A few months ago, Stephen Elop stepped in as the new CEO of Nokia to stop the company’s decline and regain its leadership. In an e-mail sent to all employees, he shared his conclusion after having taken the company’s pulse around the world: Nokia has lost time and lots of opportunities, it now needs to wake up and jump from the burning platform on which it is standing.

The famous “burning platform”. Has any change leadership metaphor been as used ? I doubt so and probably because it’s proven to be a simple and effective way of communicating the urgency of a change to a group of complacent people. So Elop is hoping it will do the trick on his staff. I’d be curious to hear how they will have reacted to the email; did it come as a surprise? Do they share Elop’s analysis? How does it make them feel? Has the email triggered discussions or has it just been back to business as usual?

Whatever the answers are, let’s hope for Elop and Nokia that there is much more to his change communication strategy than a one-shot e-mail that may end up in the bin. Elop’s message needs to fully penetrate the minds of the “boardroom people” who are often the first responsible for complacency.  This is condition #1 for the new state of mind to be broadly adopted; condition #2 is that it gets translated into actions, daily and strategically. It’s all well to jump from the burning platform but doesn’t solve your problem unless you know where to go and how to get there . This is probably why Elop, an ex-Microsoft, has just released the company’s new Windows Phone 7 strategy.

This post is an adapted english version of this french post: “Mais Qui Conduit le Changement à la Poste?”

The recent Toyota crisis reminds me of an MBA course session by Pierre Casse about the emotional cycles of life: happiness and depression. I can still hear his words when he introduced his model: “life is good; you feel great, confident, everything is going your way to the point that you become a little complacent and…You make a big mistake and you slowly realise the consequences, you sink into deep depression…” I wonder to what extent this fits with the Toyota leaders’ current emotional state. I don’t doubt they will manage to come out stronger from this crisis although this is based on nothing else than intuition. Here are a couple of interesting insights I came across:

• Joel Kurtzman from the HBR reminds us of his consulting experience with Toyota 30 years ago and tells us that their problems start at the top. The company he experienced back then was one in which the leaders, among whom Eiji Toyoda at the forefront, had tremendous respect for their workers. He listened to them, trusted and empowered them. For example he gave the workers on the assembly line authority to stop the line if someone detected anything that might affect product quality.  In fact everybody considered quality more important than profits. This common purpose is precisely what Joel Kurtzman believes has been missing recently, starting from the top: a failure of leadership and a loss of respect of the workers.

• Robert E. Cole, also from the HBR tells us that the crisis didn’t come out of nowhere, significant warning signs had been detected. For example, the number of vehicles recalled had increased sharply from 2003 to 2005.  Apparently Aijo Toyoda, the current CEO, has been attributing the crisis to the recent rapid growth of the company, leading it to invert its priorities: volume and sales became nr1 while quality and safety fell to nr2.

However challenging a context is, I don’t believe it can be seen as the root cause of your problems but more a highlighter of its consequences. I trust Joel Kurtzman’s judgement that Toyota has partly lost what lead it to success. The challenge  for them is that they will never be able to get back to what they were 30 years ago. They must change to reinvent a new Toyota way that builds on their traditional strengths and fits with the demands of a growing world leader. And eventually go from depression to happiness again until…

Pretty much any recently democratically elected head of state made it to the top thanks to their ability to convince voters they would bring the best CHANGE: change of politics, change of style, change of people. Ironically, this is also true for re-elected candidates: they were able to convince they would bring change in continuity! I have already offered some views in French about Sarkozy’s efforts and here I’d like to mention a few HBR posts that I recently read about President Obama’s ability to implement the change he promised. Of course, the challenge, while commenting politics from a purely “technical” viewpoint is precisely to not be politically biased, which, let’s face it, is a difficult task; so I’m quite happy to give you these two contradicting views on the success of Obama’s change leadership efforts:

The first relates to Obama’s face-to-face meeting with some of his sharpest critics at the Republican party conference in Baltimore, which, according to John Baldoni’s post, was a demonstration of how to face critics and lead under fire, providing 7 key learning points to business leaders:

1. Show up
2. Be open
3. Be cool
4. Acknowledge your shortcomings
5. Criticize gently
6. Smile frequently
7. Leave them wanting more

What hits me the most in this video is how Obama is desparately trying to keep the discussion on a non-political and non-ideological level. It is an interesting situation that a business leader could well meet when facing union representatives, some of which (at least here in Europe and particularly France) are heavily influenced by an ideology.

The second post, by Ron Ashkenas, uses a change management report card framework based on 4 key ingredients (he mentions that it was created by ” a team of top-academics and consultants” but it probably didn’t require too much creativity as it appears to be a simple selection or rewording of Kotter’s 8 steps model) to assess Obama’s performance:

• Make the case for change: is precisely what Obama spent his campaign doing, successfully so
• Create a vision of what will be different: a task in which the president seems to have had mixed results, at least according to Ron Ashkenas, because of his inability to be more specific on the policies he is trying to implement
• Mobilize commitment to change: the plan that was to build a wide bi-partisan coalition of support, has not been successfully applied yet, despite Obama’s efforts that we just saw. One has to admit that this is probably a much more difficult task in a political context, where behaviours are dictated by the elections agenda and lines of hierarchy are party-based, than in a company where one man is in charge.
• Generate early successes that build momentum and learning: this is definately a key change success factor that is also compatible with a political agenda because the earlier people will see benefits of new policies the more likely they are to continue to support the people in charge. Again, Ron Askenas’ view is that Obama could have done much better.

Polls as well as the recent democratic Massachusetts senate seat loss confirm that americans expect more tangible results.  More engagement with the republicans and the ability to generate and communicate positive results are certainly required for Obama to regain support.

What do you think he could do better?

The Blogue Marketing Interactif, from Quebec, features an article about how Booz Allen Hamilton successfully implemented its Enterprise 2.0 solution. The case was presented at the Montreal Webcom 09 conference by Walton Smith . The key learning for businesses interested in implementing new collaborative solutions is that not less than 50% of the budget was spent on change management. That includes:

• Tool training with demos and hands-on activities
• Incentivising usage: the tools bring recognition to main contributers
• Tracking adoption metric and other relevant indicators
• Identifying and reporting benefits

“How can we … free ourselves from our addiction to episodic change and move to a much more healthy habit of continuous business improvement?” is the very pertinent question asked by a senior BP executive, Fiona Macleod, at the recent Wharton Leadership Conference. Her thoughts on the subject are interesting as she has lead several major change initiatives including the restructuring of BP’s european marketing business and more recently the US Convenience retail business.

Image by KLINX via Flickr

As a true tennis fan, I have been following enthusiastically past year’s battles at the top of the tennis world, marked by the rise of Nadal and the fall of “King” Roger. From a strategy and change management perspective, Roger’s struggle is an interesting case to look at. I find it a perfect example of just how difficult although critical, change is for market leading organisations.
Having outrageously dominated his “market” for about 4 years, RF, like so many other market leaders, hasn’t felt the need of making any significant changes to his strategy; after all, playing and training this way is what brought him and kept him at the top, so why should he change? The problem is that in the mean time, competition has gained strengths. In particular, one key player from Spain, originally labelled as a “niche” clay court specialist, has managed to widen and deepen his capabilities while still retaining his core competency. Nadal has managed to transform his game to become more offensive and gain more advantage on hard courts and grass. He has been able to lead change in such a way that Federer hasn’t. There’s more bad news for Roger: the unexpected rise of a new British competitor who seems to have taken a clear advantage on him.
Most tennis commentators have been saying it for a couple of years now since the early signs of his fall appeared: Roger will have to change the way he thinks and acts tennis; they’ve been saying that his training sessions lack a game plan, unlike Nadal’s; they’ve been detecting signs of complacency. Yet despite his brilliance, talent and intelligence, Federer hasn’t changed. This just shows how difficult it is, and Roger, it seems, is only at stage 1: establishing the need for change.
Getting through that first stage often requires the help of an external party that will act as a mirror and come up with a sharp, critical and objective view of the situation. That party, probably consultants for an organisation or a coach for a person, will have to be confronting in such a way that their client will not only understand but really feel the need for change. Interestingly Federer doesn’t have any coach at the moment and is said to be discussing opportunities with John McEnroe. But there are also other ways to start changing: an extraordinary event that can somehow make you look at things differently. Federer will be father in a few months…
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The CGIAR is the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research. It is described as a strategic alliance of members, partners and international agricultural research centers, which mission is “To achieve sustainable food security and reduce poverty in developing countries through scientific research and research-related activities in the fields of agriculture, forestry, fisheries, policy, and environment.”