Changes in Leadership Should Not Disrupt

Create processes that will continue to thrive despite changes in leadership.

Practitioners: tactical, integrative, and strategic

The concepts that reside within the scope of responsibility at the strategic level should always be considered from the enterprise level. I have also modified the statement slightly. It initially read ‘create a process’ which I modified to ‘create processes.’ A subtle change but one I think appropriate given we are thinking from the strategic level of the organization. All processes should be robust enough to survive changes in leadership. This should invite us to ask the question, why do leadership changes impact the processes we create?

The challenge sounds like it is found at the point where functional and relational intersect. This is a concept I present to my clients on a regular and frequent basis. It begs me to begin with two simple operational definitions:

Functional refers to the work we do
Relational refers to how we do the work together

When we execute processes there are both functional and relational elements present. When processes are created or modified, there is also a process at work. Process improvement is the result of a process, too, is it not? Therefore, the functional and relational elements are present here, too. If a sponsor short circuits the improvement process by dictating a solution, then we may indeed create a process that will not tolerate new leadership changes.

Changes in Leadership

I have heard many project teams resist the project nomenclature in the face of a sponsor who already knows the solution, often even before the problem is defined. For example, I once worked with an executive who while sponsoring a project, developed a solution, purchased the necessary equipment to implement his solution, only to find that the project team had identified a root cause significantly different than his. The $500K he spent on his solution is probably still laying in the yard, rusting away, because no one is willing cite the error and the spend.

When functional and relational are working together. A sponsor understands that defining the outcome, the condition of performance, and the timing, when this condition is expected, is all that is required. The process owner or project owner and the process team or project team bring the solution and the evidence of success back to the sponsor. If no condition or timeline has been defined, there is no agreement and there can be no accountability. These failures are most often the source of conflict in our transformation process and the ultimate cause of failure in any Lean or OpEx deployment.