The Pause

“Sharpen the saw? You mean the Covey thing?”

“I guess. It’s not like he was specific. He just told me I would be “on the beach” in the short term and there were likely to be “concerns” in next month’s “discussions.”

Jasper and Jeanne were in the same new hire consulting cohort at a big firm four years ago. They bonded because they were both “NH,” among the few hires who didn’t go to the Harvard Business School or Harvard University undergraduate or graduate school. They both got tired of the “arterial red” and “Crimson Cohort” jokes.

They still get together for a drink periodically even though Jasper left the firm for a bank two years ago.

Jeanne went on. “So, as I was saying, I followed the SpeedStrat Pilot methodology religiously, BITF, brainstorm-investigate, -try-it, fix-it. It just wasn’t working. People stopped coming to meetings, none of the teams were getting results. I never saw the guy the partner sold this to after the kick-off. The woman he “delegated to” was too busy to review the “Investigate stage” AI data. She signed off on everything. There were some ‘hallucinations’ in there that my team missed.

“Then the hammer fell. One of the division heads said one of our teams was “mucking about in their biggest customer’s business.” The big client called the partner and cancelled. It’s unclear whether we’ll get paid for the work we’ve done. This was my first engagement as project lead and all the partner said was “you’ll be on the beach for a while. Might be time to ‘Sharpen the Saw.’”

“What Covey meant was use downtime to increase capability.”

“Oh thanks, Jasper. Are you assuming I didn’t read the book or didn’t understand it?”

“Geesh, Jeanne. Chill out. I’m sorry. I get that you’re in a tough spot. I’m not doing so great either.”

“Oh? What’s going on?”

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

“Come on, Jasper. You listened to me vent; the least I can do is reciprocate.”

“Well… OK… you remember that the bank paid for that external training?

“Yeah… improvement stuff, right?”

“Close. SFI, Skinny Fast Improvation. Well, last year I got my Journeyman Medallion. I designed a new product introduction process. The SFI International Review Council loved it and gave me a Platinum ring on my Journeyman Medalion…”

“Wow!”

“Don’t get too excited. I think it’s aluminum and the medal is definitely gold-colored, but the point is the SFI-IRC loved it and I put an announcement on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram with a picture of the medal, and now the head of New Product Development has asked to see me next week. She’s never even responded to an email before and I’m a little worried. Nobody is really using the new process.”

“Is she your boss?”

“No, no, but she’s an EVP, and my boss is only an SVP.”

“I thought you were a VP, Jasper.”

“Yeah, I am, Jeanne, along with the rest of the bank.”

“Did she say what she wants to talk about?”

“In the subject line of the email, she wrote ‘Leading Change.’”

“Leading Change? Is she in HR?”

“No, no, International Project Finance and New Product Development.”

“You know, Jasper, it’s funny. My partner, you remember Reg?

“The Brit?”

“The same. Reg, when he was warning me of impending doom in my upcoming performance discussions, and mumbling through his mustache, his cryptic ‘Sharpen the Saw,’ did say something about ‘change management being the most critical skill of the twenty-first century.’”

“Change management? You mean all that OB stuff from business school?”

“Yeah, that stuff, Jasper. I mostly got through that by memorizing writers and dates, Mary Parker Follett 1925, Kurt Lewin 1947, Douglas McGregor 1963.”

“I had the Derek Pugh summary book too, Jeanne. He  came to speak at my school, mutton chops and a maroon suit.” 

“Typical of all those guys.”

“Jeanne, do you remember Wilson? Was that his first or last name?”

“Wilson Anders, Jasper.”

“Yeah, he had this great quote. Vonnegut, I think. ‘the place would be an engineer’s paradise except for the people,’ something like that.”

“Yeah, Player Piano; what’s your point, Jasper?”

“I mean, it’s just that it’s really right. People are the problem.  They are what messes things up. Like they stopped coming to your meetings on your pilot project, and…”

“Actually, I think that was the bagels.”

“What? Bagels?”

“Yeah, I was under expense pressure and I cut the bagels. People pretty much stopped coming after that. The meetings were useless anyway. People were all either arguing or blathering on or comatose.”

“Whatever, Jeanne, but that’s it. People can’t get off the dime to take action, or just don’t understand a vision, or are afraid of change.”

“Well, I don’t know, Jasper, but it sounds like right now, both our jobs depend on learning something about leading change.”

“Change Schmange. How hard can it be? ‘If it weren’t for the people…’”

And… Scene.

OK. I admit it. I’m having a little fun here. This conversation didn’t happen. There are a lot of misconceptions about consulting process and about how to lead change successfully that I crammed into this short scene, but not all the available ones.

How many and which ones here can you name and count? What others aren’t in there?

I write books for the exceptions to the rule, “the young won’t listen and the old don’t read.”

Do you know anyone who fits that description?