Barking Up a Dead Horse – You can’t just WILL yourself or your people to change

As I begin the pre-promotion for my book (available in 3 weeks), I am reminded of the misguided ways professionals try to get themselves and others to CHANGE. Most people I meet are hungry to get new results, make more sales, lose weight, better prioritize or stay focused on high payoff tasks.

As you read new books and see speakers and attend trainings, remember that access to and processing information can be helpful, but is limited in its ability to generate sustainable change and quantum leaps in results. I believe most well intended efforts at sales and business communication training are destined for mediocre results at best; a complete waste of time and money at worst.

As you are working to get different results or to get your team to be more effective at their jobs, especially in the area of new business development, keep in mind that in order to create real, sustainable change in individual or organizational results, you must:

• Re-think and rebuild the foundation of all sales-related Thinking, Language, and Processes. You can’t just work on the process side of things, you have to also look at your language (i.e.: how you TALK about your value) and your THINKING (i.e.: how you think about yourself and your company value).

• Integrate a new approach slowly and consistently over a period of time. Be patient. To make sustainable changes in people’s thinking and your culture, it will take ONE YEAR.

• Meet as a management/sales team 1-2x per month focused on a new approach to new business development. Ensure that each person is accountable to specific actions. Make real-time, situational discussion before/after big meetings & calls a priority.

• Ensure you have hands-on participation and support from key leadership. They must be willing to actively participate or any changes you make will be not be sustainable.
  

Be realistic with yourself and your team when you are trying to get different results and make a change. Most people over-promise and get way too excited too early. Many others don’t accept responsibility, and often are always searching for the next quick fix or new thing. Any of this ring true for you?

“When you pull back the curtains you discover the “truth” and realize, as did the characters in Oz, that corporate success springs from the willingness of an organization’s people to embrace accountability. Too often, however, companies employ the latest management program only to abandon it when an even more up to the minute new program comes along. …Moving from one illusion of what it takes to achieve organizational effectiveness to another, executives never stop long enough to discover the truth. In reality when you strip away all the trappings, gimmicks, tricks, techniques, methods and philosophies of the latest management “fads” you find them all, albeit awkwardly, striving to accomplish the same thing: to produce greater accountability for results… the essence of organizational success will always be found in the accountable actions and attitudes of individuals.”

— Roger Connors, Tom Smith, Craig Hickman, The Oz Principle

I wish you continued abundance.

Tom

Monday, October 29, 2007  | Permalink |  Comments (0)