Management Churn
In my last entry, I taked about Reorgs, and how they are a cyclical event. In this entry, we'll take a look at the impact or a Reorg. Let's start with the size of the Reorg. It can be small, with only a few executives and managers changing positions. Or it can be massive, with entire divisions being reorganized or eliminated. New divisions can spring up, with an emphasis on solving the problems the company is now facing. They are often lead by executives or managers who have a reputation of being able to “make things happen.”
Of course, the impact on the management team is striking. Leaders that only two years ago were praised for their ability to improve the company are suddenly gone. New leaders, often from the outside, are brought in to shake up the company. Existing leaders, who are not happy that they've been bypassed for promotion, begin to look for jobs on the outside. The end result is that leaders seem to have an expiration date on them. Every two years, you have to go into the refrigerator and throw out all the leaders who have passed their expiration date. It's not unusual for employees to wonder if the corner office has a revolving door, since they see a new face in that room every two years.
I came to realize this is my career with General Motors when I was assigned to a leader that I didn't really think I could work for. When I brought this up to a mentor of mine who worked outside of General Motors, he asked if I could put up with the person for two years. “Why two years?” I asked. He described this phenomenon, and predicted that in two years I would have a new boss. As I look back through my career, I had to admit the data supported the prediction. It did seem that the average time I worked for a boss was about two years. By then, either he had a new job or I have a new job. Sure enough, after two years, another reorganization happened. The boss I was concerned about ended up in charge of another organization. Since the new organization was smaller, it was viewed as a step backwards in their career. A few weeks later that boss disappeared and ended up working for a competitor.
The term I end of using for this phenomenon is Management Churn. Now that I'm consulting on the outside, I realize that I have to take management churn into account as I develop a strategy for implementing continuous improvement in a company. I have to make sure that I secure several management champions, not just one or two. I have to make sure that my network includes potential future leaders, who can become my management champions for my improvement process after the churn occurs. And I have to remind myself that I cannot be disappointed or fustrated when management churn occurs. It's as much of a corporate "tradition" as downsizing and outsourcing. And the only way to lessen or reduce its impact is to develop strategies and tactics that will allow my continuous improvement process to become sustainable. Thus, in order to eventually reduce the amount of management churn that occurs in the company, I must set up a continuous improvement process that can survive management churn.
It's also the reason that Eli Goldratt tends to avoid large companies. Smaller companies seen to have much less management churn, and it appears to happen much less frequently. This allows a Viable Vision implementation, which typically lasts three to five years, to have some chance of success. When Eli eventually gets to the point where he wants to implement Viable vision in a large company, he'll have to put tactics in place that will allow him to overcome management churn. Hopefully, I'll have a few answers for him when he gets to that point.
