Have you ever walked into an established restaurant that has seen its better and brighter days? The pictures on the walls, the flooring, the ceiling and the booths all seem to have that look of days long gone and you feel like it needs a major facelift. The Food Network show Restaurant Impossible deals with just this type of place. The owners know they are in trouble so they agree to allow the host to come in, gut the place, and hopefully put them back on track, because if they don’t do something drastic, they will surely close their doors. Organizations of all kinds experience this sort of epiphany when they come to the point where they either upgrade and reinvent or face extinction. It’s all part of the cycle of organizational maturity, and the ones who stand the test of time are the ones that are in a constant state of rebirth. They keep up with the times, invent new products, and invest in contemporary methods of reaching new customers. It’s all about staying current.
It’s the same for leaders. We have all experienced those once-effective leaders who still function in the way they did twenty years ago, convinced that “It worked to make me successful then, so it will work now!” The problem, though, is that the methods that worked then probably don’t work in today’s ever-changing cultural and technology-driven community. Today’s audience has a highly shortened and easily-distracted attention span, plus they are the most technologically connected society in all of human history. It used to be that someone could communicate their message effectively by simply stating their argument to a prospect who was actually paying attention, but today’s audience is often partially listening to the messenger, monitoring multiple emails, and viewing instant messages and texts simultaneously. Just when the speaker thinks they have made a good point, a text comes in, an alert chimes, or the short-of-attention listener just gets bored.
Leaders and communicators of today have to be very versed in what it takes to reach today’s audience. Their message must be to the point and have so much speed, energy, emotion, authenticity and imagery that one can influence someone within the brief time span between texts, alerts or something more interesting that may come along, as people have become very visual. Everything they see on all the screens they view is packed with visual stimulation which grabs attention, informing and entertaining them in a short time period. As leaders, we need to be savvy in how we communicate and how we lead. In short, we must stay current. Methods of even a few years ago are no longer effective. The stories we tell, the examples we give and the references to pop culture we make can’t be yesterday’s, but must be relevant to the current culture’s, tastes, expectations, and sensibilities. Leaders who are stuck in the way they’ve always done things will fail. It’s just a matter of time. Organizations must be continually upgrading their methods, skills, technology, and especially their cultural intelligence if they want to stay in the game.
As a leader, if you are experiencing a decline in your effectiveness, I urge you to take an honest look at what you are doing and saying, plus an even deeper look at the attitudes, biases and preferences you have within yourself that will undoubtedly affect how you communicate and interact with the people you are trying to reach. We all have our personal likes and dislikes and we all would prefer to stay in our comfort zone of doing things like we always have, but we do that at our own peril. We must stay current.
Lead well.