Get Real!
How Mark Burnett sold reality TV to America
By Kim Wright Wiley

On October 18, 1982, a young man flew from London to Los Angeles with $600 in his pocket, no return ticket, and an almost fanatical optimism. At the time there was no reason to think that Mark Burnett, age 22 and fresh out of the British military, would become the mastermind of reality TV and creator of the phenomenally popular shows Survivor and The Apprentice. But Burnett was all about hustle and within hours off the plane he was offered his first job – as a nanny. Welcome to the big time.

That’s right, from Los Angeles nanny to big time producer. Only in America, right?

As Burnett tells it, he persuaded a wealthy Beverly Hills family that his background as a paratrooper would make him the perfect nanny/bodyguard for their children. “My first actual task in America was unloading their dishwasher,” he says. “Which was tricky because I’d never seen one before.” The nanny job, and later gigs selling t-shirts along the sidewalks at Venice Beach, are perfect examples of Burnett’s philosophy that if you’re serious about success, you start small and build. In his book Jump In! Even If You Don’t Know How to Swim (Ballantine, 2005), Burnett says, “People striving to make it don’t consider any task beneath them; they do whatever it takes. I’m still that way.”

Burnett parlayed child care into t-shirts, t-shirts into real estate, and real estate into marketing. He promptly purchased a 1969 Firebird convertible – a muscle car that Burnett considered the embodiment of the American dream – but he was still restless. At a dinner party one night he envied the attention a fellow guest garnered by saying he was a movie producer, but, more important, he saw “I needed to take bigger risks. Somewhere deep in my paratrooper soul still beat the heart of an adventurer.”

Burnett didn’t know television but, thanks to his military training, he did understand the appeal of extreme sports like trekking, rowing, and climbing. He also understood that these challenges brought out the best and worst in people, turning everyday citizens into heroes and villains, and he suspected that this sort of spontaneous drama might make good TV. Burnett’s improbable television empire began with Eco-Challenge, a global extreme-sport competition he developed for the Discovery Channel. The format paved the way for the 1995 debut of Survivor on CBS. Next year Burnett, along with cocreator and executive producer Steven Spielberg – long rumored to be a reality TV fan – will debut a new show, On the Lot, on the Fox network. On each episode contestants will make a brief film, which will be played before a studio audience and panel of judges. The ultimate winner will be offered a job at Spielberg’s DreamWorks studio.

The Firebird eventually died but by the time it did Burnett was through the guard gate and on the grounds of the studios. And from that point on there was no stopping him.

“All success begins with the ability to sell something, whether it’s a shirt or an idea,” says Burnett, and in an exclusive Selling Power interview he outlines five steps to help you survive any corporate jungle.

1. The most important trait for success – whether as a reality show contestant or a businessperson – is flexibility.

Burnett is actively involved in casting his reality shows and says that time after time he has seen contestants who have the ability to adapt to changing circumstances triumph over seemingly stronger competitors. “People who stubbornly believe there is only one way to approach a problem are usually eliminated early,” he says. “They become so obsessed with their plan that they don’t even notice when circumstances around them change.” Reality shows constantly create new challenges and realign teams in ways that lead to unforeseen shifts in power. Burnett believes the business world operates the same way.

“People ask me what it takes to win on a show like Survivor or The Apprentice,” Burnett says “and I tell them that the winners were very different in terms of age or gender or personality type, but they all had one thing in common: the ability to read other people. Flexibility starts with paying attention to the people around you. In selling, the dumb salesperson has one way of presenting…and only one way. He fails to understand there are different types of people and they all require a different kind of sales approach.”

Burnett outlines four different personality types that a good salesperson needs to recognize. “An analytical person wants all the information, all the stats. If they’re going to buy a car they’ll want to go through every fact in the owner’s manual. But an emotional person is going to be more interested in the color of the car, how it smells, how the CD player sounds. If you talk them through an analysis-based sales pitch you’ll lose them. Aggressive people don’t want to be pushed - they basically will lead themselves to the sale if you put your ego in your pocket and let them be the boss. On the other hand, passive people need to be taken by the hand and told what they like and dislike. I’m not talking about bullying them – nobody likes that – but a good salesperson realizes that a passive client prefers to be talked through the process.

“That’s why flexibility matters,” Burnett concludes, “be-cause each different client requires that you read that person, see what they need and tailor your approach to them. If you’re a one-trick pony, you’ll end up selling a lot less.”

2. New ideas are the best ideas – but they have to be presented right.

When Burnett was first marketing reality TV to American networks it was still a new idea. Since most explanations involve comparisons (“My idea is a lot like this” or “Our product is much better than that”) he faced a problem common to all entrepreneurs: How do you bring other people into your vision?

Burnett pitched the concept of Survivor to all the major networks, and they all turned it down. The relatively small UPN was the only channel who liked the idea, but Burnett knew they didn’t have enough money to produce the show in the manner he’d envisioned. So he bravely turned UPN down and decided to make one last run at getting Survivor on CBS.

“In a situation like that you need two things,” he says, “and the first is enthusiasm. You have to engage the other person, to paint the picture, to come in with a high energy level.” Knowing that a large number of the television execs were the emotional type described above, Burnett walked into CBS with a mock copy of Newsweek showing Survivor on the cover and said “That’s how big this is going to be.”

But he also knew that he’d need complete product knowledge to impress the more analytic decision makers. “Enthusiasm is important, but you also must be able to explain how you will do it and exactly what it will cost. They need to have the confidence that you can actually execute.” Burnett, following the Olympic model, had gotten corporate sponsors to help share the financial risk of producing the show and he was also able to reassure the skittish CBS execs with his past track record. “I had done six seasons of Eco Challenge on cable,” he says, “and while cable and network TV are not identical, the fact that I’d successfully produced a challenge show in another venue worked in my favor. If investors or clients can see you’ve had success in one area, they’re more apt to believe you can have success in another, even if it’s new and untried.”

Despite the challenges that come with being a programming pioneer, Burnett believes there are huge advantages to being first in your field. “If you look at my shows,” he says, “there were many later imitations that came and went. Everyone was trying to be the new Survivor and there were even more derivatives of The Apprentice. But the public doesn’t like copycats. They recognize and reward ideas that are fresh so if you want to stay at the top, you have to keep striking out into new territory.”

3. Repetition is the key to retention, so if you want them to remember you, give them plenty of face time.

The Apprentice, as well as being a job competition, a showpiece for Donald Trump, and a very entertaining TV show, has evolved into the perfect advertising medium. Throughout the last four seasons some products stand out, specifically Dove Cucumber Body Wash and the Pontiac Solstice. In the case of Dove, the two competing teams each had to produce a commercial and the results were so ludicrously inappropriate that the Dove executives were rendered speechless with horror and Trump gave the would-be apprentices one of the most memorable tongue-lashings of the series, if not history.

The Pontiac Solstice story went a little differently. This time the two competing teams had to develop a product brochure for a new sports car. One team missed the mark by being overly-analytical, but the other team delivered such an outstanding brochure that Pontiac opted to actually use it to sell the car.

What the two stories have in common is that in both cases you remember Dove Cucumber Body Wash and the Pontiac Solstice, which is remarkable retention for a one-shot marketing effort. It seems that whether the teams perform woefully or well, The Apprentice is a great launching pad for new products.

“People still talk about some of our shows weeks, months, and years after the fact,” says Burnett “and they remember the products involved.” Burnett believes viewers retain the message because it’s presented in a fun way. “Contestants are screwing up or doing great and, either way, it’s entertaining to watch. Because you’re seeing that new product in a novel context, you retain the memory.”

There’s also the matter of repetition. The whole episode is based on that one product, making the show in essence an hour-long commercial for the company being featured.

It’s a remarkably successful way to draw advertisers but Burnett admits they “got into it backwards. We needed content each week, which means we needed tasks for our contestants to do. You can’t have them selling lemonade on a street corner for 16 straight episodes. In order to add credibility to the show, we want real-word scenarios. If the task is to develop a new flavor of ice cream for Baskin Robbins, we can’t build a set for that. We take them right into the Baskin Robbins plant.”

“Without the actual use of brands the show wouldn’t be as good. If we’re testing these people to see if they’re sharp enough to be an executive for Donald Trump, we need to see them working with genuine Fortune 500 companies. We did it to make good TV and the fact it turned out to be so great for the sponsoring companies is just a bonus. The brands love it because it cuts through the problem of TiVo. You can’t TiVo through a whole show.”

Face time matters in another way, too. Burnett refuses to pitch ideas over the phone. When trying to woo Donald Trump to host The Apprentice, Burnett was originally shot down by Trump’s agent. Undeterred, Burnett knocked directly on Trump’s door and, after a 20-minute conversation, Trump shrugged off his agent’s trepidation and said “My gut tells me this is going to work.” Realizing he’d found a kindred spirit, Burnett immediately proposed a deal that would make Trump not only the host but a partner. But…

4. Don’t expect it to always be easy.

“My story is as much about failures and nearly catastrophic moments as it is about success,” says Burnett. He’s had plenty of setbacks along the way. 9/11 wiped out plans for Survivor: Arabia before filming even began. Other shows were produced, aired and sunk like a stone, including the highly-hyped boxing reality show The Contender and Martha Stewart’s version of The Apprentice.

“If you plan every move and analyze every angle you might be able to pre-think half of what could go wrong,” says Burnett. “The only thing you can be certain of in business is that problems you have not yet thought of are headed your way. Successful people know they aren’t going to close every sale, they aren’t going to hear a ‘yes’ every time they suggest an idea. You can promise something in good faith and then find that circumstances make it difficult to deliver.”

Burnett, who once had a parachute fail to open while skydiving, knows all about performing under pressure. “There are times,” he says, “when all you can do is persevere and try not to repeat the same mistake down the road again. It doesn’t feel good at the time but you can almost always learn something from adversity.”

5. Surround yourself with the best people possible.

What’s more likely to make you a winner, the ability to strike out on your own or the ability to be a team player? After years of watching as some contestants/showbusinesses fail while others thrive, Burnett doesn’t hesitate with his answer.

“I never go it alone,” he says. “A leader is only as good as his team. The oil billionaire J. Paul Getty said, ‘Take away the oil fields and the factories, but leave me my 50 best people and I’ll have it all back double in five years,’ and it’s the same with me.”

At various times throughout his career, Burnett has aligned himself with Donald Trump, Martha Stewart, Steven Spielberg and Sylvester Stallone. Not exactly a low-profile group, and not exactly people known for small egos. “Only a dumb person tries to shine by surrounding themselves with weak people,” he says. “In my employees I hire people smarter than myself and in a partnership I look for the strongest allies I can find. If you’re good at what you do, they’ll recognize that, so you shouldn’t be frightened of working with the best.

“Successful people,” Burnett says, “recognize strength in other people. Look at Trump’s assistants on the show. George has worked with him forever and Carolyn has been there for 10 years, so when Trump tells contestants that George and Carolyn are his eyes and ears he means it. Strong people surround themselves with other strong people and keep them there. That’s how you build empires.” •

How a Leader Masters Change
Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP Americas, shows you how to create a sales team of winners By Kim Wright Wiley



In 2002, SAP America was going nowhere. The U.S. and Canadian subsidiary of the German software giant had gone through five CEOs in six years and revenue was growing at less than half the rate of the company’s European division. The market buzz was all about dot-coms out of California, and SAP, whose software focused largely on mainstream functions such as accounting and manufacturing, seemed like a big yawn. But that was before Leo Apotheker, president of customer solutions and operations, and the Executive Board of SAP AG brought in Bill McDermott as CEO of SAP America. McDermott, then 41 years old, joined SAP America in September 2002 and immediately set about creating a sales machine that was second to none. During the next four years, the stock price of SAP would rise from $9.75 to $54. The market cap would increase 400 percent to $55 billion. Employee turnover (after an initial bloodletting) would drop from 40 percent to 10 percent. Now the dot-coms are foundering and SAP has become the leading business brand in the field, racking up record profits year after year.It's a stunning reversal of fortunes. But how did McDermott and his team do it? What makes the SAP Americas' team one of the most successful teams in the region - and how can you get what it's got? Change is only possible when it’s tied to a very specific vision,” says McDermott. His vision was to create a marketing plan that would let his sales team tell the SAP story from the customer’s point of view. “We intended to make every customer become a best-run business,” he says, a goal reflected in SAP’s global advertising slogan, ‘The best-run businesses run SAP.’” In other words, the customer comes first – even in the slogan. Reps don’t talk to their prospects about how great SAP is; instead they talk about how great the prospect’s company can be once they begin running SAP. “Customers don’t like tech talk,” says McDermott. “They don’t care about all the capabilities of your new system, they just want to get something done better, faster, and cheaper. Our marketing focuses on what the customer is trying to accomplish.” The vision is actually even more long-range than that: SAP cares about the customer’s customer. “You have to take the time to understand the customer’s markets and their competition,” says McDermott. “It enables you to not only see what the customer wants now but to also see what the customer is likely to want in the future.” Managing the volume of information necessary to make this vision a reality is a daunting task, but it’s largely what has enabled SAP to quadruple its market value while other software companies have stood still. McDermott is the original turnaround kid. During high school, he worked in a deli and when the owner put it up for sale, McDermott, although still a teenager, offered him a deal. McDermott would borrow the $7,000 purchase price from the owner and if he couldn’t pay the loan off within a year, the owner would get the store back. It was his first exercise in understanding customer needs. Under McDermott’s management, the deli began offering everything that the competitive 7-11 down the street did not – delivery service for senior citizens, weekly credit for blue-collar workers, video games for neighborhood teens. He not only paid off the loan, but used the proceeds from the deli to put himself through college and buy his family a beach house. After successful stints at Xerox, Gartner Group, and Siebel Systems, McDermott was called in to resuscitate SAP’s North American business and he had one question: Why isn’t this thing working? “I spent the first three months figuring that out,” he says. “It’s easy to automatically blame the sales people for not selling, but I looked at the leadership team.” There were 13 direct reports and by the end of his first 100 days, McDermott had replaced 12 of them. “They weren’t bad people,” he says, “but our vision had outgrown their ability to get us there. They were used to selling in terms of the product, but we were in the process of changing from a product culture into a value-to- customer culture. Now it was all about telling the story from the customer’s point of view and if someone wasn’t comfort- able with that shift, they weren’t the right person for the job.” This customer-first vision became like a knife that separated the wheat from the chaff. “At that time, our vision was non-operational,” recalls McDermott. “If people didn’t have the skills or the knowledge to make it real, a lot of them needed to go. I honestly believe that if people don’t get it within a certain length of time, they’re not likely to ever get it.” The surviving employees, along with new people brought in to augment the team, were then put through an aggressive cross-training program. SAP was a tech company full of people uncomfortable with tech, and McDermott was not amused by the irony of employees who were selling software but reluctant to use it themselves. “We needed to make radical changes if we were going to get closer to our customers,” McDermott says, “and all our executives now use our own CRM technology to manage their business in real time.” McDermott established a sales intelligence center where reps could tap into a database and get up to speed on their customers fast. Thus they don’t have to waste the customer’s time – or their own – asking endless questions just to get the background info they need to make a sales pitch. Use of this system isn’t just a nice idea; it’s mandatory. “Our sales professionals go in armed with completely up-to-date intelligence,” McDermott says. “With this technology, there’s no excuse for not knowing your customer’s business and we have no patience with anyone who appears in front of a customer without the facts.” It wasn’t just about getting employees to embrace their own technology; some of them had to embrace a U-Haul as well. McDermott restructured the SAP Americas sales team to match the firm’s 25+ target industries. This required some radical moves of personnel. But if someone had experience with high-tech clients, McDermott was willing to relocate them to California where their expertise would be the most valuable. In order to implement so many changes in such a short time, McDermott had to convince his sales force that these changes were crucial to its success. “Make no mistake,” he says. “Change is tough and people instinctively fight against it. It’s unrealistic to think everybody is going to get on board immediately, and I certainly wasn’t naïve enough to expect people to follow me from day one, especially in a company that had been through so many changes in leadership. The best way to get around the doubters is to get a few faithful disciples in the boat with you and begin rowing. Don’t wait for everyone to agree, just proceed with the work. Once you’ve had a few successes, you start to gain momentum and eventually the doubters will begin to follow you too.” So how do you communicate your own vision and motivate your team? McDermott suggests the following steps. 1. Communicate the reason you need to change. Over-communicate it. “To get people to follow your lead, you have to get them to change their minds,” says McDermott. “They need to see that this change isn’t just some random request you dreamed up, it’s developed around a cause worth fighting for.” 2. Stretch the team. Once McDermott had cut the dead weight, he knew that the people who remained all had the right stuff and were capable of responding to the challenge. “Good leaders constantly stretch people,” he says. “I asked a lot of these people, but they delivered.” 3. Empower each individual. “It’s important to speed up decision making,” says McDermott. “Many companies centralize all power in the corner office and if management has to okay even the most minor decision, it slows down the sales process. Our people are told, ‘If it’s right for the customer, just do it.’” 4. Reward high performers. McDermott’s grandfather was a professional basketball player and his father was a coach. Collectively they taught him that you get better results when you focus on what people are doing right instead of constantly berating them for their weaknesses. “I’m not afraid of paying out compensation,” says McDermott. “Perhaps we even disproportionately reward high performers … but you must create an intensity to win.” The final component to SAP Americas’ winning strategy may be the most unusual: McDermott believes in a team approach to sales. In fact, McDermott believes in it so strongly that even in his position as CEO of SAP Americas, he estimates that he still spends about 70 percent of his time with SAP customers. McDermott is well aware that not every company has such a musketeer-like approach. In many companies, there’s almost antipathy between the different officers. But McDermott believes that a key ingredient for sales success is a respectful relationship between the CEO, CIO, and CSO. “The CEO should realize that the sales leader has a really tough job,” he says. “It’s easy to turn your sales leaders into whipping posts but it takes a smart CEO to realize how smart his CSO must be. Respect builds integrity into the relationship.” The CIO is equally important. “The CEO is all about growth,” says McDermott. “but you can’t grow unless you have the technology to support it.” McDermott believes that “in the most successful companies, marketing and sales work as one. I think of marketing as the air cover while the sales people are the ground troops. Neither can do it without the other, so the effort must be collaborative, with constant communication.” Ideally, there’s also collaboration among members of the sales team. “It’s unrealistic to think a sales professional, no matter how well trained, can handle all the conversations necessary to close all sales,” McDermott says. “Each account that’s worth going after needs a relationship plan, one strategic format that involves the whole team. The sales professional might be the quarterback, but he needs other people to run plays.” McDermott uses the analogy of an elevator and says that you have to know what floor your prospect is on so that you can send a representative from your team who is on the same level. “Each interaction is different. If you need to engage a company CEO to get a sale, then that elevator has to go to the top floor and you need to send your own CEO to meet with him. Figure out who needs to be talking to whom, because it just makes no sense to assume that any one sales professional is capable of having all the conversations necessary to close a large sale. It’s naïve of management to assume he can do this or to blame him if he can’t.” Besides, McDermott loves being in the field. “It’s my chance to find out what people want. If one customer needs something, I know that eventually a dozen more will need it too.” By now you may be thinking, “Sounds great, but my CEO is nothing like McDermott. In fact, I think I may be reporting to one of those guys he fired back in 2002.” The good news is, no matter what your actual title, McDermott believes you’re already your own CEO. He believes that every salesperson is actually running his or her own business within the larger business of their corporation. “Most sales organizations,” McDermott says, “are driven by a single question: ‘Did you make the number?’ But that’s the wrong question. These short-term, narrow kinds of focus are why we see so much fluctuation – a sales team will have a good quarter, then a bad quarter. It makes more sense to use a four-quarter rolling measurement because then you’re looking at the whole pipeline. Your thinking becomes broader and more long-term. When I talk to a sales professional, I look at his business plan for the next 12 months and ask, ‘Jim, do you have everything you need in the pipeline to achieve this goal?’” “If you want to go from a VP of sales to a CEO, just practice in the job you have now,” says McDermott. “Think strategically: What does this customer need? What is he or she likely to need in the future and how can I develop it? Where within the company will I find the necessary support? How can I reach goals not just for this quarter, but for the whole year? In other words, what do I need to be putting into the pipeline now to assure my success six months from now … nine months from now … five years from now? Thinking like a CEO is the first step in ultimately becoming a CEO.” •

http://www.sellingpower.com/article/display.asp?aid=SP0923958

"There are two parts to influence: First, influence is powerful; and second, influence is subtle. You wouldn't let someone push you off course, but you might let someone nudge you off course and not even realize it."
Jim Rohn

Winning at Change
by John P. Kotter

NO organization today -- large or small, local or global -- is immune to change. To cope with new technological, competitive, and demographic forces, leaders in every sector have sought to fundamentally alter the way their organizations do business. These change efforts have paraded under many banners -- total quality management, reengineering, restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, turnarounds.
Yet according to most assessments, few of these efforts accomplish their goals. Fewer than 15 of the 100 or more companies I have studied have successfully transformed themselves. The particulars of every case vary, but I have found that the change process involves eight critical stages (see box). Mismanaging any one of these steps can undermine an otherwise well conceived vision, but four mistakes in particular are the source of most failures.
1. Writing a memo instead of lighting a fire. At least half of failed change efforts bungle the first critical step - establishing a sense of urgency. Too often leaders launch their initiatives by calling a meeting or circulating a consultant's report, then expect people to rally to the cause. It doesn't happen that way. To increase urgency, I suggest you gather a key group of people for a day-long retreat. First, identify every possible factor that contributes to complacency. If you work at it, you will come up with 25 to 50. Then brainstorm specific ways to counter each factor. Finally, develop an action plan to implement your ideas. If you attack all 25 or 50 items, your chances of creating a sense of urgency -- and building necessary momentum -- improve immeasurably. However, the effort involved in creating a sense of urgency is usually several times what leaders expect. They slide through this first crucial step, and when the effort stalls six months later, they wonder why.
2. Talking too much and saying too little. Most leaders undercommunicate their change vision by a factor of 10. And the efforts they do make to convey their message are of the least convincing variety -- speeches and memos. An effective change vision must include not just new strategies and structures but also new, aligned behaviors on the part of senior executives. Leading by example means just that -- spending dramatically more time with customers, cutting wasteful spending in the executive suite, or pulling the plug on a pet project that doesn't measure up. People watch their bosses -- particularly their immediate bosses -- very closely. It doesn't take much in the way of inconsistent behavior by a manager to fuel the cynicism and frustration of his or her direct reports.
3. Declaring victory before the war is over. When a project is completed or an initial goal met, it is tempting to congratulate all involved and proclaim the advent of a new era. While it is important to celebrate results along the way, kidding yourself or others about the difficulty and duration of organizational transformation can be catastrophic. I met recently with a capable, intelligent management group that has begun to see encouraging results in a difficult initiative. They are only six months into what is probably a three-year process -- but are already talking about "wrapping this thing up in a few months." Such talk is nonsense. They are far from where they need to be, and in danger of losing the ground they have gained.
People look forward to completion of any task. The problem is, the results of a change vision are not directly proportional to the effort invested. That is, one-third of your way into a change process, you are unlikely to see one-third of the possible results; you may see only 1/10th of the possible results. If you settle for too little too soon, you will probably lose it all. Celebrating incremental improvements is a great way to mark progress and sustain commitment -- but don't forget how much work is still to come.
4. Looking for villains in all the wrong places. The perception that large organizations are filled with recalcitrant middle managers who resist all change is not only unfair but untrue. In professional service organizations, and in most organizations with an educated workforce, people at every level are engaged in change processes. Often it's the middle level that brings issues to the attention of senior executives. In fact, I have found that the biggest obstacles to change are not middle managers but, more often, those who work just a level or two below the CEO -- vice presidents, directors, general managers, and others who haven't yet made it to "the top" and may have the most to lose in a change. That's why it is crucial to build a guiding coalition that represents all levels of the organization. People often hear the president or CEO cheerleading a change and promising exciting new opportunities. Most people in the middle want to believe that; too often their managers give them reasons not to.
These common mistakes suggest three key tasks for change leaders: managing multiple time lines, building coalitions, and creating a vision.

Managing Multiple Time Lines
O establish a sense of urgency and avoid declaring premature victory leaders must manage a key strategic resource -- time. Responding quickly while also accepting the long-term nature of the change process sounds like a paradox. But effective leaders make it clear that meaningful change takes years. At the same time, they create shorter term wins and continuously remind people that the need for change is urgent precisely because it takes so long. When, for example, Konosuke Matsushita started the Matsushita Institute of Government and Management -- his graduate school for people who want to go into public service -- he explained that his vision was to help Japanese politics become less corrupt and more visionary. When a skeptical reporter asked how long that would take, he said, "In my judgment, about 400 years -- which is why it's so important that we start today."
The best leaders that I have known balance short-term results with long-term vision. (When it comes to organizational change, I define short-term as six to 12 months.) They engage directors, investors, employees, and other constituents in the excitement of delivering both long- and short-term results. They operate in multiple time frames.
Results and vision can be plotted on a matrix that has four dimensions (see figure). Poor results and weak vision spell sure trouble for any organization. Good short-term results with a weak vision satisfy many organizations -- for awhile. A compelling vision that produces few results usually is abandoned. Only good short-term results with an effective, aligned vision offer a high probability of sustained success.

Some leaders fear they have too little time to manage long-term change and therefore focus only on quarterly or annual results. Yet many now reach senior leadership positions at age 50 or younger and have an opportunity to lead a number of transformations necessary to long-term leadership. Jack Welch, for instance, has led at least three major change visions at GE. Of course, he had the benefit of starting early and keeping his job a long time -- but he has kept the job precisely because he made organizational change an ongoing, multiphase process.
Transforming an organization is the ultimate test of leadership, but understanding the change process is essential to many aspects of a leader's job. Two skills in particular -- building coalitions and creating a vision -- are especially relevant to our times.

Building Coalitions
N today's less hierarchical but more complex organizations, leaders must win the support of employees, partners, investors, and regulators for many types of initiatives. Because you are likely to meet resistance from unexpected quarters, building a strong guiding coalition is essential. There are three keys to creating such alliances.
Engaging the right talent. Coalition building is not simply reaching out to whoever happens to be "in charge" of a department, organization, or other constituency; it is assembling the necessary skills, experience, and chemistry as well. A coalition of 20 people who are decent managers but ineffective leaders is unlikely to create meaningful change -- or much else that is new. You don't necessarily start with the president or CEO as your partner; it may be the executive vice president who brings more to the party, and yet still connects you to the line organization. The most effective partners usually have strong position power, broad experience, high credibility, and real leadership skill.
Growing the coalition strategically. Like a good board of directors, an effective guiding coalition needs a diversity of views and voices. Once a core group coalesces, the challenge is how to expand the scope and complexity of the coalition. It often means working with people outside your organization -- even for an internal change effort. Leaders must not only reach beyond the confines of their enterprise but also know where and how to build support. That may mean, for instance, giving others credit for success, but accepting blame for failures oneself. It means showing a genuine care for individuals but a toughmindedness about results -- getting results being the best way to recruit allies.
Working as a team, not just a collection of individuals. Leaders often say they have a team when in fact they have a committee or a small hierarchy. The more you do to support team performance, the healthier will be the guiding coalition and the more able it will be to achieve its goals. Especially during the stress of change, leaders throughout the enterprise need to draw on reserves of energy, expertise, and, most of all, trust. Personnel problems often lurking beneath the surface of a team -- all too easily ignored during placid times -- come to the fore during times of change. The pressures of transformation make a strong team essential. Beyond the customary team-building retreats and events, real teams are built by doing real work together, sharing a vision, and commitment to a goal.

Creating a Vision
A vision of the future is more emotional than rational.
EADING by example is essential to communicating a vision. But how do you actually build a vision? Because it relates to the future, people assume that vision building should resemble the long-term planning process: design, organize, implement. I have never seen it work that way. Defining a vision of the future does not happen according to a timetable or flowchart. It is more emotional than rational. It demands a tolerance for messiness, ambiguity, and setbacks, an acceptance of the half-step back that usually accompanies every step forward.
Day-to-day demands inevitably pull people in different directions. Conflict is inevitable. Having a shared vision does not eliminate tension between, say, sales and manufacturing groups, but it does help people make appropriate trade-offs. The alternative is to bog down in I-win, you-lose fights that can paralyze an organization. Thus, leaders must convey a vision of the future that is clear in intention, appealing to stakeholders, and ambitious yet attainable. Effective visions are focused enough to guide decision making yet are flexible enough to accommodate individual initiative and changing circumstances.
For example, this narrowly defined but effective change vision was developed by the operations group of a financial services company: "We want to reduce our costs by 30 percent and increase the speed with which we respond to customers by 40 percent. When this is completed, in approximately three years, we will have ... better satisfied customers, increased revenue growth, more job security, and the enormous pride that comes from great accomplishment."

Traits of Effective Leaders
EADERS exist at all levels of an organization. At the edges of the enterprise, of course, leaders are accountable for less territory. Their vision may sound more basic; the number of people to motivate may be two. But they perform the same leadership role as their more senior counterparts. They excel at seeing things through fresh eyes and at challenging the status quo. They are energetic and seem able to run through, or around, obstacles.
I have found that people who provide great leadership are also deeply interested in a cause or discipline related to their professional arena. A leader in a pharmaceutical firm, for example, might have a passion for reducing suffering. He or she may have watched a parent or loved one suffer, and be motivated by deep emotions, not just intellect. Such leaders also tap deep convictions of others and connect those feelings to the purpose of the organization; they show the meaning of people's everyday work to that larger purpose.
Great leaders continue to take risks.
However, the most notable trait of great leaders, certainly of great change leaders, is their quest for learning. They show an exceptional willingness to push themselves out of their own comfort zones, even after they have achieved a great deal. They continue to take risks, even when there is no obvious reason for them to do so. And they are open to people and ideas, even at a time in life when they might reasonably think -- because of their successes -- that they know everything. Often they are driven by goals or ideals that are bigger than what any individual can accomplish, and that gap is an engine pushing them toward continuous learning.
Leaders invest tremendous talent, energy, and caring in their change efforts, yet few see the results they had hoped for. But there is a good reason why so few organizations have transformed themselves. Today's leaders simply don't have much practice at large-scale change. Thirty years ago few organizations were thinking about radical reinvention, so there is little practical experience to be passed on to a new generation of managers. The good news is, the percentages are bound to improve. The kinds of changes routinely undertaken by today's organizations -- producing ever better products, more quickly, at ever lower cost -- were unimaginable 30 years ago. Over the next decade, thousands of leaders will guide equally remarkable changes. That is more than a safe prediction; it is a social and economic necessity. All institutions need effective leadership, but nowhere is the need greater than in the organization seeking to transform itself.
Eight Steps to Transform Your Organization1. Establish a Sense of Urgency · Examine market and competitive realities · Identify and discuss crises, potential crises, or major opportunities 2. Form a Powerful Guiding Coalition · Assemble a group with enough power to lead the change effort · Encourage the group to work as a team 3. Create a Vision · Create a vision to help direct the change effort · Develop strategies for achieving that vision 4. Communicate the Vision · Use every vehicle possible to communicate the new vision and strategies Teach new behaviors by the example of the guiding coalition 5. Empower Others to Act on the Vision · Get rid of obstacles to change · Change systems or structures that seriously undermine the vision · Encourage risk taking and nontraditional ideas, activities, and actions 6. Plan for and Create Short-Term Wins · Plan for visible performance improvements · Creating those improvements · Recognize and reward employees involved in the improvements 7. Consolidate Improvements and Produce Still More Change · Use increased credibility to change systems, structures, and policies that don't fit the vision · Hire, promote, and develop employees who can implement the vision · Reinvigorate the process with new projects, themes, and change agents 8. Institutionalize New Approaches · Articulate the connections between the new behaviors and organizational success · Develop the means to ensure leadership development and succession Return to reference

The Ways Change HappensOrganizations change of necessity and for a variety of reasons. But the single biggest impetus for change in an organization tends to be a new manager in a key job. These change leaders range from the middle to the top of an organization; it is often a new division-level manager or a new department head -- someone with fresh perspective -- who sees that the status quo is unacceptable.While there is no single source of change, there is a clear pattern to the reasons for failure. Most often, it is a leader's attempt to shortcut a critical phase of the change process. Certainly, there is room for flexibility in the eight steps that underlie successful change -- but not a lot of room.When people say, for instance, "We're going to empower employees to act entrepreneurially -- but we don't need to spend a lot of time changing our whole organization," they are almost bound to fail.Producing change is about 80 percent leadership -- establishing direction, aligning, motivating, and inspiring people -- and about 20 percent management -- planning, budgeting, organizing, and problem solving. Unfortunately, in most of the change efforts I have studied in the past 20 years, those percentages are reversed. Our business schools and work organizations continue to produce great managers; we need to do as well at developing great leaders.

From New York Times

September 17, 2006
Career Couch
Taking a Rain Check on a Promotion
By MATT VILLANO

Q. Your boss has offered to promote you to a managerial position, but you’d rather keep your current job. How can you decline the opportunity without derailing your career?

A. It is important to follow your heart, but you need to do it in a way that conveys a commitment to the group as a whole, says Phil Wilkins, chief executive of Diverse Wealth Systems, a management consulting firm in Lexington, Ky.

“You have to be diplomatic,” he said. “It’s O.K. to say, ‘No thanks,’ but you need to couch it in a way that convinces your boss the decision is the right one for both you and the company.”

Q. Are there valid reasons for rejecting a promotion?

A. Most managerial positions come with a higher salary, but they also bring increased paperwork, additional hours and, usually, a new boss. Sometimes, promotions involve relocation as well. Beverly Kaye, chief executive of Career Systems International, a talent management company in Scranton, Pa., said that any one of those could be enough to dissuade an employee from accepting a new role. “If an employee is happy with the way things are, every major change is going to be cause for concern,” Ms. Kaye said.

On a more fundamental level, managers do something rank-and-file employees don’t — they manage others. For some people, leading and prodding subordinates is as appealing as camping in Antarctica. Before taking on a managerial role, Ms. Kaye said, employees should ask themselves what they want from their careers.

“A key to accepting or declining a job is a fundamental understanding of who you are and what you want,” she said. “The last thing you want is to wake up one morning and ask, ‘How did I get myself into this?’ ”

Q. How should you inform the boss of your decision?

A. Schedule a private, face-to-face conversation, and open by thanking the boss for his consideration and support. Tell him you’re flattered at being offered the opportunity for advancement, but note that this isn’t the right time for that kind of change.

Explain your decision in a firm yet humble tone. Lauren Stiller Rikleen, executive director of the Bowditch Institute for Women’s Success in Framingham, Mass., said employees needed to highlight what made them think twice about taking the new job.

“Say nothing about why you’re declining the promotion and it raises eyebrows and makes you seem untrustworthy,” she said. “You’ve worked there for a while. You owe the boss some sort of explanation.”

If the boss expresses disappointment, don’t apologize. Stever Robbins, an independent career consultant in North Cambridge, Mass., said employees should convey a sense of decisiveness, even if the decision was one they had agonized over.

“In anthropological terms, you don’t want to give off prey behavior,” Mr. Robbins said. “Don’t hem and haw — your goal is to say, ‘No’ to the new assignment while keeping the image of yourself as a strong and capable person in the boss’s mind.”

Q. Should you recommend someone else for the position?

A. Probably not. If your boss offered you the promotion, he thinks you’re the one to do the job. Dr. Robert Maurer, a clinical psychologist in Santa Monica, Calif., said that nominating a colleague could offend the boss if it seemed to call his original decision into doubt.

“Nobody wants to be insulted when they’re giving you a gift,” said Dr. Maurer, author of “One Small Step Can Change Your Life” (Workman, 2004). He added that questioning whether you were truly qualified for the new responsibilities had the same effect.

“Even if you don’t think you’re right for the job, trust that the boss knows what he’s doing,” Dr. Maurer said.

Q. What risks do you run by turning down the new job?

A. Your boss might think you’re not interested in advancement, and might never consider you for promotion again, or even start reducing your responsibilities.

Go out of your way to show the boss you are not complacent. Stress that your decision is based on circumstances that may change over time. Inquire about opportunities to help out in ways that won’t alter your routine as much as a new job.

Areva Martin, managing partner of the Los Angeles law firm Martin & Martin, said employees should also offer to take professional development courses and sharpen their leadership skills so they’re ready for other opportunities. “Just show you care,” she said. “If you demonstrate that you’re willing to learn new skills, then you gain more credibility and the boss sees you as someone who may someday be interested in a promotion.”

Q. Can any good come of staying put?

A. Lots. If you’re happy in your current position, retaining it should keep your job satisfaction high. If you’re part of a team, declining a promotion could also enhance camaraderie with co-workers who will remain your colleagues, not your subordinates.

Most important, Jerald Jellison, professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, said that a discussion about a promotion could be a great springboard to a broader conversation about your future. While many companies have formal career planning, it never hurts to chat about where you’d like to see yourself in five years. “Ironically, declining a promotion could present a great chance for you to plan ahead,” he said. “If your boss knows what you want and what you’re willing to do to get it, the next promotion that opens up just might be a better fit.”

Workplace or career topics may be sent to ccouch@nytimes.com.