In a business world that forces organizations to deal with both constant and disruptive changes every day, business leaders within these companies find themselves trying to find the right balance between driving long term performance and surviving through the next quarter.

One of the most critical and foundational elements of being a successful business leader is aligning priorities and goals of the organization or team being led in support of the execution of the business strategy.  Well-intentioned business leaders spend millions of hours having meetings, writing emails, and sending texts that try to create alignment yet are frustrated and ineffective most of the time.  Based on more than 25 years researching and working with leaders, there is an obvious yet neglected reason why despite the hard work and valiant efforts, their business success isn’t met; a lack of basic business acumen.

During a recent leadership development program I conducted for a large global company, my class and I were having a very frank discussion about the differences between success and failure.  One of the participants – a leader in supply chain management – was talking about his goals and objectives and how he felt completely stuck between what he was telling his team to do, what his boss was telling him to so, and what other key stakeholders were telling him to do.

“My boss told me that we have to cut 25% of our operating costs and at least 20% of our raw materials costs as part of the ‘Reduce-Innovate-Deliver’ (RID) program being put into place.  I told my team what we had to do and they complained bitterly because we already have cut things to the bone and cut many of our raw materials vendors to the bone to the point they are making less than 1% margin.  I then got my ass handed to me on a silver platter by the Platform Manager responsible for the product line who was screaming about product quality and customer complaints and returned products.  You can have all the goals and objectives in the world, and I can coach until I am blue in the face, but there is something wrong here.  I don’t know what to do…”

The participant became really emotional and had to leave the room for a quick break.  When he returned, we discussed the situation further to see what skills we could develop and how to address the challenge.  After some more discussion with the participant and a few others in the same business unit, the challenge started to become clearer.

When I asked what the business strategy of their business unit was, and they didn’t have an answer other than to “satisfy customer needs.”

When I asked what are the key financial goals and metrics of success for their business unit, their only response was “achieving the operating budget spend reduction goal.”

So, here is the problem as I discovered through further research and dialogue with the business unit leaders who sent them to the leadership development program: the value proposition of their business unit is innovative product leadership.

Innovative product leadership means investing in R&D and other parts of the business to develop and bring to market new and unique high-quality products that competitors can’t immediately compete with.  Unfortunately, no one in this entire leadership chain has participated in any formal business acumen training to be able to understand the strategy nor the key metrics and goals of the innovation strategy.  Instead, they were being told to cut and manage costs as if they were an operationally efficient low-cost player.  As a result, the supply chain managers were buying cheap, inferior quality raw materials which were resulting in customer complaints and product returns.

Sadly, this is not just an isolated story.  This same leadership archetype is being repeated every day and billions of dollars are being wasted because real alignment of goals and objectives can only be achieved when everyone is talking the language of business including strategy, financial management, measures of business performance, competitor analysis, the voice of the customer, and delivering the right value proposition to the right and targeted customers.

This week I had the pleasure of working with a group of Emerging Leaders from a large company in the high-tech space.  One of the many reasons why it was such a pleasure was how enthusiastic and thirsty for new leadership skills this group was during this business simulation-centric learning journey.  The multi-day session – that includes pre- work and post-work reinforcement - focuses on fundamental business leadership skills including understanding personality styles, coaching and providing feedback, and emotional intelligence.  One of the interesting conversations that came up as part of debriefing the interactive business leadership simulation workshop scenario was the topic of “empathy” in leadership.

Almost every “leading innovation” framework, model, and training program begins with the recognition that in order to innovate within an organization, leaders and individual contributors must “challenge the orthodoxies” (which is another way of saying force yourself to think differently about the things you take for granted or assume will be the same forever).  There are several iconic examples of organizations that failed to innovate because they didn’t challenge the status quo:

Kodak – Their own R&D department invented digital photography but leadership didn’t want to invest in a business that would “cannibalize” their camera, chemicals, and paper businesses

Blockbuster – Didn’t understand or embrace streaming technology as Netflix did and put Blockbuster out of business.

Blackberry – Became an early world leader in the smartphone market but failed to recognize the desire for touchscreens and applications like Apple thinking their brand loyalty would be a competitive advantage.

But this blog is not about how to lead innovation or develop a new business strategy; it’s about the challenge leaders face when they are able to read the weak signals, challenge the status quo, develop an innovative solution, but then run into the brick wall of skeptics and critics who say it “can’t” be done or look for every reason in the world why not to change.

During the past several years I’ve had the chance to work with and brainstorm with executives and other senior leaders and I can definitely say that to a person they all share there is nothing more frustrating to a leader than evolving new idea by challenging the status quo only to have the naysayers shoot down the ideas because they are afraid of change or it negatively impacts them by taking away power, resources, or even their jobs.

Based on research from the academic world, the consulting world, and our own experiences running business simulations, as well as leadership and business acumen training programs, here are five quick tips to help you lead past the skeptics:

Over communicate and explain in big picture terms

In the corporate world, there is no such thing as too much communication.  Successful leaders pushing past the skeptics communicate, share, and talk in big picture terms rather than getting caught up in all the details that can only confuse some people.

Manage expectations

All of the change leadership data illustrates that the most successful leaders are able to manage the expectations of their people.  That means being authentic, acknowledge the realities, and share will people the truth about what to expect.  Over-selling a significant change to the status quo is never a good thing.

Adjust to their style; give them the facts and details

Many “critics and naysayers” are generally skeptical people in terms of their personality styles.  And as we know from personality styles, every style has its strengths and limitations and sometimes a healthy dose of skepticism is a good thing. When trying to challenge the status quo and change things, the best leaders are able to identify the skeptics and provide them with all of the facts and details they need to understand and feel comfortable. We live in an era of big data, use it.

Hold firm and show commitment

The skeptics will challenge you and wear you down; that’s what they do and they do it many times to see how committed you really are.  When you truly believe in a challenge to the status quo you need to hold firm and tirelessly and show your commitment because everyone is watching (not just the skeptics).

Exit them

Sometimes people need to move on and you have to exit them from the organization.  Challenging the status quo suggests changes in functions, jobs and roles and not everyone who is performing a job today will be able to evolve to the jobs of tomorrow.  It might serve all parties well to exit the people who don’t fit and find the people who get it and understand the challenge to the orthodoxies.