Page 208 - Just Promoted A 12 Month Road Map for Success in Your New Leadership Role

From Resistance to Renewal 193

Organizations with unhealthy cultures know it. The managers who are
working long hours to pick up the slack left by those under them are resent-
ful. Ambitious mid- and lower-level managers are concerned about the orga-
nization’s health because their livelihoods depend on it—they have tuition,
mortgages, and bills to pay.
Find these people. Build around them. Hire people who will support a new
culture. You may have to weed out a lot of the old guard before the culture
can change.

3. Cultures Are Powerful

People are capable of visioning and molding the cultures of which they are a
part just as they are capable of being shaped by that culture. Often during the
early phase of a leader’s transition, the prevailing feeling of the organization
is that problems will continue, that things really can’t change. This sense of
powerlessness is often found at all levels in the organization. A corollary is an
individual’s feeling that “others within the organization are better able to
improve or effect change and renewal.” It is common to hear a middle man-
agement group say that if improvements are to occur, then senior manage-
ment has the power to make it happen. These same senior executives are
frequently heard bemoaning their inability to get those below them—the
employees, first-line supervisors, and middle managers—on board. After all,
they reason, this is where the work is really done. Certainly, middle and first-
line management is where the people are who can make ideas succeed or fail.
The employees, on the other hand, who have much more influence and
power than they typically recognize, look upward and say, “That’s their job.
They set the rules, and they have the clout.” The prevailing sense is that the
power and responsibility lie elsewhere and that others are responsible for suc-
cess. Some use this as a weapon to avoid responsibility and place the blame
elsewhere. As Janet, an experienced manager, would often tell her bosses, “You
people had better . . ., somebody had better . . ., nobody seems to . . ., some-
body ought to . . .,” as if everything that needed improving were someone
else’s responsibility.
In reality, power rests within all of the groups working together to synergize
talent and energy with the goal of becoming stronger and better. Excellent lead-
ers at every level of the organization fail to accept “that’s the way things are here”
or “that’s the way it’s always been” as the norm. They are able to identify and
reverse the forces that resist positive movement and involvement.