Change Leadership

The article “Change Leadership” reminded me of a time when my prior company was undergoing a restructuring of the compensation program. The restructuring had multiple parts and required additional work from everyone on the compensation team. The restructuring was spearheaded by the brand new Vice President and assisted by the new Director. Both of these leaders had only worked for the company for a few months when they started trying to push this new initiative and had virtually no knowledge of the compensation structure of the company. Compared to the rest of the staff which had worked at the company for years the management did not understand the dynamics of the job and did not ask for advice.

The article put into perspective some ways they could have been more successful with the change. First, the article mentions creating small wins and using those wins to propel the momentum of the change. The leaders did not do this in my case. Instead the goals were too large and not well communicated. Each section of the project took over 6 months to complete and tasks were often dropped to attend to more urgent matters and picked up months later. The article also mentions leaders being able to assess their own gaps in abilities. The leaders at my company did not acknowledge any of their short comings and did not run their ideas by any of the more seasoned employees. Leadership was also unable to rally the staff around their vision and as a result all they had was a bunch of employees gossiping in their cubicles and no real followers. Leadership should have worked first to create buy in from the employees and then set a way for us to complete their vision instead of leaving us in the dark and expecting everyone to immediately follow their vision.