Leadership in times of dramatic changing business conditions
02/10/10 02:44 PM Filed in: Changing
Businesses Environments | #in
I
don't think that you'll get an argument from any
executive when you say that a lot of businesses
are in turmoil right now. Consumers have
permanently changed their relationships with
brands and marketers are scrambling to do
anything to try and retain customers including
deploying social media without having firm
analytics or a strategy in place.
Helping senior managers swim through this thick stew of challenges is a perennial problem that has become more acute for many organizations over the last year. The credit crunch and global economic slowdown didn’t just cause the unraveling of many business models. They also unsettled the assumptions and confidence of many senior managers. Mopping up the collateral damage in the executive suite is now a mission-critical task for many CEOs and is likely to remain one even when business conditions begin to recover.
In times of rapid change, when the actions that used to lead to success don’t any more, even strong marketing executives can experience intense, unproductive levels of fear caused by threats to their identity, their reputations, their social standing, and even their basic survival needs of a job and a paycheck. Ironically, leaders with the strongest track records are often more susceptible to fear during tumultuous periods because they have less experience facing adversity than their colleagues with more checkered pasts do.
It more important to understand, however, that the option of doing nothing is no longer an option. If you stand still or get into an analysis paralysis mode you risk losing customers and sales. Having months worth of meeting with endless Power Points on deploying a social media strategy tells your customers and prospects that you're not interested in talking with them right now. If you decide to launch a social media program to support your brand or company don't expect to get it right the first or even second time. It takes time to learn how to listen again and engagement is not something that a lot of customers give you easily.
By far the biggest challenge is to get the CEO to issue his/her vision and have B level executives execute the CEO's vision throughout the organization. People love to talk about change but when it comes to actually doing they usually have very little to do with actually getting people comfortable with a changing environment.
If you don't change now you risk having change forced upon you later on through job cuts, new organizational structures or worse. Time to embrace change and make change a priority before it's too late.
Helping senior managers swim through this thick stew of challenges is a perennial problem that has become more acute for many organizations over the last year. The credit crunch and global economic slowdown didn’t just cause the unraveling of many business models. They also unsettled the assumptions and confidence of many senior managers. Mopping up the collateral damage in the executive suite is now a mission-critical task for many CEOs and is likely to remain one even when business conditions begin to recover.
Should we or shouldn't we do it ?
In times of rapid change, when the actions that used to lead to success don’t any more, even strong marketing executives can experience intense, unproductive levels of fear caused by threats to their identity, their reputations, their social standing, and even their basic survival needs of a job and a paycheck. Ironically, leaders with the strongest track records are often more susceptible to fear during tumultuous periods because they have less experience facing adversity than their colleagues with more checkered pasts do.
It more important to understand, however, that the option of doing nothing is no longer an option. If you stand still or get into an analysis paralysis mode you risk losing customers and sales. Having months worth of meeting with endless Power Points on deploying a social media strategy tells your customers and prospects that you're not interested in talking with them right now. If you decide to launch a social media program to support your brand or company don't expect to get it right the first or even second time. It takes time to learn how to listen again and engagement is not something that a lot of customers give you easily.
By far the biggest challenge is to get the CEO to issue his/her vision and have B level executives execute the CEO's vision throughout the organization. People love to talk about change but when it comes to actually doing they usually have very little to do with actually getting people comfortable with a changing environment.
If you don't change now you risk having change forced upon you later on through job cuts, new organizational structures or worse. Time to embrace change and make change a priority before it's too late.
