Leading Change from the Middle: A Practical Guide to Building Extraordinary Capabilities

6. How Do Kurt's and Stephen's Journeys End?

Success in building new capabilities depends in part on customizing a midlevel leader’s approach to each distinct category of stakeholder. That means Kurt and Stephen should engage their superordinates differently from their subordinates. But are there times when they can use the same strategy for all stakeholders and times when they must customize to each category or even each person ? Also, how does engaging one group of stakeholders affect the way you engage another group? Leading at the Crossroads of Change offers a set of approaches collectively known as ABBA that will help to answer these questions . The components of ABBA align with each type of stakeholder . The name is an acronym for the individual approaches: Agree-in, Bee-in, Buy-in, and Allow-in (see figure 1-2). Each approach provides communications, strategies, tactics, and sequencing of actions for leading change among stakeholders— activities collectively referred to as CoSTS. Some of these approaches focus more on communications and sequencing while others emphasize strategies or tactics. To illustrate how they operate , I return again to the contexts in which Kurt and Stephen found themselves and explain what they might have done to lead change. 44 Leadership Approaches to Each Category of Stakeholders FOUR 2522-0-book Nickerson_nickerson 3/11/14 3:11 PM Page 44 What Kurt and Stephen actually did and whether their change efforts were successful are disclosed later in the book. Agree-in The first and vital phase of any project consists of achieving the “Agree-in” of superordinates, in other words, of ensuring that superordinates agree with your game plan for leading change. The central objective is to gain information and commitment from superordinates that will make it easier to lead the other three categories of stakeholders. The Agree-in approach is tailored to the midlevel leader’s superordinates through a series of conversations and questions designed to —Explore the sources and nuances of timing and objectives. —Discover the stakeholder landscape. —Investigate superordinate role and support. —Secure resource support. —Coordinate ongoing communications. The following paragraphs present five groups of questions to help guide these conversations. The groups are not mutually exclusive , and, in practice, questions in one group often blend into another. Nor should they be considered the best sequence of questions . Instead, the five groups should be treated as useful touchstones to be drawn upon for shaping and guiding the conversations with superordinates. 1. Timing and Objectives An easy way to begin a conversation with your boss is to explore the project’s timing and objectives, for by then a completion date probably has already been established. That date may have been set by your manager, but other factors from elsewhere in the organization that you may not know about can affect and may even drive LEADERSHIP APPROACHES TO EACH CATEGORY 45 2522-0-book Nickerson_nickerson 3/11/14 3:11 PM Page 45 the targeted date. By asking about and seeking an understanding of the factors behind this date, you can monitor them as well as make appropriate adjustments to your plan as surprises unfold. If, for instance, these other factors were to change over time, you might have to accelerate your change efforts or, conversely, might gain more breathing room to implement change. You might also be able to influence these factors and thereby ease the pressures they impose on you. For instance, if your deadline is being driven by other projects elsewhere in the organization, which might be the case for Kurt, then perhaps you could find a beneficial way to relax this constraint and give your project more time. Unless you understand why your manager chose the target completion date, you will be less able to manage your boss’s expectations satisfactorily or to influence the factors behind your target completion date. The objectives of delivering a new capability may initially seem straightforward and clear, but a few probing questions may reveal that they are far more nuanced. The all-important factors of timing , budget, and resources are likely to be easily specified, so you need to push beyond these preliminaries. For example, it may be more difficult to determine how your manager’s performance is going to be evaluated on the basis of your leadership. Some questions to ask here include the following: —How can your change effort create goodwill throughout the organization, or how might goodwill be destroyed? —What other leaders in the organization might congratulate...