The CEO’s role in leading change

The CEO’s role in leading change

"Khun Don, what do you want to discuss today?”

“Coach Kriengsak, what can I do to add more value to my organisation?” Don asks me.

“What made you say that?”

“We’re facing the most difficult time in terms of business growth. It’s very hard to expand our business at the high rates we used to see in the past. So what we have to do is focus internally. That leads me to the conclusion that change is inevitable,” he explains. “And change has to start from the top. I want to be a role model to my people and champion the change. Hence, I have to come up with some things to change in myself.”

“Okay. What changes do you need to make to add value for the organisation?”

“I’m not sure, Coach.”

“Okay. Perhaps my question was not clear. Let me try another approach. You’re considering some of your actions that can add value to your company. Usually, what actions create value for your business?”

“They fall into three categories: making things cheaper, making things faster, and making things better.”

“That’s good. Now let me try to rephrase my question. Let start with: how can your company make things cheaper?”

“In my business, we can make things cheaper by doing less reworking.”

“As a CEO, how much of the reworking is generated by you?”

“Quite a lot.”

“What can you do to reduce that?”

Don thinks for a few seconds, and then he a ‘Eureka!’ moment. “I think I’ll have to spend more time explaining my ideas,” he tells me. “The things we single out for reworking usually come from the marketing campaigns we hold every month. I usually ask my people to make some adjustments almost at the last minute, because they didn’t clearly understand my vision.”

“So the first thing you will change is to better explain your campaign vision to your team members in order to prevent the need for doing things over again.”

“That’s correct, Coach.”

“Okay, now what changes are needed in order to make things faster?”

“I spend too much time lobbying for my ideas. Hence, we spend too long on some critical decisions. The reason I did that in the past was because I wanted to engage people. But during a crisis like this, I need to be more decisive. What I need to do is categorise my decisions into two groups: high involvement ones and straight directives. This will make some executive decisions move faster.”

“How much do you plan to change?”

“Coach, I think I will aim to base about 50% of executive decisions on involvement with my leadership team. The other 50% that need less input from them, I will make the decisions by myself.”

“But this might create resistance from you team. How can you make the transition smoothly?”

“I’ll explain this change to them first. I’ll also inform them in advance about those decisions that I will take alone — just in case some of them might want to add some input.”

“That’s good. What can you do to make things better in your organisation?”

“To make things better we need the employees’ input. Basically, we are talking about quality improvement. The quality of work can be improved in several ways.”

“Which one is under your control?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Okay Khun Don, in your own work as a CEO, what has a direct impact on the quality of your product or service?”

“Usually, our quality is good. We have few complaints. But we can be better.”

“What can you do to make the quality of your product better?”

“I think I’ll need to discuss that with my direct report who’s in charge of quality.”

“What do you plan to talk about?”

“I will ask him what he’s done to make our product better than those of our competitors?”

“Good. That’s a good starting point to ask about his strength. Then what?”

“I think I will ask him some ‘3-Do’ questions in order to make quality better:

Do more: What can he do more?

Do less: What can he do less?

Do new: What are the new things that he has never done before?”

“That’s great, but to be fair, you should let him ask you the same 3-Do questions. What would your response be?”

“Do more: I will compliment them at least once a week on the quality aspect.
Do less: I won’t try to add any unnecessary projects to the quality department.
Do new: I will learn more about our customers’ feedback on quality issues.”

“That’s great Khun Don, I think that now you have some good ideas for action to champion the change you’re looking for. Let’s follow up in our next session.”


Kriengsak Niratpattanasai provides executive coaching in leadership and diversity management under the brand TheCoach. He can be reached at coachkriengsak@yahoo.com. Daily inspirational quotations can be found on his Facebook fan page: https://www.facebook.com/TheCoachinth. Previous articles are archived at http://thecoach.in.th

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