Author: Mike Ulwelling

The customer should be at the center of all strategy development for an organization. It doesn’t matter if you’re a huge multi-national corporation, a non-profit, or a tech start-up, if you lose sight of your customer needs, your organization’s results will suffer. Most of us take this for granted.

I fundamentally believe that for growth to work, the entire organization must be aligned around that objective.

But often, strategic planning and implementation devolves into each functional area pursuing its own agendas. Marketing has one strategy, separate and distinct from supply chain or finance, for example. The net effect is a disjointed execution, and the customer suffers. Ultimately, so does the organization.

I think there are several reasons for this. First, leadership doesn’t always openly agree – explicitly – that strategy should be led by the customer-facing elements of the organization. Second, no accomplished leader wants to surrender their autonomy and ability to control their own destiny. In the absence of explicit direction that “we will be customer-first” in our strategic orientation, they will take the initiative and move independently.

“If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself.” – Henry Ford

But most importantly, I believe that most customer-facing groups are negligent in engaging with their operational and financial counterparts, and those resulting conflicts force independent strategy development.

“Bring them with you.”

When I joined Blount International (now Oregon Tool), in my first few months, I had a great conversation with then-President David Willmott. We were beginning the process of turning around a struggling business unit, and were discussing ideas both for the business strategy and implementation. At the end of the conversation he said, “You have a good plan, so you will win most of your arguments. All I ask is that you bring them with you.”

I didn’t truly understand what he was asking, until a year later. What David was saying, is that if you have the responsibility to lead the organization from the customer’s perspective, it is your responsibility to ensure that your operational and finance partners understand what you need from them, and are supportive of both strategy and implementation.

I have long understood that sustainable, healthy, scalable growth is only possible if an entire organization is focused on achieving growth. But, the breakthrough for me was that it was the customer-facing organization’s responsibility to ensure that.

What does taking responsibility look like?

Take ownership. First and foremost, your sales, marketing, DTC and product teams need to explicitly own that fact that they need to bring everyone along. That’s a heavy burden given your day job in these roles. However, if you don’t begin with that acceptance, you won’t execute against it. And along with that ownership, there needs to be the recognition that you – the customer-facing groups – create most of the chaos in an organization. Once you accept that fact, and understand that its your job to clean up the mess you made, executing what comes next is easier…

Lead in driving cross-functional coordination. Cross-functional collaboration is core to an entire organization mobilizing toward growth. The difference here is who initiates and leads it. If sales identifies a new channel to engage, it is their responsibility to bring together the impacted functions to ensure smooth implementation. If a new product introduction will materially impact warehousing and logistics, it is their role to engage to seek input into the best solutions. If marketing is creating a significant promotional push, they must ensure that supply management, warehousing and logistics know what’s coming. There have been so many times when engaging this way, you find an operational partner say “I had no idea” once they were included in the process. The customer teams must take the lead when they create opportunities to grow, and be the catalyst to bring people together to ensure you’re successful.

Socialize. Socialize. Socialize. No, don’t run off and party ’til dawn. This is the informal engagement of your partners in the discussion of ideas before they are final. If the customer-facing teams are actively engaging their operational partners with new ideas, new approaches, potential new directions – before they are finalized – you will have greater buy in. Your growth teams don’t understand the impact their decisions have on other elements of the organization. By seeking that feedback informally in advance, getting the best answer, and improving implementation will increase 10 fold. During my time at HP, I actually had a route through the Boise facility. I had 4-5 key stakeholders – cross-functional directors and VPs – that I would seek out in their spaces, to make sure they knew what I was thinking well in advance. Going to “their Gemba” to socialize has immeasurable positive impacts. And, socializing these ideas was not disempowering to these capable professionals. To the contrary, I was actively engaging them to use their expertise to better serve the customer. I was unleashing their brilliance to solve problems. As a result, there were rarely misalignments. Getting early stage feedback is paramount in creating alignment. So socialize – a lot.

Behaviors are often more important than processes.

Throughout my career, I have learned that how we make small decisions about our behaviors – as individuals and groups – are often significantly more impactful than the processes that could or should connect us. If a group of people is behaving in ways that drive collaboration, partnership, creativity, or resourcefulness, you may not need as many processes to execute. I believe when people say culture beats strategy every time, that’s what they mean.

What I’ve outlined above are truly behavior shifts. They are part of the “soft skills” that we as leaders need to understand in order to develop our individuals and teams into world-class, self-sustaining organizations.

Creating durable growth in an organization requires the identification and nurturing of these types of behaviors. In fact, I believe that the key to great organizational development is anchored around establishing and reinforcing desired behaviors.

If those behaviors are led by the customer teams and foster collaboration, coordination, and alignment, then the entire organization will successfully operationalize growth.

Bringing them along translates directly into sustained growth.

I was talking with a senior leader the other day, and she was discussing the hyper-growth environment that her organization was experiencing.  Importantly, she was describing the strain on the organization of continuous long hours, ever expanding teams, new responsibilities for existing roles, new functional departments that were created, and the new processes that resulted from all those activities.  It is full-blown chaos. 

I asked her a simple question.  How is the senior leadership team guiding the organization through the change management process?  There was a pause.  “We aren’t, we are managing growth,” was her response.

“Growth Demands Change “

– Virend & Virusha Singh

The truth is that growth is a continuous process of change.  Moreover, the more aggressive the growth, the greater the need for an active change management process.  We, as leaders, do not consciously think about it that way.  Nevertheless, our teams experience it that way.

Consider the characteristics of growth.  There are increased workloads.  There are new team members.  There might be entirely new functional groups created.  There will certainly be new processes.  There will likely be teammates who take on new or increased responsibilities.  They may not receive any training or mentoring in taking on those new tasks.  There may even be a new business objective or strategy.  The common theme is “new.” Most people can’t handle that much “new.” It is overwhelming.

Driving growth is a change management process.  However, it is hidden under a veil of enthusiasm and euphoria over what is occurring for the organization.  For the leaders, the need for change management may be neglected due to aggressive goals or expectations.  Either way, we tend not to view growth through lens of change management.

 “If we are growing, we are always going to be out of our comfort zone”  – John Maxwell.

As leaders, what do we do?

There are an armada of books on how to manage change.  Maxwell.  Lencioni.  Drucker.  There is a long list of brilliant minds who will set you on the right path.  In putting those great works into practice, I have found that you can often simplify it down to a handful of items, and repeat them. This is my formula.

Identify a target, and keep it in sight.

Create a vision and a goal.  Sometimes the vision could be an aspirational goal for what the organization will become.  “We will become that finest innovator in the industry.”  Most often, it is a target that can be easily measured.  “We will reach $100m in revenue by year’s end.”  Either way, you must have that target for people to track.  I’ve found that many times we as leaders wait for a “perfect” version. The reality is that often it doesn’t have to be. We all like to have a north star.  Give it to your team.

Provide a map to get there.

This is a strategy.  Experience has taught me to that having “A” strategy is better than having a perfect strategy.  Sometimes you simply do not have the time to devote to a fully baked strategic planning process.  Creating a strategic framework that your teams can use to prioritize their efforts, and develop their operating plans, is enough to keep everyone on-track. If your team is growing, the organization is maturing and succeeding, that strategy (or framework) will morph over time to suit your needs. Often is simply gets more focused. The point is, people need the map to plot a successful course.

Give people clear ownership.

Most authors stress the need for individual clarity when effectively managing change.  This is true.  But, I have found that you can provide even greater clarity by going beyond a job description or organization chart.  Provide a clear statement of ownership.  “I own the processing of orders for Walmart.”  It is simple.  It is easy to remember, and even easier to reinforce.

Now, that is not as comprehensive as a full job description.  However, as a teammate, that simple statement allows me to take ownership of my part in achieving our goals.  Ownership of our role brings with it the potential for innovation, as the teammate is bought into our collective success and will seek creative ways to deliver. Serendipitous innovation is my favorite kind. We can build a foundation that fosters it by establishing individual ownership.

Establish behaviors.

Often, leaders will move to process at this point.  I have found that in times of change, process development can be very difficult.  A group is too new.  There is a missing leader.  The optimal final outcome is not yet well understood.  And of course, process development takes time.  Sometimes you do not have it.

If a team is behaving correctly, you often do not need process to thrive. 

How do you establish behaviors? 

First, set expectations.   I always “call my shot” before I embark on establishing behaviors.  Whatever those things are that you expect to see, make sure that everyone knows what they are up front.  Then when you are reinforcing later, there is no guessing and certainly no surprises.

Second, you should only focus on the behaviors that will yield the greatest impact.  For me, I have two that have universally worked well – partnership and cadences of accountability.

Partnership sounds like a no-brainer.  I am always surprised how many groups say they “partner”, but when you observe the behavior, it often defaults to someone simply handing off to another group, without any meaningful engagement.   For me, true partnership has to meet a clear litmus test – are we bringing everyone along in the journey?  If the organization’s bias is toward bringing every impacted group along in the journey, by default you will be partnering.

The second behavior is utilizing cadences of accountability.  Within the recurring meeting structure, teammates make and review commitments toward completion, discuss roadblocks or resource needs, and finally confirm the next meeting.  The cadence can scale and contract based on need.  Daily.  Weekly.  Monthly.  Whatever is necessary.

The key is the ruthless enforcement of the cadence. (Yes, I typed ruthless.) But you must stick to it. If we meet every Tuesday at 10am, then we meet. If someone can’t be there, send a surrogate. We are teaching everyone to stay on task, keep commitments, and make sure the right people are involved. The power of cadences of accountability is remarkable and cannot be underestimated.

Reinforce.  Reinforce.  Reinforce.

The enemy of most organizations unlocking their full potential is usually a lack of communication.  Successful change management is anchored in consistent communication.  I have modified my communication styles to suit the needs of the organization – size, maturity level (of the organization), business conditions, etc.

My current cadence includes a weekly all hands meeting, where we reinforce strategic priorities, provide functional updates, and reinforce behavioral expectations.  Within each functional leaders staff, there is a review of those same strategic priorities, along with accountability tracking, to again reinforce partnership and cross-organizational collaboration.  The net effect is that each week, every team member is exposed to elements of the vision, goals, strategic priorities and key behavioral expectations at least twice, and sometimes more.

Where ever you are in the change management process, you need to reinforce continuously.

Driving it home.

With your vision and goals readily apparent, with your strategies understood, and with behaviors established, you can then begin to look to processes. But, I won’t delve into that here.

All these change management techniques have been very well documented. For me, leadership is about staying ahead of your team – strategically, in organizational and individual development, and cultural development. The key to managing change has been about being aware of the strains you were putting on the organization (and yes, we put those there), and proactively preparing for each step. Being able to synthesize the others’ great work, and making it my own, in the form of these 5 steps, has enabled me to step into different organizations, industries and market conditions, and adapt my playbook to our collective needs.

I hope you find my specific examples useful.

Mike Ulwelling