cad leadership 2011: leading change - …aucache.autodesk.com/au2011/sessions/4841/class... · cad...

CAD Leadership 2011: Leading Change

Mark W. Kiker

Owner - www.caddmanager.com – www.bimmanager.com

AUGI Executive Director

DL4841 - Class Summary

Managing technology means that you work with people. Getting a software tool to cooperate may be

easier than getting people to cooperate. Who you are can make change happen for both your firm and

your office's CAD productivity. Find out the five key concepts that you can use to create the environment

for positive technology change. Get practical, real-world advice on how to take your firm to the next level

and advance your career at the same time. Move beyond management to leadership.

Learning Objectives

At the end of this class, you will:

• Learn how to get your firm moving forward

• Discover 5 Key perspectives that can change your environment

• Know why you need to act and react to your firms goals

• Drive your team to new heights using proven processes

About the Speaker:

Mark has more than 25 years of hands-on experience with technology. He is fully versed in every area of

Management from deployment planning, installation and configuration to training and strategic

planning. As an internationally known speaker and writer, he is a returning speaker at Autodesk

University since 1996. He is an Autodesk Certified Trainer (ACT).

Mark is currently serving as Executive Director of the Autodesk User Group International (AUGI®). He

writes the monthly "CAD Manager" column for AUGI HotNews. He is editor of the monthly CADD

Manager Journal, an e-newsletter and maintains two blog sites, www.caddmanager.com and

www.bimmanager.com.

[email protected]

mailto:[email protected]

CAD Leadership 2011: Leading Change www.caddmanager.com Page | 2

Leading Change

Leading - Draws upon you leadership skills and Uses your people and political skills

Change - Draws upon your planning skills and Uses your creative and organizational skills

What does a Leader need to do?

• They need to demonstrate their character—the intention to do the right thing.

• They need to demonstrate their competence—knowing how to do the right thing.

• They need to demonstrate their influence—the ability to deliver and execute the right thing.

What Leaders need to Embrace

Strategic Planning

• Combine formal and informal

Innovation

• Taking existing to a new level

• Blending multiple ideas into new areas

Cost Cutting

• Systematic and purposeful

• Not slash and burn

Culture Change

• Improving the way people interact

Customer Service

• Do for others what you would want done for you

Leadership Truths

1. You Make a Difference

2. Credibility Is the Foundation of your Leadership

3. Your Values Drive Your Commitment

4. Focusing on the Future Sets you Apart

5. You Can’t Do It Alone

6. Trust Rules

7. Challenge Is the Crucible for Greatness

8. You Either Lead by Example or You Don’t Lead at All

9. The Best Leaders Are the Best Learners

10. Leadership Is an Affair of the Heart


Leading from your Strength…

Executing: Leaders know how to make things happen

Influencing: Leaders help their teams reach a much broader audience

Relationship Building: Leaders are the glue that holds the team together

Strategic Thinking: Leaders keep us focused on what could be

Leaders have good judgment

1. Timing

o Gathering information

o Making the call

o Executing on the decision

2. Areas of influence

o People – managing those around you

o Strategy – Planning and adjusting for tomorrow

o Crisis – when the chips are down

3. Gathering input

o Self-knowledge

o Social network

o Organizational network

o Contextual input.

Leaders have the Ability to Inspire Others

• Tell others what can happen

• Tell others how it can happen

• Predetermine a course of action

• Lay out your goals

• Break down the process into smaller parts

• Adjusts your priorities to make it happen

• Notify key players – get buy in – one by one

• Allow time for people to process the change

• Plan for problems

• Rally around the small successes

• Review your plan along the way


Levels of Leadership

Leaders tell people “why”

Tests - Your Leadership under fire

• Qualifying Tests – Do you have what it takes? (Skills)

o Get the training, certificates, schooling you need.

• Self-Imposed Tests – Do I walk the talk? (Integrity)

o Under promise and over deliver - Keep your word

• Circumstantial Tests – Can you cope with the unexpected? (Trials)

o Take charge - Don’t shrink back

• Political Tests – Direct challenges (Attacks)


o Confront the ones that break the norms – Restate your authority

CAD Leadership Areas – 5 T’s

Tools relates to the ones that you select. Which ones will you use? What will you use them for?

Talent relates to who is using the tools. Do they have a gut level understanding of how they are

used? Do they get it? Do they push the limits?

Technology is your approach to using the tools and the talent. Who gets to use what? What mix

can they have? When do they select the tools? When do you push toward the next great tech

tool.

Training is how you get everyone there. Provide it and you succeed. Let it laps and your best

tools and talent go stale.

Time – just give it all time to work

Generational impact of Technology

• Past experience is soon outdated

• Hands off causes lapse in understanding by Managers

• Drafting to CAD – 2d to 3d – CAD to BIM

• Staffers who have advanced understanding of technology look down on others

• Technology advances reduce available workforce

• Technology savvy can overshadow true business/trade savvy

• Older workers see the impact of change as negative

• Younger workers will be shocked when they are outpaced by even younger staff

Reaching multiple Generations

Key #1 – one size does not fit all

• Tailor your messages to the audience

• One person at a time if possible

• Understand who you are from their perspective

• Reaching multiple Generations

Key #2 – leverage the skills and experiences of all career stages

• Everyone brings value

• Don’t disrespect what each generation brings

• Good teams are made from diverse membership

• Reaching multiple Generations

Key #3 – Embrace Diversity

• Multiple generations make you smarter

• Multiple generations make you more flexible

• Multiple generations enable better decision-making


Leading Change

Change is Inevitable -mostly

• It may happen in the wrong direction

• It may not move fast enough

• Others may lead change

• It may not happen at all

Principles of Enduring Success

• Exploit before you explore

• Diversify your portfolio

• Remember your mistakes

• Be conservative about change

o Don’t make abrupt, radical changes

o Don’t make changes without planning

o Don’t make changes with random implementation

What should you Change

Investigate

• Start by thinking through the major steps in your process.

• Write down each step in your work flow from the first point you touch CAD (or before).

• Do it in a timeline manner, starting with the first step and ending with plotting (or beyond).

Identify

• Review the list for the areas that you KNOW are causing problems and flag them.

o Keep the list in the same order, just flag the ones that you want to work on first.

o This will allow you to work on the top priority issues while also seeing the overall flow of

the process.

• Take each task or step and ask some questions.

o Is it working effectively?

o Can it be improved?

o Is it in need or corrective action?

• Don’t forget to look at each step in the context of the whole.

o Isolating a step from the overall process could make you sacrifice overall efficiencies for

the sake of one step getting better.

o This could actually make the whole process from end to end take longer, even though

each step is better.


Making Change Happen

Correct / Change

• After you have determined that an item needs to be corrected.

o Define how you are going to do that and who will need to help.

� If it is a process that involves many people – get much input.

o Determine the best approach to getting better results and move in that direction.

� If the problem is just a quick fix, then do it and move on.

� If the problem impacts multiple departments or offices, make sure you gather

their input before moving forward.

o The greater the impact or change, the longer it will take and the more people you will

need to have involved.

Improve

If the issue is just an improvement to an existing work flow, then make small adjustments and gauge the

results.

Most people will agree that making progress is a good thing, but make changes slow enough and step by

step so you can track the impact.

If you change too much too quickly, you may have problems determining which step caused the

problem.

Effecting Change - by Persuasion

Power – you exert your power to make it happen. You have the power as CAD Manager to do

this (hopefully) by using your position.

Protest – you complain about the issues to the point where people do something because you

are right or because they want to shut you up.

Pronouncement – kind of like Power, but this just makes statement, sends memos and makes

documents that set out the target for the change.

Persuasion – the process of convincing someone that change is needed, cannot be avoided and

must happen to create a better environment.

Persuasion moves someone who does not care, cares little or actually desires something

different to move to your position. Persuade someone to embrace a change and they will go

with you rather than fight against you.

It is all about Relationships

Understanding others. “The single most important principle in the field of interpersonal relations

is this: Seek first to understand, then to be understood. Most people listen, not with the intent to

understand, but with the intent to reply.” Steven R. Covey

Express yourself. Make sure that you have fully thought out what you have to say – before you

say it. Some people think while talking. They talk things out.


Speak your mind. Make sure that when you have an opinion, that others know what it is. You,

as CAD Manager, are expected to have a perspective on things. Get it out there. Respectfully

and not forcibly, but get it out there.

Why you need a Strategic Plan

With a Strategic Plan…

• You increase your credibility with the business leaders

• You gain closer alignment between CAD and business objectives

• You improved teamwork between CAD and internal business partners

• Your efforts are easily visible to others because they appear as firm wide successes

• The environment is supported and infused with budget line items because of the achievement

of company goals.

Breaking down the Planning Process

Strategic Planning 101:

The End Product of Strategic Planning

• An agreed upon Vision for the Future

• Goals to achieve, Short term and Long Term

• Action Plans to Achieve your Objectives


Creating Business Alignment

• Your main CAD initiatives, in terms of budget and resources, should be directly linked to

business goals and objectives

• The business managers should drive or back every major initiative

• Understand that not all of the goals that your firm develops will be connected to CAD

• There may very few that really can be used to create alignment

• The point is not quantity but quality

• If you can align to several specific strategic goals then others will be able to help you achieve

them

Example:

Firm Goal: We will reduce our project delivery time by 10% by increasing our employee’s

productivity.

CAD Goal: We will customize our interface to provide 15% improvement in speed of the user’s

processes.

CAD Goal: We will create custom content that will alleviate the need for each project to create

content which will reduce production time for CAD files.

CAD Goal: We will replace aging plotters with high speed plotters – one plotter every two

months.

Example:

Firm Goal: We will extend our ability to deliver project expertise by sharing staff among offices.

Each project will be staffed with the best talent from differing offices.

CAD Goal: We will enable secure file sharing between offices by establishing guidelines for CAD

file transfer, remote file sharing, laptop storage and backup requirements.

CAD Goal: To assist knowledge workers in traveling between offices we will standardize CAD

folder structures of all offices and CAD system setups so that they can use any machine in any

office and see the same setup.

Before you talk to others

The People Perspective

• People are pivotal

• Tell your story

• Share your concerns

• Ask for input

Take the temperature

• Recruiting others

• Start one on one

• Move to groups


Start Rocking the boat – slightly

• Start openly sharing your frustrations and concerns

• Talk about how changing something will help

o A Software upgrade

o A process change

o A standard project

• There must be a better way…suggest a few

• Don’t let this go on too long

o People will start making up their own solutions

Team Up

• Start gathering a team

• Keep your ears open to who is discussing it and offering solutions

• Keep the team small but representative

o Doers

o Reviewers

Avoiding Team Conflict – one on one

With Mixed Teams you need to:

WW2

• Express appreciation for their efforts

• Acknowledge that their desire for organizational excellence is good

• Let them know how their willingness to work with everyone will improve the

organization

Boomers

• Emphasize the need for their input for team success

• Discuss an action plan for improving their interactions

Gen X

• Be straightforward and honest

• Focus on the results that are expected

• Don’t start with “Back in my day…”

Millennials (Gen Y)

• Emphasize the business reason for any change

• Explain how what they do as an individual impacts the entire firm

• Let them know that you are here to help and will check back in often

Produce the Product

• Define what you need to achieve

• Make goals SMART – Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time Bound

• Break it down into small enough chunks


Get Team Approval

• Make sure everyone agrees with the goals

• Talk to each one – Doers and reviewers

• Include their names in the documents you produce

Getting the Royal Seal

• Get approval from upper management – even if they don’t care

• Call in a few favors

• Big Ticket item - Get the CEO to issue the memo of compliance with the changes

Making it Happen

• Follow the plan

• Talk to others as you go along

• Especially your detractors

• Let people know what is coming next

• Celebrate milestones

• Adjust as needed

Settling In - Stopping the change machine

• You have to stop the change process

• Stopping the process includes:

o Verifying that the change has happened (are people doing things the new way?)

o Getting people to police themselves (Are others doing things the new way?)

o Agreeing that it is an improvement (The new way is better!)

o Possibly providing feedback for minor adjustments (it might be even better if we…)

• Stop the change / modify process at regular milestones

o Let people know that they are not expected to constantly tolerate change.

Once you have the change complete:

• Spotlight heroes

o Reward the compliant

o Award the ones who got you there

o Teach the new hires

• Rest

• Start the process again


What we Learned

• Learned how to get your firm moving forward

• Discovered 5 Key perspectives that can change your environment (5T’s)

• How to act and react to your firms goals (Business Alignment)

• Processes to create and achieve your goals

Change is Good

• When planned well

• When executed with vigor and wisdom

PASS IT ON…

Mark W. Kiker

AUGI Executive Director

www.caddmanager.com

www.bimmanager.com

[email protected]

cad leadership 2011: leading change - …aucache.autodesk.com/au2011/sessions/4841/class... · cad...

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