Create Momentum

Stopping and turning set up the transformation; restarting the engines gets the organization moving again, but in a new direction. Just as in starting up a new business, the leader’s job is to get the flywheels spinning— slowly at first, then faster. To do this, leaders must create organizational momentum; this is a sense within the enterprise that the force behind the initiative is growing and that progress is accelerating. Leaders create momentum by orchestrating a continuing stream of meaningful wins. When I say meaningful, I mean wins that count for something.

You’ll want to kick off small, doable activities all over the organization to get things moving again. While training and setting organizational structure are important, these are not enough. You’ll want to focus on a pipeline of visible outputs, if not outcomes. Some are in the marketplace. Look at the timeline in Exhibit 1.9 in Chapter 1. NS&I’s provider started immediately to introduce new products that customers would buy. This was a tangible accomplishment that marked a clear departure from the organization’s track record.

Skip Stitt, Deputy Mayor of Indianapolis under Stephen Goldsmith,^[3] emphasizes this leadership approach: ‘‘It is important to point out the people who will have their streets paved for the first time in twenty-five years because the process of managed competition generated savings that the city could reinvest. It is critical to identify the neighborhoods where a crime problem exists and then commit to hire additional police officers for those neighborhoods using the managed competition savings. When you are able to juxtapose the real winners and the people who believe— sometimes wrongly—that they are losers as a result of the reforms, the arguments get easier. We didn’t just say, ‘We want to privatize the wastewater treatment facility; what do you think?’ Instead we said, ‘We want to put the wastewater treatment facility through a managed competition process that protects both the environment and the public workers so that we can avoid a 30 percent rate increase for our poorest citizens; what do you think?’ That’s a totally different question. Not surprisingly, you get totally different answers because of how you phrase the question.’’

This kind of achievement also lays the groundwork for a stream of future wins. Launching a new product is an output of the new organization, but increasing revenues and profits by selling the product is an out- come. Starting with its first launch, NS&I could begin to build momentum by tracking the sales from new products.

You’ll want to rely on your partner for help in creating momentum. As employees move into their new roles, their supervisors will introduce them to new practices and expectations. Whether this means hiring new workers, giving existing workers new tasks, establishing new ways of doing old tasks, or simply setting new goals and performance measures, workers in critical processes will be taking up their responsibilities with a fresh agenda. As they master new behaviors, they’ll shake down the work processes and rebuild valuable organizational routines.

For example, John Fleming, the Deputy Minister of the Ontario Ministry of Community and Social Services, talks enthusiastically about the impact of working with the motivated and disciplined staff of a large outsourcing company. In this case, the provider’s fee for a particular piece of work was based solely on the documented savings it could generate. Of course, these savings were critical for the Ministry as well. Fleming remarks enthusiastically:

We learned a whole new definition of the word drive from [our provider]. We’ve learned about discipline, planning, risk assessment, and hard driving project management.

For example, we had performance measures to tell us what we were getting out of the initiative, and we weren’t getting there. Our partner drove us to ask, ‘‘Why is that?’’ and ‘‘What do we need to do to make it happen?’’ It was all about discipline, management, and finding incentives.

Fleming easily shares the credit with his provider because there was plenty to go around. Only six weeks after transitioning to the new process, his organization had generated CAN$35 million in savings, and was on track to bank CAN$200 million per year.

Be wary of picking off a few quick wins at the beginning of the transformational initiative without thinking through what comes next. You won’t get momentum if demonstrable progress ramps up, but peters out quickly.

^[3]I use a simple but powerful paradigm for change: stop–turn–restart. Unlike the classical Kurt Lewin model—unfreeze-move-refreeze—this recognizes explicitly that organizations are bodies in motion.