Even after a successful external search, when the new executive steps into the organization, typically everything in that organization deteriorates for a period of time. If the new executive really is effective, she will ultimately reorganize her departments, and usually she will fire or transfer several personnel in the process.
At least part of what goes on is that each manager tends to have a style of information handling which is unique. Since there isn't any explicit model of information handling, people fly by the seat of their pants at least as much in business as they do in therapy. One aspect of a managerial style is the amount of specificity or detail that a manager requires in reporting relationships.
Over a number of years a manager's staff learns what level of detail she is going to insist on, and they adjust their own reporting procedures to take that into account. Soon their reporting is running at just about the level of detail that is required by the manager they are reporting to. After that relationship has been established for any length of time, the staff person reporting will be upset if the manager asks for more or less detail.
To ask for more detail will be perceived by the staff person— particularly at the unconscious level—as being a challenge to his competency. «Why is she asking for more detail than I had to provide before? Does this mean she doesn't trust my judgement in reporting in this area?» The resulting negative interpersonal relationships can be very troublesome.
To ask for less detail can also cause problems. The reporting person offers a certain level of detailed information, but the new manager waves that off and asks for a more global judgement. All she wants is a «go/no–go» decision. Then the reporting person feels incomplete, and as if he and his work are not valued. He feels that the information he has worked so hard to develop is not being utilized. He also becomes concerned that now he has the responsibility for making decisions, instead of just the responsibility for gathering and presenting information. He may become quite nervous about keeping information which he traditionally had passed on to the manager and therefore no longer had any responsibility for.
One of the most powerful and immediate interventions is to instruct an incoming manager/executive in the notion of control of the quality of information. This allows you to do for verbal information the same thing that blow–up technology does for aerial photography. It allows you to control the detail of the information. You can have the most detailed, highest quality information possible, or you can reduce it to a simple decision: a «go/no–go» signal.
Once a manager is taught this, then she gains a sense of being able to exercise quality control down that information network that leads from her desk to the point of production or service. If she has no confidence that what she decides and plans can be transmitted— maintaining a high quality representation through the entire network that's going to have to respond to the change—then she doesn't make waves. She leaves things running adequately, and that's why you get the mediocrity and conservatism that is traditional in business. Any change runs a risk of a misrepresentation or misinterpretation somewhere along that chain. Therefore, it makes sense to be quite conservative.
With this understanding, a manager can exercise full control over the quality of the information flow within her network. She can make changes with the assurance that her representations will be communicated with high quality and detail. Then she can set standards of excellence as opposed to standards of mediocrity.
Once a manager has an appreciation of the notion of exercising control over the quality of information, she will be quite sensitive to that when she takes a new position. She will realize that the people who are reporting to her, and her peers, and the people she reports to, all have certain typical quality requirements for the information they process. In many instances we have taught a manager who is stepping into a new position to establish a positive frame by saying to her staff: «My understanding is that this is a well–oiled team that I'm joining, etc.» Next she explicitly brings up the notion of quality of information, and that certain adjustments will need to be made.
«You all had important and significant relationships with my predecessor. She had her own personal style, and you all learned—both consciously and deliberately, and by habit—how to present information to her. I'm different. I don't even know how I'm different, specifically, but for the next few weeks or a month, I want you to be particularly sensitive—and I will also—to the fact that there are some occasions on which I'll need very specific, very detailed, high quality information. At other times I'm going to simply ask you for a 'go/no–go' opinion.»
That way of framing the transition is both a reframe and a future–pace. It specifies the outcome: developing an adequate level of information flow. It alerts the staff that there will be some adjustments, because there are going to be differences. The new manager is not God and doesn't know what the differences will be specifically, since she was never exposed to the quality control measures that the previous manager used. That allows the staff to take a deep sigh of relief and say «OK. She's saying that she recognizes there are going to be adjustments made, and she wants my cooperation in achieving the outcome: finding an appropriate level of specificity in reporting information.»
Man: So a generalization that you could make from that example is that you need to be careful to frame any change in such a way that the people affected by it will respond in a positive way.
Yes, exactly. And that may mean framing changes differently for different levels or departments within an organization. Every maneuver in a business organization has to be done in such a way that it makes sense within the perceptual frame of the people who are affected. A five–year plan, if it were transmitted in its entirety to an assembly–line worker, would make no sense at all. For the assembly–line worker, the five–year plan has to be presented in terms of what happens to him and his job. To talk about the financial background and so forth would simply be confusing to him. It's literally information that he doesn't need to know. The description of a five–year plan at the executive level is not part of the perceptual reality of the assembly–line worker. It has to be relativized to his perceptual frame.
For example, I had a friend who was hired as the chief executive officer of a large firm. He is one of the few really high–quality business communicators that I know of. He has a really fine sensitivity to nonverbal behavior, and so on. One class of employees at the main headquarters of this firm was being operated by a time clock. The workers punched in every morning, punched out at noon, punched back in after lunch, and punched out in the evening. My friend has a philosophy that machines should never supervise or run people. One of the first changes he made after he'd spent a month or so taking over the reins as chief executive officer, was to remove the time clock. He explained to his primary staff his principle about not wanting machines to run people in his organization. He presented a frame to them which was adequate for their understanding, and then ordered all the time clocks removed on a Friday evening.
Now, consider the situation for the employees on Monday morning. They had been punching the time clock for years. No matter what happened on the way to work, or the night before, punching the clock was what hypnotists call a «reinduction signal» for them; it was an anchor that triggered access to all the skills and states of consciousness which were appropriate for effective performance at work. The time clock provided a signal in all representational systems. You see the clock, you push the card in kinesthetically, and you hear that funny sound as it punches the card.