The Wall

One of the traits of great leaders is their ability to paint a compelling picture of the future and motivate their followers to overcome major obstacles to get there. One only has to think about Martin Luther King Jr. and his “I have a dream” speech or Nelson Mandela’s quest to end apartheid. We have used the wall as a tool to help leaders not only create their story (i.e., the story of how and why they are going to transform) but also communicate their story to their organization²

There are five major pieces to the wall: future, past, present, the control panel, and closing the gap (see Figure 10.1).

Future

The future is where you would write down the vision, mission, and values of the organization. As you can see, there is limited space, so if your vision was one or two pages long, we would suggest you distill it down to one or two sentences.

Past

We think this is one of the places where leaders get into trouble. Recall in our technical plan chapter (chapter 6) that we stated that you need to identify your current situation. Often leaders start a new plan as if there were no old plan. The past is a way to capture your previous lessons about transformation efforts and activities that produced a desired result (“encores”) and those activities that produced undesired results (“never-agains”). This often causes conflict in the organization as some might think one program was an encore, while others might think it was a never-again. The point of the exercise is not to correctly label the activity but to draw upon previous lessons. Some lessons might be about how change was introduced or perhaps when change was introduced (e.g., a type of lesson learned could be to introduce change during the spring or fall because when you tried to introduce it in the summer, too many people were out of town and it was difficult to communicate the change efforts).

Another benefit from gathering lessons from the past is that once we have identified the lesson, we can release the baggage. How often have you heard, “We tried that before and it failed.” From our experience, this baggage stays in organizations for a long time. One way to address the “we tried it before” syndrome is to identify the lesson from the failure, carry that insight into the new transformation efforts, and release the baggage of the old. We have worked with organizations that have actually had baggage-burning parties where they put all of their emotions about previous transformation efforts into a bag and then set the bag on fire as a symbolic way of letting the past go.

An example from one of the authors might further help clarify the role of discussing the past. Marvin and Erika were living in Chicago but decided to get married in Colorado and then celebrate their honeymoon in Hawaii. This was back when you actually had a paper ticket (which seems amazing given they were married in 1995). So Marvin left for Colorado on a Tuesday, and Erika left on Friday. After an amazing wedding they went to the airport to board their flight for Hawaii. When they got to the gate, the ticket agent asked for the tickets, and both waited for the other, as each thought the other had brought the tickets from Chicago. Needless to say, this was not the best way to start a honeymoon. Now imagine Marvin and Erika are planning another trip. What is the lesson to be learned from their past? It isn’t that Erika and Marvin shouldn’t go on vacations or that Hawaii is a bad place to go. Maybe the lesson is to create a “to do” list to make sure that the important activities are accomplished. Maybe the lesson is to identify a critical set of steps and prioritize them (e.g., “Now I will place the tickets in the same place with my credit card, wallet, and passport; everything else becomes optional”). Similarly for the organization, you need to determine the lessons from your past because much like the famous maxim on history, those who don’t learn from it are doomed to repeat it.

Present

The present is where you start to really think through your analysis of your situation. What is the current state of the organization? Where are you now in terms of some key result area (KRA)? How receptive is the organization to change? What is the burning platform? How hot is the fire?

Another part of the present is the actual technical plan. What are the key initiates that you will implement to achieve the vision? We suggest that planning be done yearly, so while your vision might be 3 to 5 years away, your wall will have the key initiatives for the 1st year. If your goal is to lose 100 pounds in 3 years, your wall might say to lose 30 pounds the 1st year. Remember, as you create your key initiates, you will have some direct drivers (e.g., exercise more) and some enablers (e.g., find a personal trainer).

The Control Panel

The control panel represents the KRAs. No more than five or six metrics are to be placed here. We often use the analogy of a pilot’s control panel. If you have ever been in the cockpit of a plane, you see lots of dials, gauges, and lights. However, there are probably five or six key gauges that pilots are constantly monitoring: the altimeter, the fuel gauge, engine operation, cabin pressure, air speed, and so forth. If these five or six gauges are off, then the pilot knows to look at the other gauges to determine the source and extent of the problem. We worked with one organization that had a monthly review where they reviewed more than 40 pages of graphs and charts to assess the success of the organization. We remember the meeting lasted over 4 hours, and they would talk about numbers in the green (better than expected), numbers in the red (worse than expected), and numbers in the yellow (close to expected). After the 4-hour meeting, one of us asked the leader of the organization, “So how is your organization doing?” He couldn’t answer. He had gotten so focused on the details that he had no assessment of the overall health of the organization. We worked with them to identify five critical measures that could not only assess the health of the organization but also chart the way toward the future; if the measures chosen were moving in the right direction, this should be some indication that the organization is moving toward a positive future.

Closing the Gap

Now that you have the future, the lessons from the past, an understanding of your current situation identified (and a measure of your desire to do something), and an understanding of how you will measure your progress toward the future and your key initiatives, all that is left is closing the gap. While your key initiatives will probably require much more planning and effort and could involve the deployment of work to other units, with regards to closing the gap, what do you want those initiatives to look like 1 year from now? If your goal is to weigh 195 pounds in 4 years, and a key initiative is to work out more, maybe your point of departure is that you will exercise 8 days in the 1st month. For that same initiative, your point of arrival might be that 12 months from now, you are working out 16 days each month. Then you would review your progress along the way. Recall that we talked about monthly and quarterly reviews in the technical plan chapter (chapter 6). In your monthly review you would see how many days you worked out and then find out why you did or did not meet the target. In your quarterly review you would see if working out more has led to the desired weight loss.

We suggest that the wall is just a tool to help communication and not the actual plan itself. The plan would include the five ingredients, the LT, and the TDT. The wall would simply be used as a way for the leaders to communicate with the organization. For example, Moses probably needed to explain to the Israelites why they were leaving Egypt. He could have either created an elaborate story about their faith and how Pharaoh was treating them, or he could have said something like, “God has promised that he would look out for us [past], Pharaoh is treating us very badly [burning platform], God has said that we should go into Jordan [vision] and that we must cross the Red Sea [key initiative].” Moses still needed a social plan (in his case, it was Aaron who helped him communicate his plan to the Israelites) and a technical plan (i.e., cross the Red Sea, create a governance structure, and implement the Ten Commandments). What the wall did was allow Moses to simply, passionately, and clearly communicate the reason for the plan and the plan itself. This is how we usually end our work with clients and their organizations. After working with them to create their transformation plan (usually at the level of key initiatives and KRAs and not necessarily at the level of action plans and flag-chart creation) that encompasses the five ingredients, we have them work on their wall. We work with them until they can tell their transformation story. We put them in groups, have them go up to strangers, and have them share with their spouses—whatever it takes to get them to practice telling the story. After they have told their story (recall our “stand up for energy” exercise), both we and they feel confident that they are ready to lead the transformation.

As we end our training sessions with leaders communicating their transformational plans with the wall tool, so, too, do we end our book. We started this book by describing some truisms of organizational change processes, and we want to end by returning to two of them. The first is that change is a system problem. As such, you need a holistic solution. While there are some great books out there that focus just on tools or methodologies of change, tools and techniques are not enough. Similarly, there are lots of great books focused on leadership, written by some very important people, but leadership isn’t enough. Just focusing on having a vision or a burning platform is not enough. This book is intended to help you identify the entire change plan, for you or your organization. The second truism is that organizations do not change; people do. As such, the organization’s vision and burning platform need to be the collection of the individuals’ visions and burning platforms. Without it, you may end up like many people on the Titanic as the ship was going down (their burning platform). Many people not only were unaware during the first critical minutes but also refused to believe they were in danger even after being informed that the listing ship was doomed.