Leading Change - Acting on problems

The situation had been problematic for months. Tension and stress were high. People were scrambling to fix the many urgent fires that always seemed to crop up at the end of the current cycle. Usually, the team managed to push through, but this time the situation was worse than ever before.

I’ve had it, you thought to yourself. There must be a better way.

Leading change

Starting at the core of change leadership lies a fundamental key mindset. It is a mindset that directly drives a lot of the principles, techniques and habits for change.

This mindset can be summed up in two points.

• I will uncover and act on problems
• I will not let things that matter slide

This is much harder than it looks at first sight.

When this mindset is weak in your organization, things can get really bad. I have seen it with my own eyes more than once. It is not pretty, and recovery is expensive.

I have also seen when this mindset is well established, and how large a contrast in outcomes then becomes possible.

Leading change is about a lot of things. At its core it is about making a very personal choice in how I will relate to problematic situations in organizations when I experience them.

This is not a binary choice. Here is a diagram to help illustrate what I am talking about.

Your willingness to act on a problem

The ability to lead change in an organization is a vital leadership skill. It defines your effectiveness as a manager and your influence over outcomes.

Before we dive into what this means, let's take a closer look at this diagram.

The up and down axis represents your willingness to either tolerate a situation or being willing to do something to address it. The green dotted line indicates the “threshold” where your desire of what to do about the situation flips (the red x in the diagram).

On the left to right axis is your assessment of how much the situation is in need of change. Meaning the degree to which you are convinced that there is a problem that cannot be ignored. This axis is also part of your personal view, your perception of the situation.

The blue plotted line indicates how your perception of a specific situation develops as it becomes more problematic, and how quickly you become more willing to act.

Understanding your own threshold for action

I want to make a couple of key points here.

The first is that this threshold to act is far from static. It is personal and will be different for different people, and likely different for different situations. It is also not just mental. It can be felt in both your body and mind, as part of your first-hand experience as you are exposed to a situation.

Secondly, this threshold will change as you develop over time, gain experience and accumulate new good reference points.

For example, a person who has seen a similar situation before, or has experienced a much better setup, may assess a situation as a confirmed problem. We can compare that to a person who lacks the same experience and who therefore may instead assume that these are things you just must live with.

To illustrate, here is a question for you to answer right now.

How do you know when a problem in your organization can’t be ignored anymore? Imagine such a problem. Was your answer to this question different to what it would have been earlier in your career, when you had less experience?

My third key point is that people who are strong at leading change often have a lower threshold for action compared to others, even when they make a similar assessment of the situation.

I believe that comes from primarily two things: they value change higher, and they have a stronger skillset and confidence of how to succeed with change.

The choice of when to act is not just arbitrary

Determining when to act often involves personal judgment and to some degree preference. Not all problems need to be solved, and the world is not meant to be perfect.

But there is one principle that is fundamental to having a bias to act sooner rather than later.

The longer you wait, or the more to the right in the diagram your situation slides before acting, the less choices for what to do about the situation you will have. You will become more vulnerable to have change be “forced onto you”. To be forced to react (re-act). And because the situation will be worse, you will have less time to act.

So, if you wait too long, you lose a lot of your power over how to influence change.

As a leader, you don’t want to put yourself in that type of situation. So as a main rule you want to cultivate proactivity, to act on problems earlier rather than later.

Why this matters on an organizational scale

With this mindset established, let’s consider its impact at an organizational level.

Every organization has a baseline for where this threshold for change is collectively, on average. Typically, the leaders in an organization set the standard for when and how to act, thereby role modeling for their staff. This then builds the collective habits for when to act, that becomes the cultural norm.

Leaders in strong organizations are self-aware of where this threshold for action is and are proactively managing it (see below). This means they cultivate values and behavior that allow their staff to act on problems earlier, thus lowering the threshold for action.

They understand that leaders with a lower threshold for action will develop their products, departments and teams faster and be more effective at following through. It is a skill they value and mentor for, to carefully shape their leadership culture.

If you are a senior leader in your organization, this is one of the tools you can use for evaluating and developing your people and organization.

Summary

Acting on problems is a leadership trait that can be trained and cultivated. It is worth making tradeoffs to promote it and mentor for it in your organization’s culture.

By lowering the threshold for action, you will become faster at acting on problems, and stronger at successfully leading change.

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