Keep it moving
You want to get your people involved, and you don’t want to be overbearing in leading a change effort. But at the same time, it’s your responsibility to keep things moving.
“What the leader has to do is to make real clear what’s expected and when it’s expected,” Restrepo says. “Trust the people to make it happen. If they don’t make it happen, then we’ve got a problem. I kind of have a deaf ear to why they didn’t get it done, because I made it real clear this was their No. 1 objective and they were expected to do their jobs.
Restrepo spoke with managers who were losing people to this project to plan for their absence in an effort to clear the obstacle of time from their work.
But everyone is busy and sometimes you just have to deal with it.
“We all have peak times and you have to learn how to manage and balance,” Restrepo says. “Sometimes the only way to manage and balance is to put in more hours and that’s what folks did. But they understood why it was important and understood that it was important. They also understood that it wasn’t going to go on forever. People have to learn how to manage themselves and their teams through peaks.”
Your job is to keep things moving, but it’s not to be a micromanager.
“If you want to empower people, you need to give clear direction and then you have to get out of their way,” Restrepo says. “But you have to have means to verify that they are making progress.
“Make sure you have a point person or point people to check in with to monitor progress. I’m always asking, ‘Who is in charge? Who is accountable? Who loses sleep if we are off track on this? How far down the organization are they?’ It’s making sure you have the right person in charge and you have to look them in the eye every once in a while. It’s just really assigning clear measurable responsibilities. I want to know, ‘Who is it that is going to make this happen?’ Then it’s holding them accountable for it. ‘Did you do it or didn’t you do it?’”
You also need to make sure you’re keeping the rest of the company involved, even those who aren’t directly engaged in the process. The key to any project is a clear sign of progress.
“We gave at least monthly updates to everybody,” Restrepo says. “You’ve got to communicate status. When the process was over, I did a second round of employee meetings, 20 to 25 people to talk about the high-impact ideas and spend time specifically on those areas that affected my audience.”
Perhaps most importantly with any project, in addition to getting it done, is how quickly you get it done.
“The first critical success factor is, ‘Do it fast,’” Restrepo says. “I’ve seen projects that last 18 months. They bring in an outside consultant and they do one after another and it takes 18 months to two years. Whatever you do, do it fast. I have a friend who works with me here and he says, ‘Fast beats perfect every time.’”
The end result is a company that’s in a better position to move forward.
“We’re much better positioned for the future,” Restrepo says. “I knew when I got here we were going to need to make some structural changes. We had been doing things the same way for 15 years. We called our project, Innovate State Auto, but there wasn’t a whole lot (of innovation) that came out of this.
“It was just getting us up to some reasonably good practices. What it’s positioned us for now is to take the next step and say, ‘OK, now what are the best practices?’ It’s positioned us to be more responsive to our customers and positioned us to accelerate profitable growth.”
How to reach: State Auto Insurance Cos., (614) 464-5000 or www.stateauto.com
