“You Have 30 Days……!”

I’ve been reading a number of articles about people being terminated, or put on PIPs, 30 days to fix the problem. It culminated, today, in a discussion I had with one of the most talented CROs I’ve met. She was being recruited by another company.  She said, “Dave, their key issue in recruiting someone is how to fix their Q3 EBITDA problem!” This coming from a $B plus organization. I responded, “Hold on a moment, let me look at my watch…… Oh, we are a month + into Q3, even if you started today, it’s impossible for you to fix their Q3 EBITDA problem! What’s up?”

This is INSANITY! Yet, this is, increasingly, a mindset I see among too many leaders of organizations.

I need to vent for a moment, forgive me, but I need to get this out of my system.

• “It took much more than 30 days to create this problem, why do you expect me to fix it in 30 days?”
• “Where were the current management team, why did they let this happen?”  Why has the team consistently ignored the warning signs?
• “Hmmm, this is like thinking, ‘What if I get nine pregnant women together….?'” (OK, that’s really bad, please forgive me.)

OK, I’ll stop my rant here.

Unfortunately, I see too many organizations having completely unrealistic expectations of themselves and of their people. I can understand being ambitious, I am a huge fan of BHAGs! I have always set ambitious goals and have been driven to achieve them.

But if we don’t have realistic plans for what we must do to achieve these, if we don’t have the resources, if we don’t have time; all of this becomes wishful thinking and dreaming. And none of this is helpful in addressing the opportunities before our organizations.

Unfortunately, we see too much of this happening, as a result we either fail to achieve our goals, or we under perform our potential.

Even in the most transactional business, change takes time. And sustaining the impact of that change takes even more time.

But as we look at tenures at all levels within the organization plummeting to 11-15 months, we set our organizations and our people up for failure. We’ve, perhaps unconsciously, created this self-defeating loop.

Let’s look at this from a couple of views.

When a new leader comes into an organization, it takes a time to understand the business, customers, organization, and the performance issues. Once that leader has identified the key issues and changes, it takes some time to put those changes in place, then it takes several cycles to see the sustained impact of those changes.

Unless the business is a highly transactional business, with cycles less than 30 days, we have expectations for results that may be unrealistic. Even in an organization that has sales cycles less than to days, and if the leader knows from day 1 what needs to be changed, it takes over 60 days to see the initial impact of those changes and over 120 days to see that it’s sustainable. And that’s in the most idealized situation.

But the reality, particularly in B2B, is our cycles are much longer, and the changes may be more complex. We have to give these change initiatives the chance to succeed. We have to align everyone around the “why, what, how” of the changes. We have to roll it out to the organization. We have to assess the early warning signs, to see where we might need to tweak the initiatives to get them back on course, then we have to take the time to make sure the changes stick and are sustainable.

But in our impatience, we drive different behaviors. We focus on “What can be done quickly?” Rather than addressing the real issues, we focus on the quick wins. We shift the focus of the organization to these new quick wins, but the underlying issues persist. And soon, senior management starts thinking, “What have you done for us lately,” and the cycle starts all over again, just with a new person in place.

And the executives moving from company to company, carry the same playbook to each company. The change initiatives become less, “what we need to do,” more, “this is what I know how to do….”

This dynamic, creating self defeating behaviors across all players in the process. We are focused on the very short term and what we can achieve, rather than looking at how we achieve and sustain our potential over years.

We need to change this mindset!

Executive leadership in organizations need to be aggressive, yet realistic in change expectations. It takes time to identify what changes are needed. It takes time to implement those changes. It takes time to see the initial results of those changes. It takes time to know that we can sustain these. Through the process, we need to identify leading signals indicating we are on the right path or to establish correct actions. And leadership needs to be 200% behind the teams as they go through these initiatives.

And as individuals taking leadership roles in these organizations, you need to commit yourself to go beyond the quick fixes to look at the real challenges. You have to commit to see the job through, helping guide the team to achieving the expected outcomes.

We can and should be doing better for our organizations and our own professional development.