OVERCOMING EXECUTIVE BLAH BLAH
13. During the initial meetings, few people note the steps they need to take immediately
14. Words like ‘new,’ ‘faster,’ ‘better,’ ‘cheaper,’ ‘smarter’ are used without definitions or criteria that everyone can recite
15. After introducing the change, the leader doesn’t close with names, dates, and reassigned budgets
The two major causes of executive blah blah are: 1) the tough choices and the defining new actions have not been identified; 2) the tough choices and the defining new actions are not integral to the public message. Both kinds of oversight will defeat any serious change from taking hold.
The first step in a solution to overcome blah blah is to identify the tough choices that need to be implemented BEFORE crafting any message. Before executives can define it for others, they must define it for themselves. The point is not for leaders to get lost in the project management responsibilities of any change initiative but to ensure that the hard decisions behind the change have been wrestled with, made, and are being backed with conviction.
Before anyone should spend a moment on the wordsmithing of the public message, executives need to be able to answer these questions:
1. What exactly needs to stop/start/continue for the change to be successful?
2. How will we be measuring the progress of the change, both early and often?
3. How will we expose where it’s happening and where it’s not?
4. How will we recognize and reward those responsible for success?
5. How will we be ensuring that everyone understands what is to be different
6. How will we be planning, openly and inclusively, about how best to accomplish the new objectives?
7. How are we going to ensure that we stay aligned, focused, and motivated to persist day after day, and especially when it gets hard?
The next step to take to eliminate executive blah, blah is then a relatively straightforward one. The answers to the above questions need to be in the public message. All words need to be defined.
TESTING THE NEW MESSAGE
Finally, regardless of how we are able to de-blah blah a message, great progress will be made action mapping„ – completing a checklist of decisions and directions that guarantee clarity, focus and benchmarks to assess early and often if the ‘talk’ is being translated into ‘walk’, i.e., if the investment in old actions is being released, whether new actions are being taken and whether the new actions are producing desired results. Action mapping is designed to show how the desired results associated with then new direction will follow from behavioral changes people can recognize and drive.
