Innovation and change are hot topics, but many who talk about it or wish for it never seem to move forward or make changes. I speak to a lot of managing partners, solo owners and clients who "complain" about stagnation and ask for a way to jump start change. There are many ways to accomplish change, but I think there is one essential and without that essential it doesn't happen. That is the resolve of the leader.
Not leaders or leadership and not managers and not management, but THE LEADER. I have definite proof of this and will share some of the conclusions of what I've seen and done that works.
Keep in mind that every business has systems, and most every system can be improved. What needs to be done is to obliterate complacency and develop a plan of action for innovation and improvement. How that plan is established is not the issue leading to success, it is how that plan is implemented. Once a plan is decided upon, the degree of the leader's efforts in making sure it is implemented will determine its success or failure.
There is always resistance to changes. This is natural. Most change cannot occur without disrupting an established and, many times, comfortable and familiar situation. A lack of buy-in by many partners and managers to new things is natural and needs to be anticipated. It is up to the leader to make sure there is an alignment with the changes and innovations. Lip-service feedback is easy and cheap and needs no effort, and the leader needs to cut through the hubris, defiance, smoke and mirrors.
I have found that permitting a digression or overlooking full compliance, every time, sets a pattern that causes the change to fail, primarily by neglect. Nothing terrible happens, things continue as they were, and the change is overlooked or forgotten. However, there is no forward movement based upon the changes that were agreed upon. Another wasted set of meetings and fallacious decisions.
The significant successes I have seen have been with a strong leader serving as the champion for the change. Those leaders have the determination, the strong will needed and actually an obsessiveness about succeeding with the change. They become annoying, a pest, a pain in the neck and worse until it is realized that following through with the change is the easier course to take. It will take time and effort, but it works, and the results can create the major changes that were anticipated when the plan was adopted.
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