Everyone wants to progress, wants to be better and if one wants
to be better, then logically one wants to
change to become better. All rational human beings change if they see the
reason and benefit in it. Simon Sinek in his path breaking discovery has shared
with us the secret of world class marketing and it a single word “Why”, if we
share “Why” with people, they are willing to listen and ultimately change.
In the past one year, the organisations I have touched more
or less do not want to spend
time on sharing the reason or “Why” of change, but are more than willing to
spend million of rupees on deciding “What” to change and “How” to change. They
want to share the new direction, strategy and plans with people and expect them
to follow the same quickly, often wondering as to why others can not see the
reason for change as clearly as they can. We miss the point, as management we
have spent countless days to look at scenarios, mull them in our heads over and
over, looked at various perspectives, spent may be 2-3 months to arrive at that
crisp 1 pager explaining the strategy and plan. We are clear and our mind fails
to believe that others can not see what we are able to see, ‘it is not possible’
we think and yet others are not able to see things the way we are seeing, it is
all very ‘perplexing’ is what we think.
We fail to communicate the “Why”, the more we want to explain “What” the more
people want to know the “Why”, the forces are acting against one another and
since we are “in” the situation, we fail to see “Why”.
I have experienced the magic of people willing to walk the
hard path with you provided you make
them your partner in the hard path (and explain the “Why”). Please do not pretend
that you are leading but walk shoulder to shoulder with them.
Often management does
not explain the “Why” of change and expect people to walk along, they will, but
the minute something catches their fancy or they find the path Hard, they will
slip and walk off. Most of us in top management think it is a waste of time to
align people to the “Why”, we think it is the job of management to think and provide direction and job of employees to follow. We can not
be farther from reality, employees are rationale beings, explaining your rationale
helps people appreciate your point of view and once they see what you see, they
understand and then they trust. Once trust builds, one can move mountains,
literally.
Next time you want to start that change effort in your
company, start with the “Why” and be amazed with how quickly things gain
momentum.
