Читать книгу Stacking the Deck - Pottruck David S. - Страница 8

Most organizations' processes and culture are structured for predictability, reliability, control, and risk minimization. Breakthrough change is the polar opposite. It is unpredictable and favors responsiveness to new realities over control and staying the course. Breakthrough change is inherently risky and goes against every instinct the leaders of the company have developed over the course of their careers. Is it any wonder, then, that employees often resist breakthrough change – even in companies whose leaders say it's exactly what they need?

Every business is filled with people who depend heavily on procedures continuing “as they have always been.” That's what “expertise” is; you spend 10, 15, or even 20 years doing something a certain way and therefore become an expert in it. Your knowledge of the way things have always been done is what gives you value as an employee. So when some brand-new executive comes in and tells you everything is about to change – but it's going to be great and you should greet it with open arms – how would you feel?

If you answered “pretty darn nervous,” you're not alone, or irrational. People's emotional responses to a specific change initiative can be unpredictable and very powerful. Leaders must find ways to help people see the need for change and then inspire them to move toward it with confidence and urgency. This is a daunting struggle and one that is not explored deeply enough in most books on leading or managing change. Stacking the Deck explains not just the what of change but the how.

The nine-step Stacking the Deck process is designed to mitigate the risks that come with change by having you take concrete steps to increase your chances of success. This preparation does not make the change less bold – and it doesn't guarantee success. What it does do is create an advantage (or more accurately, a series of advantages). These steps – culled from my experience, tested in practice, shared, and refined – provide a guide to preparing and planning so that your change initiative, and your team, have the best possible shot at succeeding. The Stacking the Deck process allows you to take on big, transformative change with increasing confidence and momentum because you know that you have a proven approach going in.

I've seen successes and I've seen failures. The failures were not because the proposed change was toxic or wrongheaded, and not because the effort was inadequate. Instead, these failures were often rooted in an inadequate understanding of how truly difficult it is to overcome resistance, to deal with uncertainty, to respond to new facts, and to execute the myriad details necessary for success.

You may know the phrase “stacking the deck” to mean preparing a deck of playing cards so that you will almost certainly win the game rather than rely on chance. This is what I was thinking of when I coined the phrase in reference to leading breakthrough change – except that the Stacking the Deck process is not designed to cheat other players. It implies instead that thinking through and preparing for all the steps and processes we will need to undertake vastly increases our chances of success.

Stacking the Deck distills the useful techniques and processes I have learned throughout my career into a series of logical and sequential steps for leading breakthrough change. Understanding and following these steps – and reading about my own experiences and those of the leaders I've interviewed – will enable you to avoid many decades of trial-and-error that we have worked through. You will learn practical, relevant ways to deal with change and succeed, without experiencing the risks and the mistakes that were required to amass this knowledge.