- Managers leading transformational change projects need to be willing to be "politically incorrect" and unreasonable to fully realize the intended benefits of a project.
- Consultants often only deliver 80% of what is needed before the project budget runs out, focusing on tangible early deliverables rather than intangible late-stage work that provides real value.
- The project sponsor needs to push back and demand the full 100% be delivered, even as fatigue sets in, to avoid settling for an adequate rather than exceptional outcome. Being unwilling to compromise is critical to the project's success.
2.
Leadership of transformational change has to be one of the most difficult disciplines a manager can
master. For mine, the biggest hurdle is the capacity of managers to be unreasonable for a sustained
amount of time.
“If you argue with a fool, they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience” ‐ anon
Having worked in the discipline of change for over twenty years I have learnt a couple of things.
80% is frequently considered good enough
Consultants need to forced out of their comfort zones
Sponsorship is a misunderstood role
A project is always stronger when there is a person who is willing to be politically incorrect.
As a consultant it is not difficult to lead the thinking at a client site. This is almost what you get paid
for. But despite all the intellectual property a consulting firm has in the ‘cupboard’, the thought
leadership provided by a consultant is frequently no better than the sum of their experiences. And
because the client does not really know better, this leadership is treated as appropriate for the
project at hand.
The frequently used consulting approach is to rely on experience and the deliverables previously
prepared for somebody else on a different project. This material gets reworked, refreshed, re‐
presented and re‐invoiced. Nothing fundamentally wrong with this as it is part of the value that
consultants offer.
At this point in the project the client is impressed. They have a concept deliverable they can review
and critique. The relationship is working well. But here’s the problem. The clients thinking becomes
constrained by the tabled deliverable. They start to critique what’s there. The far more powerful
critique of ‘whats not there’ is often missed.
Then the client is faced with a problem. How do they tell the consultant what they have produced is
just rubbish. Not only is it rubbish, but they don’t want to pay for it either. Managers tend to be
diplomatic and in the intimacy of a consulting engagement they don’t want to fracture the
relationship. So they ask the consultant for changes and refinements and so start down the journey
of accepting 80% of what they really wanted in the first place.
When the consultant runs up against a client who knows their own mind and who has a clear picture
of the deliverable, then the consultant is forced to lift their game. No longer can they provide clever
ideas on PowerPoint that could mean more than one thing depending on how the conversation
goes.
But to find a client who knows their own mind is rare. Sure, every manager will say – I am my own
person. This is true at a private or small group level, but less so in the public forum of meetings and