Organizational Change Leadership

I watched an HR director tell a CEO he was wrong. In front of the entire leadership team. It was the best thing that happened to that company all year. Six months ago a CEO wanted to cut the sales team's base salary by 20%. "More commission, more hunger," he said. "Let's make them earn it." The Head of HR didn't nod and take notes like everyone else. She pulled out her laptop. "Here's what happened when our three biggest competitors tried that exact strategy." She showed him the data. Turnover rates. Revenue drops. Customer complaints. "Every single one had to reverse the decision within four months." The room went silent. The CEO stared at the screen for thirty seconds. Then he said, "What would you recommend instead?" Sarah had already done the homework. She'd analyzed the top performers' compensation structure. Mapped out retention patterns by pay level. Benchmarked against companies that were actually winning talent wars. Her recommendation? Increase base by 10% Restructure commission tiers Reward long-term customer value, not just initial sales The CEO implemented the strategy. Six months later: - Sales team turnover dropped from 34% to 12% - Average deal size increased 28% - Customer satisfaction scores hit all-time highs But here's the real win: The CEO now brings Sarah into major decisions before announcing anything. Not to execute ideas but to challenge them. Because he learned: The best HR leaders aren't order-takers. They're the people who save you from your worst instincts. Sarah didn't build this relationship by agreeing with everything. She built it by being right when it mattered.

Many organizations spend time and money on brand marketing, not realizing that one of the biggest threats to their brand is the toxic individuals they keep and protect. When employees come forward or raise the flag on unethical workplace behaviors, a practice many leaders and HR departments adopt is to try to downplay the problem or silence the employee. They do so to protect leadership and the organization's reputation. While these tactics might appear to work to "contain the problem" in the short run, they are not effective down the road. The problem is not with the employees raising the flag of unethical behavior but with the people committing these behaviors within the organization. Toxic individuals do much human damage within organizations. It is impossible to deal with human damage by trying to camouflage a problem and make it look as though the target is the perpetrator. An organization is made of humans. When toxic behaviors are present and tolerated, humans can see and feel them as targets and as bystanders. This will affect their well-being and their motivation to work and stay with the organization, and it will affect their performance. Employees, as humans, are connected; when some are suffering, and the systems in place to protect them are inefficient, they lose trust in leadership and their organization. When employees trust that leadership and the organization want what is best for their employees, invest in their well-being, and are ready to act to protect them and live up to their organizational values, they want to invest in their work and their organization's success. Without trust, there is no emotional engagement; this leads to quiet quitting and turnover. When individuals are not held accountable for their unethical actions, they will keep repeating the same toxic behavior, hurting employees and, inevitably, the organization. Ignoring, hiding, or justifying unacceptable, unethical behaviors in the workplace will only increase the risk of recidivism by the perpetrator and others. We need organizations that genuinely care about their employees and walk the talk regarding creating safe workplaces. Dealing with toxic individuals takes courage and determination. While it might seem easier to ignore problems or blame targets and whistleblowers, these "solutions" are a trap, as they give more power to bullies and fraudsters. These individuals don't care about the organization and its employees; they only care about gaining power, control, and money. They will not hesitate to hurt the organization's reputation if they feel it can help them achieve their personal goals. Protecting them may seem like the "safest" solution; however, when organizations protect toxic individuals, no one is safe, including leaders and the organization's reputation. Creating positive and safe workplaces starts with dealing with unethical behavior and making perpetrators accountable. Take care of yourself and the people around you 💗

"Culture change" is the biggest lie in organizational transformation. Here's what actually happens: You run workshops. You print posters. You train people on new values. Six months later, behavior looks exactly the same. Why? Because you've got the causality backwards. Culture follows structure. Not the other way around. Craig Larman captured this in his Laws of Organizational Behavior. The first law: Organizations are implicitly optimized to avoid changing the status quo of middle- and first-level manager positions and power structures. Read that again. Your organization isn't resisting change because people are difficult. It's resisting change because it's designed to resist change. The structure, rewards, and processes are all optimized to preserve existing power. Want to change culture? Change the structure. Want people to collaborate? Remove the structural barriers that make collaboration expensive. Want innovation? Create Product Groups with real P&L ownership and decision-making authority. Want customer focus? Merge customer-facing and product development units so everyone shares the same measures of success. Jay Galbraith's Star Model shows this clearly: Strategy, Structure, Processes, Rewards, and People practices must be in harmony. Change one without the others, and the system snaps back. Stop running culture workshops. Start redesigning your organization. The culture you want will emerge from the structure you create. #SimplificationOfficers #OrganizationalChange

In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, leadership development can't afford to stand still. Just as we regularly upgrade our technology, we must consistently upgrade our leadership capabilities - but unlike a software update, leadership skills can't be installed overnight. Along with my colleagues Leslie Kawai and Erin Wilson Burns from The RBL Group, we've identified five essential strategies that are reshaping how organizations develop their leaders. Drawing from our Leadership Code Research Initiative findings, we explore evidence-based methods, expanded coaching access, personalized development approaches, stakeholder-focused assessments, and the critical need for strategic reflection time. These aren't just theoretical concepts - we've included real-world examples of organizations successfully implementing these strategies to build stronger leadership pipelines and drive measurable business results. I invite you to read our full article and share your experiences: Which of these five strategies has had the most impact in your organization? What other leadership development approaches are you finding effective in today's business environment? Let's learn from each other as we work to build the next generation of leaders. #Leadership #LeadershipDevelopment #TalentDevelopment #HR #OrganizationalDevelopment

People can handle difficult truths. They cannot handle the feeling of being managed. Many leaders understands this intellectually but fewer act on it consistently. Instead, when a hard decision comes (e.g., a layoff, a reorg, a strategy reversal), leaders often default to holding back context, softening the rationale and attributing their own decisions to external forces. They do this thinking they're protecting their team but the team experiences something different: being managed. Recent Gartner research discussed in a really interesting Harvard Business Review article puts numbers to what I've been seeing in my work. Fewer than half of employees trust their senior leaders. And the damage comes from three specific behaviors: (1) Withholding context. "We can't get into the details right now." Trust drops 20%. (2) Deflecting accountability. "The market forced our hand." I've sat in rooms where a leader made a difficult decision for sound reasons and attributed it to someone else. Trust drops 30%. (3) Walking back commitments without acknowledgment. A public decision gets reversed without an explanation and a new direction is presented. Another 20%. What sits underneath all three is the same instinct: managing discomfort instead of sharing it. The same research found that employees are over 4x more likely to trust leaders who explain the "why" behind hard decisions, including what alternatives were considered and rejected. I interpret this to mean: Teams need their leaders to be transparent about the mess. Trust erodes in patterns, not in moments. And it rebuilds the same way: one honest conversation at a time. #trust #leadership #teams

Over the years, I have realised that the single biggest gap in leadership development isn’t knowledge. Its application. Leaders don’t struggle with what to do; they struggle with how to translate that knowledge into behaviour, into systems, into results. Leadership, at its core, is a mindset and an understanding of systems. And that’s where the shift must happen from content delivery to deep transformation. Here’s what that looks like in practice: 1. Mindset Transformation: Encouraging leaders to look inward, reflect, and unlearn habits that no longer serve them. Mindset shapes perspective, and perspective shapes reality. 2. Systems Thinking: Understanding how culture, incentives, and processes interact because leadership is never about one person; it’s about influencing the whole system. 3. Embedding Change: Moving beyond classroom learning to real, adaptive environments where new thinking is tested and refined. Leadership development cannot remain an individual curriculum. It must become an organisational journey, one that’s supported by diagnostic tools, personalised coaching, and visible reinforcement from the top. True resilience is built not through direction but through empowerment, helping people achieve what once seemed impossible. #LeadershipTransformation #MindsetShift #SystemsThinking #EmpoweredOrganizations

The real work begins after the ink dries – my M&A learnings. According to most studies, between 70-90% of M&A transaction do not deliver the targeted goals. Experienced M&A practitioners identify problems in the integration as a primary cause. Over the past years, I have had the privilege of being involved in several M&A transactions at HDI International – from strategic evaluation to post-merger integration. Each deal brought its own dynamics, but one truth remained constant: the most challenging time begins after the signing. Here are my top personal learnings from post-merger integrations: 1️⃣ Start integration early and move fast – Integration planning should begin very early on, even before signing. A clear roadmap for the following months sets expectations and creates transparency thus reducing the uncertainty each integration phase will inevitably bring. Moving diligently, but fast through the integration phases and defining the leadership teams early on also helps to reduce the uncertainty. 2️⃣ Define clear targets and keep a business focus – We defined for the integration financial and operational goals overall and for each area top-down and bottom-up. This created clarity and commitment. We also continuously tracked the progress made. This helped to keep a clear focus on the market and our business momentum while also achieving the targeted synergies. 3️⃣ Culture is not a soft factor – It’s often the hardest and most decisive element. Our teams made it a priority to establish a common culture that fits both companies. True to the motto: listening, adjusting, and moving forward together. Our overall values of transparency, engagement and collaboration are at the basis of the new common culture and were critical in each integration process. 4️⃣ Embrace feedback – A healthy error culture and open feedback loops are essential. When moving fast in such a complex integration process, surprises and mistakes will happen. It is thus key to identify and address them quickly and to learn from them. 5️⃣ It’s a team effort – Integration success very much depends on the team you have on the ground, not only in our decentral organization. We have leaders who know the market, their business operation and their teams deeply. In addition, quite a number of leaders already have vast experience in post-merger management. On top, it wasn’t just our leadership teams who made the difference – it was every colleague who embraced the integration as an opportunity to build a leading business in their market, adapting and supporting each other, going the extra mile while maintaining the business momentum. 🙏 I’m grateful to everybody who has made the integrations of the past years successful – with dedication, resilience, openness, and a shared vision. The results and progress we achieved so far would not be possible without you. I would love to hear from you: What are your key learnings from post-merger integrations? What worked – and what didn’t?

My M&A Executive Course at Harvard Business School. I promised to share a few book recommendations from the course - and, more importantly, what they have to do with post-merger integration and HR. The second of four books is: “Hidden Truths: What Leaders Need to Hear But Are Rarely Told” by David Fubini, who taught us, among others, Post-Merger Management. The book is written for CEOs. Reading it through an HR lens, one thing became very clear to me: Everything David describes applies just as much to CHROs - especially those who enter an organization with the mandate to lead a transformation, a merger, or essential transactions. Based on decades of advising senior leaders, David lays out a series of "hidden truths” about leadership. -Not strategy frameworks. -Not operating models. -But uncomfortable realities, such as: 1| Leaders are rarely told the whole truth when they enter an organization 2| Power, incentives, and informal networks matter more than org charts 3| People adapt their behavior long before leaders understand what is really happening 4| Blind spots - not bad intentions - cause most leadership failures 📌 In short, leaders act on incomplete pictures of reality! What does this have to do with CHROs? A lot! When a new CHRO joins an organization - especially in the context of: HR transformation post-merger integration carve-outs, acquisitions, or restructuring They are expected to act fast, set direction, and deliver impact. 💡 But without understanding the hidden truths of the organization: -informal power structures -unspoken incentives -legacy dynamics -trust levels -cultural fault lines, Every HR measure becomes a blind flight. (Carlos Salgado - I remember your quote!) New policies, new structures, new systems may look right on paper, but miss what actually drives behavior. Why does this matter even more in transformation and PMI? David’s core message translates directly to HR leadership: 💡Transformation fails not because of flawed measures, but because leaders act before they truly understand the system they are changing; they often end up changing it in harmful ways. For CHROs, this means: 1. listening before redesigning 2. Diagnosing before standardizing 3. Understanding before accelerating ‼️ Without this, even well-intended HR initiatives risk: -resistance instead of adoption -compliance instead of commitment -activity instead of impact My biggest takeaway for CHROs: Transformation starts with seeing reality as it is - not as it is reported! 💡Hidden Truths is a reminder that HR leadership is not just about designing solutions, but about uncovering the truths that determine whether those solutions will ever work. For CHROs entering a new organization, this book is not optional reading. It is a risk-mitigation tool! You will find the link to David's profile below. Tomorrow: Book 3/4 ----- Want to know how to get an overview of your People Base quickly? Send me a DM.

Change rarely fails because people dislike it. It fails because leaders mistake compliance for commitment. Real transformation isn’t driven by hierarchy, it’s built through influence — the quiet work of enrolling others before the formal plan is even written. John Kotter called this a “guiding coalition,” but what that really means is earning trust from the people whose informal authority moves the system. Titles matter less than credibility. Influence is built when others believe you see what they see, care about what they care about, and can help them make sense of what comes next. In the video below, I talk about how to build that kind of coalition — not by selecting people from an org chart, but by spotting where energy already lives in the organisation and aligning it with purpose. Change succeeds when people feel they own the story, not when they’re asked to follow someone else’s script. What’s one example you’ve seen of influence making or breaking a change effort?