and group sessions. The team was originally surprised and worried about the few questions we were going to ask. The key was to target the questioning so people would tell us things we didn’t know–our questions were about eliciting insight. And they did! We quickly got beyond the expected and usual whinges to expose the real challenges and problems to solve, and we even unearthed a few perceptive solutions!

2. Respond to users

After each session, we analysed and categorised what we had heard. There was a lot of activity in the background not visible to others. We asked ourselves some hard questions:
• What were others telling us?
• Was it what we expected?
• Does it change our understanding of the problem and the possible solutions?
• Is it aligned with what we thought?
• What will we do with the key points made during the consultation?
• Does this change where we’re heading?

A key aspect of this analysis was to challenge our perspective and to ask ourselves whether we had understood what was being conveyed, and how did we know we REALLY understood.
After each session, we analysed and categorised what we had heard. There was a lot of activity in the background not visible to others. We asked ourselves some hard questions:
• What were others telling us?
• Was it what we expected?
• Does it change our understanding of the problem and the possible solutions?
• Is it aligned with what we thought?
• What will we do with the key points made during the consultation?
• Does this change where we’re heading?

A key aspect of this analysis was to challenge our perspective and to ask ourselves whether we had understood what was being conveyed, and how did we know we REALLY understood.

This last point is significant. It’s much more difficult to unravel what you think you’ve heard to understand the point being made rather than assume. Being receptive meant that we picked up some gems which we could have easily dismissed as off-point or not relevant!

3. Let go

This one sounds a bit of a contradiction but if you want to speed implementation, don’t force or mandate it! If the strategy is well-pitched to the organisation, it will make sense to others but often the challenge is not about the value it’s about how can business make time, where they should start etc. And when you’re working in a smart organisation with smart people, telling them you’ve done the thinking so they just need to ‘do it’ is guaranteed to fail.

If instead you provide guidance on possible areas of focus tailored to the needs of a specific business line and allow others to determine what aspects are most relevant for them to pursue at their own pace. Particularly in the short term, business areas will quickly establish a foundation upon which they can build. In the early stages of implementation, it doesn’t matter if the focus is different from team to team or if implementation progress is different across the organisation. What matters is they get started and they own the start.

In this department and in a relatively short time frame, we could see implementation activity popping up all over as we pursued our formal implementation plan and kept an eye out for other implementation opportunities.

So, when you are embarking upon a big change, remember to really listen, respond to users and let go–you will foster an environment where others will pursue implementation without you!