How to achieve Tipping Point Leadership

How many managers face obstacles that include:

• people locked into a stagnant culture,
• limited resources,
• demotivated staff, and
• opposition from powerful interests?

A now famous article in the Harvard Business Review, titled ‘Tipping Point Leadership’ (W Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, April 2003) offers a helpful example of how to constructively tackle these issues, which I summarise here together with practical steps to apply in your own or any situation.

Example

As Police Commissioner for New York City, William Bratton achieved what many thought was impossible. In two years following his appointment in 1994, Bratton turned New York into one of the safest large cities in the country. Felony crimes were down 39%, murders were down by 50%, and theft was down 35%. All this was done without any increase in his budget, and at the same time staff morale increased dramatically.

Bratton’s achievements were so profound that they prompted Kim and Mauborgne to study his methods, which the authors believe are able to be learned.

They believe that Bratton achieved what they have called ‘Tipping Point Leadership’ which hinges on the insight that:

‘… in any organisation, once the beliefs and energies of a critical mass of people are engaged, conversion to a new idea will spread like an epidemic, bringing about fundamental change very quickly’ (p4)

To achieve Tipping Point Leadership, Bratton overcame four fundamental hurdles, which I summarise below.

1. The Cognitive Hurdle

Most CEOs try to argue their case for change by providing empirical evidence – facts and statistics to back up their claims. For some reason, this approach rarely works.

Leaders like Bratton don’t rely on numbers. Rather, managers are confronted face to face with the problems – they are forced to confront reality.

When Bratton headed up the transit police in 1990, he made it a requirement that all senior officers, including himself, ride the subway to work every day, rather than drive their cars. In many cases, this was the first time these senior people had been in the subway – and they didn’t like what they experienced.

Faced with reality, the senior managers could no longer deny the need to change policing methods.

2. The Resource Hurdle

Bratton believes that limited resources are a given, so he achieves Tipping Point Leadership by focusing existing resources on the issues that are most in need of change, and where there are likely to be the biggest payoffs.

Many argued that the New York subway crime problem was only able to be resolved through a massive injection of funding.

Bratton thought that targeting was the key. Officers analysed crime statistics and found that most crimes occurred at only a few stations. He allocated plain clothed police to these hot spots. Criminals soon realised that the absence of uniforms did not mean an absence of police.

3. The Motivational Hurdle

Managers realise the importance of employee motivation as a way to effect change. Bratton addresses this by focusing on key influencers ie. people with disproportionate power to influence or block initiatives.

As an example, Bratton identified commanders as key influences in the force. He instituted a mandatory meeting every two weeks for all senior staff including commanders. One commander was given two days notice, then interviewed by a panel of senior staff at each of these meetings – to account for strategies and performance. This quickly resulted in a culture of accountability!

4. The Political Hurdle

Bratton recognises that organisational politics is a given, which must be addressed.

His strategy is to identify and silence opponents early on. To do this, he recruits respected senior insiders onto his team and he gathers facts to counter saboteurs.

For example, he anticipated the response from commanders to an impending exercise involving compilation of crime maps. Knowing they would say it was unworkable because it would take too long and drain resources from fighting crime, Bratton was able to counter this by showing evidence that the task would take 18 minutes a day, or less than 1% of a precinct’s workload.

Conclusion

Every organization could provide numerous examples of similar problems to those above which are affecting the performance of their people and their business. If you’d like help to address your own problems, contact me on 0412 921 292.