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The Keys to Effective Change Management; Walk Before You Run; Do You Have the Right Structure in Place?; Ethics: Setting the Standard for Your Business

The Keys to Effective Change Management
Walk Before You Run
Do You Have the Right Structure in Place?
Ethics: Setting the Standard for Your Business
Streamline Your Path to Change with Windows SharePoint 3.0
Productivity@Work Update: ProForma Anchor Printing & Promotions
Make Your Business Case

The Keys to Effective Change Management

Change is an ever-present component of business ownership. The ability for business owners to effectively manage change lays the groundwork for growth and helps build the foundation for the development of a positive corporate culture. Unfortunately, the vast majority of business change initiatives fail—an estimated 80 percent to 85 percent, according to the authors of The New York Times best-selling book Influencer and the forthcoming Change Anything. The good news is, you can reverse those odds by focusing on a few key points in your own approach to change management.

The authors are the four cofounders of VitalSmarts, a corporate training and organizational performance consulting firm that developed a model honored by Sloan Management Review as the Change Management Approach of the Year in 2009. They claim, and their research backs it up, that companies that focus on four of six specific “influence sources” in combination increase their chances of corporate change success tenfold. The six sources of their Influencer model include:

1. Love what you hate, (i.e., learn to disarm your impulses and make the right choices pleasurable).
2. Do what you can’t: recognize the important role skills play in creating and managing change, then acquire the skills you lack.
3. Eliminate the bad habits and choices that undermine your change efforts and the people (accomplices) who abet your bad decisions.
4. Cultivate those who support your efforts to start and sustain good change habits (friends). “Eliminate a few accomplices, and add as few as two new friends to your influence strategy, and your odds of success increase as much as 40 percent,” says Joseph Grenny, cofounder and cochairman of VitalSmarts.
5. Invert the economy. “Reverse incentives by bribing yourself to change. It works,” Grenny says. “You can also reverse costs by raising the price of bad behavior.”
6. Control your space. Learn to use distance, cues, and tools in your favor to take control of your environment.

Matthew McCreight, managing partner at Schaffer Consulting, which specializes in the development and practice of organizational and cultural change, says the key to successful change management is building capacity and capability into the company’s culture and human resources. In 50 years of studying change in organizations, the firm has identified “immense hidden potential for better performance right now” in most of them, he says. “The challenge is how to tap into that resource, and how to get people growing and keep them growing.”

It is important to structure change management plans so they have short-term consequences, no matter how long-term the ultimate goal might be. “You almost have to reverse engineer it,” he says. “If your goal is to increase sales by a certain amount or cut production times by x percent 18 months from now, what do you have to accomplish by the three-month mark, by the six-month mark, etc., to get there? The toughest thing is getting started. It’s your job as a leader of the organization to build a vision of the future, figure out how to tap the tremendous potential within your business, and then drive toward that vision.”

Click here [LINK TBD] for easy access to a collection of useful tools and articles compiled by Schaffer Consulting especially for Productivity@Work readers.

To learn more about change management best practices, go to the Prosci Change Management Learning Center. Once you register — it’s free of charge — you’ll find links to a wide range of change management articles, white papers, and tutorials, all available at no cost.

Walk Before You Run

Businesses should conduct a thorough self-evaluation before embarking on any change management plan, and doing so is within your reach no matter how small your business or how limited your resources. “The key is to keep it simple,” says Rick Maurer, author of Beyond the Wall of Resistance and a change-management expert whose approach is being used successfully by large and small businesses in many industries.

“You don’t need a fancy, consultant-designed process,” Maurer says. He advises assembling a small group of people who understand your business and business climate and are willing to speak candidly in front of you. It’s helpful to include a supplier and a customer in that group, and all levels of the organization (front-line workers, middle management, executives) should be represented. He suggests posing the following questions to provide a good framework for the conversation:

• What are our strengths?
• What are our weaknesses?
• In the business climate in which we work, what potential opportunities do we face?
• What threats do we face?

In strategic planning circles, this is known as a SWOT analysis, and the conversation it drives should yield a lot of helpful information about where your business is today and where it might consider going, Maurer says. “The SWOT analysis is a great foundation. As you look at each of those four areas, focus on what stands out. What excites you? What worries you?”

Maurer stresses the importance of keeping it simple. He favors the “sloppiness” of conversation over the regimentation of Venn diagrams, charts, and boxes for this exercise, because it facilitates creativity and allows participants to learn from each other. “Charts and boxes tend to be much more polite and often don’t give us very good results,” he warns. However, once plans are developed, then it is important to identify clear metrics—goals, objectives, deadlines, etc.

Gary Teuber, Sr., a partner in strategic planning consulting firm Abacus Business Leaders LLC, says the three big issues in conducting a self-evaluation are speed, quality, and execution. The first is critical for maintaining a high level of interest among the stakeholders involved, the second is a must if an actionable plan is to arise from the self-evaluation, and the third is necessary to prevent backsliding and loss of focus.

“There are many processes out there that SMBs can find in books and online, so this is something they definitely can do themselves,” he says. “However, appointing a facilitator—preferably someone from the outside—is highly recommended.” Everyone selected to participate should be completely involved during the process, which should be done without interruptions and at an off-site location, he adds.

Businesses engaged in rapidly changing industries should conduct this exercise at least annually, or more often, if prompted by specific change events. Less frequency may suffice for those operating in a more stable environment. “What is key is that business leaders keep their eyes open to changing conditions all the time,” Maurer insists. “Use the SWOT lens informally whenever you look at your business.”

For more information on successful change management, check out “Lead Your Change Project Successfully,” by Maurer.

Do You Have the Right Structure in Place?

As your company grows, one consideration that will inevitably arise is your professional structure. Options available to small and medium-size businesses include sole proprietorship, general partnership, limited partnership, LLC (limited liability company), C corporation, and S corporation. The majority of small businesses choose S corporation status because it offers some liability protection and potential tax benefits. However, some accountants favor C corporations for small businesses because they provide more favorable deductibility of fringe benefits and allowance of charitable deductions. But, the tradeoff is that income is taxed at both the corporate and personal level.

Sole proprietorship is the default structure for individuals operating a business by themselves. It provides a high degree of financial flexibility and is the cheapest structure to administer, but there is a big taxation downside. Sole proprietorships pay self-employment taxes equal to both the employer and employee share of FICA. Other concerns include the risk of full liability exposure for the owner and potential problems resulting from the lack of business structure after the death of the owner or when the owner wishes to sell, says Eric Kalnins, an attorney and partner at Handler Thayer, LLP.

“For this reason, we generally suggest that clients organize other types of business structures. One that has come to the forefront recently because of its flexibility is the LLC,” Kalnins says. LLCs can be owned by multiple individuals or entities, whereas C and S corporations are limited to one type of stock and in the number and types of shareholders that can obtain ownership interests. For tax purposes, owners can choose to have an LLC treated as either a C or S corporation or as a partnership, he adds.

Does it ever make sense to change a business structure? Yes, it does. Enterprises that start out as sole proprietorships may find it beneficial to switch to S corporation or LLC status as they grow. As long as they continue to take a “reasonable salary,” owners may take additional compensation as dividends, exempt from the employer portion of FICA. While the IRS does not define what constitutes a reasonable salary, it offers some guidelines in its article, “Wage Compensation for S Corporation Officers”.

Inc. Resource: How to Incorporate

If you are starting a business, or you already run one but haven't thought strategically about its legal structure—S Corp, C Corp, or LLC—you need to take this matter seriously.

Learn more

Ethics: Setting the Standard for Your Business

You may not feel a written code of ethics or written policy is necessary, but no matter how large or small your business, having one sends the right message to your employees, vendors, and customers. “I firmly believe in having a written code of ethics,” says Tom Walter, CEO of Tasty Catering, a Chicago-based corporate catering and event planning company. “Ours is framed in big print in our conference rooms, operations area, and kitchen/production area.”

Walter also incorporates the code into the company’s weekly internal newsletter with examples of its use in the regular course of business. Doing so, he says, “serves as a constant reminder to all and helps employees make decisions about what is right and wrong, and avoid the gray areas.”

Having a strong ethics program in place pays off on the bottom line as well. According to the International Business Ethics Institute, businesses in their “2010 World’s Most Ethical Companies” report have outperformed the S&P 500 by 53 percent since 2005. The organization also reports a marked increase in the number of customers, clients, and employees deliberately seeking out businesses that define the basic ground rules of their operations on a day-to-day basis.

At the conceptual or aspirational level, a basic code of ethics should:

• define accepted/acceptable behaviors;
• promote high standards of practice;
• provide a benchmark for self-evaluation;
• establish a framework for professional behavior and responsibilities; and
• serve as a vehicle for occupational identity and maturity.

At the nuts and bolts level, it should spell out specific policies and practices that are allowed and not allowed in areas such as, working with vendors, hiring and firing, interacting with customers, etc. The best codes are custom-made to fit the specific needs of an individual business, and getting employees and other key stakeholders involved in their creation is a good idea, says Ann Rhoades, president of People Ink, a firm that helps companies build value-based corporate cultures.

To learn more about crafting a business code of ethics, check out “Considerations for Writing a Code of Ethics” at EthicsWeb.

Inc. Resource: How to Write a Code of Ethics for Business

A code of ethics can help a business determine its priorities and values. It can also help you down the line if one of your employees or vendors drags you into legal trouble.

Learn more

Streamline Your Path to Change with Windows SharePoint 3.0

When you’re dealing with change management — or any other company-wide initiative — the ability to collaborate efficiently is critical. But sharing information in real-time with multiple people, both in the office and at remote locations, can be difficult to orchestrate, and maintaining security and version control can pose another set of headaches. Windows SharePoint, part of Microsoft™ Communication Services from Comcast, can break down all these barriers and help your business operate more smoothly.

To truly drive change and ongoing innovation, companies must make data available to more people both inside and outside the organization, and then implement solutions to harness the collective knowledge and experience that can be tapped into. Online collaboration tools designed to facilitate shared project planning, document management, online meetings, and other capabilities can make that happen. And that’s what Windows SharePoint 3.0 is all about. It’s a secure file-sharing service that lets you store, secure, and share documents, files, folders, announcements, and even tasks and calendars from wherever you have Internet access. And it’s available free of charge with Comcast Business™ Internet.

Windows SharePoint 3.0 helps teams stay connected and productive by:

• providing a single workspace for teams to coordinate schedules, organize documents, and participate in discussions — within the organization and over the extranet.
• allowing users to easily author and manage documents, and help to ensure their integrity with enhanced features, including the option to require document checkout before editing, the ability to view past revisions and restore to previous versions, and the ability to set document-specific security.
• helping people and teams stay on task with a variety of communication features that let users know when actions are required or important changes are made to existing information or documentation, including announcements, sophisticated alerts, surveys, and discussion boards.
• providing creative forums for brainstorming ideas, building knowledge bases, or simply gathering information in an easy-to-edit format with new templates for implementing blogs (also known as weblogs) and wikis (websites that can be quickly edited by team members—no special technical knowledge required).
• helping users remain productive while mobile with enhanced support for offline synchronization using Microsoft Office Outlook 2007. Users can manage document libraries, lists, calendars, contacts, tasks, and discussion boards, even offline, and then synchronize changes when reconnected to the network.

Learn more about how easy it is to set up and implement Windows SharePoint 3.0. You can also take a video tour. To see how the service can work in a particular work environment, check out these video examples highlighting construction and real estate.

Productivity@Work Update: ProForma Anchor Printing & Promotions

Building on a stellar customer experience

The recent recession hit a lot of businesses hard, but since we last spoke with ProForma Anchor Printing & Promotions in Tallahassee, Florida, in early 2010, it has not only made it through that difficult period intact, but has already transitioned back into growth mode.

In 2009, the most challenging stretch of the Great Recession for many businesses, ProForma Anchor rang up a 2% increase in profits and was ranked in the top 2% of its industry, despite a soft sales environment. Owner Bill Parsons has really stepped on the gas since then, adding not just new customers and sales, but two new offices as well. While many factors have played a role in ProForma Anchor’s stability and return to growth, Parsons says, an important one is the quality and reliability of Comcast Business services.

“A customer experience that is defined by unparalleled service is what sets us apart from the competition,” Parsons explains. “It’s the underpinning of our business strategy no matter what the economy is doing, but it becomes even more important during challenge times like those we just came through. Simply put, we could not execute on our strategy of aiming for 100% customer satisfaction without the quality and reliability of the phone and Internet service we get with Comcast Business.”

The building blocks of ProForma Anchor’s customer experience strategy are straightforward but effective. It focuses on providing fast response times, consistently solving problems to the customer’s satisfaction, and making sure customer interactions with ProForma Anchor staff are always pleasant. “Customers know they will be treated with respect and courtesy when they do business with us,” Parsons says. “That also pays off with a high number of referrals, which account for a substantial portion of our new business.”

Needless to say, ProForma Anchor’s two newest offices are also using Comcast Business Services. Parsons says that’s one of the reasons he is so optimistic about the outlook for his company’s future. “We get what we need from Comcast, from the quality and reliability of our phone and Internet service to the quick response and professional support on those rare occasions we need it.”

Make Your Business Case

We’d like to highlight your success story in Productivity@Work. If you have a challenge that Comcast Business Services has helped you solve, or you have a unique story to tell about your accomplishments, briefly tell us about it in an email to: Editor_at_newsletter@cable.comcast.com, and your business may be the next one you see in Productivity@Work.

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