STRATEGIC MOVES

One of the women we interviewed likened taking on a new assignment to filling a leadership vacuum . That characterization may fit from the new leader's perspective. It probably misses the mark by a mile when it comes to the people who will end up reporting to her. There's no void where they are concerned . They have long memories. They know what worked in the past. Most have looked long and hard at what the appointment might mean for their careers or their daily routines at work. Their memory banks include leaders who encouraged them and those who stalled their progress.

Recollections of predecessors are particularly fresh. Whether team members rate that performance middling or superb, it is a tough act to follow. On one hand, people may be demoralized and hold out little hope that the situation can be retrieved. On the other, they may have so customized their expectations ”taking the predecessor's style as model ”that they really want a clone and business as usual.

Well, they won't be getting a clone, and neither the discouraged nor the skeptical can expect business as usual. You need your peers and colleagues on board. But how do you energize the resigned and the doubtful so that they work with you? What can you do to give the fence-sitters a push? And what do you do with the stubborn resisters after their probation period runs out? Four strategic moves can help you unify a team behind an agenda.

• Go on a listening tour: In the interdependent world of business today, few leaders elect to go it alone or issue orders by fiat. By listening closely to your team members, by being actively curious , you can discover their hopes as well as their fears. By listening closely to peers across the organization, you can draw out their perspectives. Attentive listening shows them that their opinions matter to you and can have value for the organization.

• Help solve problems: The changes that follow from a new appointment or a new agenda ripple through an organization. Give people tangible reasons to believe those changes will be positive by starting with their problems.

• Forge broad links: Peers can have real stakes in seeing your agenda succeed. They stand to gain if it moves forward or lose if it stalls. Alliances forged across the organization not only propel the agenda forward, they make team members feel less isolated.

• Create opportunities to learn: Change challenges adaptability. By expanding people's capabilities, finding where they can be successful and giving them the tools, you enable them not only to adapt to the new realities but to flourish there.

Civil War cavalry commanders are rumored to have followed an instructive maxim : "Feed your horses, feed your men, then feed yourself." Although perhaps apocryphal, it goes straight to the heart of the matter. It is hard to get through any battle ”in business or elsewhere ”unless the troops and the leaders are right there in the thick of it. Buy-in depends on recognizing these interdependencies ”linkages in work, in accountability, in rewards, in concerns and interests. June, a senior woman at Xerox, captures the loyalties that can be fostered when the contributions of people at all levels are respected.

I've known Ann Mulcahy for twenty years . She is absolutely amazing. She articulates the problem clearly ”walking around on the floor, talking to everyone. She's not a person who has a different persona depending on the audience. Ann articulates the situation ”warts and all. My job is to take that message to the operational level and to tap into the vested interest that everyone has in the company's success.

The connection that produces buy-in is not a superficial smoothing of discord or compliant peacemaking. It requires work to listen hard, work to respond to concerns creatively and still keep everyone on track. It requires work and not a little fortitude to make hard choices, particularly when they involve reassigning people.

Linda Green faced hard choices when she was recruited to be president of Clarendon Capital, a small Portland investment bank wholly owned by a large financial institution. She also took on the assignment with several liabilities. A banker with more than twenty-two years' tenure at BankOregon, she had been running specialized lending ” automotive, restaurants , and telecoms. She was what in the trade is called a "relationship banker." The portfolio at Clarendon Capital, however, was a mix of mid-market debt, buyout equity, and venture capital investments, and Linda knew virtually nothing about the venture side of the business.

Moreover, Clarendon Capital was in trouble. It had suffered significant losses in its venture and funds portfolios, and the IT and telecom investments were overleveraged. It was, as Linda remembers, a "double whammy." Linda did not want to be a "substitute teacher," cleaning up the balance sheet only to have someone else come in.

Linda did, however, know the chairman and vice chairman of the parent from her days at BankOregon. She respected them as people and as businessmen ”an important factor in her decision to accept the offer. "There had been," Linda says with measured understatement, "a dilution of credibility in terms of key managers at Clarendon Capital."

Although the Clarendon Capital group was small, it was divided into fiefdoms. Junior people felt "isolated in their silos , at the whim of personalities." The senior people had lost the board's confidence. No one was certain how long the doors would remain open .

Linda had to get the financial house in order. But she aimed to do more than rescue Clarendon Capital and reduce the risk level of its portfolios. Linda wanted to grow the company. Her people were the crucial determinant in whether that would happen. As she described her first year on the job ”the focus was people, people, people.

We will follow the strategic moves she makes to energize the group and bring people on board.

Go on a Listening Tour

It is standard fare these days for new leaders to start their tenure with "listening tours ." As one of the women put it at a recent conference: "You need to show up and listen." Teams expect it of a leader and of a woman. But listening tours are not just another item on a new leader's checklist ”a task that can be performed in perfunctory fashion and then crossed off. Listening tours are a time to get acquainted ”to find out what is on people's minds and to let them know what is on yours. Shortly after being appointed dean of Harvard Law School, Elena Kagan conducted long interviews with the eighty-one faculty members. The time commitment alone signaled her genuine interest in mutual discovery and set the tone for her leadership.

Listening tours encourage participation. Attentive, responsive listening goes a long way toward convincing people that you want them to do well and will help them adapt to the new realities. They begin to see points where the new agenda may align with their interests. But they won't get that far ”either with you or with your agenda ”if they sense that they are being manipulated. Nor will they bother to participate if the gesture comes across as a shallow attempt to conform to organizational niceties. "Making nice" is not a surrogate for connection, although it is often mistaken for one. A leading executive coach advises the "intimidating" women sent to her by their companies for counseling to "Listen Up Until You Want to Throw Up." ^[10] This advice denigrates the listening process and belittles the acuity of the very people that her clients want to engage.

Find Out What's on People's Minds. Most listening tours begin with one-on-one meetings with the key members in a team or unit. Just as you want a positive introduction when you take on a new role, subordinates want an opportunity to introduce themselves and get some of their issues on the table. Typically these individual meetings cover a range of topics that touch on the personal as well as the professional. One leader described her approach:

I asked three questions: First, tell me about you? Anything. Work, family, whatever. Second, what do you do here and how is it working? Third, what are you hoping for ”two years out, three years out, in ten years?

These one-on-one meetings are an occasion to get to know your people in multiple dimensions. They also help you understand the major issues in the group and begin a process of collaborative problem solving. Listening, you can take the group's collective pulse.

Cynthia, an engineer with an MBA, took over as vice president of engineering at a technology start-up when the current COO was promoted. Despite Cynthia's engineering background and experience, earning the respect and cooperation of the technical people was a challenge.

Cynthia's company supplied sophisticated Internet security systems. The firm had survived most of the fallout when the dot-com bubble burst, but Cynthia detected uneasiness in the labs and in the offices. "I met with every single person in the unit. I wanted to find out their concerns for the company and for themselves. I wanted to know what was worrying them." The technology slowdown was an obvious source of concern.

The individual engineers, the technical folks, felt marginalized. And particular teams felt marginalized as groups. Partly these feelings reflected a residue left by my predecessor. He was abrupt and made decisions by fiat and so the engineers felt that they had no say in their jobs. I listened to them with an eye to restructuring job assignments in ways that would make them feel that their skills were being used and make the entire enterprise more productive.

But Cynthia also found out that her staff had other concerns. As billable people in a volatile market, they were worried about that next project. Cynthia knew that she needed to find ways to remove this source of anxiety if she could. It was one of the first concerns she addressed.

In taking time to figure out what is on people's minds, you uncover information that enables you to shape your agenda, making some issues priorities and letting others wait for resolution. Dealing early on with what is on people's minds, not only do you signal your concern, you also make it more likely that you will be able to produce some small wins that mean a lot.

Take the Group Pulse. However important it is to find out what is on people's minds, these issues and concerns may be quite parochial. That is not a limitation per se, but a listening tour needs to uncover more about the business issues a new leader has been called in to work on. While there may be consistency across a set of individual stories, just listening to individuals may focus you too narrowly.

Taking the group pulse inevitably pushes the new leader to engage different team members in a group activity, be it a series of small, informal meetings or an off-site retreat. These events serve multiple purposes. They become places where concerns can be shared and debated. An interesting phenomenon can occur during this process. As people tell their stories and listen to others, they often come to see the situation in new ways. The new leader can build on that experience and help fashion an agenda that members can buy into. That is what Kate did when she took over an R&D support unit for a consumer products division when her company merged with another.

After meeting one-on-one with the seventy-five scientists and a large administrative staff, Kate organized an off-site retreat. With the help of a facilitator, Kate summarized for the group what she had learned from her one-on-one conversations.

The group confronted two major issues at the retreat. First, they wanted to craft a shared mission. Since the group was the product of the recent merger, finding an identity was critical. In the group session, members talked about being buffeted by the demands that other departments put on them. Working together, they came up with a team slogan ”Bringing Senses to the Table. This motto defined their work as providing product insights. Two aspects of Kate's approach were pivotal in enabling the group to reach this common place. She shared what she had discovered in her one-on-one interviews and then orchestrated a process that made it possible for individuals to talk about their concerns about the newly merged organization.

The second issue the group faced was gaining a sense of themselves as a unit and not as two competitive factions artificially thrown together by a merger. Each person in the group had taken a style assessment and an exploration of their differences was built into the retreat's structure. "We could talk about our style differences and wasn't it great that there was so much diversity in the group," Kate says. But it was through the process itself ”which put the group to work on its issues ”that they came to appreciate the strength of their diversity.

Exchanges like these provide a peculiar kind of safety net. They cut down on the uncertainty and ambiguity that arise whenever someone new takes over. In sharing ideas, both the benefits and the support implicit in the new agenda can take sharper definition.

Listen Outward. A listening tour would be limited indeed were a new leader to stop short and not seek out assessments of her group from other quarters of the organization. It is standard practice for a new leader to meet with external customers and clients in order to get a fix on the systemic problems that need to be addressed. But any group also has internal clients that command attention. Unless you listen to them as well, you cannot understand how your group is viewed within the organization at large. You also risk overlooking significant points of interdependence .

The nature of the organization you lead determines whom you consult and how critical that consultation is. For Eleanor, internal consultation was essential to her mandate when she was put in charge of information technology for a consortium of health care plans. Top management saw health insurance moving toward consumer-directed plans, and good systems were the cornerstone of the firm's ability to serve consumers individually rather than through an employer.

Eleanor initiated a series of meetings with key stakeholders ”her peers in other departments who used the services IT provided. These included vice presidents in sales and marketing and health care services.

They told me that we talk in a language that nobody outside IT understands. We overcomplicate things. They don't need all the bells and whistles. We're not very responsive ” especially to complaints when a system goes down or they're having trouble with some new software.

From inside IT things looked radically different.

The team was frustrated. Nobody listened to them or appreciated the work they did under considerable constraints. They had processes that they had inherited that didn't make any sense. People complained, but team members didn't feel empowered to suggest fixing anything.

The change agenda carved out a central role for IT as an enabling tool. Before Eleanor started talking to people, she worried about buy-in internally within IT. Her subsequent peregrinations told her that she would also need buy-in from her peers ”the consumers of IT's services ”to address the problems at the operational level.

Complex problems generally have complex sources. Attempts to fix them spill over in multiple directions. The more you know about those spillover effects, the better able you will be to anticipate them.

It is telling that Linda Green started at Clarendon Capital on December 17. Most people do not start new jobs on December 17. But Clarendon was regulated by the Federal Reserve, and the Fed audit was scheduled for January 29. "It was quite clear," Linda says, "that the sooner I got in the better. "

Many in the parent company were old BankOregon hands, and they welcomed Linda. They would say: "Oh, we knew you from before." "You have a great reputation." "This is a great place to work." The atmosphere within her group, however, was tense. It was generally acknowledged that the time was ripe for "the folks who got them into this mess to leave. The jobs of three and possibly four of the senior people were up for grabs."

Even with the holidays and the Fed audit, Linda spent an hour and a half with each person in the group.

• They were afraid. I wanted them to see that I had two interests at heart: their success and the unit's success. It was not hard for me to show them that we could align those interests so that we could create value between the two. I did this by helping them envision their futures in a revitalized investment bank. I told them that I was fully prepared to give them new responsibilities ”and would help them learn ”as we restored the bank's health and started growing again. Developing their skills was good for their careers and good for the bank.

By being open and transparent, Linda used these discussions to emphasize the change of regime . "The transition was going to be tough," she says. Management procedures needed to be improved, guidelines established, and underwriting criteria tightened. "The agenda would put an enormous administrative burden on everyone . "

Previously the senior people controlled individual fiefdoms. There was no cohesion as a group, no sense that the various functions were interdependent. Linda did not sugarcoat the work ahead. "Time out," she would say.

• All hands on deck. We have a lot of things to do. And we need people to jump in on an as-needed basis. If four financings are up for renewal or need add-ons, and all four belong to one person, everyone must help.

If members of the group saw a sudden expansion of their responsibilities, they also did not miss the benefits. Whereas earlier they might have been cordoned off in mid-market finance, now they would have opportunities to get involved in venture investments or leveraged buyouts.

• They felt good about that. Instead of thinking only about how they were doing, they started to think about how the group was doing. There was much more camaraderie. We were going in a new direction. We were not going to look back, but forward.

As Linda got acquainted with her team, she carefully balanced twin goals: she wanted her people to shine as individuals, to be successful in what they did, and she wanted to make Clarendon Capital the thriving enterprise she believed it could be. She saw no dichotomy between the two, but rather synergy.

Help Solve Problems

As you listen and make connections, you gather information and shape perceptions of you as a leader and of your agenda. The responsive, appreciative inquiry that characterizes effective listening tours creates an atmosphere in which team members can begin to consider the possibilities ahead for them. Nothing immobilizes people faster than uncertainty. Anxiety can be tempered by listening attentively to concerns and sharing expectations and plans. It will not, however, disappear.

Talk is not enough. Actions need to be taken. People have to see you doing the things that promise change for the better. Obviously, you need to start correcting the issues you were brought in to address ”and are committed to resolving. If you move too slowly, you raise questions about your competence. Moving too quickly and exercising a heavy hand, however, can be equally risky. It is a fine line.

In the early stages of a new assignment, you want to create the conditions that make it possible for those you lead to work effectively and move the new agenda forward. Those conditions may involve individuals and their deployment ”ensuring that the right people are in the right jobs. They may need to be created at the group level ”implementing enabling structures so that the group becomes more productive. Or they may have to be introduced at a systemic level to remove barriers to high-level performance.

Fix Individual Problems. At the top of any new leader's priorities is human capital. Practical considerations focus a new leader's immediate attention on staff matters. Not only do you want to get things moving, you want to show people right off that you are committed to helping them be more satisfied in their jobs and more productive in their work. During listening tours, new leaders find out about individual interests, preferences, skills, and experience. They can put those discoveries to good use by aligning assignments more closely to individual objectives while at the same time deploying team members in ways that benefit the entire organization. Cynthia, the Internet security firm vice president we mentioned earlier, took what she learned and began to address the concerns she heard expressed about uneven deployment. Based on individual interests, she restructured some jobs.

I respected their career plans ”who wanted to move into which areas. I tried to get to know them as individuals and position them so that they had greater job satisfaction. This shift led to increased efficiencies. Dealing with the unpredictability of the work, however, was more difficult.

Demand for engineering services could be erratic. Sometimes people were overloaded, but at other times they had little to do. Under pressure to cut costs, Cynthia could have downsized the engineering group and used contract workers to cope with the ebb and flow of the workload. But Cynthia regarded that option as a last resort. The economy would turn around soon, she believed, and she wanted to keep her highly talented pool of engineers. The challenge was to find ways to use the engineers that created value.

Cynthia knew from her interviews with key stakeholders that potential internal demand for the engineers' expertise existed elsewhere in the organization. Departments like procurement had been waiting a long time to upgrade their systems.

I would invite ”not assign ” people to take on certain projects that would benefit other groups in the company. They could turn them down if they wanted to. So the product groups began to see us as a resource that could help them. The engineers also began to feel that I was looking out for their interests. They were busy and they were adding new applications to their resumes.

When a new leader solves problems at the individual level, she helps people move beyond their immediate personal fears or worries. She signals that their interests and concerns are being credited and acted on. Although it is possible to think about fixing individual problems narrowly and consider only the impact the solutions have on individuals, the women leaders we interviewed did not frame their approach that way. Certainly they were willing to coach and spend time with their people. But in dealing with individual problems they looked for synergistic solutions that worked to the benefit of the organization as well as the individual.

Address Group Problems. Group problems are those that interfere with the group's productivity. Addressing these issues can mean removing barriers that hamper performance. Rules or procedures may no longer fit the realities of how the group does its work. The group may need greater insulation from outside interference so that its members can focus and not be continually distracted. ^[11]

Margot, newly appointed director for one of her company's software products, knew she would need to take action to salvage her team and its product. When she took on the role, people warned her that the unit was "a sinking ship." Due to cutbacks during the slowdown in technology sales, the unit's staff was overworked. They were not meeting delivery deadlines and customers were complaining that the product had too many bugs. Margot knew that if they did not deal with the quality control issue, there was no way she could get the unit back on track. She assigned a test team to investigate the bugs . She wanted to know exactly where they originated in the production sequence.

The test team's report was illuminating. Half the bugs turned out not to be bugs. The breakdown was not in programming or production. It was in a poorly written user 's manual that confused customers. Prior to her arrival, her team had already spent over nine hundred hours dealing with the wrong problem. By quickly addressing the group problem, Margot freed up her team's time and enabled them to begin work on the software's next release.

Sometimes, a group problem has more to do with morale and a sense of defeat than with a faulty system or procedure. Leah was recruited from the California state university system to help a Midwest college get its physical therapy program through accreditation. The appointment carried a deanship, but by and large the faculty were skeptical. Having been turned down before by the accreditation board, they were convinced they could not succeed.

Leah tried to show them ways that they could succeed, that it was possible. She brought in course syllabi from other institutions and across a wide range of programs. Leah knew the faculty's materials suffered by comparison, but she wanted to provide a model for them to emulate. With Leah's encouragement, the faculty began to talk about the weaknesses in their materials and how they could develop a curriculum that would meet the accreditation criteria. This positive attitude leached into other program areas and within a short period the program had passed its first milestone with the accreditation agency.

Addressing group problems means creating the structural and psychological conditions for the group to do its work most productively.

Engage Systemic Problems. In identifying and dealing with group problems, your focus remains on the group's internal workings ”with those issues that individuals or the group as a whole single out as concerns. Systemic challenges, by contrast, you discover through interactions with people outside your group ”the other stakeholders who have been part of your listening tour. Engaging systemic issues can be a major undertaking, requiring a thorough cultural assessment and reorientation. But systemic problems can also be addressed more modestly through incremental changes. It is this modest course that Eleanor, the head of the IT in the health care field, pursued once she discovered the negative light in which key stakeholders viewed the IT department.

Eleanor recognized that IT's internal clients did not value the work her group was doing. In turn, their constant complaints frustrated her group. Eleanor knew that she had to break this cycle if she was going to turn things around. At an off-site meeting, she relayed to her group what she had learned from key stakeholders on her listening tour. There was, they decided, a disconnect between the group and its major internal customers. Relationships were not being managed well. Working with her senior team, Eleanor realigned job responsibilities to create project managers. These managers would be the primary interface between IT and its users. Collectively, the group agreed to streamline forms and communicate in simple English about the existing systems. Eleanor also appointed a small group to investigate which technologies were too cumbersome for users.

The group really appreciated what we did. At last, they could see some progress. First, I appealed to their prime frustrations and tried to alleviate those. But beyond that we focused on how we could add value to the organization by tying IT's services back to the critical things the organization was doing.

Tackle the Difficult Problems. When you're new to a role, the choices on how to proceed can be overwhelming. One alternative, which can also be a trap, is to wait and see how things play out. But a problem can be so pressing that a new leader's credibility rides on dealing with it immediately. Often that problem is someone who is not performing. Making determinations about performance can be tricky. Is the person coachable or not? But in other cases there is no debate. Everybody is aware of the problem, even if they keep their opinions to themselves. The situation is like the proverbial elephant in the room that people see but do not mention. Taking on the elephant's organizational equivalent can be a critical moment in the process of creating buy-in. That is what Beverly faced when she became CFO of a venture capital firm.

When Beverly interviewed for the job, people told her about the controller. Then during her listening tour she discovered just how chaotic the accounting function was. Reports were late and filled with errors. "His office," Beverly recalls, "was a cave, filled with papers, piles and piles of faxes and spreadsheets." The clutter was symptomatic of the general, disorganized malaise affecting the whole finance function.

Having identified the problem, Beverly also knew she needed to tread carefully. The culture was one that valued loyalty. People were not likely to look favorably on a peremptory firing as her first act. But Beverly also knew she had to act. At first, she tried to work with the controller.

I started to push. In the beginning we met once a week, then three times a week and then twice a day. The more the controller withheld information, the harder I pushed . One day after a particularly difficult meeting, he resigned. This pattern had a history. He had resigned three times before and the partners had begged him to return. The controller was surprised when I accepted his resignation . Everyone else was relieved.

The practical benefits of confronting difficult problems early are obvious. Less apparent is the symbolic value. However hard it may be to deal with a poor performer, for example, the decision sends a pointed message: You can make the tough choices needed to maintain morale and move everyone forward. For a woman, moments that call for decisive action can be pivotal. Others watch and wait. Unless ” and until ” you move to resolve difficult issues, they will continue to question your ability to take charge.

Linda Green underscored her commitment to champion not only the group but also its individual members by going to bat for one of the people top management had slated for termination. After talking with him, she decided the decision would be a mistake. Linda noticed that he was not a good advocate for himself. He needed someone to repair the damage that was accruing to him from the three other senior executives who were culpable. She sat down with him and laid all the cards on the table.

• Look, here's what might have happened ; here's why it didn't. But there are things that we ”you and I ”need to do together to change the perceptions of [top management]. They don't have confidence in you right now. He was very, very happy that I was honest with him.

That connecting move brought the unit together. Linda had no Machiavellian intent. She thought it was "the right thing to do." But in standing up for this man and not going along with top management's initial recommendation, she gave the members of her group concrete evidence that she saw them as individuals and valued what they could contribute. Moreover, Linda left no room for her responsiveness to be interpreted as weakness. She let two other senior people go, although the separations were amicable. And, with the Fed audit looming, she laid out an exacting schedule.

Forge Broad Links

Your team and direct reports are not the only ones whose buy-in you need. The objectives of peers across the organization may be intertwined with your agenda. When you enlist them as allies , you build momentum behind your efforts. The quotient of positive energy increases with each additional level of support. People notice the growing consensus. As they talk to one another, their enthusiasm for obstruction can dwindle rapidly .

Winning coalitions require strategic and political thought to assemble. But their impact on a team can be pronounced. They provide psychological reassurance and a telling safety net for your group. Subordinates quickly realize that they are not hanging out there all alone with you.

Offer Help. The quickest, and often the surest, way to get support from peers is to show that the changes you are implementing will make their lives easier. And the simplest way to demonstrate that improvement is by offering help ”letting them experience firsthand the effects of the changes. Even natural competitors think twice about blocking efforts that add to their bottom line and make them look good with customers and bosses alike. As others in the organization notice the benefits, you can bring them on board as well. ^[12]

Stacy was tapped to head up a newly formed unit at her financial services firm. Stacy's handpicked team was all on board. Resistance from other sectors, however, was pronounced. The unit, a response to the chairman's emphasis on "relationship marketing," targeted the firm's top seventy clients worldwide. It was no surprise to Stacy that its creation sparked pervasive turf battles . "People in sales considered , say, Janus their property. But Janus also happened to be one of our top seventy accounts."

Rather than accept the inevitability of the conflict and battle with sales, Stacy decided to help them. Their end objectives were the same, serving the firm's clients and growing the business.

My teams did a lot of research on our clients. This was research that sales couldn't or just didn't do. We analyzed our clients' strategies, competitive positions , and cultures. Sales would claim they knew the key decision makers , for example. But often their information or sources were just plain wrong ”not senior enough. That misinformation can lead to big mistakes in the investment community and leave you spinning your wheels.

Stacy did not hoard this information to gain a competitive edge on sales. She shared it. Within a short time key people in sales began to depend on the analysis that Stacy's group provided. She no longer had to "twist arms" to be included in strategic planning meetings, and her team felt appreciated rather than beleaguered. News of the success spread by word of mouth around the company. Members of Stacy's group were ecstatic. They had, after all, managed to be in the right place at the right time.

Resistance to a change agenda springs not just from within but outside. Other groups within the organization can view the contemplated changes as threats to their objectives. Offers to help go a long way toward dispelling these fears. When the help actually makes people's lives easier and furthers their mission, resistance can abruptly dissipate. Former antagonists become surprising allies.

Enlist Help. Change agendas are difficult to implement alone. They often cut across functional disciplines. They usually impact long-standing loyalties and accepted practices. On only a promise of improvement and a better future, they ask people to step outside their comfort zones.

Even when new leaders recognize the complexity of the task, they can resist seeking help. They view it as a sign of weakness. That reasoning is based on a faulty premise . You are asking people to work with you, not to come up with solutions for you. Once others are engaged, they bring different perspectives and resources to bear. And as they become involved, they begin to own the problem with you and to have a stake in its resolution.

Laura, a consultant whose clients included major players in the health care and pharmaceutical industries, was drafted by the CEO of a premier biotech firm to head its business development wing. "In biotech, business development is synonymous with mergers and acquisitions or divestitures," she says. One operational unit caught her immediate attention. It was small but losing money rapidly. The CEO wanted to keep the division; everyone else wanted to sell it outright and get rid of the problem. The CEO asked Laura to draft a strategic plan. He liked what he saw and promptly appointed her division president so that she could implement the plan. "That is every former consultant's nightmare ”having to execute," Laura observes wryly. It is also the primary task of new leaders.

Laura's plan called for selling three of the division's businesses and closing one plant. An outright divestiture would have been easier. The company had never had a layoff . Skepticism multiplied within the division. Everyone on the inside doubted Laura's plan could succeed. The economies of scale argued against it. The division had always been a "stepchild with never enough resources or guidance."

Laura appealed to the head of human resources for help. Loyalty was an integral part of the company's culture and a big selling point in attracting talent. They could not let the plant closing and the layoffs undermine those bonds . Laura also turned to the chief financial officer. The plan projected marked productivity gains. Some of those cost savings could be anticipated and applied to relieve laid-off workers. The chief financial officer created room in the budget for transition costs. The head of human resources worked with Laura to make the closing seamless. As a result of their help, Laura was able to offer displaced workers placement services and generous separation benefits. "Sixty of my sixty-six employees found comparable work in a month or so," Laura says.

The level of cooperation Laura mustered in support of the division impressed her remaining employees. They began to think her plan just might work. Within three years, the division was in the black with bright prospects ahead.

Requests for help are not a sign of weakness. They respond to a simple reality. Organizations today are characterized by a high degree of interdependence. Changes in one area spill over into another. Requests for help underscore these interlocking interests. Responsibility for execution remains with the new leader. But she can broaden ownership of the underlying problems by soliciting help from other quarters.

Raise the Stakes. If you have dipped into any of the standard texts on negotiation, you will be familiar with the concept of BATNA ”the acronym for the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. ^[13] The construct forces negotiators to come to grips with a single question: What will I be forced to do if we cannot reach agreement? Its underlying principle derives from a simple observation: As the alternatives available to one party improve, the other side's bargaining position worsens. In other words, it is sometimes necessary to raise the stakes and force others to recognize that, however costly the changes may be, the alternatives are worse .

Even though an institution's survival may depend on implementing tough measures, resistance can persist. People zero in on the impact on their own parochial interests. Losing sight of the big picture, they assume that if they stand firm, they will prevail. In cases like these, it is essential to get people to question their myopia , to show that there are no viable alternatives to agreement.

Frances stepped into the leadership vacuum at a major teaching hospital when the board rejected a "slash and burn" approach and fired the CEO and the COO. "When dollars are in crisis," Frances says, "rifts come out in the open." As the red ink continued to flow, friction mounted between the board, the doctors , and the administration. On an operating budget of $350 million, the hospital lost $73 million and had to dip into endowment . "The bond-rating agencies," Frances says, "were on our backs."

Political infighting took everyone's attention away from the severity of the problems. Frances, now COO, and the new CEO functioned as a team. To their respective constituents they delivered a single message. Work with us or the hospital will fail. When challenged, they asked for other ideas; none were forthcoming. The CEO, a physician , directed his attention to the medical staff; Frances concentrated on the administrative side. Both brought pressure to bear on individual board members, stressing that they needed to focus on governance, not day-to-day operations.

They raised the stakes for each constituent group by altering structural elements to make cost control more compelling. All the key players ”except Frances and the CEO ”would have dual reporting relationships. The medical staff was accountable to Frances as well as the CEO and key administrators to the CEO, not just to Frances. People could no longer argue that "decisions were being made behind closed doors or that individuals were cutting deals in private." With decision making out in the open, the leadership team made obstruction more costly. As more and more people accepted the new structure as an appropriate framework for addressing the financial crisis, life became increasingly uncomfortable for the holdouts.

The potential benefits of a change agenda do not always persuade people. Individuals remain convinced that the upside does not outweigh the personal costs to them. A new leader can force recalcitrants to reevaluate this equation by raising the stakes. Each escalation in the price attached to continued opposition clarifies the potential damage to individual careers and to the organization. As one of our commentators pointed out: "People generally rise to the occasion. They want to do the right thing. If they don't, you want them to leave."

Join Forces. Peers can be drafted to lend specific expertise when your agenda dovetails with their interests or they hope to accumulate political capital to use in the future. These are the allies you target in requests for help. Other peers are ripe to tap for more active roles. Your agenda directly impacts their performance. When support comes from multiple directions, you have the makings of a "winning coalition." Tamara created such a coalition by joining forces with marketing and sales to bolster a fledgling initiative.

In response to growing pressures to provide greater opportunities for women and people of color in management, Tamara was pulled out of marketing to spearhead a diversity effort. Creative programs that her team initiated, like internships for minorities, began to show results. Success reached a tipping point, however, and human resources began to feel threatened. They viewed recruitment as their prerogative.

Tamara was convinced that the program's benefits would ripple throughout the organization and stretch well beyond the parochial concerns of human resources. She turned to her former colleagues in marketing. "Changes in our consumer profiles and the political pressures made diversity a hot button for them," Tamara says. Marketing was a "powerhouse" in Tamara's retail operation. The executive vice president threw his weight behind Tamara's effort and enlisted the support of another member of the executive committee. The head of sales immediately understood the boost that the effort would give to his training programs. Together, the two recommended that Tamara report directly to the executive committee.

Not only did this intercession spare members of Tamara's team the stress of having HR constantly looking over their shoulders, it increased their exposure to key players in the organization and brought the effort a visibility Tamara could not have claimed on her own. With the key support of the executive vice president, HR people reconsidered their stance. Now they wanted to be on board as well.

Alliances like these build momentum behind an agenda. They prevent blockers from gaining traction and underscore the importance of the effort to the wider organization.

• As CEO, Linda Green was in a strong position to bring people on board. A major selling point, Linda believed, was the parent company's commitment to her unit. She brought in the chairman and vice chairman to reiterate their support and then articulated the business case to members of her group. She also worked closely with human resources and the department soon became an ally. With HR's help, she was able to back up her words with policies and changes in job titles. These steps convinced her team members that she was serious about their development. When she started to hand out assignments in areas where team members did not customarily work, they had additional proof that they would no longer be isolated in their former silos.

• Linda needed support in the broader community as well. She enlisted the media as an ally. At every occasion, she agreed to be interviewed and directed the talk to the traction they were gaining and the investments they were making in their current portfolio of companies. When the local business press ran stories about deals that were in the works, skeptics, both inside and outside the bank, stopped talking about when the bank was going to close its doors and started talking about its rapid recovery.

Create Opportunities to Learn

Members of your team have mixed motives. However much they want to advance the group's objectives, they also want to further their own careers. Expectations can be spelled out. But to secure buy-in, the talk must be followed up with action. To participate fully in the change agenda, team members need to be invited to take part in the process. When their contributions are appreciated, they are more likely to make them generously. When their opinions are solicited, their perspectives can add important dimensions to the group's efforts. When mistakes are analyzed, not to place blame but to avoid them in the future, everyone learns. When consequences are collectively weighed, group consensus emerges. Creating buy-in, in other words, is a campaign ”one that takes advantage of opportunities as they arise and turns even mistakes into learning experiences.

Open Dialogue. Just as feedback mechanisms must be worked out with key backers, opportunities for open dialogue need to be structured for subordinates and peers as well. However pressing the day-to-day crises , there is a pragmatic reason to carve out room and time for these opportunities. Free but disciplined exchanges bring doubts out into the open where they can be discussed and resolved, not left to fester. But open dialogue can create a forum for more than dispelling fears.

Inclusiveness draws everyone into the decision-making process. As team members are encouraged to contribute, they have the chance not only to put in their own two cents but to build on their colleagues' ideas. The solution becomes a shared solution, not an imposed one. As active participants , team members stop viewing the changes contemplated as threats and see change as a process that can be managed collectively ”with everyone having a contribution to make to its success.

Janet used open dialogue to move her group beyond a crisis mode to a place where they could work together to fix the underlying problems that precipitated the crisis.

An information technology company had looked outside its ranks to recruit Janet. Several major contracts were, in her words, "on life support." It was her job to take over the department and deliver the systems to their customers. "The spirit of disaster can be a bonding agent," Janet says. But that glue is temporary. "What do you do when the crisis passes ? Some fundamental changes had to be made in the way we responded to our customers."

Janet used the crisis as a springboard to discuss her agenda for change. "We needed to take apart the process and we needed to do that as a group." Janet challenged her team to come up with "quality improvement programs." No element in the process was too inconsequential to attract attention in the discussions. "Often it is the little things that drive a client or customer nuts." Gradually, by sharing ideas and critiquing them, the group came up with an early warning program. They turned the collective effort into a feedback loop by asking customers to vet the program against their notions of " platinum service." It was, Janet says, a learning experience for everyone.

The early warning experiment was so successful that Janet's group exported it company-wide. "Anyone, any time, can now go online and get a color-coded reading on any engagement: red, yellow, green, or blue. If there is an operations problem, the project automatically goes to red."

Team members are far more likely to get behind an agenda if they have some say in its implementation. As open and disciplined dialogue sharpens their understanding of the reasons driving the changes, they begin to share their perspectives on how best to achieve the results desired. This active participation not only increases group cohesion, it adds value. The thorough vetting actually improves the results.

Leverage Mistakes. Time after time, our commentators returned to a common theme: To motivate and keep talented people, they had to provide opportunities for them to stretch. Work had to be structured as an experience where people could learn, one where they could constantly expand the personal resources they would need to adapt to a competitive and rapidly changing environment. Many of the women we talked to honed their group's adaptive skills by leading members through a thoughtful and collective examination of experiments that had gone awry in the past. They mined earlier mistakes for lessons about the future.

When, for example, Hope was given responsibility for launching a major new product, she anticipated problems. It was common knowledge that a competitor had a similar product in development. The sales force pressed for delivery. The product promised to fill a major gap in their offerings. Market analysis supported their optimistic forecasts. By the time Hope came on board, however, the picture had changed. The competitor had beaten them to market.

Hope negotiated with her boss and others in the marketing function to abandon the product before it went from prototype to production and costs escalated. Despite her logical and well-grounded arguments, they remained committed to production. They believed the market could support two competing products and that the introduction would round out their line. Hope's team, heavily invested in the product's development, wholeheartedly supported the decision.

Hope found herself in the unenviable position of launching a product she was convinced would fail. Whatever she did had considerable risk attached. She decided her best course was to help the group learn from its mistakes if the product did, in fact, fail. Throughout the introduction, she captured the decision-making process and tracked the losses. At critical junctures, she convened the group to review options. She always had options to propose. Rather than flaunting her knowledge ” saying she'd told them so ”she gave them choices so that they could make a midcourse correction without losing face. Eventually the data became so compelling that they decided to abandon the project.

People can get defensive when mistakes are put on the table. Hope took deliberate steps to prevent that from happening. Although she was on record as opposing the launch, she presented her ideas in a way that focused everyone on the realities of a rapidly changing market and what they could do in the future to adapt more quickly to altered circumstances. In high-risk environments, people stumble. To convert those missteps to learning experiences, you have to focus not on the who but on the why. Everyone must understand that finger-pointing is not the objective of the exercise.

Take Chances. When researchers went looking for the habits of visionary companies, they turned up some surprising results. For example, 3M had no master plan, little structure, and no charismatic leader. Instead, the company had developed a culture where smart people were not afraid "to try a lot of stuff and keep what works." ^[14] Coming into a visible and demanding assignment, you have to be prepared to take calculated risks ”on people and on ideas. Otherwise you remain captive to the status quo ”and that usually needs to be changed.

When Christine was promoted to head marketing for a software firm, she brought a lot of management skill to the table ” but not much technical expertise. "My forte is handling people, not bytes," she says. Christine believed top-line sales could experience double-digit growth, but only if the sales effort underwent radical reorganization. In the current model, the account executive controlled all the client contact. As client problems and technology became ever more complex, that model was breaking down.

Christine put together an experimental team with senior salespeople and technical people. The sales organization was skeptical and secretly predicted the experiment would fail. Instead, the new teams worked.

The technical people loved it. They actually got to see the client. The clients loved it because they got a better sense of the value-added in the company's products. And sales loved it, of course, because it was easier to close the deal.

Christine took a chance on an idea. Rearranging the sales teams, she thought, would force members of her team ”the technical experts and sales staff ”to reframe the way they looked at the sales process. She also took a chance on her people. The technical contingent had never made sales calls. They saw the new teams as a vote of confidence in them personally and as a vindication of their work.

To capitalize on opportunities you sometimes have to take a chance and precipitate them. This is not a recommendation to try any novel approach that might shake things up or give untested people blanket responsibilities. The risks must be calculated. But a small win from a bet with good odds can provide the results and the encouragement to your team that you need to get bigger things rolling. And if you fail, you need to be prepared to have a safety net ready for the people who took the risk with you. Without one, you'll get few volunteers the next time.

Walk Through the Consequences. Action may have its costs. It unsettles the status quo. But the price exacted by inaction can be even steeper. If team members need to understand the benefits of taking action, they must also be made aware of the consequences of doing nothing ”of just muddling along with things as they are. This perspective can help team members reframe the way they view your agenda. Inaction is no longer so appealing when it endangers future prospects or inhibits growth.

Diane's construction and real-estate development company was at a major turning point. The firm could resist the pressure to expand and return to a manageable and comfortable scale. Or it could break with the past and adapt to the demands of growth.

Diane had been recruited by the CEO to fill a newly created position ”vice president for administration. Her mission was to introduce systems that supported the firm's growth trajectory. The rest of the senior management team liked the idea of growth well enough, but they did not warm up to the idea that growth demanded thorough revisions in the way they conducted business.

Rather than paint a cosmic picture of the consequences of inaction, Diane broke down her change agenda into component parts . Focusing attention on specific areas, she walked people through the likely outcome of continuing the status quo. She started with simple items like vacation time. When the company was small, everyone could take as much vacation time as they wanted and still get paid. It was common knowledge that they would pitch in when projects heated up. That informal system had broken down. Monies allocated to vacation were out of control as a percentage of gross revenues . The numbers Diane presented were a wake-up call for her peers. They had no idea that vacation time was taking such a huge cut out of profits.

Diane then took up the consequences of inaction in areas of greater resistance. She had incorporated overhead controls into her business plan, the first ever formally articulated at the firm. Previously bids would go out on the basis of back-of-the-envelope numbers. As her fellow executives juggled more and more projects, could they realistically expect to keep track of the profit levels? Without systems in place to monitor work in progress and overhead burden, they would only be guessing at the profit at any given point in the construction process. By the time they realized a project was in trouble, it would be too late.

Unless the firm implemented proper controls and systems, any efforts to grow top-line revenues would be hobbled. Her peers could opt for growth and change or they could maintain the comfortable status quo. They could not have it both ways.

New leaders trying to build support behind a change agenda can underscore the obvious benefits ”the opportunities that will be created for individuals and for the organization. But they must also make one additional argument: Not taking action can do real damage. To fully appreciate the demands and possibilities of a change agenda, peers and subordinates must be aware of more than the benefits of taking action. They also have to understand the consequences of pursuing business as usual.

Linda Green did not have to emphasize the importance of making change at Clarendon Capital. If business proceeded as usual, the investment bank would go out of business. Although the scenario was crystal clear to her, she spelled it out for her team.

Linda challenged her team to take hold of their future. They could turn around the operation. Firmly convinced, she shared the reasons behind her conviction . They had made mistakes in the past. They could learn from them and from each other. Dismantling the interoffice fiefdoms, she opened channels of communication and created opportunities for her team members to grow. As Linda negotiated buy-in, she simultaneously became both encouraging coach and disciplined enforcer of rigorous standards.

"The chairman was not afraid to allow me to make the decisions on which companies we would support," Linda says. That message sent a positive signal to her team. They saw that she was willing to stand up and support their decisions. But Linda also pushed the parent company in areas that brought immediate benefits to the group. All these moves ”some little, some more consequential ”showed Linda's team that she cared about them as individuals. When executives departed, she moved offices around. She made sure that someone with an internal office got an office with a window.

As Linda perused the group's accomplishments, she made adjustments in the gradings so that the titles made sense. "That was terrific ," she says, "because people finally had titles that matched their responsibilities and helped their interactions on the outside." She also handed out promotions where they were merited.

These moves resonated with the group. Internal space allocations she could do on her own. But she had to get approval for any promotions. Everyone in the unit knew that she had gone to bat for them when the changes in titles and the promotions started to come through.

Even though it was standard policy within the parent, the Clarendon Capital team had never had systematic evaluations. So Linda introduced a system, of individual goal planning. It was her way of communicating: "We are a unit; we are moving forward; I want to show you a career path ." These review sessions gave Linda the opportunity to praise and to coach.

• Here's what you are good at; here's what you need to work on. Let's talk about how to get you better. My suggestions for focus might be something like, You know exactly what you are doing, but your presentations don't showcase your ideas as well as they might. How might you get people more involved?

Linda explicitly asked for help. She was unfamiliar with the lingo of venture capital, but to learn more of the venture world she did not seek advice from, the most senior team member on the venture side. She turned to its most junior partner. "Here's what I don't know and I need to know about this. Will you help me to learn?" Linda was open about her gaps. She was equally candid about her expertise ”coming up with creative yet realistic solutions.

• Help me understand the difference in the venture world between average anti-dilution and simple ratcheting, and I'll help you understand how we are going to work through this mess. People were thrilled that I admitted what I didn't know. But I was also warning them not to judge me as an idiot. You can ask for help, but you also must show where you are strong.

One of the critical changes Linda Green made was to introduce a long- term compensation plan for her team. This effort contributed to the rapid buy-in she negotiated for her agenda. Previously the lion's share of benefits went to three people. Are my people going to work long hours to turn the unit around only to enrich the top two or three people? she asked. Linda designed and got approval for a plan that included everyone ”even the most junior loan officer. But Linda also shifted the plan's payout. Half the benefits would vest over four years. The rest of the payout would come in year seven or eight. Linda was putting her own compensation on the line and making a substantial investment in the unit's success.

Any leader taking on a visible and demanding assignment needs to make things happen. People have to see results. Those results do not come about by accident . To be implemented effectively, a change agenda must have broad support. No matter how much backing a change agenda enjoys at the top, team members have to be brought on board. Their buy-in must be negotiated. They have a lot at risk when any new leader takes over. If expectations must be clearly communicated, so must the benefits of the contemplated changes. But talk is not enough. People need to see the words backed up with action. If they are going to be held accountable for results, they should have some say in the process of getting there. Opening a dialogue unveils the concerns about the impending changes, but it can also surface some surprising and valuable suggestions. Motivation increases when people see the possibilities for personal and professional growth. A cohesive team is the best thing going for a new leader, but it takes work to get there.

^[10] Jean Hollands, Same Game, Different Rules .

^[11] Deborah Ancona's research ("Outward Bound") indicates that the people who lead the most successful groups are the ones who manage the boundaries best.

^[12] David Lax and James Sebenius, "Thinking Coalitionally." In these "winning coalitions" momentum gathers with the addition of each ally until, as the saying goes, "resistance is futile."

^[13] For more on BATNA, see Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton, Getting to Yes .

^[14] Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, Built to Last .