Leading Change - I'm Feeling Better, Now that I've Given Up All Hope

"I'm feeling a lot better now that I've given up all hope."

That humorous quote came from one of my lieutenant's. He was reporting on the morning change update by my boss. Our company had been working on change forever. Unfortunately, it was coming off like Alfred E. Newman once said, "Just because everything is different doesn't mean anything changed." We were burning cash and not a single thing was really happening.

At the time we were working for Houston's other rocket, Compaq. We were changing a lot just by virtue of our growth. We were growing at about a 40% rate our first two years with the company so that alone was a blur. On top of that the head of operations was 'driving change' and the whole thing became a comical episode of mismanagement.

I didn't go to the morning meeting, I thought they'd just be reviewing how far we were off track so why waste my morning. I mean this project was so far gone Spiderman wasn't going to be saving this day. But to everyone's surprise there was an announcement to be made. Yet another group of consultants were now taking over the failing project.

So get this ... the project started with Anderson, now Accenture after they wiped the egg off their face at Enron. After them came the vaunted McKinsey. They rode into town with a busload of kids after the sharp guys made the sale. You gotta' give it to them for efficiency though. After they unloaded the kids they used that bus to backhaul the cash they were carrying out of the place. But in spite of the big guys, still nothing was, well, different. But the new announcement in the meeting would surely change all of that. We'll need a drum roll please, this is too good. Yet, another new consulting outfit, this time from Vegas. We'd never heard of these guys before, which honestly could have been a good thing.

One thing you must remember as a change leader. Every time you change leadership on the project, be it a consulting house as in this example or an individual, you are tossing gas on the fire of cynicism. Everyone loses hope like my guy did. You just can't do it. If something forces you to make changes, then communicate it and the reasons why or you lose.

What drove my guy to come out of there and mumble, "I'm feeling a lot better now that I've given up all hope?"

Well, the new consulting guys opened the meeting and wanted to prove that the days of McKinsey's nonsense were over.

The guy said, "You will never see us using overheads or Power Point."

That proved to be true. They whipped out brown butcher paper and covered the walls and began immediately recreating the wheel we'd just been riding on for months. They were killing trees with brown butcher paper for months to come. That was different, but nothing else was, nothing changed.

I'll bet you can hear the blub, blub, blub of the water leaking in your project boat right now. Yep, you're right. That ship went down.

Keep steady leadership and you'll do your part to keep cynicism at bay.

Ed Kugler

Ed Kugler has been living change since the jungles of Vietnam where he was a Marine Sniper for two-years in the Vietnam War. He came home to a country he hadn't left and began work as a mechanic and truck driver. Since then he has worked his way into the executive suite of Frito Lay, Pepsi Cola and Compaq Computer where he was Vice President of Worldwide Logistics, a position he achieved with no college degree. Ed left in 1997 to consult and write. He is the author of Dead Center - A Marine Sniper's Two Year Odyssey in the Vietnam War and five other books and counting. He regularly consults with some o the nations leading companies on organizational change and coaches individuals to make the most of their lives. Ed is the father of three, grandfather to three and has been married to the same woman for 38 years and counting.