Planning changes in the New Year? Don’t underestimate the fear.

Of all the many mistakes I have made over my years in managing new projects one of the most recurrent has been “Discounting the Disruption”.  I often mistakenly believed that every obstacle could be overcome.  All we needed was focus, enthusiasm, commitment and perseverance. 

Then I came across these three questions.  Take a minute and answer them for yourself.

1. Do you present a compelling vision of the future and evangelize to your team?

2. Are you passionate and articulate, creating an atmosphere of infectious enthusiasm?

3. Are you continually spouting new ideas sparking the creative process?

If you answer yes to these questions, as I have, “you may be an accidental diminisher”.

Research published in Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter by Liz Wiseman and Greg McKeown, demonstrates that these well intended attempts to “motivate” actually undermine creativity and reinforces the status quo.  What we need in times of change are not bold proclamations, but insightful investigations.

Einstein was once asked what he would do if he were told that a huge comet would totally destroy the earth in one hour.  He said he would spend 55 minutes figuring out how to formulate the question and 5 minutes solving the problem.

These are the quality of questions developed in a diagnostic tool used by Red Shoe Solutions™ called the Competing Values Framework.  Developed through research conducted by the University of Michigan faculty, competing values framework has been identified by the Financial Times as “one of the 40 most important frameworks in the history of business”.  This diagnostic instrument is prized for its ability to predict the ROI of an organization based on the congruency of its values.   The CVF Survey is powerful in its simplicity and reliable in its proven accuracy contrasting organizational cultures by both their levels of flexibility as well as areas of focus.  Together these views help define the shared values and underlying beliefs that guide decisions and determine reinforcements.

This instrument is a set of six weighted online questions repeated twice.  The first round is to represent the current state of the organization, and the second the preferred or goal state.  The values lie in the comparative perspectives, leadership to frontline staff, present to future, and the level of continuity between team members.

Questions explored include:

1. Do you want people who are innovative, visionary and enjoy constant change or do you prefer a more controlled and organized environment?

2. Do you value commitment and communication or are transformation and agility more prized characteristics within your team?

3. What about your leaders.  Are they hard driving competitors, entrepreneurial visionaries, or the kind who facilitate, mentor and support?

4. Are there conflicts between what your team does and what they believe is important?

5. Will the culture you have now help you reach the next level or trap you in interminable transition?

There are four basic competing values within every organization: Collaborate, Create, Compete and Control. When these values are in alignment with individual and organizational goals, teams thrive but when in conflict they are the most powerfully destructive force a team can experience.  Some have names for it.  They call it the “HP Way” or “The Spirit of Southwest Airlines”.  More often it is the unspoken, unwritten understanding of the-way-we-do-things-around-here.

When these forces are out of alignment it is the top of the class who are first to jump ship when cultures don’t fit.  The New York Times reported that more than 200 top Google employees, including their COOSherylSandberg, have recently defected to Facebook.  This despite offers of pay raises, independent projects and promises of autonomy.  They left to find a culture that better fit their own goals and aspirations.

In the July issue of HBR article How to Keep Star Talent, Jean Martin and Conrad Schmidt reveal that of “high potential employees” one in four intends to leave within the year, one in five believes their aspirations are quite different from what the organization has planned, and four out of ten have little confidence in their coworkers and even less in senior management.

Competing Values Framework Survey Instrument is just one of the metric tools the Red Shoe Solutions™ team uses the to design Leadership Retreats, Team Training as well as providing a foundation for ongoing consulting.