The Secret to Effective Change is Having Sincere, Transformative Conversations

Our current difficult circumstances necessitate constant adaptability and agility. An adaptable, high-commitment, high-performance organisation is required by the pandemic, new technology like AI, the Great Resignation, changing competitive needs, and changing client requirements. 

Four CEOs of Becton Dickinson (BD) and other important company, functional, and regional managers used the revolutionary discourse Ed Ludwig recounts from 1990 to 2020. 

Due to its ability to overcome several of the aforementioned difficulties, BD has a track record of consistently increasing its profitability and shareholder value between 1990 and 2020.

But, according to current estimates, 70% of business efforts fall short of bringing about the lasting change they were designed to. Why?

The real explanation for organisational effectiveness problems is that executives are unaware of their root causes. Most businesses have important lower-level employees that are two to four layers below the top and are privy to the full, unadulterated truth. 

But, they are afraid to explain to senior management why the crucial objectives of high trust, commitment, and performance are not being met. Honest, transformative dialogues are required to expose the truth in order to create rapid and lasting change in these three fundamentals.

When Becton Dickinson's CEO asked me to help his company transform its ability to implement a new strategic direction in 1990, I had to figure out a way to assist key leaders at various levels of the organisation in understanding the real reasons they weren't successful in carrying out their strategic direction, achieving their objectives, and creating a culture of high trust, commitment, and performance.

I established a framework and guiding principles for facilitating an Honest, Transformational Dialogue with my colleagues at TruePoint, the consulting company I co-founded. Key managers at Becton Dickinson and later hundreds of top managers across the globe in other industries were taught these leadership principles.

The same six organisational and leadership hurdles to performance, trust, and commitment were constantly disclosed during these dialogues. They are what we refer to as "silent killers" because, similar to cholesterol and hypertension in people, they kill commitment, performance, and trust.

What are the silent killers that senior teams constantly learn about from the open, transformative talks we see taking place in many different companies?

• Conflicting priorities, unclear values, and unclear strategy: Collaboration with other activities to implement the new direction is made challenging by this obstacle.

• Senior team members were widely seen to differ over a new direction and priorities, which resulted in an ineffective senior team. As a result, they gave conflicting instructions and priorities to their own workforce, which led to uncertainty, a lack of trust, and a lack of commitment to action.

• The Leader: Lower-level employees said that the senior executive, whether the CEO or a business, functional, or regional leader, used either top-down management or a laissez-faire management style. As a result, genuine discussions about the root reasons of inefficiency were avoided, and helpful debate about what and how to change was never had.

• Inadequate cross-silos coordination: When functional departments or regions do not successfully coordinate and collaborate to execute strategies, the outcome is a failure to implement initiatives effectively and on time.

• Insufficient leadership development across the board: Senior leadership teams did not create initiatives that rotate high-potential managers into demanding positions they had never held before. Managers are forced to gain good leadership and management abilities through practise since they can no longer leverage their substantive knowledge when they lack the information necessary to lead effectively. As a result of the lack of such a programme, competent general managers were not created, and the organisation struggles with agility and effectiveness.

• Inability of lower levels to speak out against injustice: Senior teams are unable to understand and address the first five barriers because of this barrier. Organizations are unable to transform into the adaptable, highly committed, high-performing organisations needed to thrive in a constantly turbulent and changing environment, and they remain stuck in neutral.

The companies we studied were caught in a vicious cycle of declining performance that they were powerless to escape without an honest, revolutionary debate about silent killers.

The truth about the six silent killers mentioned above can be communicated to power through a systematic procedure called an Honest, Transformational Dialogue. Its framework and ground rules stop the finger-pointing and defensiveness that stifle candour. 

Your senior executives will learn how to lead such a conversation in a two-week, 20-session cohort-based course called Leading Transformational Conversations that the TruePoint team and I developed in collaboration with Business. 

They will gain knowledge about the subsequent three iterative phases of a transformative discussion through lectures and practise.

Create and promote an internal strategy that incorporates the organization's mission, goals, and values in Phase 1.

Phase 2: Perform a confidential investigation involving 100 key individuals from throughout the company to identify the direction's strengths and weaknesses.

Step 3: Implement change by 1) coming up with an action plan, 2) telling everyone in the organisation the good, the bad, and occasionally the ugly about what leaders heard, and 3) including senior leaders in carrying out the plan.

The Strategic Fitness Process (SFP), a structured method that leads leaders through an open and transformative dialogue, will be introduced in the programme. Many companies have since used the SFP to drive their own transformative talks.

Genuine, transformative talks have a strong emotional impact. Trust, commitment, and performance increase significantly throughout the workforce when leaders get candid input, communicate the unvarnished truth about what they heard to the entire business, and hold themselves accountable to lead change. Regularly having open, transformative conversations promotes continued progress.

At the webinar Transformative Conversations: Steps to Driving Organizational Change on December 8th, I will discuss what transformative conversations are, why they are effective, and the outcomes they produce. I am looking forward to meeting you there. 

You will watch a video of a leader during the webinar as she describes how the transformative dialogue she facilitated altered her leadership for the better, increased trust and commitment, and enhanced performance.