For the readers, can you name three first steps that upper management could take once they have decided to change their mindset? Three simple changes that they can implement with regard to caring more or implementing something for the employees so that they view work differently?
Bill Sanders: I would say that one of the first things that you have to see…and I believe this is a lot of what the book is about. In the past, we were looking to do mass production which means that you can have very little leeway in the degree of how something’s built and that’s led over into how something’s done, as well. So, it’s become a very top-down mindset. We now have a whole situation in our economy and this massive speed of change that we’re looking at which means that more and more you have to treat people as individuals, not cogs in the wheel. People aren’t fungible, for the most part.
Break that down real succinctly for me. What’s one, two or three things that upper management could do to support what you just said?
Bill Sanders: Well, the first thing is recognizing that things have changed and need to change. That’s number one. Number two is they’ve got to be very clear on what the end result has to be. Then, they have to devise a plan to get from A to B.
I love it! So, your chapter, Bill, is “The Momentum of Change”. In your chapter, you stated that people don’t fear change. Can you speak to fear change and why it’s critical for companies to embrace adversity?
Bill Sanders: Absolutely. I’ve heard all my life that people fear change. They resist change especially if they don’t know what’s coming, but they don’t fear change. In the book, I use the example of people buying lottery tickets. I mean, people are buying lottery tickets every day, hoping that it completely changes their life for the better. So, this falls back into: When change has to take place in an organization, how do you communicate that change? Is this a positive? How is this going to affect me? is the major question that everyone in the organization has. They start looking at it from a negative point of view. When we run into an issue or a problem, pushing against that adversity at the level it shows up and learning to solve that problem is what develops a skill set in us. It’s no different than going into the gym and lifting weights. The more weight you lift, the more weights you can lift. So, the more adversity you can overcome, the more adversity you do overcome, the more adversity you can overcome. When you have a company culture that attacks that adversity; that says, “Hey, this is part of my job.” Not, “How do I avoid this?” But, “How do we take this on and grow from it?”
Can you share a success story where you were able to help a client with your approach?
Bill Sanders: Absolutely. So, we had a very large, Fortune 100 company in retail come to us. It had a marketing campaign process that was too large. They were extremely frustrated. They had five campaign processes during which they ran five campaigns a year. At some points in the year, because it took 33 weeks per campaign from start to finish, they were touching all five of those at the same time. So, we went in, worked with the team to identify the places where failure work was being done, where things were having to be reworked, taking the information from people on the front line. We resolved that down. We cut it by over a third at the longest point and by over half at the shortest point, so they were never working on more than three at one time.
Wow! Well, that concludes our interview. You made me want to keep asking you questions. I loved your responses. Thank you so very much.
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For more information about Bill Sanders, visit www.roeblingstrauss.com.
