Training Magazine - June 2008 - (Page 36)

CASE STUDIES Black & Decker: Building a Model for Change I magine seasoned businessmen “Once in-house, we try to transand women clutching and form the environment into an stroking plush penguins during a iceberg—we have blow-up pentraining session. It may sound odd, guins and squid hunts. We try to but that was the scene during a create a discovery process instead Leading Bold Change (LBC) trainof a training program.” ing session for Black & Decker Here’s how the global operations Hardware and Home Improvement leader used the 8 Steps to get the Group executives. “Ninety percent Black & Decker group into the of people hate change,” says Bret change mind-set: Skousen, director of employee and Step 1: He hit key points of organizational development, Black the training, including having ice& Decker Hardware and Home berg posters everywhere with the Improvement Group. “So people at penguin symbol under each the session were grabbing the Black & Decker execs discuss Dr. Kotter’s 8 Steps of Change. nametag to create urgency. stuffed penguins because they Step 2: He pulled together the wanted comfort cuddle buddies. They felt better able to deal team, then made it cross-functional and branched out from his with the change issue when holding and stroking the stuffed team to others. penguins,” which represent the characters in the book, “Our Step 3: The team laid out what it was going to do and NOT Iceberg Is Melting,” on which the training is based. going to do. Skousen has been a strong proponent of change at Black & Step 4: The team started to communicate with others in the Decker. It all started when he signed up for Ken Blanchard’s company who would be affected—obtaining buy-in. Master’s of Leadership program at the University of San Diego Step 5: The leader got the right executive team leadership (he’s known Blanchard for years and admires him as a mentor). members to support the effort and made them understand the “Two weekends of the program were devoted specifically to consequences of not doing this. change,” Skousen explains. “We had to research all the change Step 6: They celebrated short-term wins. experts out there and then go forward with one. It was an aha Step 7: The leader is a soft-spoken guy, but he forcefully said, moment for me: Without a good change program, you don’t “We can’t let up now. We can’t celebrate to the point where we have a good leadership development program.” think it’s done. We have to put a plan in place to continue to So Skousen started analyzing what was going on at Black & have meetings and checkpoints and accountability.” Decker. He found that the company does lean manufacturing Step 8: This year, at the global operations meeting in January, and Six Sigma, but had no concrete, consistent process for the leaders were filmed on where they were at in their change change. “We had made some acquisitions a few years before, initiatives, so people didn’t think it was just a one-hit wonder and there were things we could have done better if we had a from last year. This included executives who said they were change management initiative,” Skousen says. “Plus, we found planning something and didn’t get it done but now promised to we were tapping the same people all the time to solve problems, do something this year. but they were getting overwhelmed. And they might have been Skousen says Black & Decker doesn’t formally measure critical thinkers, but they might not have the right skills to solve employee engagement in change initiatives, but “we pulse it that particular problem.” Skousen ultimately chose Dr. John through meetings and informal chats. And while we don’t allow Kotter’s Leading Bold Change approach because “I felt he was people to identify with NoNo, one team does feel strongly the best, plus I’ve been involved with ISB Worldwide [the about having ‘NoNo sessions’ in which they allow people to be course developer] for a long time.” devil’s advocates to bring up potential problems.” Skousen The group’s global operations leader was very much behind admits to identifying most with the character of Alice “because the change initiative, Skousen says. Once a year in January, he in the role I’m in, I have to push people along. So I’m behind brings together 150 leaders to discuss strategy, so in January the scenes doing the dirty work, influencing people. That said, 2007, the decision was made to start the change management my favorite characters are the heroes—the people on the plant training with those executives. “We trained all of them on LBC floor and in the bowels of the organization who get the majorand trained them to take it back to their teams,” Skousen says. ity of the work done without the credit.” t 36 | JUNE 2008 t r a i n i n g w w w. t r a i n i n g m a g . c o m http://www.trainingmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Training Magazine - June 2008

Training Magazine - June 2008 Contents Online TOC Editor’s Note Live & Online Training Today Soapbox How-To World View Changes With Penguins Keeping Forced Ranking Out of Court Across the Board Certify Me Meetings CPR How Secure Is Your Data? Training Leadership Summit Wrap-Up Tools of the Trade Inprint Questions for Covey

Training Magazine - June 2008

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