Get people involved
Reisz was confident that Ontario Systems had the potential to be a successful and dynamic company. But he needed to put his people in a position where they could help him capitalize on that potential.
“We gave everyone the opportunity to not only understand the strategy but to know exactly what their role was in the execution of that strategy,” Reisz says. “It wasn’t me who walked in and said, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do.’ My job was to guide that. But they needed to be bought in to the process. They know the company better than anyone else. They are the agents for change. They are the ones that need to execute on that change. For them to own it and to say, ‘This is me. I put my name and thoughts and ideas into this,’ it becomes virtually impossible for someone not to execute on that change.”
These teams have to represent your vision for change.
“There were certain characteristics of leadership that we were looking for when we chose members to participate in this team,” Reisz says. “It wasn’t like we had everybody in the organization participating. We had an opportunity to really look at leadership and make some decisions of ‘OK, here’s the type of people we think we want.’
“Cross-functional teams looked at every facet of the business and came to a conclusion. Is this what we want to do? Do we want to be in this business? If we’re to be successful in this business, here’s exactly how we’re going to do it. And then creating the operational plan that comes out of that strategy in order for us to go back to the organization and execute on it.”
It’s critical that you put a time element on the work of these teams. You’re not micromanaging. But you are making it clear that they need to move swiftly in their work.
Reisz went with 30 days from the formation of the teams to the creation of a report.
“It forces people very quickly to get everything out on the table, because they have a deadline they have to reach together,” Reisz says.
The time element keeps people on the teams from playing the blame game or getting territorial about their own department.
“As the CEO, I was the ultimate change agent for the organization,” Reisz says. “I had a weekly meeting with each of the rapid response teams. They had to report out to me on their progress. So I was able to watch very quickly to see who was performing, who was staying in the territorial mode and who was thinking outside of the box.”
Make the tough call
At some point in a transformation, tough decisions need to be made. It’s at that point that many corporate transformations stall out, because the leader doesn’t have the nerve to follow through and make those tough decisions.
“You have to be the one who is not willing to let yourself go backward,” Reisz says. “You have to have the intestinal fortitude to stick to it when it gets tough.”
The tough time for Reisz came after the reports had been reviewed and analyzed, and it was determined that employees would need to be let go.
“As a byproduct of our new plan, I laid off a fair chunk of the organization,” Reisz says. “That in itself was the moment of truth. I had to make the tough decision. … For me to have believed that people were behind me at that point, I would have been kidding myself. That was a very tough, lonely time for me when I had to make that decision.”
However, as Reisz and his leadership team looked at the result of all the research that had been conducted by the cross-functional teams, he felt it was the right thing to do.
“We’re a 30-year-old company that has rebuilt itself into a company with new markets and a new growth attitude,” Reisz says. “The biggest transformation that we made was a talent transformation. The leadership and the talent we have in the organization today is fundamentally different from the talent we had in the company two years ago.”
Despite the positive changes, Reisz knew that there were and still are people in his company who did not agree with what he did.
“For the person who is gone, a decision has been made,” Reisz says. “For the person that stays, there hasn’t been a decision made yet. They have to make a personal decision. Is this what I want to do? Do I want to look at other options? Do I even have other options?”
Reisz conducted a number of employee surveys and shared the results with his people, even when those results did not reflect well on him personally.
“Here is a segment of the company that absolutely does not buy in to our strategy,” Reisz says. “We were very open about that, that we still have about 25 percent of the team that’s not on board with us. Here’s what we’re trying to do about that. It’s not calling people out, because you don’t know who they are and you’re not trying to find out who they are. It’s just being really transparent that we’re gaining momentum, but we still have people that are really skeptical.”
When you show yourself to be open in sharing the mood of your people, both good and bad, you increase your chances of eventually getting more support.
“By sharing those results as widely as we did, the peer pressure started to step up,” Reisz says. “When somebody started to hear somebody else at the watercooler who would be bad mouthing something or creating some rumor along the way, they would say, ‘Hey dude, what are you doing? We got stuff to do and don’t you be the one who is standing in the way of this.’ You create this kind of internal peer pressure when you’re transparent. People have an opportunity to police themselves. It’s a lot more effective than when you try to do it.”
As Reisz looks at his company, he sees a lot of progress. But it’s all about the diligence and the commitment to carry out the plan that makes the difference.
“A lot of people can lay out a great strategy or plan,” Reisz says. “But it takes a ton of everyday effort in order to make sure that you execute in order to overcome the obstacles that are going to be along the way.”
How to reach: Ontario Systems LLC, (800) 283-3227 or www.ontariosystems.com
