Sigmoid Curve, part 3

Let say that you have figured out that nothing lasts forever and that you have introduced an inflection point into your system.  Congratulations, this is a good thing. . . or at least it has the potential to be a good thing.  There are two basic assumptions about your inflection point:

1. That you are committed to it.  Without your commitment and passion, as the leader, what will follow will erode your resolve and leave everything worse off than before, as well as making your position precarious.
2. That the new direction has the strength to move the company forward.

IF both of these assumptions are true, then begins the "fun."

As I mentioned in my previous post, what is labeled "Doubt and Uncertainty"  in the diagram above has been described by others as "hell" and "chaos."  This is because of two factors:

1. Ruts - i.e. the comfortable patterns which have produced success in the past have lulled some into assuming that such patterns, if continued, will always produce the same or greater success, while others use that same concept as a clear definition of insanity.
2. Resource allocation - i.e. there are only so many resources and now with two tracks you can depend on conflict to arise as to where the limited resources should be expended: toward the already successful track, or toward the "hair-brained" new track.

The ultimate answer to this is also two fold:

1. Administrative resolve at the highest level.  If the top officers of the company are not fully convinced in the need for the new initiative and fully behind it, you can be assured that the political struggles which will arise will undermine its implementation and perhaps even scuttle it completely.  DO YOU BELIEVE THIS NEW DIRECTION IS THE FUTURE OF THE COMPANY? If you can't answer that with conviction. . . disaster looms.
2. Vision casting.  Here is where I find most leaders struggle.  They have announced the new direction of the company and gotten a lot of fanfare, and then left the implementation to their teams without realizing that vision has to be cast, and then re-cast, and then re-cast repeatedly . . . and it has to come from the top as well as at the managerial level.  It has to be prominent, and consistent, and often.  It has to be presented in different ways using different pictures and different stories.  It cannot be neglected or delegated.

With these two pieces in place then the movement through the period of transition, although still rocky, will be traversed with success.

I have seen and experienced this personally and know it to be true.