Leaders often face the dilemma of sticking to a failing plan or admitting they were wrong and pivoting. This episode tackles the challenge of changing course after setting goals and objectives. John will guide leaders on how they can overcome barriers to change, avoid failure and improve communication to help teams thrive.
Welcome fellow veterans. From the tip of the spear to in the rear with the gear, I went from active-duty Infantry to reserve-component logistician. I’m your host, CEO, entrepreneur, trial lawyer, and Lieutenant Colonel Retired, John Berry. The military lessons that I learned helped me grow an eight-figure business that has maintained consistent annual double-digit growth, landing on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in America every year for the past seven years, and has allowed me to continue to serve America’s heroes.
Don’t change, improve. Imagine after crafting a masterful plan and an even more astonishing presentation to your team, you set the course for the new year. But two months in, you realize that your objectives and your team incentives were all wrong. What do you do? Do you stay the course knowing that if you don’t pivot, the year will be a lost opportunity? Do you stay the course because you don’t want to admit that you were wrong? Well, better to admit you were wrong now than to let the team suffer from your failure later. But what about the team? Will they embrace changing course? No, they won’t. Teams do not embrace change.
And when the leader altars the plan, they often feel confused, uncertain, insecure, and in some cases, betrayed. You will never get buy-in from changing the plan. So how do you, as a leader, change course when you know most of your team fears change, but you as a leader know that if change outside your organization is happening faster than the change inside the organization, you will become obsolete. The answer is in how you frame the change. This is simple. Instead of using the word change, use the word improve. Everybody wants to improve and nobody wants to change. But don’t just talk about improvement. Show the improvement. Think, nobody wants a change that affects their annual income, but everybody wants an improvement that increases their annual income. Show the team how the improvement benefits them. Every company runs on metrics, whether they know it or not. You, as the leader, will find that certain metrics that mattered last year no longer move the needle this year. Sometimes you’ll have to tweak those metrics in the middle of the year for them to make sense. If you can show your team the benefit from the improvement, you’re much more likely to get buy-in than if you simply announced a change.
Ultimately, it’s not about the change, but how we communicate it. The change is likely going to come either from your failure, maybe an adequate plan, or an unknown variable, or a change in the industry. The origin of the change is irrelevant to your team. How they feel about the change and how it affects them is all that matters to your individual team members. It’s not that you as the leader, must get better at change or change management. The real skill that the leader must improve to effectuate change is communication. In most cases, the problem is not the change, but how the leader presents it. Remember the quote by Sir Edmund Hillary, It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves. It is not the change, but how we communicate the change and how we show our team that that change is really an improvement. Because as leaders, that’s what we do. We are here to improve to make them better, and to provide bigger and better futures for our teams.
After-Action Review. Number one, leaders drive change. Number two, when you must pivot, frame it as an improvement rather than a change. Number three, show the team how the improvement benefits the team and the individual.
Three down. Number one, change not handled delicately or communicated clearly will lead to feelings of betrayal. Number two, change is not optional. The entire team may not embrace it, but they all have to accept it. Or the foundation of the organization will crumble. Number three, as a leader, your ability to communicate effectively will either grow or destroy your organization. Continually seek to grow your communication skills.
Thank you for joining us today on Veteran Led, where we pursue our mission of promoting veteran leadership in business, strengthening the veteran community, and getting veterans all of the benefits that they earned. If you know a leader who should be on the Veteran Led podcast, report to our online community by searching @veteranled on your favorite social channels and posting in the comments. We want to hear how your military challenges prepared you to lead your industry or community, and we will let the world know. And of course, hit subscribe and join me next time on Veteran Led.
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