Create change agents
Any organization that undertakes a major shift in the way it does business will need people to step up, set an example and create buy-in from the people around them.
Paul says Compuware already had a number of such leaders in place. But he is always on th
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lookout for additional change leaders.
To find them, he sets clearly stated goals and observes who has the most success — and fewest setbacks — in reaching those goals.
“You will learn who your main players are in the near and medium term if you have set goals,” Paul says. “I set up quarterly goals for each of our business leaders that are all very measurable. You can tell who is capable of breaking through walls and achieving those goals. It can take a bit of time, but it’s something where you can kind of get there in the medium term.”
In the long term, you need to create an environment that develops and nurtures leaders who can help anchor and grow your culture and strategies. Paul creates that environment at Compuware by looking both inside and outside the organization.
“I have done a combination of things,” he says. “I leveraged the best and brightest that were already in place, plus I hired a bunch of new people to work with the existing people. The newer people are ones I thought would bring an outside perspective, a fresh attitude, agility and nimbleness. Then, we set up processes internally through training and evaluation programs to really encourage and foster the future leadership.”
Paul also wants to see a leader’s ability to groom and mentor other leaders. In order to be promoted, a manager at Compuware has to show not only excellence at their current job but also a demonstrated ability to mentor candidates who could potentially fill the role to be vacated.
The ability to teach as well as learn is, once again, rooted in effective goal setting. Paul wants employees’ goal-setting processes to be both collaborative and focused on the business plan.
“In goal setting, the No. 1 process is that you get the business plan right,” he says. “Every year, we go about the exercise of putting together a fair and achievable but aggressive business plan across the organization. We then break that down into geographies and solutions. From that, we expect two things to happen: One, that there is an evaluation process that happens between every manager and employee. Separate from that, there is a collaborative discussion about what that manager’s goals are for their team. It’s a very quick cascading from the business plan, and it creates alignment around the business plan.”