Your company is in a funk. The same ol’ same ol’ is not going to cut it. Things need to change.
Perhaps it isn’t a crisis situation. Maybe it is — like what I suspect Level 3 Communications is going through right now. In either case, it is not particularly comforting. You were part of the creating the current situation. So were your co-workers, and you might be very close to some of them. Certain decisions might be difficult and uncomfortable, as they will affect people’s jobs and career paths. “Ahhh,” you sigh, “maybe things will solve themselves if you just wait another month or two.”
I got together with a Level 3 friend the other day. I told him of an exercise I used recently with Envysion. It goes like this. Assume investors brought in a new CEO. During the first week, it is safe to say the CEO gets together one-on-one with members of the senior team, picking their brains about what needs to change. At the end of the week, he or she gives a presentation to the board on the immediate get-well plan.
What would the plan be? Almost guaranteed, you know the answer. The plan would point out what the entire executive team knows are obvious (and often embarrassing) problems. The get-well actions would be those that the current executive team could have largely derived on their own. Of course, much of the current team would be replaced because they didn’t do so. Said differently, “We need some new blood” would almost certainly be part of the plan. It will be easier for the new person as they were not part of how the company got itself to the state it is in nor does he or she have loyalty to the current team. Nonetheless, the actions would likely be largely the same.
If you think about from this perspective, it might help you do what needs to be done before someone else is asked to do it for you. Worse case, if you make the obvious (though perhaps uncomfortable) changes, a new CEO would need to do a lot more than pick the low hanging fruit.
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