Lesson Three:
Make Reinforcement a Part of Your Culture
By: Rich Blakeman
Sales Vice President
Many change initiatives are guided by the common principle of “inspect what you expect.” Set clear objectives, identify a small number of critical leading metrics, and inspect them with diligence. While this is critical and may be common sense, it may not be commonly practiced, nor is it the sole differentiator you need to make your next change initiative successful. Setting key performance indicators (KPIs) and reviewing them will support and measure the desired change, but doesn’t speak specifically enough to a key responsibility held solely by the most senior members of your leadership team: the stewardship and leverage of the culture.
Family-owned companies are often the poster children for stewardship of culture, providing lessons in the sustainment and maintenance of cultural themes going back to the founders. At Torani, it is the shared responsibility of board and family members Lisa and Paul Lucheta along with CEO Melanie Dulbecco. Amongst their keys to successful change management: patience with discipline in reinforcing the change. How do we help our team members succeed? How does the board support the process, reinforce success and challenge the team to move faster?
Melanie recalls that “Lisa and Paul wanted to know everything about what was going on. They brought our CFO and sales vice president to board meetings to brief them on the overall health of our sales funnel and the KPIs we have developed to track it – a first for our company. They have stayed disciplined in their interest and actively involved, but showed patience with results so that we could get through this change with all of our team members intact and encouraged.”
Torani’s culture is steeped in deep care for its people and, from the top down, follows the senior leadership lesson of making reinforcement a part of their culture. Your change initiative needs to fit into and leverage the culture to have the ultimate level of success, and it is the senior leader’s responsibility to ensure that it does.
The Intersection of Kotter and Gandhi
Lobbing a change initiative into the organization with a “do as I say, not as I do” mentality doesn’t work. Whether or worked in the past, today’s companies only get one shot when implementing change that will affect results. When executives fail to lead the change by example, they are prone to find their seat at the leadership table more and more uncomfortable as the CEO makes his rounds.
If it’s important for senior leaders to model the way, repeat lessons learned, and reinforce and encourage others along the path. Nothing could be more critical than consistency of leadership in these change endeavors. John Kotter provides the challenge in direct terms:
“Nothing undermines change more than behavior by important individuals that is inconsistent with their words.”
More simply put, by Gandhi: “Be the change you wish to see…”
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