The Over-the-Top Management Team

I’ve worked on a lot of improvement projects over the years. Some were difficult from beginning to end. Others struggled because of technology, processes, budgets, schedules, or resistance to change.

And then there were a few where everything seemed to come together.

One of the easiest—and most successful—projects I ever worked on began with an owner making a statement to his employees that I probably would not recommend repeating today.

But there was absolutely no misunderstanding about whether the project had his support.

A Distribution Center That Needed to Change

The company was a smaller business owned by two brothers. One of the brothers was responsible for the distribution operation, and the distribution center needed a major update.

This wasn’t a minor adjustment. There would be new machinery, new processes, a redesigned workflow—the works.

Changes of that magnitude inevitably create uncertainty. Employees wonder what the new operation will mean for them. Will my job change? Will I be able to learn the new system? Will management really follow through?

And perhaps the question people are sometimes reluctant to ask:

Will I still have a job when this is finished?

In this case, the owner decided not to leave much room for speculation.

He met with the distribution employees and explained what was about to happen. Then he told them, very directly, that when the project was completed, approximately half of them would no longer be working in the distribution center.

The improvements would require fewer people. He also made it clear that resistance to the changes would not prevent the implementation.

Where possible, the company would try to move employees who were no longer needed in distribution into other areas of the business.

It was a remarkably direct conversation. Perhaps too direct by today’s standards.

But nobody walked out of that meeting wondering whether management was serious.

The Change Was Going to Happen

I’ve seen organizations announce major initiatives and then unintentionally communicate that everything is still negotiable.

Employees hear the announcement, and then they wait. They watch leadership.

Will the deadline move? Will a resistant manager get an exception? Will the difficult decision actually be made? Will management lose interest when implementation becomes uncomfortable?

People learn very quickly whether a change initiative is truly a decision or merely management’s current preference.

At this company, there was no ambiguity. The owner was involved. He understood the project, had communicated directly with his people, and had made it clear that the organization was moving forward.

That clarity changed the environment in which our work took place.

One of the Easiest Projects I Ever Worked On

The implementation itself wasn’t revolutionary. The processes and systems were similar to ones I had implemented for companies throughout the country.

We had good methodology. We understood the work. We knew how to implement the changes.

What was different was the degree of ownership from the top.

The project became one of the easiest implementations I ever worked on. We finished early, came in under budget, and the operation outperformed the results we had expected.

Those were the best results I had experienced from that type of implementation.

The methodology mattered. So did the equipment, the process design, and our team’s experience.

But none of those things fully explains why this particular project performed so well.

The leadership environment does.

Commitment Is Visible

Leadership commitment is one of those phrases that appears in almost every change-management presentation. Everyone agrees it’s important.

The problem is that organizations sometimes confuse saying the right things about a project with actually leading it.

Employees know the difference.

Commitment is visible. It shows up in where leaders spend their time and in the decisions they make when implementation becomes inconvenient. It shows up in whether resistant behavior is allowed to quietly undermine the work.

It also shows up in whether leaders understand enough about the initiative to explain why it matters—and whether the people at the top are willing to attach their own credibility to the outcome.

That owner certainly did.

Clarity Doesn’t Require Cruelty

There is one part of this story I would handle differently today.

I would not recommend walking into a meeting and casually telling half the room that they may be gone when the project is finished. Organizational change affects real people and real families. Leaders should communicate those consequences honestly and with appropriate care.

Directness and compassion aren’t opposites.

We can be clear without being callous.

But I also wouldn’t move so far toward comfortable language that nobody understands what is actually happening. False reassurance isn’t kindness.

If jobs will change, say so. If expectations are changing, explain them. If a decision has been made, don’t pretend it hasn’t.

And if leadership expects an initiative to succeed, leadership needs to demonstrate that expectation through more than words.

The Difference Leadership Makes

I’ve seen essentially the same systems produce very different results in different organizations.

That shouldn’t surprise us.

A methodology doesn’t implement itself. People do. And those people are constantly taking cues from leadership about how seriously they should take the work in front of them.

The two brothers who owned this company weren’t perfect leaders. None of us are. And I wouldn’t necessarily use every word from that employee meeting as a model for modern change communication.

But on one point, they left absolutely no doubt:

This change mattered, and leadership was fully committed to making it work.

The results reflected that commitment: early, under budget, and better performance than expected.

Sometimes we spend so much time looking for a better process that we overlook the environment in which we’re asking the process to succeed.

The process matters.

But leadership creates the conditions in which that process either has a chance—or doesn’t.