Don’t Be Sheepish

Leaders who consistently grasp for a sense of new, fresh, movement often are really good at creating slogans which just serve as a mask for actually addressing healthy changes. Leaders try to create fancy slogans so it sounds like there is progress being made when there is actually no strategic changes being made for the health of the organization.

A favorite quote of mine is from Ernest Hemingway who said “Never mistake motion for action.”

For example, the under performing Consulting Advisory Team is relabeled as Community Impact Relations. The attempt at having a better sounding, action orientated name is supposed to inspire people immediately. However no changes to the under performing team members or systems were made and nothing actually changed. Customers are still frustrated, fellow employees are still agitated with underperformance and leaders are baffled as to why everything has stayed the same.

For many organizations this can begin in a vision or mission statement. A major focus often falls on getting words just right to lead to beautiful, inspiring statements but do produce little to no change.

It is not what the statement is...it’s what the statement does.

Fancy words or savvy slogans are just an attempt to pull wool over the eyes and ears of others in the organization. The act is very condescending and patronizing to people who are close enough to know what is really going on.

A healthy step leaders can take is to create open dialogue about the problems that are prevalent, transparency about the need for change, opportunities for people to be a part of the change and make necessary strategic adjustments for actual change.

Change is challenging. When the proper change is engaged with, the organization takes notice and will respect the final outcome more when it’s done with organizational health in mind. Be that kind of leader, don’t be sheepish about the change.