Leading Change - Be Aware of Overloading the Circuits
If I had a dollar for every time I saw organizational leaders during times of change, through task after task on top of people with full time jobs and brazenly announce "they can do more". Well, if I had that dollar for every time I'd be a wealthy man. Of course we all know the leaders at the top have the dollars and the folks down on the project are dieing a slow death trying to keep up with the overload.
Real change leaders; and real leaders as well, don't do the task overload routine. They are leaders and aren't afraid to make the tough calls and decide where to utilize their resources without blindly adding task after task to already overloaded people. I hear the naysayer's out there saying, "come on Ed, you have to challenge your people, you're soft". Well, I'm a former Marine sniper and it's now about being soft, it's about real leadership.
What's happening today doesn't need to happen if leaders just got it - and understood what they're doing. What they're doing is ignoring what pilots know, and that is task saturation. Military pilots especially will tell you about task saturation. When the pilot gets overloaded with 'tasks' they will in fact go done. I think the figures are 80% of all aircraft accidents, at least in the military, happen because of from what they call task saturation.
Most of you probably know, but pilots, amateur and professional, use checklists before and during flights and even have practiced them for various emergencies. The purpose of a checklist is to make the work they do into a routine task. It is organized and they are trained to use the checklist to make sure they do not suffer from task saturation. That means that the pilot doesn't get 'saturated' or overcome with too many tasks and take the plane down.
Well the same thing happens on change projects. Presidents, Vice Presidents, all the senior leaders want to be macho and issue their edicts from on high, mandating the troops just need to give 110%. That of course implies that you don't have a full time job now, so just suck it up and do all the new things this year long project implementation is going to require, plus your full time job. Leaders like this are leading from a position of power and not as a leader with personal power.
When they lead in this way they also imply, or sometimes say, that those who don't agree are a problem, they are soft and don't want to take a stand. In the past eight years I have worked seven or eight large change projects for organizations, and in all but one, maybe two cases did the leaders not confuse a power trip with leadership. They demand people take on more and more because they don't want to make the hard calls on the budget. They want their cake and eat it too. It doesn't work.
People in organizations all over this country and across the world suffer from task saturation. The plane the CEO is riding is going down, it's happening everywhere, and all the while the Emperor sits on high demanding more from the change leaders and wondering why they are failing. It doesn't have to be that way, that is, if you are a real leader. Make sure you don't overload your organizational circuits. Make sure you are well aware of task saturation. You can challenge people and not kill them at the same time.
Related Tags: leadership, change, change management, lead, managing change, leading change, change leadership
Ed Kugler has been living change since the jungles of Vietnam where he was a Marine Sniper for two-years in the Vietnam War. He came home to a country he hadn't left and began work as a mechanic and truck driver. Since then he has worked his way into the executive suite of Frito Lay, Pepsi Cola and Compaq Computer where he was Vice President of Worldwide Logistics, a position he achieved with no college degree. Ed left in 1997 to consult and write. He is the author of Dead Center - A Marine Sniper's Two Year Odyssey in the Vietnam War and five other books and counting. He regularly consults with some o the nations leading companies on organizational change and coaches individuals to make the most of their lives.
Ed is the father of three, grandfather to three and has been married to the same woman for 38 years and counting. http://www.nomorebs.com
http://www.edkugler.com
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