Sustaining Growth

It’s hard enough to get the buy-in necessary to introduce a change. It’s even harder to keep it going until you see the benefits. The folks at McKinsey tell us that

Research shows that 70 percent of complex, large-scale change programs don’t reach their stated goals. Common pitfalls include a lack of employee engagement, inadequate management support, poor or nonexistent cross-functional collaboration, and a lack of accountability. Furthermore, sustaining a transformation’s impact typically requires a major reset in mind-sets and behaviors—something that few leaders know how to achieve.(emphasis added)

So what are some things you can do to help sustain a change that helps your company grow? How can you create a culture that sustains growth, rather than letting it fail?

Plan for your future leadership needs. Any change you introduce — something as big as moving into a new market or expanding into new products, or as small as changing some HR policies — can have a ripple effect beyond the initial change. To be honest, it SHOULD have a ripple effect; that’s why you change things, right? So with any new change, sit down with your front-line managers and ask “ok, if we do this, how will our leadership needs change?” Consider what leadership roles will need to exist, and what abilities those leaders should have. Then start developing your future leaders with those roles in mind. All too often we promote people based only on their past performance, and we need to remember that the skills they used before may not be the skills we need in the future. Help cement the idea of change in people’s minds, and make sure you have the right leaders to keep your changes going, by identifying what you need and then developing people to meet those needs.

Recruit people for the future. As you implement changes, take a look and at your hiring process, and ask yourself: “are we hiring for the future, or are we hiring for the past?” Consider technical skills, of course, and how those needs might change, but also look at the personality traits of your candidates and see if they meet your needs. If you are trying to create a culture of innovation, hire people who are risk-takers. If collaboration will be a key element of your success, look for people who can contribute to, and leverage off of, a larger group. If you’re in a highly regulated industry and need to be able to try new things that fit within the rules, look for people who have shown excelled in rule-based competition — athletes, for example. Hire people who are the right fit for where the organization is going, and not only will they add to your performance, they will also be more likely to stay with you because they like to do what you want them to do.

Create new habits. Culture is ultimately about shared values and expected behaviors. If what you value is changing — if your priorities are shifting, for example, or you are focusing more on new markets and less on new products — then those changes need to be built into daily habits and routines. As you initiate changes, be willing to hold people accountable for doing things in the newly expected way, rather than just saying “oh, they’ll change someday.” You may need to have some more explicit direction, and more check-ins and follow-ups in the early stages of a change, so you can start creating new habits, and then back off once those new behaviors become the norm.

A lot of great ideas never work. Sometimes, it turns out they weren’t so great after all, or they were great but the timing wasn’t right. In too many cases, though, an idea gets introduced, but the workforce never really follows through on it. If you want to sustain growth then you have to sustain change, and the key to sustainability is to get everyone focused on the same style of working.