Margaret says

Creating better performance in organisations cannot be achieved by command. Better performance involves cultural change, and this is strongly influenced by the behaviour of pivotal groups in the organisation. The momentum for change is created or hindered by the ability of pivotal groups to change.

Pivotal groups are groups that have an impact on the organisation’s productivity and performance that outweighs other factors. In the book that crystallised the concept of the learning organisation, The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge talked about pivotal groups as being the core group of people who determine the way the larger group operates.
Pivotal groups may differ between industries. For example, for a manufacturer whose revenue derives heavily from new products, research and development staff are a pivotal group. For an insurance company whose revenue is affected by the effectiveness of call centre interactions, the call centre workers are a pivotal group.

Across all industries, the executive team in an organisation is a pivotal group. The people in this group have more effect on the performance of the company and the morale of its employees than other factors – for better or for worse. This is true partly because of their decision-making power and partly because of their influence on employees’ behaviour.
Creating higher performance therefore requires the executive team, as a pivotal group, to examine their behaviour and determine what they need to change about themselves. It is on this basis only that wider, sustainable organisational change will take place.

An agenda for improvement
The process of generating organisational change begins with the pivotal group examining their current behaviour. In many cases, organisations exhibit the following characteristics:

• separate business units operating as silos, with little communication between them
• an attitude of doing “just enough”
• feelings of constantly being under pressure
• lack of accountability
• lack of honesty
• lack of discipline
• feelings of leaderlessness
• political intrigue
• lack of creativity and trust.

At the same time, people in organisations may be loyal and hard-working, and also feel that the company does have some shared, positive values. The task is for the pivotal group to examine how much they contribute to characteristics that are less than ideal, and to determine how they can change.

The learning agenda begins with articulating a positive picture of what the pivotal group could be. The picture would address the kinds of issues identified above. The question that comes out of this process is: how do we, as a pivotal group in the organisation, need to change?
Managers need to undertake this exercise as a group, addressing their own circumstances. This exercise is based on the prior realisation by the managers that the organisation will not perform effectively unless they themselves learn to work together as a group. An example of an agenda created by a management group which undertook this process yielded the following features:

• Learn to cooperate and collaborate, not compete.
• Commit to change ourselves and our behaviour.
• Build integrity within the group by acting honestly, trust each other.
• Learn better implementation techniques, garner support.
• Take an inventory of the skills and talents available and use them.
• The best teams are not embarrassed to rely on the individual skills of members.
• Use positive, polite language around each other and encourage others to do the same.
• Learn to celebrate together in a genuine way.

The impact of the pivotal group
Because of their position in the organisation, the behaviour of senior managers has a disproportionately large impact on the culture. Leaders are role models and their behaviour is seen as an endorsement of that kind of behaviour. Leaders are inherently influential because people imitate them. Therefore, if the leaders are lazy, intolerant, disrespectful, selfish or dishonest, employees will take the message that these behaviours are “the way things are done around here”.

If leaders, as a pivotal group, wish to project a positive vision, then it has to be reflected in how they conduct themselves. Conversely, if leaders try to enforce a vision they do not reflect, they will find their efforts unsuccessful. Employees will reject the vision and learn ways to give effect to their rejection – by leaving, sabotage, lack of effort or withholding ideas.

The question for leaders is, what do they wish employees to see? What is the leaders’ ideal? Jim Collins, author of Good to great, speaking about organisational leaders, said that greatness “is largely a matter of conscious choice”. The choice to be a great leader is made by looking honestly at your current performance, seeing what is not ideal, choosing to make changes and stopping behaviours that are destructive.

Leaders also need to see what their strengths are. What are the qualities that enabled you to get where you are? What do you have to offer the company that is of value? What are you good at? What can you be better at? Jim Collins observed that companies that became great invariably did so by developing managers from within their ranks. The secret was in their commitment to development, not in clever recruitment decisions, buying in talent.
Leadership learning as the basis of change

Peter Senge emphasises that development requires leaders to commit to continual learning. But by learning, he does not simply mean accumulating more knowledge or facts. He means enhancing our capabilities, including our very capacity to learn – he calls this “generative learning”.

There is risk involved in learning. If organisational change is not based on commanding others to change but on demonstrating change in ourselves, then leaders have to commit to personal change. As Daniel Goleman indicates in Working with emotional intelligence, this is not easy. Habits die hard and learning new ways can be intimidating. Making mistakes as we try to change is also difficult – it is always tempting to go back to our old practices.

Learning involves experiment, practice and discipline. Jim Collins emphasised that great organisations were not created overnight, but emerged after long periods of consistent effort that was held together by a common vision and values. Collins also emphasised that there were few “heroes” in great organisations – their strength lay in collaborative effort. Members of pivotal groups in these organisations supported each other and worked together.
Creating a positive culture requires effort by individuals to commit to personal change and learning, but the whole executive team has to be united in the effort and they have to support and challenge each other. Success is built over time as employees see that positive change is happening and the example of leaders is consistent. Trust, commitment, loyalty, energy and innovation are all outcomes of the consistent, positive behaviours of the pivotal group.

References
Collins, Jim, 2001, Good to great, Harper Business.
Goleman, Daniel, 2000, Working with emotional intelligence, Bantam.
Senge, Peter, 1994, The fifth discipline, Currency.