by Kent Romanoff, TFI Leadership Effectiveness Consultant

If you frequent TFI’s Friday Best of Blogs, then you know that we recommend changes to profitably streamline tech companies’ product design, supply chain, product movement, and other operational functions. Our clients know that change is necessary, otherwise they would not have engaged us. But often they need help in overcoming their teams’ or managers’ resistance to change. Organizations have an unfortunate habit of acquiring blockages that impede progress and stymie performance.

Managers can regularly embark on search-and-destroy missions to root out barriers and obliterate them. These barriers can be difficult to find, because they morph into familiar forms and hide in plain sight. If you look carefully, you can uncover these barriers to change:

1. EXCUSES — When you start hearing excuses for why things can’t change, you have encountered a blockage.
2. FEAR — When people get scared, they freeze and plug up everything they are involved in.
3. SECRETS – This is a sure sign of a dysfunctional organization.
4. INSECURITY — When people are in over their head, they know it and their main purpose in life becomes trying to make sure other people don’t figure it out.
5. POSTURING — When people fixate on their image, you are in the presence of a blockage.
6. ROUTINES — Doing things the same way for too long creates “comfort zones,” which are places where fearful, insecure, posturing people go to avoid detection.

By contrast, positive change thrives in healthy organizations, characterized by:

1. Strong, enlightened, progressive, free-thinking, open-minded LEADERSHIP.
2. An appreciation of the value and importance of SETTING AND ACHIEVING GOALS.
3. An atmosphere of HIGH-ACHIEVEMENT, where good enough is not good enough.
4. FULL DISCLOSURE and a willingness to share virtually all information.
5. Employees who understand WHAT IS EXPECTED and WHAT THEY WILL GAIN when they achieve it.
6. A sense of TEAMWORK where everyone believes they are working for the benefit of all, not enriching the few.
7. The ability to EMBRACE CHANGE and LEARN FROM MISTAKES.
8. The capacity to GET THINGS DONE.

How many organizations truly possess all of these attributes? Precious few. The first step to positive change is creating the right conditions for improvements to exist. Life on earth didn’t emerge until there was an oxygen-rich atmosphere. The Renaissance couldn’t happen until dogma gave way to enlightened thought. And an organization plugged with barriers cannot strategically progress.

We at TFI have succeeded in having upper and middle management and all employees understand the imperative of positive change. How? We gain enthusiastic buy-in through addressing key leaders’ business and budgetary goals, inspire people through real-life examples of other companies’ success, show how it’s good for business, educate about the cost of wasted materials/processes, and tie compensation to results. We use a host of approaches depending on the company’s culture. It’s very rewarding.

How have you removed barriers to change in your company? (Please reply below.)

Posted by Pamela J. Gordon, September 25th, 2009

Filed to Environment, Lean Practices, Logistics, Supply chain management

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