Authors: Henry Cloud
And the technique works not just on the negative side, but the positive side as wel . What helped me pul the plug with my problem employee was not only picturing the problems continuing, but also picturing the way that I wanted my business to be. I pictured what it would be like with someone in that position who was truly performing, how much better it would be. The more I pictured that, the more I saw it, the more I became determined to have what I wanted and the more I hated what I had. As Martin Luther King said, “I see a day . . .” That vision changed an entire nation and created a lot of endings to real y bad realities. Whether in smal matters or large ones, the method is the same.
So play the movie forward in both directions, negative and positive. Feel your vision, smel it, see it. See the reality that could be if you would only end what is. And see the reality of your future if you don’t. That wil get you moving. Also,
do this with your team.
Ask your team if they want to be where they are now a year from now or if they want a different reality. Then ask them what endings wil be necessary to bring that about.
Create “Ending Alliances”
The reality of human behavior is that we are affected by those we are near. Recent research shows that even in patterns such as weight gain, whom you hang around with wil affect you. If you have family or friends who are overweight, your chances of being overweight go up. If you live in a sober environment, you wil have less chance of relapse. If you are creating a corporate culture that values urgency, you wil move quickly to create endings that you need to create.
I see this in groups of leaders or in teams when I give them the assignment to figure out what endings each of them needs to create. When everyone believes in the urgency of needed endings, positive pressure to change gets created. The good, positive group pressure to get off the dime is strong, and it works. We need each other to create this kind of change. I just led an off-site session in which the guiding question I gave the clients was How wil you create “heat” around this table? A team that “feels the heat” puts positive pressure on one another to perform.
If you are leading a change movement in a company, you must form power al iances, or what are often termed “powerful coalitions,” people who wil be the influencers of change. Whether their influence comes from a position of authority or from personal respect that they have earned, these people wil keep the energy going to end what has been and create what is needed.
Recently I consulted with a CEO who wanted to drive change that had been lagging after many attempts; previous efforts had been delegated to one person, who had not gotten it done. We worked to get the power al iances together, the people who had influence throughout the organization, and created a structure in which they would have a lot of exposure, communication, and input to a lot of people. Their unity around the ending was contagious and became the group norm for the organization. For the first time, it became “not OK” to
not
be on board, whereas for the previous three years, being stal ed had been fine.
It often helps to delegate part of the urgency mission and message to subteams of two or even to individuals, then make them accountable to the group for doing their part each week or at certain intervals. That way, they al have to regularly answer for their responsibilities. They own it as part of the team and get team pressure to get their part done. Who wants to go to that meeting unprepared?
In your own life, you need the same kind of power. Ask yourself this question: who am I surrounding myself with, day to day? Those who support and create energy for change? Or those who are stuck in the comfort of what is? Whether you want to re-create a company, or lose a hundred pounds, whom you surround yourself with is going to be a key factor. Do not ignore this truth, or you are very likely to stay stuck.
One of my favorite stories comes from a group of women I was working with. One of them was having particular difficulty breaking up with a boyfriend who was not good for her in the long term. She knew that but was unable to break it off. When she did attempt to end it, she would miss him, long for him, idealize the good times, and always go back, thereby putting off the life she dreamed of for the comfort of the current one that was frequently dissatisfying. Often, after a breakup, he would cal her, and as they talked, she would remember his charming “good parts,” as she put it.
She would then long to be with him, he would invite her over, she would go, reconnect, stay the night, and hate herself the next day.
The group began to see this pattern over and over and started to exert good, positive pressure on her for an ending. They offered to be with her in the initial withdrawal stages. They confronted her with how she was settling for less than she wanted in a relationship. I could see the power of the al iance building. Then it happened.
She came to the group one day and told them that the night before, he had cal ed her and begun another charm offensive, and she gave in. He invited her over and she said she would go, as she was certain that “they could make it work this time.” He could be “so good,” as she put it. But then she said, something else happened:
“As soon as I hung up the phone, I could hear al of you in my head! Your voices were so loud!” Pointing around the circle to different women, she said, “I could hear you saying, ‘What are you thinking? He is just trying to use you again for sex! He won’t deliver on the relationship!’ And then you said, ‘Don’t give in to this again! He is not what you want!’ And you, ‘Why do you keep giving yourself to someone who is not the person you real y want?’
“As your voices got louder, I picked up the phone, cal ed him back, and said, ‘I am not coming.’ He tried to talk me into it, and I hung up as I said,
‘Don’t ever cal me again.’ It was your voices in my head that gave me the strength to do what I needed to do.”
From brokenhearted girlfriends to addicts to CEOs, we need and are influenced and strengthened by the voices around us. So here is your question:
Who are your change agents, either for yourself or your company, for the endings that you need to make happen?
Create vision
A few years ago, our family moved to a new home. My two daughters were five and seven at the time and loved the previous house. They had good friends in the old neighborhood, lots of great experiences, and loved their school; moving was the last thing they wanted to do. But it was a necessary ending that we needed to make, as we needed more space.
Consulting with the psychologist parent in me, I decided to begin the conversation with them when the idea first came up. “So, would you guys ever want to change houses? Maybe get one where you had your own playroom, or a flat yard where you could do a lot more fun stuff?” I asked, trying to sel a few of the benefits.
“No!” they said in unison. “Never! We love living here.” I was truly taken aback at the passion that they came at me with. I was glad that they loved their home, but this did not bode wel for our moving plans. I knew that it was not going to be an easy sel or an easy ending.
But then I had an idea. The new house was undergoing a total remodel and would be unlivable for many months. In that time period, there was enough room to do something sneaky. The new house, I knew, had a playhouse in the backyard, just perfect for them at their ages. So without tel ing them that they were moving, I just took them over there to “see a friend’s house,” and expose them to al the bennies, secretly.
When we went, I wandered around looking at al the construction and they immediately noticed the playhouse. They ran to it, went in it, and within minutes were taking snails into it, putting flowers in the window boxes, climbing on the roof, and doing a bunch of other things that showed real engagement. Then I told them we had to go, and they resisted, wanting to stay and play more. But I held firm, creating more desire for the forbidden fruit that I would one day want them to embrace.
Over the next few weeks, I continued to play this trick and even threw in a dip in the pool one time to seal the deal. Also, I took them upstairs to let them see the bedrooms and walk out on the balconies, and I employed other sneaky ways of getting them attached. I walked them to the park, which was right down the street, and talked about how close it was to that house. “Wow, wonder what it would be like to live that close to the park!” I said. “That must be real y cool to just be able to walk to the park from your house! Those people are so lucky.”
You get the picture. Gradual y, keeping them close to the motivating vision, letting them experience it, taste it, feel it, and be in it, they were closer to embracing an ending than they knew. When they got the news, “We are moving,” it was a shock, and they immediately protested. “No! We don’t want to move.”
But when they started to think about the playhouse, the pool, the park, their rooms, and so forth, the ending they were being asked to go through was not as impossible as it once would have been. They had “touched it,” and it was tangible enough to get them through the change. This is similar to when heads of sales must get their salespeople to experience new products, touch them and feel them before they can shift to sel ing them with urgency.
Whenever people have to do a necessary ending, they need sustainable motivation. They have got to have enough fire in their bel ies for the new to put an end to the old. Otherwise, when it gets tough, they want to go back and pul out of the change.
Remember Jack Welch’s strategy for pruning? If a business could not be number one or number two in its market, it would be fixed, shut down, or sold. That is a vision to work toward. In creating any kind of change, continual y holding up the picture of what you want it to be is essential to maintaining urgency. It creates cognitive dissonance with what is. It is the standard against which the current reality is judged, daily. So it keeps us moving toward the goal.
There is a good reason that direct-sales companies keep waving the sales prize before their salespeople. Or that the CEO overcommunicates the picture of what tomorrow is going to look like. Or that a woman keeps the Club Med bikini picture on the refrigerator, reminding her of the vacation that wil be a lot more fun after she loses thirty pounds. Kind of makes opening that refrigerator door a little harder.
Although the very word
vision
and the techniques of seeing the “good future” have been so talked about that they almost fal on deaf ears at times, that overuse has happened for a good reason. Human brains are designed to create what they see in the future. Our internal resources begin to align with that internal reality and create it. It is the reason that great golfers see the shot before they hit it, or NBA players see the bal going in the basket before they shoot it. It is the reason that CEOs cast the vision of what they want the company to look like and be over and over.
When people see it, they can create it. If it is communicated strongly enough and often enough, they almost cannot
not
create it!
But as it is overcommunicated, you also begin to realize that you can’t have that vision if the current realities and practices continue to exist. You have to end them. Therefore, vision empowers necessary endings. I can’t have B if I hang on to A. Somehow our conscious and unconscious forces work toward creating what we have envisioned. It has been proved over and over. The question Where do you picture yourself in five years? is more than an inquiry to find out more about a person. It may be diagnostic of where they wil actual y be.
So make it real. Write it down. Talk about it and create reminders in your personal life and your organization. Line your company’s wal s with pictures of the new reality. When you do that, the one they are living in every day won’t be as welcome anymore.
Set Deadlines
This is rocket science that is not rocket science—rocket science because it works for very esoteric reasons, but not, because it should be obvious.
Deadlines force endings when nothing else does. Ask a bankruptcy judge if they have any effect, or ask any CEO who has gone through a bankruptcy. Does your tax-return procrastination get weaker the closer it gets to April 15? You get the picture.
The rocket-science part involves the role of structure and the brain. We need structure to organize energy, contain it, and direct it toward an effect. It would be great if we al had the same level of self-discipline as some leaders, who create deadlines in their heads al the time. They live by them: “Today I have to get this or that done.” High-performers live by a sense of urgency, which is necessary for any performance to happen. Even the writing of this book happened because I created monthly deadlines for myself for a certain amount of words or chapters to be done by that month. Otherwise, it would never, ever have happened.
But in the areas where we find that harder to do, like creating some difficult or painful endings, we need external deadlines. We need to “do the ending by January 1, period.” Such a deadline forces urgency and gets us moving.
In other places, I have written about a friend who bought a company that he took from $25 mil ion in revenues to over $500 mil ion by an ending that he engineered as soon as he bought it. He ended 80 percent of the operations that the company was engaged in, because he thought the “real life” of the company was in about 20 percent of its operations. Although even the 80 percent was profitable, he saw the “best buds” in the 20
percent and pruned the rest. How?
He set a deadline for his management team
and told them that he wanted that 80 percent gone by January 1. In June of the previous year, he told them they had six months to get out of those businesses. They protested: “We wil lose money. We don’t have enough time to get the best price.” But he held firm.
Getting the best price for what you do not value is not the issue. Getting to what you
do
value is the issue. So
,
do it
,
no
matter what
,
by a certain date. Time is the most important issue.
Sometimes there is bleeding when you cut out a cancer.