Page 191 - Great Communication Secrets of Great Leaders

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MAKING CERTAIN THE MESSAGE STICKS
CHAPTER 11
IS THE MESSAGE STICKING?
How do you know when the message is getting through? It’s getting through
when the intent of the message is fulfilled! Sometimes it’s pretty simple to tell
this. For example, if you are the leader of a customer service department and
your call to action specifies that people answer the phone by the second ring,
you know that the message is getting through if people do this. If you are
involved with an organizational transformation that involves behavioral
change, that change will come slowly, possibly taking years.
As with all calls to action, however, the leader must ensure that people
have the tools and resources they need in order to perform. If you are asking
service technicians to fix a vehicle the first time it comes into the repair shop,
but you do not provide the right tools, then you are not following through.
Likewise, if an organizational transformation requires employees to take more
responsibility or exert front-line leadership, and your organizational hierarchy
prevents any sharing of authority, nothing will happen.
Rich Teerlink is candid about the challenges he and his team faced
throughout Harley-Davidson’s organizational transformation. His leadership
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team tied communications to the business process and by so doing was able to
gauge the results of communications in terms of the implementation and out-
come of business objectives. Again and again, there were snags over a variety
of different issues, including organizational systems, cultural values, and
especially compensation plans. The leadership had to persevere and to use
communications to drive the transformation home. Communications at
Harley was not simply telling people what to do, but, very importantly, asking
them for their ideas and creating a culture of learning in which best practices
could be shared among groups. Change is never easy. What can assist the
process and give it the impetus to succeed is a leader who is willing to com-
municate the goals and to listen to other ideas as the organization moves
slowly and steadily onward.

LIVE THE MESSAGE BY EXAMPLE

As a leader-communicator, it is imperative that you live your message, i.e.,
that you walk the talk. What can happen when leaders fail to perform in
accordance with their words can be disastrous. The sexual abuse scandal
that has swept through the Roman Catholic Church is a sad example of what
can happen when the values of the organization do not match the actions of
its members. Although cases of priestly pedophilia had been well docu-
mented for decades, the Catholic hierarchy, chiefly the bishops, took no