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Case Study:
Large Software Company
Resistance to Change:
The invisible thief that doubles or triples project time, obliterates creativity and cooperation, rallies your troops against you, and guarantees mediocre results.
The Challenges:
- Building an organization that can adapt quickly in times of accelerated change.
- Creating excitement and cooperation for continuous improvement.
- Cutting new project development/implementation time and resource investment.
The old, hands-on leadership style in this fast-growing software company was doing more damage than good. They had been focused on acquiring complementary firms, and although the upside potential was enormous, the cultures of these sister companies simply were not blending. Every group had its own way of doing things. "Protect your turf" seemed to be the new company slogan. Any effort to change job descriptions, to reorganize departments, to combine software was met with fierce resistance. To simply dictate a higher receptivity to change clearly was not going to handle some of the major problems they had never before experienced.
"The Vision Process in particular, seemed to focus all
energies into a common direction. Additionally, we now use
the Pathways to Leadership program as a strategic weapon
in our continuing efforts to acquire other software concerns.
An example is our recent initiative to pick up a promising
Florida firm. We found ourselves competing with several other
buyers. All the other bidders had the resources to make the
acquisition, but we had something the others did not -- a
track record for blending cultures in an effective caring
way. The nod went to our company." -- Vice President,
HR
Specific Tools and Concepts
Note: The following steps represent only a few of the key
concepts and tools applied in this case study.
- In the first Pathways to Leadership® training,
senior management learned that for most people, Change =
Danger. However, by using the 3 Conditions of Change,
they could improve the formula to Change = Opportunity.
If any one of these three conditions is missing, effective
implementation of change will be compromised.
- Senior management quit playing tug of war with their team
members and began honoring them. They actively pursued gathering
the opinions of the team and shared the benefits to the
appropriate parties of the final game plan.
- Manager began immediately to model the tools, processes
and behaviors, and everyone else began to do the same, taking
an active role in continuing to build the wellness culture.
This had a pronounced positive impact throughout the organization.
- The participants used the Vision Process to accomplish
two main objectives: a) to remove any vestiges of significant
resistance; and b) to stimulate team motivation into an
aligned direction. This was accomplished from senior management
down through the effective use of a series of forward
focused questions in a face-to-face meeting format.
Learn more about the Pathways to
Leadership programs.
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Poor Morale