The True Turnaround: The Executive's Brain Call To REALignment

One has to wonder in a $100 billion a year industry of corporate training why there is only a 10% return on investment when looking at serious behavior changes. Or as David Ulrich’s research from University of Michigan indicates, why do 85% of well-intentioned change efforts fail to meet their original intention?

Most management consultants will tell you, there is no “messier” time where “right questions, not answers” are more desired then at business turnaround time. But a technique or strategy is only as good as its grounding in reality. And at a time when training and development content is certainly not in short supply but sustainable changes are, we are left having to change more than mere methodologies, but actual assumptions. To do this, the CEO and senior staff need to undergo transformative turnarounds of their brains, and stop seeking outwardly the next “Kool Aid” of turnaround strategic plans.

In the approach I call REALignment, I directly challenge common understandings of management practices and unsubstantiated “rules” of performance consulting.

Let’s look at five critical business process areas and turn some assumptions around:

1. Ethical Decision-Making: Right/Real Some would say that decision-making as a skill is the single greatest ROI-maker out there. But in searching for the “shoulds,” we have practiced a model that has no predictive validity (think Enron). Aligning teams with the right “woulds” do a better job than a team with the right “shoulds” in a group-think kind of way.

2. Corporate Training: Information-Based/Knowledge-Based Although information is exchanged lightning fast in this “flat” world of ours, it still takes the same amount of time to learn something like calculus or algebra now as it did 1,000 years ago. What good is information if we have not yet mastered integration?

3. Performance Evaluations: Human Performance/Human Nature It’s true: If it can’t be measured, it can’t be managed. But what if what you’re measuring isn’t linked to the goal? What if performance is the cart before the horse? Ironically, you get high performance when you optimize human nature.

4. Management Practices: Sensitive Compliance/Commitment Authenticity speaks louder than words. Instead of building pseudo-commitment with words, tactics and “verbal biscuits” that actually are manipulative, leave fear-based leadership thinking behind and take the leap to really get to know your employees. By being real, you get commitment more naturally with less effort.

5. Visioning Capabilities: What You Wish/Want At a recent seminar I presented, 74% of the participants felt vision started with what you wish/want. Ironically, by knowing reality as it is now, you have a better chance of obtaining (not just articulating) that future you want. If there is a tendency to be flawed in the present perceptually, then you are going to build a flawed future.

Reprinted with permission by Executive Decision Magazine, July/August 2006

The True Turnaround: The Executive's Brain Call To REALignment - To learn more about this author, visit Kevin Fleming's Website.

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