• Program-of-the-Month vs. Real Change
• Growing Pains and a Moment of Truth
• Green Managers In A Patchwork Culture
• Grassroots Change, Leadership Resistance
• Communication Gridlock Is A Hidden “Gold Mine”
• Executive Career Rescue
Grassroots Change, Leadership Resistance
The Issue
A state highway department was attempting to modernize its entire operation. There were significant issues of entrenched habits and culture, in a highly charged political environment. The leadership changes completely every few years, and the new leader has to create momentum for change quickly, during his limited tenure.
Challenges Top
- Political and economic pressures demand the organization operate
with more results with fewer resources.
- A new director is trying to implement change through an executive
team that has been in place for many years with no demand for
innovation or change.
- Employees are mixed in their response to the idea of change,
which has not been articulated clearly or involved them enough.
Overarching Goals Top
- Build commitment for a "new way of working."
- Create a common, shared understanding among senior leadership
of what needs to change and how to accomplish it.
Jackson & Schmidt
Intervention Top
- Extensive interviews with senior management team, key employees
and vendors.
- Facilitation of a management staff meeting designed by Jackson & Schmidt,
to elicit support for a strategic planning off-site retreat.
- After facilitating management meetings, design and conducts
a 3-day strategic planning meeting for 40 members of the management
team. The meeting focused on a collaborative building" of
a new vision and action plan for the coming year.
- Jackson & Schmidt created a "report" of the entire work session
in real time, so the plans were converted from "wall maps"
to working documents while the session took place.
Solution: Executive
Alignment Meeting
The Payoff Top
- A senior leader in the organization said: “In two days you showed
us what leadership looks like”;
- People conducted similar meetings for their districts, based
on this Strategic Alignment meeting;
- For the first time, line workers became involved in improving
their day to day operations;
- One senior leader said “We have yet to see the full results,
but we expect millions in savings from this strategic planning
meeting.”
The Moral Top
Small levers create big movement, if pushed in the right place.
