How can I inspire my team to take ownership of change?
Sometimes when it rains it pours, and that’s this week when many more coaching calls than usual have been focused around a similar question:
How can I drive change, without having to get deep in the weeds with my team to get results?
I’ve been hearing from wonderful leaders who are completely swamped, but who also urgently need to drive significant change for their organizations.
Unfortunately, the layers of managers below them aren’t either able to — or willing to — push forward on more strategic, values-based or transformative work, requiring the leader to devote time to giving the team’s important initiatives some needed momentum.
But my clients aren’t sure where that extra time will come from — or how they’ll ever get out of the cycle of being repeatedly pulled into the weeds.
After it came up a few times this week, I was starting to give some thought to what a possible coaching framework could look like to address this very common issue.
But then, before my thinking got clearer, it got muddied even more: I read this article this week by Roger Martin (my favorite business writer), talking about how a CEO being too busy could actually, if left unchecked, turn into a performance issue on the part of the CEO. He shared a description of one leader who he thought spent way too much time in internal meetings and not enough time with customers:
He was almost unbelievably busy. His calendar featured meetings from sunup to sundown — every day. I have seen many busy CEOs, but this set a new standard. I observed little ability to discern between important activities and trivial ones. Because he felt he needed to schedule so many meetings, they were all short. So, whenever there was anything truly important to discuss, there wasn’t enough time. It required the scheduling of another far-too-short meeting, and maybe another and another.
When he was fired by the board, I assume he thought it was despite how hard he worked. My view was that he was fired because of how hard he worked — not directly of course, but because of the consequences of someone who can’t figure out what is important and what is not.
He then goes on to say that the most important job of a CEO — which I think also applies to other C-Suite leaders — is to spend less time internally-focused and as much time as possible with customers.
Yikes.
This felt really provocative to me because the leaders I work with are brilliant, hard-working, efficient, and deeply committed to mentoring their teams. When I talk to them, they absolutely seem to be able to distinguish between what’s important and what’s not.
Are they busy? Yes.
But when faced with the need for an important change that will transform the group, how could any leader not want to jump in to help, and therefore become even busier?
But yet …
I always feel like the best solutions come when there’s serious tension between two competing ideas, so I tried to visualize some approaches that can solve both things:
Issue 1: Many leaders and teams struggle with change and transformation, requiring the senior-most leader to step in to make sure the team is correctly focused and moving forward.
and
Issue 2: Senior leaders need to be even less busy than they already are in order to make sure they’re spending enough time with customers.
Meaning,
Combination Issue: Senior leaders have a double time-management problem to solve, rather than just one, to both drive needed internal change and get closer to customers.
So, how can you resolve this serious conflict between needing to step in to drive transformation while also needing to step back to spend more time with customers?
Defining the Problem More Clearly
In each of the situations that have come up in coaching this week, the sub-leaders working for my clients are actually quite good at the day jobs they were originally hired to do. So the problem isn’t that you as a leader ALWAYS have to get in the weeds.
The problem is that these managers are skilled at their regular work but not skilled at change initiatives, so you have to get more involved than you expect to when significant change is required.
Change doesn’t have to be a discrete project in order to trip up your team; it could be a major initiative, of course, but it could also simply be a shift in how teams work together, or working by a new set of values, or an adjustment to your working style if you’re a new leader.
Simply put, if your team is like 99% of the teams out there, your direct reports and their teams have likely been very well-trained in their functional area but NOT AT ALL well-trained on how to drive change.
Which means that unfortunately you can’t delegate when significant change is required, until you know your leaders have the expertise to handle it.
The second problem is that senior leaders need to free up more of the time that’s currently focused on internal work.
This means that until your team is trained, supported, and high-performing around change initiatives, you have to stay involved in those and you’ll need to delegate a lot of other internal work other than strategic internal improvement.
Senior leaders have to eliminate internally-focused time to spend more time with customers, while also devoting more internal time to their teams to push significant change.
This double problem requires a radical approach — what are the ways in which you can free up your time AND elevate your team to take on more strategic work?
Here’s What You Can Do
Here are some strategies to help you try to free up your time, help your leaders navigate through change, and have more time to get closer to your internal and external customers.
First and foremost, of course, is making sure your own time management is as tight as it can be, but that will only get you so far — ultimately, you have to be able to delegate to others.
1. Cascading Delegation
If you move things off your own plate, it has to get delegated, automated, deferred or delayed — and the last three have an organizational cost — so chances are high that your direct reports have to move things off of their own plates to take on some of your work. Time management isn’t always a “me” problem — more often, it’s a “we” problem.
So, the first place to start is by making sure that your direct reports, and their direct reports, are delegating, streamlining and managing effectively so that THEY are freeing up their time for more innovative work. This may require more team training at lower levels, better knowledge management (which is in itself a project) etc., but without this, your important change work is likely to stall.
2. Accountability and Ownership
The next step is ensuring that the person leading the change actually owns the change. That means that when you assign change to someone, they own it — they're held accountable for driving it forward and they are responsible for the metrics that will define the initiative’s ultimate success.
This designated leader must fully “hold the baton” — meaning they’re not just responsible, but they’ve planned for this innovation work in their workload, with no ambiguity about where the ownership lies.
3. Delegate the Strategic Thinking, Not Just the Project
Delegation can’t just be about handing off the project itself; it has to include the strategic thinking behind the project. Break your initiatives into chunks, and ensure that part of the delegation includes a strategic kickoff and a “strategy orientation” where you specifically ask the team to create a strategic definition for the initiative’s success. After that, have the project proceed through “gates,” with checkpoints at key milestones.
Your role is to stay involved at critical starting, ending, and midway checkpoints, offering guidance, but not to handle the step-by-step details of the change itself.
4. Create Strategic Workstreams
To give even more support to your team leaders, consider creating a separate management channel for strategic change projects if you don’t already have one. (In many places, change projects are handled more informally than they should be, and then keep getting delayed by an ill-equipped manager dragging their feet.)
These workstreams would all be managed with a standardized kickoff process, follow similar timelines, and pass through predefined checkpoints in similar fashions.
In this way, you’ll be training your team WHY and HOW to run these projects so that they get a running start with each project. Eventually, you’ll be able to define the WHAT of each project and they can drop into the workstream and run from there.
Having an elevated, separate strategic workstream in place signals that the work being done is crucial and gives it a structure that allows for autonomy while ensuring continual check-in and alignment.
5. Build Templates, Frameworks, and Playbooks
One way to accelerate strategic thinking without reinventing the wheel every time is to use pre-developed templates, frameworks, or playbooks. These tools give your team a structured way to approach problems and spend more time innovating solutions rather than getting bogged down by the process itself.
The time you take to tee up one major project can be leveraged many times over, if you do it correctly. For example, could you do a Loom video that talks about how to think about an organizational transformation project, or perhaps create a series of presentations that are titled Kickoff, Strategic Findings and Approach, Project Plan, Project Update and Project Read-out so that your team never has to start from scratch?
The more you build templates and clarify your expectations, the more your team can focus on what’s important — executing strategy, not just planning it.
6. Create a Project Zero
For teams lacking innovation or strategic thinking skills, you might start by leveraging your most forward-thinking staff on a Project Zero — your bar-setting initiative — that can help you develop your signature strategic change framework along with their skills as change leaders.
The aim is not just to produce an innovative outcome on this project, but to establish a replicable process. Once you’ve fine-tuned that process with your top performers, you can gradually roll it out to the rest of the team, ensuring that everyone gets a chance to practice and build their innovation muscles.
7. Strategic Deputies
If a particular leader or team doesn’t have the depth or expertise to drive key initiatives on their own, you can think about appointing a layer of strategic deputies, who have the mandate and authority to mentor teams through critical projects or drive transformation.
By deputizing others to lead, you ensure that key initiatives move forward even when you're focused elsewhere — particularly with external stakeholders. which are ideally your direct reports but could include consultants or people outside your team if relevant and available. Deputizing spreads leadership responsibility in a way that both empowers your team and frees you up for your highest-value activities.
8. Strategic Thinking Bootcamps or Co-Working Mornings
The more you can train your team to think strategically, the sooner you will be freed up for even bigger-picture work. One option is to introduce strategic thinking bootcamps or ongoing training sessions to help your team develop these skills. This can take the form of “lunch and learn” sessions or even quick videos you make for your team where you and others share best practices on innovation, change management, or strategic decision-making. Regularly reserving time for training shows that you’re committed to building this capacity across your team, not just among the top performers.
9. Engage External Consultants When Needed
Transformation efforts can be complex, and if your internal teams need help driving a particular initiative, don't hesitate to bring in external consultants if your budget allows. Sometimes a fresh perspective or expertise from outside the organization can unblock stalled projects or offer new insights that are hard to generate from within.
10. Prioritize Strategic Time in Everyone’s Calendar
One simple but effective strategy is ensuring there’s dedicated time on everyone’s calendar, including yours, for strategic thinking. Without carving out time for this purpose, both you and your team will find yourselves overwhelmed by day-to-day operational demands. Strategic time has to be as non-negotiable as any other critical meeting — because without it, transformation just won’t happen.
In addition to strategic thinking time, you also may need to block off more strategic collaboration time. If you feel like you don’t have the time for this, take heed of the warning about the CEO who was so busy that meetings were too short to make real progress. Sometimes shorter meetings are less productive than longer ones.
Another idea - similarly leveraging larger blocks of time - is to ask your team to block off a morning (perhaps once a month?) where a) you do a deep dive together on one project with a team, or b) your leadership all works in parallel on important issues and you make the rounds to check in, without being involved in all of the work directly.
11. Assess and Develop Strategic Competency
Assess and create a development plan for each team member not just on their functional capabilities, but also on their competency in strategic thinking and innovation. Some of your team may excel at their daily roles but struggle with change management or creative problem-solving.
Create a roadmap (working with your People lead if you have one) for each individual to develop these skills over time. Building a team of independent, strategic thinkers won’t happen overnight, but by consistently developing these capabilities, you’ll eventually find that they need less and less intervention from you.
12. Adopt a Culture of Coaching
One of the best ways to maintain the balance between guiding your team and giving them space is to adopt a coaching mindset. Even if you do need to step in, do so as a coach, not as a pair of hands to do the work. Ask the kinds of questions that prompt your team to think critically and find their own solutions.
This approach not only helps you avoid getting pulled into the weeds now or in the future, but also strengthens your team's capacity for independent problem-solving and provides more psychological safety for them to take risks when pursuing innovation.
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These strategies aren’t quick fixes and won’t free up your calendar tomorrow, but they can lay the foundation for more independently-thinking, accountable teams.
The key is to focus on freeing up your non-strategic time first, then create a “build once, deploy many times” with your own strategic approach to teeing up projects. When you do this, you give your team the tools to think beyond the day-to-day, and you teach them to push forward into the strategic and transformative work that matters most.
By shifting the focus to building your team’s capacity for strategic work, you’ll find that not only are you able to spend more time with external stakeholders, but you’ll also have a team that is stronger, more independent, and ready to drive the changes your organization needs.
What I’m reading / sharing about this topic:
HBR Artlicle: How to Give Busy People the Time to Innovate
Most companies are full of really busy people, which makes it hard to slow down and focus on trying new things. At the same time, stopping everything to focus on innovation can leave day-to-day tasks neglected. So, how can leaders make sure workers are able to balance operational necessities with innovation? Four strategies can help: 1) Clearing the “process debt” that’s blocking innovation time; 2) Subtracting something old before you add something new; 3) Putting innovation at the top of the list; and 4) Separate invention and optimization.
hbr.org/2024/10/how-to-give-busy-people-the-time-to-innovate
Book: Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter, by Liz Wiseman
Multipliers lays out two distinct leadership styles: Multipliers and Diminishers. Multipliers, she says, are leaders who raise the intelligence and capabilities of their teams, encouraging people to think independently and take ownership. Diminishers, on the other hand, may mean well, but may unintentionally hold their teams back by over-directing or stepping in too frequently.
For executives looking to elevate their teams, not only might you reflect on your own style, but also evaluate your management team along these same lines. Are they empowering their own teams, creating frameworks for efficiency, creativity and ownership? Are they creating time for and building skills in innovation and strategic decision-making?
Thinking about how each leader can be a multiplier for their team and training them to think not just about performance, but leverage, can help each team reach its full potential, while also freeing up the leader to work on more strategic objectives.
Find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Multipliers-Revised-Updated-Leaders-Everyone/dp/0062699172/