Smart leaders are not too impressed with themselves. They recognize that head grapes have more personal influence within certain employee groups than they do. They understand leadership is about trust and relationship; it is not about position. Recognizing this truth, they seek out influencers in organization. They strive to get influencers onboard with change. They understand power of relationships, and they put that power to work. They work with head grapes to affect change so that they don’t have to push against head grapes’ resistance.

4. They break change into “bite-sized” pieces

Smart leaders understand that people need both information and time to accept a change. They also realize that they can’t wait forever to get everyone onboard. So, they break big changes into small pieces that people are willing to accept more quickly.

By moving in stages, smart leaders move their organizations with steady forward progress instead of periodic quantum leaps.

5. They build positive momentum

By breaking big changes into bite-sized pieces, smart leaders set themselves up to build positive momentum. Smart leaders know that an early failure or setback can create more resistance later -- even if they overcome initial setback.

Building a record of quick, early wins helps people accept upsets that will happen on way to success. Smart leaders understand power of momentum -- either positive or negative. They break changes into small pieces then pick their first move because it has a high-probability of success.

Copyright 2005, Guy Harris

You may use this article for electronic distribution if you will include all contact information with live links back to author. Notification of use is not required, but I would appreciate it. Please contact author prior to use in printed media.

Guy Harris is a Recovering Engineer. He helps entrepreneurs, business managers, and other organizational leaders improve team performance by applying the principles of human behavior. http://www.principledriven.com

Guy co-authored "The Behavior Bucks System(tm)" to help parents. http://www.behaviorbucks.com

You can also summarize. Rather than distributing selected bits of information, you can write an abstract that captures key data or ideas and reduces load to manageable size for others. That's great added-value for senior managers who need overviews, rather than details. Many internal newsletters earn their keep by providing regular summaries of useful information. That information can come from outside organization or from within.

Third, there's other side of same coin, which involves expanding, rather than condensing, information.

One way to do this is by providing context. Consider, for example, any current issue that gets high profile treatment. Can you take information you have, and then provide background that helps others make sense of it? You might bring in additional information that provides a brief history, current opportunities and threats, and some possible directions for future, along with their implications.

You might also expand information by making connections to issues that don't seem to affect your organization. For example, suppose your factory serves only domestic market, so globalization seems irrelevant for at least near future. But, what if you could explain how changes to tariffs would allow you to buy your raw materials at lower prices?

In summary, you can add value to existing information by turning it into business intelligence, condensing it, or expanding it. All approaches may use same material, but manage it differently, to satisfy different needs.