Life coach - Step 67 of 100 - CHANGE - From who to how

To bring a change the mindset has to change. But even before the mindset we as the leaders have to change. Here I bring another difference between a manager and a leader - a manager manages based on the instructions given to him, a leader manages based on what is not given to him. To bring about a change the manager needs to become a leader, once the change is in place, the leader becomes a manager again.

The fact that a change is to be brought about means that there are either problems, if not problems there are opportunities to exploit and the third option could be that we need to do it to survive - say a mandated legislation or orders from top / external authorities that we have to abide to. Let us start with problems in this blog.

Typically the mindset is "who did this?". The battery of the vehicle broke down before it served its 2 year life cycle. Who was the driver of the vehicle? Why did he not take care of it? What happened to the inspections?

The first question should always be "How did this happen?" Col. Deshmukh used to keep the problem away from the doer. I was conducting exams for a promotion Cadre and the Adjutant gave me the question papers. I opened them in his office to count them and he flew into a rage saying that the papers were only to be opened in front of a committee / examination team. Now the exam would all have to be rescheduled and blah blah. Col Deskhmukh was the acting Commandant and the matter reached him within minutes.

His first question was "How did this happen"? The entire focus changed from who did it, to how did this happen. The next thing was " How do we fix it?" Can we tell the examination team that the papers were opened but have not left the office so no one has seen the questions? He got the Adjutant thinking as to was any harm done intentionally. If no harm was done, let life proceed as usual. The Adjutant got the team members, apprised them and they said that if none of the soliders taking the exam had seen the questions before the exam began, it was okay.

In consulting, often I have to change existing processes and procedures, make people stop what they are doing and make them do something new. To bring this change I often start at the mistakes. And the question is "How did this happen?". We need to separate the mistake from the owner to achieve two things

• Get to the root cause of the issue to prevent occurences in future
• Avoid putting the person on defensive whereby he would shut himself up to change

It is all about who to how