Walk the talk

🐟 The fish always starts stinking from its head.

I grew up in Northern Germany with this saying. I love the sea and went sailing with my parents every weekend and every summer holiday when I was a boy. But the reason for bringing the saying up is much more boring – change and organizations.

I have seen many strategic, tactical, turn-around or you name them initiatives, that all tried to initiate change. Most of them failed (still being claimed successful) 😳. But why?

There can be many reasons, but one one of them is always

➡ change management.

Change management is something abstract, not a science and offers many many options to make a change successful. However, there is ultimate basis without which you will definitely fail

📣 WALK THE TALK

I have seen high ranking managers of companies who think they walk the talk, but in reality don’t:

🔎 The CEO that is the only one in the company having a car way above the car policy emission standards.
🔎 The plant manager that is not following the safety rules.
🔎 The Member of the Board marketing a culture of openness and empowerment telling a project manager in a steering committee „This is not what I want to hear.“

These things happen more often than not. They are demotivating and they send messages that are detrimental to organizational health and success.

👉 We make rules, but they do not apply to the management.
👉 We don`t mean, what we are saying.

Like in George Orwells book „Animal Farm“ – all animals are equal, but not the pigs…

Have you encountered this behavior in your companies? What did it do to you?

By the way, I have also encountered many fantastic managers, that did walk the talk – and without exception they are very successful.