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Leading Change - Listen More and Talk Less

"Well Dave, here's how it is. Thanks to Oracle, we have most of the parts we need for all of the products. However, we don’t have all of the parts we need for any of the products."

That quote came from the Director of Purchasing regarding the new Oracle system the company had just implemented. Honesty was long overdue. We were working in a $500 million dollar tech outfit at the time, when the VP of Op's flew into town to stop the riot. He was going to set everyone straight and tell us straight up ‘how it was’.

He started the meeting with this gem.

"I've heard all the noise in the system. I've checked it out. And I want you to know it stops today! Oracle is our system, it works fine and this is the end of it."

We all wished he was right. But he was about as right as Bush and his WMD’s in Baghdad.

But the truth never stopped this guy, so he rambled on with authority.

"Just why are we not making the new products that are on order? Why are our shipments always late? We cannot have this anymore. It stops today!"

He was pretty exercised and excited and they seemed like fair questions. I mean the company had invested around $30 million or so to get this Oracle thing on the street. It had been two years since this guy kicked off the Oracle project. So questions like he now posed seemed fair. Things were pretty quiet for a time.

That's when he got his priceless answer from the Director of Purchasing.

"Well, Dave, here's how it really works. Thanks to Oracle, we have most of the parts we need for all the products. However, we don’t have all of the parts we need for any of the products."

The entire project team had been telling this guy we call Dave, for months that things weren’t what the consultants from Oracle were claiming. They were telling him but he wasn’t listening. As time went on he became more obsessed with the timeline than he did the truth. That is a killer. He had stepped out on that proverbial limb and told the CEO that all was well in Zion. He was dead wrong. You have to listen to the right people. You have to listen to understand, not just nod your head.

You must be a listener to lead change successfully. Anything less and failure is loaded on the southbound train screaming towards you at this very moment. It's a bullet that's been fired and it just hasn’t arrived yet. Dave ended up getting shot in the process, don’t let that be you.

As the change leader - make sure you listen. It's been said, "To change, you gotta' change". I might add, "To change successfully, you gotta' listen."