Some CEOs think that change management is the softer side of restructuring an organization. but, managing people can be the most challenging and critical part of any transformation. here’s how to effectively address the people side of change.

The world is changing fast, and the global pandemic has accelerated the need for companies to adapt or die. A business strategy that has been relatively sidelined until now — change management — has emerged as a main focus for C-level executives. Businesses are now concerned with having the right organizational structure, human talent, and sense of purpose that can tackle the new world order. CEOs are looking to solve this challenge by building a brand that embraces creativity, adaptability, authenticity and relevance. Change management has become a critical skill in an age of disruption, and agility and adaptability have become the new buzz words.  

 But when we discuss change management and CEO success, do we keep asking the wrong questions? Life is about change and business is life. Each business is a human drama at its core, as each organization is really about its people. Each day, companies face change on a grand scale — Fortune 500s, mid-caps, or family businesses — because they are all living organisms, and they will thrive (or die) a little each day based on how they manage change. “But I’m changing every day,” you might say. That may be true, but the real questions are: how and why?

 My experience as a CEO has taught me that there are two types of change, and although similar in outcome, they differ greatly in how people perceive them. Self-change or self-transformation projects a very positive idea in people’s minds. Think of the titles of some self-help books such as, Awaken the Giant Within, Practicing the Power of Now, or Start Living an Awesome Life. There is usually a sense of excitement around personal transformation, conjuring up images of optimism, dedication, and positive action. But when we talk about organizational change, the opposite feelings emerge. We fear organizational change, we confront it with resistance and then retract and ponder what will befall us. We enter a negative, fear-driven mindset. Yet, instead of viewing this process as exhausting and overwhelming, organizational change can instead be empowering and energizing. 

While running my company and helping other CEOs, some interesting challenges arose. How do we make organizational change as exciting as personal change? How do we ensure teams approach far-reaching change with open minds, innovation, and creative thinking?

One of the most challenging change management projects I’ve ever been involved in was the restructuring of former French ferry company SNCM. The state-owned company was highly inefficient, had conflictual relationships between employees and management, and was highly unionized and financially unsustainable. The French government had sold it to a large private group that endeavored to turn it  around. I started by trying to break the unhealthy relationship with the unions by integrating their members into a process that  was holistic, inclusive, and transparent; the exact opposite to what I was seeing.

The environment was toxic. Just a few months before, union leaders had hijacked one of the company’s vessels, and French special forces were called in to take it back violently. I was told by union leaders that their main objective was to prevent me from introducing any change management strategies, by any means necessary. 

I agreed with them. Nobody likes change, and I explained that change for the sake of change was not my goal. Instead, I told them I wanted to work with them to save the company and their jobs. “I’m not your boss or a consultant,” I explained. “Rather, see me as your advisor.” 

In the subsequent years that it took to turn the company around, we agreed to disagree on many issues but always kept a mutual respect for our opposing views. At the end of a successful transition, the lead union negotiator called me a partner, someone they could talk to and respect. 

The SNCM transition was the most stressful time of  my life, but had taught me valuable lessons. It taught me that change happens at an individual level, not at corporate level. Change is human, and requires human values such as empathy, passion, commitment, respect, creativity, and risk-taking.

In smaller companies, change is often a maelstrom of emotions and can be compared to a small organism morphing into an adult form — similar to a caterpillar growing into a butterfly. The process is painful, full of doubt and risks. Approach change as if you are caring for a living organism, with a holistic outlook that includes the emotional and irrational. It will help foster a sustainable, progressive, and caring process. Regard employees as individual cells of a body, but treat them as vital parts of the entire organism.

  In small to midsize organizations, resistance to change usually comes from seeing the process as too large or too daunting, and needing resources you may not have. However, this is a problem of perception. You may be surprised to learn that smaller organizations are actually at an advantage compared with larger corporations when it comes to change. They can adapt faster, are more flexible, and can be more proactive (instead of reactive) when fostering creative solutions. It’s all about self-confidence. 

A lion is not the biggest animal in the jungle, yet it is unquestionably the king of the jungle. Why? Because of an attitude and belief in itself. The power of leading change within an organization therefore lies within harnessing these same characteristics.

CEOs are good at talking to people. The truth is, they need to be — communication comes part and parcel with being an effective corporate leader. For all that popular culture tends to depict corporate bosses as unreasonable tyrants, likeability and connectivity matters. 

I’ll borrow a quote from management researchers Herminia Ibarra and Mark Lee Hunter. “What differentiates a leader from a manager, research tells us, is the ability to figure out where to go and to enlist the people and groups necessary to get there. Recruiting stakeholders, lining up allies and sympathizers, diagnosing the political landscape, and brokering conversations among unconnected parties are all part of a leader’s job.”

Data backs the pair’s conclusions. Generally speaking, organizations with better-connected CEOs and board members tend to snag cheaper financing and see better performance, respectively. Networking skills empower leaders to build the relationships they need to extend their reach, tap into talent pools, and achieve more than they ever would have if they had gone it alone. 

But I believe that a CEO’s networking skillset does more than smooth the way in business — that it can empower corporate leaders to help their communities. 

To be honest, I’ve been on this train of thought for a while. I realized that my work as a corporate leader in luxury real estate gave me the networking opportunities I needed to connect with high-profile philanthropists in New York City and inspire real change in my home city. 

It was a game-changing realization for me. I might work in Manhattan now, but I’ll always be a kid from the Bronx — even as I grew up, I realized how much work could be done to improve the lives of the people in my neighborhood. 

Shortly after that, I started applying the networking and collaboration skills I’d honed as a CEO to the nonprofit sector. I found one of my first causes, Literacy Partners, through a friend who used to be a board member for the organization. Since 2015, I’ve also been involved with the Room to Grow program, which provides coaching services, community connections, and goods to support parents and children in the Bronx. Just last year, I virtually co-hosted the organization’s annual benefit with Bruce Willis and Uma Thurman. 

To be clear — I’m not saying that all CEOs should step away from their desks and connect with celebrities. Instead, I’m saying that their communication skills make them uniquely positioned to connect with and activate potential donors and collaborators. 

Past research tells us that high net worth individuals give when they feel they’re responding to an organizational need, believe they can make a difference, believe in a nonprofit’s values, and are concerned about the cause at hand. Now, a philanthropically-motivated CEO might not telegraph shared values or concerns, but they can certainly communicate a need and sell the donor on a cause’s importance. Donor activation requires negotiation, sales, pitching — all skills that are well-taught in the boardroom. 

That said, if a CEO isn’t necessarily comfortable focusing on donors, they may also want to consider lending their counsel, support, and mentorship to nonprofit leaders. 

This kind of assistance is more wanted than you might think at first listen. The nonprofit sector’s problems with personnel development and succession planning are well-documented. According to a report published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), only 30 percent of C-Suite roles in nonprofits are filled via internal promotion; this is about half the rate reported in the for-profit sector. 

“Our new study surfaced what we call a leadership development deficit. The sector’s C-suite leaders, frustrated at the lack of opportunities and mentoring, are not staying around long enough to move up,” SSIR researchers wrote. 

“Even CEOs are exiting because their boards aren’t supporting them and helping them to grow. This syndrome is coming at a high financial and productivity cost to organizations, undermining their effectiveness and hampering their ability to address social and economic inequities.”

As you might imagine, the turnover can be expensive. By some reports, the cost of locating a capable high-level leader can be as much as half of the person’s annual salary. This monetary expense doesn’t encompass the “softer” turnover costs — i.e., productivity lapses, fundraising, and the general distraction posed by recruiting. 

Taking some time to provide mentorship or advice to upcoming nonprofit leaders could be an easy way for CEOs to use their networking skills and business savvy to cultivate positive change. In offering their time, these corporate executives help facilitate effective leadership, reduce nonprofit turnover, and further their community efforts. 

All CEOs take a slightly different approach to leadership. Some are more direct in their oversight; others prefer to delegate. But by and large, all successful executives are stellar communicators. Those skills don’t need to be — or perhaps shouldn’t be — confined to boardrooms and C-suite offices. As corporate leaders, we can do more to support the causes we love than only contributing funds. 

Growing up on a small farm in rural Australia, my dad – who left school at 16 and milked dairy cows for 50 years – would tell me that he saw great things for me… like one day becoming a nun, ‘Sister Margaret Mary’ in charge of a convent. By the time I was in my teens, he’d raised his expectations.

As the big sister of seven, perhaps it was due to how well I ‘managed’ my younger siblings. Whatever the reason, I still recall the day he said, “Actually I think you could do even bigger things. You might even be Mother Margaret Mary, in charge of a whole order of convents.”

Alas, I never felt the calling.

I share this story, amusing as it is, because my parent’s vision for me was confined by the horizons of their own lives. Similarly, the vision we hold for ourselves is often also confined by what we think possible. We simply don’t know what we don’t know.  

We are all shaped by our environments, unconsciously taking on the expectations, norms, beliefs, and biases of those around us. When it comes to gender, there are many. For instance, women are more likely to be labeled bossy for acting with equal assertiveness as the men around them, yet showing compassion and sensitivity to the feelings of others makes them perceived as “less leaderlike.”

Even well-meaning parents can unconsciously hem in their daughters. For instance, parents of boys are more likely to see their sons being successful tech entrepreneurs than their daughters. They’re also more likely to praise their sons for being strong and daughters for being sweet. Gender bias starts early and runs deep, permeating into our psyche in profound yet invisible ways.

And so on this International Women’s Day, I want to share a few thoughts about how we can embrace the ‘Choose To Challenge’ theme. So if you are a female leader (or aspire to be one), here are three ways you can embrace the #ChooseToChallenge theme of this year’s International Women’s Day. And if you’re a male champion for women, consider how you can encourage the women in your orbit to back themselves more, and doubt themselves less. After all, this is not a zero-sum game. As research by McKinsey has found, when more women are seated at decision-making tables, better decisions are made for the benefit of all stakeholders. When women rise, we all rise!

1. Challenge the doubts that fuel a sense of inadequacy

While not all women lack confidence, many do. Women’s tendency to underestimate their abilities and not internalize their strengths has led to what’s been coined the ‘gender confidence gap.’ 

Hewlett-Packard found that where their male employees were comfortable applying for a job with only six or the 10 ‘ideal candidate’ attributes, their female employees wanted to put a big tick in all ten boxes. This contrast shows just how more harshly women can judge their abilities which, in turn, makes them more reticent to put themselves out there.’ 

Many factors contribute to why women tend to doubt themselves more and back themselves less. Fewer strong female role models and sponsors are but two. Yet, as I wrote in You’ve Got This!, we cannot wait for confidence before putting our hat in the ring or putting ourselves out there toward our boldest ambitions. Only by daring to challenge the negative noises in our head, those critical voices urging us to think small and play safe, can we ever discover how little reason we had to believe them.

2. Challenge other people’s limiting labels and beliefs 

Students at Columbia Business School were presented with a case study of a successful Silicon Valley venture capitalist. The students were given the same data except for one difference – gender. Half of the class was told the ambitious entrepreneur’s name was Howard, and the other half was told it was Heidi. They then asked the students of their opinions on either Heidi or Howard. 

While there was consensus that both were equally competent, Heidi was seen as selfish and not “the type of person you would want to hire or work for.” The study found that “the more assertive a student found the female venture capitalist to be, the more they rejected her.” Women must content with a negative correlation between power and success that men do not. This isn’t an impossible obstacle. But it makes the going harder and the climb steeper for women and the going harder as women have to deal with more complexity in juggling pressures, expectations, and perceptions. 

Over the years, I’ve been asked countless times, “How do you manage a career and four kids?’ Yet my husband Andrew has never been asked. Not once. 

The only way to reconstruct the gendered mental maps that constrict what we see as possible for ourselves – or other women – is by challenging them and defying the doubts they fuel. As Vice President Harris after being elected the first-ever Madam Vice President’ of the United States:

“Dream with ambition. Lead with conviction. And see yourself in a way that others might not see you, simply because they’ve never seen it before.”

3. Challenge more women to back themselves, more often

It’s easy to underestimate the power of a few words of encouragement. They take little to give yet can make all the difference in critical moments. It’s why it is so important to proactively go out of your way to lift other women – to challenge how they see themselves, how they speak about themselves, and what they see as possible for themselves. 

After negatively comparing my own media platform with Oprah’s after following a podcast interview I did with Presidential Candidate Marianne Williamson, she looked me square in the eye and said something that’s stuck: 

 There is nothing holy in diminishing yourself.

It’s true. There is nothing helpful in talking ourselves down. As I wrote in, You’ve Got This! “Words hold power. What we say about ourselves and others is generative as well as descriptive.”

So next time you hear a woman talking herself down, focusing on what she hasn’t done, minimizing all that she has, or merely deflecting a compliment, even sarcastically, draw her attention to it. (This probably won’t take long since most women I know struggle to accept a compliment.) 

Power has no gender, yet our mental template for power is intrinsically masculine. So challenge other women when they disempower themselves. 

As I stated above, helping women advance is not a zero-sum game whereby the rise of one is a fall of another. Instead, it’s about creating an equal partnership that harnesses the full value of diversity in all its forms, embracing feminine leadership strengths – empathy, compassion, and the affiliative use of power – as every bit as valuable as traditional male strengths.  

After all, our greatest strength doesn’t flow from everyone thinking and acting alike but from what sets us apart.  

How will you choose to challenge?

Be brave! 

Your data follows a similar pattern to Moore’s law. It doubles every few months. You might not even see the doubling, but your team is experiencing the effects of this exponential growth. 

Drowning in data isn’t the goal of any company. Every executive wants to use data to make better decisions and drive business outcomes. So how do teams end up in the deep end of the pool without a floating device? 

There are four reasons why teams fail to get insights out of their data. Let’s examine each one. 

Reason #1: No Practical Data Strategy 

Deciding to collect every data point around customer interaction isn’t a strategy. It’s a tactical plan, but it won’t quite get you to insights.  

The technical details of data are becoming easier with every passing day. Yet, the psychology for using data remains the same and grows more difficult as the volume of noise increases. 

I worked with a client that had fantastic data, but no one was using it. After asking some questions, I learned that the team didn’t trust the data. This then required an audit of the company’s major reports and working with several individuals to answer questions and build trust back into the data.  

There wasn’t anything technically wrong with the data, but the team needed assurances and training. You can tackle these kinds of challenges in a data strategy. Think about the people that will be using the data, the process to gather insights, and the providers (or technology) that you will need. 

Reason #2: No Training on How to Use Data 

Don’t assume that data is self-explanatory. In my experience, teams need basic training to understand how the data works and how to use it in their specific role. You can design your training in group, individual, and ad hoc formats to get people moving in the right direction. 

For some people, working with data is a throwback to statistics in college. In reality, they don’t need to know advanced statistics to find relevant insights — they need to know how to build relevant reports and look for patterns in the data. 

Reason #3: No Support from Data-Specific Roles 

Companies understand that they need to hire data-specific staff, such as data analysts, but these roles can quickly become bottlenecks. They have way too many requests and not enough time. They also have to deal with any changes in the data quality and ensure no technical issues. 

Here are a few ways to get the most out of your data analysts or data scientist: 

• Provide self-exploratory data tools 
• Limit requests to only the most important, and ask individuals to justify their requests 
• Automate as many reports as possible and make them easy to find 

Reason #4: No Tangible Motivation 

Your people are busy. They already have too many things on their plates, and asking them to dig into the data is just another to-do item. There needs to be serious motivation for them to commit to spending more time with their data.  

The motivation will come from seeing tangible cases in which the data helped other people in the company. The marketing team might have discovered hidden levers in their campaigns, or the product team increased customer satisfaction by understanding user behavior. 

Motivation, coupled with ease of use, reasons #2 and #3, will help team members believe they can do faster or better work by leveraging data. 

You don’t need to reinvent your entire approach to data. Instead, look for slight shifts in improvement that can get you closer to the ultimate goal: insights. 

The breadth of change for leaders and their teams during the global pandemic has been dramatic: what we’re doing, how we’re working, when, and of course, where.

During my hundreds of hours of coaching this past year, I’ve watched executives adopt significantly new and different routines and gain confidence over time. Broadly speaking, many challenges have been met. But I’ve also found that success in adapting as team leaders in these times has much to do with the leaders’ ability to shore up their own and their teams’ emotional and psychological reserves — to build resiliency.

Building resiliency includes viewing leadership as an experience instead of a role. Leaders consider their impact in each conversation, relationship, and meeting. What makes an experience satisfying will depend, in part, on the individual. But in these challenging times, reducing stress and overwhelm is critical to help teams focus and stay productive.

Given the preponderance of meetings leaders and teams are facing lately, here are four ways leaders can create satisfying experiences and build everyone’s resilience — including their own:

Create agendas with a beginning, middle, and end. 

Since working today often means there are no longer informal buffers between meetings, such as chats in the hallways or brief stops in a colleague’s office, leaders need to allocate some meeting time for mental, psychological, or emotional transitions. Not unlike closing one’s computer apps after use so that the operating system doesn’t crash, humans need to “close” and then “open” too. The benefit is a team that is more present and more effective.

Help people bring their whole self into the room. 

With video meetings often strung one after another, people tend to come into each meeting still processing the feelings, decisions, and implications that just happened in the meeting before. Leaders can help people close on their last experience by asking each person to check in and share their lingering thoughts and feelings before diving into the work at hand. Try these questions:

• What is sticking with you from our last meeting and why?
• Is there anything you need to say or do so that you can be fully present in this meeting?

Then, to help each person bring their whole self into the room and turn to the collective needs of the group, ask, for instance:

• What do you most want from today’s meeting?
• As a team, what do we collectively need to pay attention to as we begin?
• What is one wish or one concern about today’s meeting?

To assess the emotional tenor of the room, build rapport, or lift energy levels, leaders can ask:

• How are you feeling as we begin this meeting?  
• What’s the best thing that happened to you today? How can you stay with it in this meeting?

Conclude the meeting with a check out. 

At the end of each meeting, a check out is beneficial to reveal unspoken assumptions and feelings about what just happened. It’s a powerful tool for helping others make sense of their experiences and others’ experiences, which is a way to support closure for each person before their next task. It’s also a perfect opportunity for teams to provide feedback for each other. Examples of check-outs include:

• What was the most important aspect of this meeting for you?
• How do you feel as we end this meeting?
• What did we achieve as a team, and what’s left to discuss for next time?
• Is there anything about our process you would like to see different in our next meeting?

Leaders need not respond to each comment or person. The goal is to give each person a space to share, process feeling and thoughts, and build trust by listening carefully and creating a safe environment. Let the statements stand on their own, or ask the team what they noticed about what was said — allowing them to make sense of the groups’ needs.

During meetings, consider when to switch from task to process, and back again. 

One of the most powerful aspects of being a team leader is the ability to influence the meeting’s progress. The importance of determining how much time should be allocated to a topic in the moment cannot be overstated. This is especially true in online environments, where it can be more challenging to bring unspoken feelings to the surface. When there is no safe opportunity to share, concerns stay covert, resulting in private chats between colleagues and a team that lacks cohesion.

Leaders have learned a lot about resilience during the last year. Their ability to create experiences that consider psychological processes will further build resilience in both themselves and their teams. And with more change on the horizon in 2021, leaders can take deliberate steps to do so — starting at their very next meeting.

Google “50 greatest coaches of all time,” and you’ll see a lot of debate on who is number two. Most lists have one name at the top: John Wooden. ESPN even named John Wooden the “Coach of the Century.”

So, what does a man who coached his last game in 1975 and passed away in 2010 have to say about how to be an excellent leader and coach, first of yourself, then of your team and business — coaching them all the way up?
 
The answer isn’t complicated. In fact, it’s quite simple: Be a teacher.
 
That is how the greatest coach of our time described himself: “I am just a teacher.” As a teacher, Coach understood human capacity, capability, and behavior. He brought out the best in individuals and teams, not by being an inspiring leader but by being an inspired teacher.
 
Coach taught character, teamwork, humility, and the process for the pursuit of excellence. Yes, he inspired, coached, and led others to go beyond what they thought they could accomplish. But, primarily, he taught them.
 
How? He followed these nine teaching techniques.

1. Be an expert.

No one studied the topics of basketball and life more than Coach, and he remained a student of each until the day he died. He demonstrated and modeled lifelong learning in the truest sense. He never let the pursuit of winning interfere with the pursuit of learning and teaching.
 
Every summer throughout his career, he’d conduct a research project on one aspect of the game he felt he and the team needed to improve. He looked at rebounding, free-throw shooting, and defensive strategy. He studied socks, shoes, and even shower solvent. Everything mattered. He never let his ego interfere: He constantly consulted with other coaches and performance experts who could provide the knowledge and understanding he lacked.
 

2. Be direct and precise in your explanations.

Coach was so exceptional at being direct he was the subject of an academic study. In a 2004 issue of The Sport Psychologist, Ronald Gallimore (UCLA) and Roland Tharp (University of California, Santa Cruz) published a revalidation of their 1976 case study: “What a Coach Can Teach a Teacher, 1975-2004: Reflections and Reanalysis of John Wooden’s Teaching Practices.”
 
They analyzed Coach’s afternoon practices for content, time, and direct communication with his team, and they recorded 2,326 teaching and instructional acts from Coach during 30 hours of practice. They found that more than 75 percent of his communication was instructional. Yet Coach never spoke for more than 20 seconds, and his demonstrations took no more than five seconds. Think about that when you’re preparing your next PowerPoint.

3. Be highly organized.

Gallimore and Tharp found that Coach’s practices were “exact and unvarying” in order to fit into his precise schedule. Individual work began at 3 p.m., and team practice ran from 3:29 to 5:29 p.m. No one dared to be late — ever.
 
Prior to that, Coach spent two hours every day with his assistants planning those practices. Each practice was recorded, tracked, and analyzed to see where improvements could be made, from the whole to the parts, right down to the minute. He had 27 years of well-organized notes and data he constantly referenced. No wonder he, his coaches, and his teams were always getting better.

4. Teach by example.

Coach was always on the floor with the team. Even in his final years as a coach, he could demonstrate proper footwork and balance. When Coach saw something not being done correctly, he would stop the action and follow a three-step process:

• Demonstrate the right way to do it.
• Demonstrate what the player or team was doing wrong.
• Demonstrate the right way to do it again. 

To eliminate repetitive mistakes, he was patient and maintained self-control when his team didn’t correct mistakes quickly. He was never in too big a hurry or too caught up in achieving immediate results to jeopardize doing something the right way. He never varied from the plan. If something didn’t work quite right, he made a note to work on and fix it the next day.

5. Teach by repetition.

Coach followed four laws of learning: explanation, demonstration, imitation, and repetition. As you might have guessed, Coach placed extra weight on repetition to create a correct habit that could be produced under pressure.
 
To ensure goals were achieved, he took these laws and expanded them to eight: explanation, demonstration, imitation, repetition, repetition, repetition, repetition, and repetition. He believed you could never work on the fundamentals too much. He never had to get back to basics — because he never left the basics.

6. Plan for the individual and the team.

“You can’t improve the team if you don’t improve each player,” Coach told us. “You have to know them to be able to do that, not only their skills but also their temperaments, attitudes, and what’s going on in their lives. How they think and what gets the response you’re looking for.”
 
Coach always knew where and how his players needed to improve, and he and his assistants were always ready with a plan and capable of teaching what was required for that improvement. He tracked his players’ practice routines to see where ongoing development was needed. This allowed him to anticipate mistakes before they happened.

7. Create a positive and disciplined environment.

Coach understood the difference between discipline and punishment. Punishment creates antagonism, and it’s hard to get positive results when you antagonize. You discipline to help, to correct, to teach, and to improve. Effective discipline is about learning and gaining improvement through correction and repetition. Those corrections should never be personal or degrading in any way, and new information should be aimed at the act, never the actor.

8. Break complex issues into simpler details.

Coach explained his teaching process and approach this way: “The greatest holiday feast is eaten one bite at a time. Gulp it down all at once, and you get indigestion. I discovered the same is true in teaching. Teach what you want and need to do best one simple step at a time. Little things done well are probably the greatest secret to success. If you do enough small things right, big things can happen.”

9. Teach more than your game.

To Coach, character was the foundation of individual success, a successful team, and a successful life. Persons with good character were the kind of people Coach believed made better teammates and a stronger team. Coach believed it was his job to model good character every day, in every situation.  
 
As Coach said: “Everyone is a teacher to someone; maybe it’s your children, maybe it’s your neighbor, maybe it’s someone under your supervision. In one way or another, you are teaching them by your
actions.”

LYNN GUERIN is CEO of The John R. Wooden Course and president and “Head Coach” of his family- owned coaching, training, and performance development firm, Guerin Marketing Services. For the past 20 years, he has had the unique privilege of partnering with legendary UCLA basketball coach John Wooden and the Wooden family.
 
JASON LAVIN is a coach, speaker, and CEO with more than 25 years of experience enhancing the performance of individuals, teams, and organizations. As president of The John R. Wooden Course and CEO of Golden Communications, Lavin helps organizations—from youth sports teams to Fortune 100 companies—refine their values, mission, and vision.

Their new book is Coach ‘Em Way Up: 5 Lessons for Leading the John Wooden Way.

“It’s not going away, and we have to face that reality.” That’s what the CEO and founder of a high-tech manufacturing startup with 180 employees told the leadership team in early July to convince them of the need to do a strategic pivot to address COVID.

Previously, the startup’s executives took things one step at a time, putting out the various COVID related fires that flared up more and more often: supply chain disruptions; cancelled orders; employees having difficulties with work-from-home setups or needing flex-time to manage kids or elderly relatives.

Seeing more of the broad picture, the CEO realized the company was going in the wrong direction. One of the members of the Board recommended my recently-published book on strategic pivoting to adapt to COVID and plan for the post-pandemic recovery.

After a quick read, the CEO convinced the other leadership team members that the company needed to do a strategic pivot to address COVID. He then had his executive assistant contact me and arrange for a facilitated strategic retreat dedicated to addressing COVID, which became my sixth of nine such engagements thus far. This article summarizes my experiences helping a range of companies — five startups, three established middle-market ones, and a Fortune 300 company business unit — pivot for our new abnormal reality.

Challenging Business Model Assumptions

Invariably, the first step involved reassessing assumptions about the organization’s business model. That meant an initial couple of brief meetings with the leadership team where we discussed the kind of fires they faced recently.

For example, the manufacturing startup faced a new challenge in selling its high-tech products. Known for their high quality, the products were flying off the shelf previously; the company had trouble keeping up with demand.

Now, the startup’s salespeople reported that the decision-making process changed. Accounting put much more pressure on operations managers to prove that the products’ quality brought sufficient ROI. Couldn’t they get by with lower-cost options?

While the manufacturing startup invested in innovation to ensure the quality of its high-tech products, it didn’t have a clear measurement of ROI for the innovation. After all, operations people focused on quality, not ROI. As a result, some of its customers, with apologies, chose to buy lower-cost alternatives.

Other companies faced a range of similar problems in sales and other areas. Often, the news came as a surprise to other leadership team members, even the CEO; all were busy fighting fires in their own areas.

Gathering Internal Information

With more awareness of the business model assumptions challenged by the pandemic, the next step involved gathering internal information for a revised strategy and business model.

Each of the top leaders who led a department and would be present at the strategic retreat gathered feedback from their direct reports on how to revise each department’s goals, structure, and relationship to customers (external or internal) in light of the challenged assumptions in either of three scenarios.

• In the first scenario, a vaccine with over 90% effectiveness would be found by Spring of 2021, and the pandemic mostly over by Spring of 2022
• In the second, this vaccine would be found by Spring of 2022, and the pandemic mostly over by Spring of 2023
• In the third, we would never find a vaccine more effective than 50%, just like we haven’t found a vaccine more effective than that for the flu

Strategy Day

Next, go on to the strategic retreat, which should be a two-day event, with one day for broad strategy and another for operationalizing the strategy.

The high-tech manufacturing startup’s team had to struggle extensively with accepting the reality of changing marketplace demands. Its operations team established a sense of identity and team spirit around innovation as a core value; its marketing and sales made innovation a fundamental element of their pitches. They kept veering away from the reality of the need to shift from innovation to ROI measurement.

The CEO and I kept steering them back. I had to use the full range of my facilitation skills to keep the conversation on the right track, an especially challenging task since this was a virtual retreat.

The leadership team of a late-stage SaaS startup with over 500 employees was surprised that the large majority of their direct reports reported feelings of work-from-home burnout and “Zoom fatigue” among employees as one of the most serious problems.

It’s key to realize that the issues stemmed not simply from burnout but from much more. These include dealing with:

• Pandemic-related mental health challenges such as anxiety/depression/trauma/grief
• COVID-related pragmatic challenges, such as kids staying home
• Social isolation from friends, family, and community events, as well as our previous outside hobbies and entertainment
• Poor work-from-home environments with inadequate home office setups
• Lack of skills in effective virtual communication and collaboration
• Being deprived of the fulfillment of those basic human needs — sense of connection, tribe, meaning and purpose – that we naturally get from work

Even worse, the vast majority of us don’t realize we aren’t simply experiencing work-from-home burnout, and don’t recognize what we’re missing. To address this requires not simply financial support for home office setups or flex time to address pragmatic pandemic challenges. It also requires professional development in effective virtual communication and teamwork. Moreover, it requires professional development in emotional and social intelligence, to enable employees to recognize and address the emotional and social gaps left by the pandemic.

Operations Day

The next day should be focused on operationalizing the strategic changes in the business model. You need to address potential threats and opportunities in a variety of future scenarios and revise the previous day’s strategy if needed. These scenarios need to include at least the three different COVID futures described above, and several different potential economic recovery scenarios (K, U, W, V, L).

An enterprise data analytics startup with over 120 staff recognized an unexpected opportunity. It had long been trying to get some lucrative client accounts held by several competitors. The startup’s CEO knew that most of the competitors’ leaders had a dismissive attitude toward COVID.

The startup decided to adjust its marketing and sales to demonstrate the steps it took to be pandemic-proof. It would then have its salespeople call on the competitors’ client accounts and tell them about these steps. It would then offer to provide support if the pandemic lasted longer than the most optimistic predictions and the competitors couldn’t uphold their previous high standards.

Next Steps and Follow-Up

After the operations day, determine specific next steps for each new initiative that you discussed. Decide on resources required and the metrics of success. Choose one member of the leadership team accountable for implementing the initiative, with others potentially involved in the effort. Finally, prepare a report for the Board of Directors on the retreat, highlighting how the strategic pivot will help the company adapt to various scenarios of COVID and the economic recovery.

Follow up on all the next steps in the weekly leadership team meeting or whatever other leadership team forum your company already uses. Then, in a month, have a half-day event where you assess the strategy shift and make any corrections to strategy or implementation as needed. Do the same in three months.

Here are the key take-aways: remember, the first step, always, is challenging assumptions. Second, gather internal information; don’t skip this step, assuming your leadership team knows what’s truly going on. Third, spend at least a day revising your external and internal strategy. Fourth, operationalize your strategy, addressing threats and seizing opportunities in a variety of potential future scenarios. Fifth, commit to next steps, determining resources required, metrics of success, and who will be responsible for implementing each step, with a report to the Board on the event. Sixth, follow up regularly on all steps once a week, with one-month and three-month half-day follow-ups revising both strategy and implementation as needed.

While nothing can guarantee success, I can guarantee that taking these steps will maximize your chances of not only surviving but thriving in these troubled times.

I grew up in Florida, and as a pre-teen, I took piano lessons, but I secretly loved playing my sister’s guitar.

I would sneak and sit in her closet in her room and grab her red guitar with the white tuning
knobs and play. She did not know I wanted to play it, so I had to sneak and play it. Finally, one day, she found me, and she realized she was never going to play that little red guitar, so she let me have it … in more ways than one. Since that time, I have not had to sneak her guitar, and I fell in love with learning to play. Music has taught me many things; the discipline of practice, playing fairly with friends, listening, connecting with others, and having fun.

I joined a band with some friends, and one of them was a fantastic guitar player; and I then realized that to stay in the group, I had to learn to play the bass guitar and up my game; I had to learn to practice in a whole new way. When playing the guitar, I played chords and rhythms, and practice was more casual. Taking up the bass forced me to realize the structure of the song and the foundation, and it dawned on me that I had to find a new approach to practicing the bass. And, this experience has laid the foundation for what music has taught me my entire life.

What is Deliberate Practice?

According to the American Psychological Association, “Deliberate practice occurs when an individual intentionally repeats an activity to improve performance. The Deliberate Practice framework claims that such behavior is necessary to achieve high levels of expert performance.”

Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, in his book The Mind and The Brain, references a study: “Robert Desimone of the National Institute of Mental Health, one of the country’s leading researchers into the physiology of attention, explains it this way: Attention seems to work by biasing the brain circuit for the important stimuli.” With deliberate practice, our brains naturally suppress distractions and improve focus. How can you use the principles of deliberate practice to improve your leadership or management skills?

According to the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine, in an article titled “Deliberate Practice and Acquisition of Expert Performance: A General Overview,” by K. Anders Ericsson, Ph.D., states, “In direct contrast, aspiring experts continue to improve their performance as a function of more experience because it is coupled with Deliberate Practice.” To grow into a professional bassist, I embraced the principle of deliberate practice in every part of my personal and professional life.

Nurturing a Passion for Practicing

As a professional bassist and a certified business consultant, I discovered that most artists and business experts spend 95% of their time practicing, and maybe five percent of their time on stage, performing. If you received all of your joy from being on stage performing, then you would be unhappy 95% of the time, waiting to get on stage. And what happens if the performance doesn’t go well? You’ll miss the joy of becoming the person you desire to be. I realized I needed to nurture my desire to want to practice and enjoy it.

So, I discovered the power of visualizing myself mastering core skills. To become a world-class performer, most experts spend time imagining themselves delivering a world-class routine, whether giving a speech, writing a novel, developing code, or performing music on stage. Visualize yourself growing and mastering your skills works, and virtuoso musicians and world-class athletes visualize. They do it because it works.

Finally, I had to take 100% responsibility for my growth and develop a love for lifelong learning and practicing. Remember, you’ll spend 95% of your time preparing for the performance, so learn to enjoy the process.

Helping Your Team Be Successful

As a leader, your example will influence your team much more than your words ever will. What’s needed today is for leaders to lead by example and be the conductor of their organization and treat the team as an artist. A good conductor trusts that the musicians under his baton are there because they love what they do, and they have worked hard to learn their craft. It’s the conductor’s job to cast the vision for the performance and coach them on working together to create beautiful music.

To learn more about creating High-Performing teams, check out Workplace Jazz, published by Business Expert Press.