Lasting Change Begins with the Right Mindset
A mindset principle is the underlying framework that informs our thoughts, behaviors, and responses to various situations.
The concept of mindset principles was popularized by psychologist Carol Dweck in her book “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.” She identified two main types: A “Fixed Mindset,” which is attributed to people who believe that their abilities are static and cannot be changed in any meaningful way. They often avoid challenges, give up easily, and view effort as pointless.
A “Growth Mindset” is associated with people who believe that they can improve their abilities through hard work and dedication. They embrace challenges, persist in the face of setbacks, and see effort as the path to mastery. They learn from criticism and find lessons and inspiration in the success of others. Many mindset theorists believe that a person can develop a Growth Mindset with hard work, careful study, and plenty of self-awareness.
Those frameworks are helpful for examining and shifting your approach to life, but it may also be necessary to identify specific mental frameworks that can lead to success in a business transformation. In my book, Results Not Reports, I identify mindset principles for each stage of the improvement cycle.
1. To Achieve and Maintain Superior Results, Create an Environment for Success.
Leaders must integrate the dynamic management of process, performance, and people: process to maximize productive time, performance to align operations with financial projections, and people to develop behaviors and skills that best serve the company.
2. To Assess Opportunity, Find the Gaps.
Performance gaps represent recoverable opportunities, but can be hidden in normal financial and operational reporting. Gaps can creep into the system due to faulty assumptions, process constraints, outdated planning parameters, and outcome variability. Learning to identify where gaps commonly exist can help you to identify and improve performance.
3. To Create a Results Strategy, Cash the Check.
At the heart of this mindset is a single question that should be answered thoughtfully and often: How can you convert potential improvement into measurable, tangible results? To achieve real financial gains from operational improvement requires making decisions and taking actions that will impact the underlying profit drivers of the business. Understanding and communicating what decisions and what actions will be required, well in advance, is critical to ensure your savings are real.
4. To Improve Processes, Increase Wrench Time.
Managers manage people, salespeople sell, designers design things, and mechanics make your machines work. People can spend a lot of time doing things that don’t add value and don’t use the skills they’ve learned, often through no fault of their own. To boost productivity, make sure mechanics are able to spend as much time as possible with a wrench in hand. The same goes for all other positions on your roster.
5. To Align Performance Systems, Synchronize Leadership.
Each level of the organization manages different aspects of the performance system. Senior leaders tend to deal with longer-range planning of resources that are built around how revenue and costs flow through the business. Middle-level managers take these financial guidelines and build out midterm resource plans. The front line manages the activities needed to deliver a product or service. Synchronizing leadership is necessary to integrated performance systems, which provide a vital tool for aligning an organization.
6. To Develop People, Develop Dynamic Management.
Managers may not produce your goods or services, but they play an active role in their outcomes. Think of a Hollywood film director. While the writers, actors, editors, and camera crews make up the most obvious roles in making the movie, the director plays a significant role in the movie’s outcome. They coordinate, provide expectations, coach, correct, and influence the environment to achieve a finished product. This dynamic, ongoing management is as important to the success of a movie as any actor’s performance. The same holds true in business.
7. To Focus the Effort, Build Ownership.
The success of a change initiative requires ownership from affected leaders and managers. Managers in the areas being changed must believe they can improve, participate in generating solutions, and feel there is some benefit to them.
8. To Prepare for Change, Walk the Track.
Professional racecar drivers often walk the track prior to a race. They have a deep respect for every curve and wall – every opportunity and every danger. When you’re navigating change in an organization, there are many walls to avoid. You can’t eliminate them, but you can manage around them by knowing where they are, knowing the course and staying committed to it, and staying focused on where you want to go. You can also have a contingency plan in case the wheels go off the road.
9. To Implement Change, Never Settle.
Implementing change is part of an evolution in management capability; it’s not an event. The objective is not to put a temporary focus on operations, make a few method changes, and claim victory. It’s a transition to a new way to manage the organization.
Peter Follows CEO, Carpedia International Bestselling Author of Results Not Reports, A mindset shift requires that you internalize these principles and make them routine across several operational areas. It also requires that the manager coach their teams to think the same way.
