A635.3.3.RB - 50 Reasons Not to Change/The Tribes We Lead

My reflection bog this week is to reflect on the Ted Talk video “The Tribes we lead” by Seth Godin and the presentation “50 reasons not to change” by Dr. Daryl Watkins. This blog will cover the idea of change and its’ excuses. I will complete the blog by identifying if I utilize any of the 50 types of excuses when implementing change and are there any quick wins I can take back to my career today.

Tribes we Lead

In the Video “The tribes we lead” by Seth Godin tribes are everywhere have been around for years. Godin talked about how tribes of people or connect together because they have something in common. Thinking in my own life and the tribes I belong to, I find it comical because my tribes have changed over the years. My personal causes tend to push for better products and services for our military veterans. Veteran initiatives are personal because I am a veteran. I belong to many groups that are organized to push legislation that is used to better the quality of life for our veterans.  Godin stated that “we don’t need everyone to push our cause or connection, we just need a few people.” I thought this was spot on statement because there are so many causes out there and not everyone is going to believe or push every single cause. Causes can be positive or negative, depending on what tribe you belong to. The recent challenge of status quo the presidents ban on transgender serving in the military. My blog is not to provide any argument for or against the decision. I would state that I belong to a tribe culture that would support the stance with the president only because our military focus is training and being prepared for war and there is not enough information to understand if this change would or would not impede a mission or readiness. (Godin, 2009)

When it comes to leadership, Godin stated that “you don’t need permission from people to lead them because they are waiting for leadership to show them where to go next.” For someone who has worked for almost 30 years, change is the norm and my leadership tribes change as well. Having leaders and being  a leader, we do challenge the status quo because we trained to leave a role better than when you received it. I just finished my role as president of our companies’ leadership association and my sponsor asked me when I began what were the three things I would leave as a legacy. I had not thought about that in the beginning because I had many things I wanted to change. The three things I changed was a brand new state of art meeting facility, vice-president positions would be changed from one year to two year teams, and acquiring a part-time administrative assistant to help. I was able to provide all three tangible items but the one thing I changed I did not realize until it was highlighted by the leadership team in the National Management Association (NMA) that I changed the culture of our association by changing how I integrated inclusion. (Godin, 2009)

Godin stated that “leaders build a culture or a secret language” which allows people to know whether they are inside or outside of the tribe. As the president, my goal was about providing experiences that would allow people to want to be a part of the association. The culture shift occurred one month into leadership role when our team attended the new leadership training for NMA. In the past only the executive committee attended the training, however my goal was to include our 11 team Board of Directors. There is usually a division between the two sets of people but I wanted to take the entire team as one and my efforts were challenging the status quo. The end results are the teams were united and the new president followed the same strategy. Throughout the entire year the two teams worked together on every event. For the first time in a decade, the association had to have an election. You may be asking why that is important? As a leader we changed the culture and provided positive experiences where people want to be a part of our tribe. I never considered being a tribe leader but people want to be a part of what we are doing because what we are doing is creating positive experiences and they are committed to our success. This simple change is morphing into other chapters because the Return on Investment (ROI) created partnerships and growth. When I came up with the idea, I did not have some ROI strategy or expected a specific result but it was merely an idea because I didn’t want to leave people behind and I knew attending the event would be a great experience for everyone. (Godin, 2009)

Excuses- Not my Job

In the Prezi presentation “50 reasons not to change” by Dr. Daryl Watkins was very good as I have probably used or heard a good portion of these excuses in my workplace.  Before I dive into the excuses, my past evaluations from my leadership has annotated that I am personally a visionary thinker. Being a visionary person, I feel like I am always challenging the status quo. Many focus on finding root cause and providing solutions to improve processes and my standard environment is focuses on leading change. My favorite excuse is “it is not my job” and I always want to ask people if it is not your job then why are you talking about it? But I cannot do that as it was be rude.  There are a couple of ways to view the excuse and our culture. Unfortunately, we work in a culture where work is placed in silos and people hoard efforts in fear they will not have a job.  With this comment the fact that it is not my job maybe legitimate based on the culture we adapt. I have had to work with people who blatantly stated it was their job and I needed to butt out. I have seen this excuse used when one didn’t want to be accountable for something not getting done. From a leadership standpoint all the roles under sphere of control is my job. It is my job to ensure there is inclusion, integration, and cross functional learning. It is my responsibility to ensure silos are brought down and we are operating as a team and not individuals. (Watkins, 2011)

Excuses- Competition

I liked the excuse (s) about change will never work or “our competitors are not doing it.” I am about to complete my two-year rotation in the Mid-Career Development Program (MCDP) which requires a research project provided by leadership. Our project is centered on how the company can attract and retain millennial employees focusing on benefits, perks, and corporate re-design. The idea was given to our team by the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) because we are losing new employees as fast as those who are retiring and leadership wanted to know what our competition is doing. Our research hit a snag this past few weeks when corporate leadership announced the health benefits going forward. One of the great benefits is our health products but because our competition is doing the same thing we needed to be in alignment within the industry.  As the leader for this project, we immediately met to focus on new strategies that will counter what our competition is doing as we need to be the leaders verses the follower. The best initiative we can offer is how the company can reduce overhead costs. Our strategy is focused on where telecommute is the norm and the company incorporate hoteling to reduce office space, products such as landline phones and stand-alone computers. The data supports that the average employee in three of our major aerospace sites spends more than an hour and half transporting to and from work each day. The strategy also includes the average cost the company saves and the employee by working more from home then coming into the office. Our second strategy is for employees to pick their own working hours as long as it supports the mission and the customer. The idea is if people choose their own work hours they are apt to perform better and it could reduce overall lost time due to illnesses, appointments, vacations, etc. Our third strategy is hoteling where employees who need to come into the office can book a cube or office based on availability. This structure will also remove cube walls and division of roles based on certain ranks getting bigger cubes or offices. Additionally, a setting with couches or bistro style working environment could enhance inclusion, innovation, and creativity, or perhaps set us out to be different than our competitor and attract the millennials. We also learned in our research that millennials hate to be called millennials, so we changed our efforts to reflect NextGen leaders. So the excuse that our competition is not doing it is a motivator to our study group to prove that we want to be the leader and ahead of competition. (Watkins, 2011)

Reaction to Colleagues

In the assignment we are discuss how we react when our colleagues use some of the excuses in the 50 Reasons not to change graphic. When our company kicked off the Culture of Accountability (COA) there were training sessions where each person was allowed to provide feedback about the culture.  You could provide feedback but you could not judge them during the session. Just write them down. Going through training and observing the feedback, I would make a food faith statement that we had hundreds of excuses and every one of Dr. Watkins excuses were on our list as well. I would say that I have used many of them because that was our culture and we tend to become adaptive to our culture. Today, I am able to use the COA concept when I hear these types of excuses by simply talking about what type of experience are we providing with that type of statement. It generally stops people in their tracks because it is easier to make an excuse than provide a good experience, which could be the quickest route to get out of the conversation. (Watkins, 2011)

Tribe  and Excuses

As I was writing, I was trying to think about how the tribes and excuses relate to each other and it is pretty simple. If you are a leader and you make excuses about changes, those who you are leading will adapt the same culture or leave it. I do believe that Godin’s concept that change is driven by tribes because we are a part of. In the military we are bound by our cultures, customs and courtesies and you can be punished by not adopting them. Godin talked about religious tribes and it made me think about my own religious beliefs growing up that you went to church every Sunday and Wednesday, it was culture. Today, I watch my religion on television because I don’t believe walking through a building is the answer to get to heaven. I challenged the status quo because of an excuse of my experiences and I won’t’ know if my choice was the right one until I am gone. When it comes to change we have to have balance that is supportive and realistic to the cause. I feel I only uses excuses when I don’t want to do something and to overcome it I have to really listen to the excuse or situation to make sure the excuses is value added.

Conclusion

What I gained from this exercise is that tribes and excusers are interrelated to each other. Our excuses can be driven by our culture or the company we keep. In order to change the excuses paradigm someone has to change themselves first. My leader is a very strong advocate for COA, however there are some on my team that say he is just drinking the Kool-aide. Where I can make a difference is when there are excuses is standing up firmly to approach it from a positive angle and hopefully if that is done enough it will change the teams culture of excuses. For me it only takes one strong leader to take the first step to make a positive change. If you are respected the tribe will change because they want to be a part of your team. I really enjoyed the video and the presentation. 

References

Godin, S. (2009, February). The Tribes we Lead. Retrieved August 27, 2017, from Ted Talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead

Watkins, D. (2011, August 24). 50 Reasons to not Change. Retrieved August 27, 2017, from Prezi: https://prezi.com/z2v2cvo4t9tc/50-reasons-not-to-change/