Frei And Morriss On How To Move Fast And Drive Big Change

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I recently spoke with Frances Frei about her new book co-authored with Anne Morriss, Move Fast and Fix Things. Frei is a professor at Harvard Business School and was Uber’s first Senior Vice President of Leadership and Strategy. Her co-author, Anne Morriss, is an entrepreneur, leadership coach, and the founder of Leadership Consortium. In Move Fast, Frei and Morriss put forth a practical process leaders can implement to drive change; Frei and I discussed how leaders can manage big change in a short time.

An audacious approach.

If you’re managing change in your organization, you may feel like you’re in a double bind: you want to be a responsible steward of the process, but your leadership team and stakeholders will become frustrated if you move too slowly. Teams and leaders may feel stuck: during change, there are many moving parts and much that can go awry. Additionally, leaders can have ideas of how they want the change to go—yet operationally, teams may not be able to live up to those ideas.

The process for change management that Frei and Morriss advocate in Move Fast is one marked by audacity. They advocate a “full steam ahead” approach. This is the contrary to the way organizations usually implement change, Frei and Morris write: the usual approach is to organize meetings all day and get very little done. The usual approach has the appearance of busy-ness, but little forward movement. The key to a successful change strategy, Frei told me, is to look for the company’s most complex problem and galvanize teams around solving that problem. In Move Fast, she and Morriss lay out a process for doing so.

The value of speed.

Frei and Morris’s book presents a change management plan that can be rolled out in a single week, with an action plan for every weekday of a typical work week. Each day of the week has a goal and actions designed to drive teams toward that goal. For example, Monday’s goal is to “Identify your Real Problem.” Frei and Morris write that the process can be spread out over multiple weeks, though no more than five—any more than that and the company will lose the benefit of speed.

This weekly process helps leaders gain traction and move forward with the necessary urgency to solve a problem on which their company’s health and growth hinges. As Frei and Morriss write, not solving the problem can create chaos and, in many cases, massive burnout for the company or teams. Frei told me in our conversation that speed has gotten a bad name; leaders often believe that when rolling out changes, the only way to move forward is slowly and prudently. However, Frei believes this approach can be the downfall of morale for your teams.

Focus on the real problem.

In Move Fast, Frei writes about how she and her team worked with a leadership team who believed they had a gender concern. Women were leaving not getting promoted and leaving the company, and the leadership team wanted to help solve this issue. However, after some digging, the team found that the founder was creating a lot of conflicts; his abrasive communication style kept female senior leaders from participating in discussions. Thus, the female leaders would not get promoted, and would often leave the company. The leadership team found that the root problem was the founder’s communication, not a “gender issue” as they’d previously believed.

Frei and Morriss share an exercise to get to the critical issue at the root of a company’s need for change: the ‘Five Whys.’ The ‘Five Whys’ is a method of questioning designed to get to the core of an issue. A line of questioning could look like this: ‘Why did the client say no to the proposal?’ ‘She said no because the timing wasn’t right.’ ‘Why is the timing not right?’ ‘The timing isn’t right because it’s the end of the quarter.’ ‘Why is the end of the quarter a no-go?’…and so forth. Keep asking the questions until you get to the root cause.

Leaders’ communication throughout the change process.

In Move Fast, Frei and Morriss share leaders should communicate with empathy throughout the change process. For example: if the leader hasn’t picked the right problem to solve or something has gone awry, say sorry. The apology doesn’t need to be complicated or lengthy. In our conversation, Frei advocated for simple language such as: “I vow to do better; please forgive me. I love you all.”

Frei also shared that leaders should focus on writing delivery. According to Frei, leaders should avoid sending lengthy emails or slide decks. Frei says that leaders should consider their teams’ time and schedules and work on refining their messages until they are absolutely clear before sending those messages.

Frei and Morriss’s Move Fast offers a week-long playbook to help you and your teams solve problematic issues, quickly. With momentum behind you, you and your teams can gain traction and implement the changes you need to move forward.