If you are making a big change, a leapfrog change, like repositioning your company, you will need to gather input from the people who will be affected by the change. Why? First of all, I guarantee you will see things from other people’s perspective that you would never see on your own.
We all live in our own little bubbles of information and input. And the higher you are in a company, the smaller that flow of information becomes about what is really happening in your company. You may know a lot more than the average worker about customers and partners, but even that may not be true.
You most definitely will know less about what’s happening inside your company than the average worker does. Because of your position of power, people carefully filter what they tell you. You need to actively seek out input, relying on people you know you can trust in an organization, and perhaps even pushing the fact-finding down to lower-level generals so you can get real feedback.
One way to gather this critical feedback on your repositioning (or other major change initiative) is to socialize the idea. Toss the idea out during hallway conversations, before or after meetings with key people you trust. Find a way to informally get feedback, responses and additional ideas about the change you want to make.
During this socializing process, hopefully someone will tell you if you are about to jump off a cliff you can’t see because of your position. You may also get some interesting feedback that helps to refine and strengthen your idea. Either way, socializing the idea of the change before implementing the change makes the whole process smoother.
Remember, being a corporate leader is not like mountain climbing; you can’t always see more from the top. You can see further, but you can also miss essential details.
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