Episode 04 · The Commercial Excellence Podcast
Transformational Leadership with Dominique Signorel
Dominique Signorel · Chief Product Officer, Honeywell
Reading this as a machine? This episode as plain markdown.
What this episode covers
- Three decades across Amphenol, ABB and Honeywell, and the shift from pushing innovation at customers to pulling it out of their pain points.
- Why hardware businesses reach a red ocean quickly, and what software and AI add beyond the margin.
- Where transformation fails, in his experience: not in strategy, in the field.
- The squeeze that produces it: change how you work, and hit the monthly number on the old way while you do.
- Running several transformations at once, misaligned in timing and outcome, and what that looks like from one person's desk.
- What ADKAR does well: structure, sequence, and a common language across functions and regions.
- Where it runs out, and why desire is the stage a program supplies messaging for.
- Compliance against commitment, defined in one line each.
- The margin project where the team owning the pricing logic saw the P&L effect and pushed harder than anyone asked them to.
- Dashboards built for the field by people who have not been in front of a customer.
- Why a group setting is the wrong room for some people to disagree in.
- The middle layer: if the regional and country managers embraced it, teams followed; if they were unsure, everything became an excuse.
- Handing over the outcome and letting each region design its own path, and what has to exist before that is survivable.
- Senior leadership rotating often, and the question people started asking him directly.
- Why training sticks only when it is practiced, and what a consultant's PowerPoint leaves undone.
- What makes a good enterprise coach: active listening, low ego, and enough patience without waiting ten years.
- What he would do differently on day one: ask where people are stuck before presenting the model.
- His career advice, which is about rotation rather than ambition.
In this episode
Dominique Signorel has spent three decades in the electrical industry, from components through to IoT-enabled devices, at Amphenol, ABB and now Honeywell. Mostly global roles, and lately transformational ones, tying customer pain points to business outcomes.
His verdict is blunt and he does not soften it: transformation does not fail in a strategy role, it fails in the field. Direction was clear and leadership support was strong on the program he describes; then it reached the regions, where teams were still owed a monthly number on the old way of working.
He and Jesse Hopps work through where ADKAR earns its place and where it runs out, what separates compliance from commitment, why the message goes down and rarely comes back up, and what he would do differently on day one of the next one. That answer is short: start at the bottom, much earlier.
Questions this episode answers
Who is Dominique Signorel?
Chief Product Officer at Honeywell, with about three decades in the electrical industry across Amphenol, ABB and Honeywell. His career has moved from components to IoT-enabled devices, mostly in global roles, and lately in transformational ones tying customer pain points to business outcomes.
What is the industry shift he has watched?
From pushing innovation to pulling it. Technology companies used to push innovation at customers and markets. The move is to become customer-obsessed, understand the pain points, and let those drive what gets built. In his account, that is what has been driving companies to transform rather than being a result of it.
Why do hardware businesses end up adding software?
Because in the hardware world you reach a red ocean fast if you are not careful, and it gets very crowded. Software and AI capability change the solution set you can put in front of a customer, and they also make the business stickier and produce recurring revenue.
Where do transformations fail?
Not in strategy. Dominique's line is that transformation does not fail in a strategy role, it fails in the field. He describes a program with a strong vision to move from a project mindset to a product mindset, clear direction and strong leadership support, that met reality when it reached the regions.
What happened when it reached the regions?
Teams were under pressure to deliver numbers monthly and quarterly, managing installation and dealing with customers. That produces a choice between hitting today's targets in a publicly traded company and investing time in working differently. Strategy says change; the field says I still have to deliver today.
What share of transformations fall short?
Depending on the source, between seventy and ninety percent fail to hit their objectives or create long-term shareholder value, across McKinsey, Bain and BCG. Dominique's own answer when asked how many he has seen succeed fully is that he has yet to see one.
Is that consistent with what practitioners report?
Jesse describes putting it to a roundtable of senior operators. Not one claimed a hundred percent, or fifty. Very few claimed more than ten percent of their transformations hit their objectives. The published statistic and the room agreed.
So are companies just bad at setting goals?
That is one reading Jesse offers, along with the possibility that the goalposts move as everyone learns. Dominique adds a structural factor: companies run multiple transformations at once, and they may not align in timing or in outcome, which makes it very difficult for one individual to work out what is being asked of them.
Why do simultaneous transformations cause a problem?
Because each is designed on its own and they all arrive at the same desk. Timing and intended outcome do not line up, so the person expected to absorb them has no way to resolve the combination into a coherent set of priorities. Any one of them might be reasonable; together they are noise.
What is ADKAR and what did it do well for him?
A change-management model naming five sequential conditions for adopting and sustaining a change: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement. Dominique has used it more than once, and he is clear about what it delivered: it structured the work, and gave a common language across functions and across regions.
Where did it run out?
At desire. His words are that they could not really explain why the change mattered to the individual, could not answer what is in it for me, and could not force that belief. The rest of the sequence continued to run: the training happened, and it did not get them there.
What did people do instead?
Went back to old habits. In his example, some teams understood the product model perfectly well and reverted anyway, because the old way was what had made them successful in their environment. Understanding the new model and having a reason to adopt it are separate things.
So what was missing?
Ownership. Dominique's summary is that they had awareness but not real ownership, and that the absence of ownership and accountability is where the transformation went. Awareness is a condition a communication plan can produce; ownership is not.
What is the difference between compliance and commitment?
Compliance is I have to do it, because something bad will happen to me if I do not. Commitment is I own it and I will push it forward, because I believe in it, I understand the end state, and I can see the impact I am going to have on my own team.
Is there an example of commitment appearing?
A margin improvement project. The team that owned the pricing logic could see the effect on the P&L, and they became strong advocates. They pushed it further than anyone expected of them. Seeing the impact produced the belief, and the belief produced the ownership.
Why does seeing the P&L effect change behavior?
Because it closes the loop between what someone does and what happens. Most people in a transformation are asked to change a behavior whose consequences they will not observe. When the connection is visible, the argument for the change stops being someone else's assertion.
What goes wrong when the people designing are not the people using?
Dominique's example is dashboards built to help a salesperson be more insightful in front of customers, by people who have not been in the field or in front of a customer. The result is a beautiful dashboard with a lot of data on it, and no answer to: so what do I do with this?
Is there a version of that from a CRM rollout?
Jesse's: a salesperson was moved into a market manager role and given the design of the opportunity screen. Wanting data for market research and reporting, he specified around eighty-seven fields, forgetting that a rep in five or six meetings a day is not going to ask ninety questions. It had to be redesigned.
What would have worked instead?
Jesse's answer is a small set everyone can genuinely commit to, enough to roll up global reporting, then additional fields where a region or a team needs them. The failure was designing for a perfect world of unlimited data capture rather than for the day the work happens in.
What is passive resistance?
People nod and agree in the meeting, then go back to what they were doing the next day. Dominique's version is the passive yes, yes, yes, we will get it going, followed by returning to the desk and doing what they were doing before.
Why do people not simply disagree in the meeting?
Partly because of who they are and partly because of the room. People have different backgrounds, skill sets, experiences and personalities, and a group environment is not the right forum for some of them to challenge anything. The disagreement is real; the setting is wrong for surfacing it.
What is the other cause?
Not being a believer. Dominique's framing is that the individual does not see what is in it for them in their day-to-day role, so the change does not resonate. You can run a transformation with tools, and if it does not bring value to the individual, the tools do not make up the difference.
What does he name as the core failure mode?
Direction of travel. Most of the time, vision, strategy and change are pushed down, and the organization is not listening upward: here are my pain points, here is how we should do things differently. Reversing that is what he calls a big shift.
How much does the middle layer matter?
In his experience it decided the outcome. The regional product leaders and country managers had to balance global direction with local execution. Where they embraced it, teams followed and it went smoothly. Where they were unsure, everything slowed down and everything became an excuse.
What does that look like in practice?
Ordinary work getting slower. His example is setting up a SKU: something that should be immediate starts taking ages. The resistance rarely announces itself; it appears as friction in operations, and the reasons offered are all individually plausible.
Does he have sympathy for middle managers?
A lot, and he says so without qualification. They are absorbing corporate direction from above and the operational reality of customers, revenue and operations from below, and are expected to reconcile them. His conclusion is that if a transformation is not designed with their reality in mind, you lose them.
How do you activate the middle rather than instruct it?
Bring the outcome you are after to the table, and let them design how to reach it. Different regions take different paths because the dynamics and the cultures are different. As long as the outcome is clear, the route is theirs.
Isn't that frightening for a senior team?
Jesse puts it exactly that way, and Dominique's answer is that where it feels frightening the problem is usually a lack of trust. That is the thing to build first, and his method for building it is unglamorous: being physically present with people, meeting face to face, having dinner, spending time.
What does a senior leader have to do differently for this to work?
Open communication, which he calls extremely critical. And a specific reflex when somebody challenges an objective or a strategy: read it as passion rather than as obstruction. That individual cares. Listen to what they have to say, ask how they want to implement it, and ask how you can help.
What is the risk in giving up control of the how?
That a senior leader who has a history of solving big problems now has to let someone else solve one in their own area, and is not in the room for most of it. Jesse's point is that developing people means letting them fail and supporting them through it, and that the patience for it is scarce when there are numbers to hit.
How does leadership rotation affect transformation?
It undercuts the trust the approach depends on. Senior leaders in large corporations rotate between regions and functions, so you build trust and then move. Dominique has been on the receiving end of it, describing himself as the fifth leader in a role, with people asking him directly whether he was going to stay.
How do you make a transformation survive the next leader?
Anchor it on the customer rather than on the leader's agenda. If the outcome is clear and what you are doing is solving customer pain points, then whoever occupies the leadership position matters less. Being the fifth or sixth leader stops being the determining fact.
Why isn't training enough to change behavior?
Because training is a piece of the equation and it sticks when it is practiced. Dominique reaches for the word accompaniment: somebody has to go with the individual, hands-on, through the doing. A course that ends at the end of the course has not supplied that.
What does he say about consultants?
He declines to bad-mouth them and names the structural gap. The PowerPoint is one thing. Once it is delivered, there is no real follow-up. His phrase for the pattern is: it is not PowerPoint, thank you, bye, which he says happens quite often.
What does coaching add that a deliverable does not?
Being on it together. Working alongside the customer or the team rather than handing something over and leaving, and supporting the work as it happens. His summary is that it comes down to taking the time, which is exactly what the delivered-and-gone model is designed not to spend.
Why is coaching accepted in sport and not in business?
Jesse raises it as the puzzle: in athletics few people expect to learn a skill from an explanation, and a coach watches you do it and gives you feedback. His illustration is his daughter's round-off back handspring, two years of twice-weekly work. A backflip is not a weekend-workshop skill.
Do enterprises have people who could coach?
Jesse's argument is that the talent usually exists and two things block it. Long-tenured people may be inwardly focused and lack an external view of what better looks like, so they coach toward more of the same. And the ones best placed to do it have little personal incentive to spend their time on it.
What makes a good enterprise coach?
Active listening, first and repeatedly. Dominique extends it past the obvious: listen to more people than the one leading the transformation. His test is practical, that a coach who is not listening to the field, the department or the factory has nowhere to start.
Does ego matter?
He is unequivocal that a coach should be humble and a servant leader, and that a high-ego coach does not work. His reasoning connects to the rest: a coach still answering their own what is in it for me is poorly placed to help anyone else answer theirs.
How much patience does coaching need?
Enough, and not unlimited. Dominique says patience is important and qualifies it immediately: on a transformation, ten years is not available. Jesse names the failure in the other direction too, that a coach who jumps to the answer stops people forming their own.
How do you keep coaching patient without it becoming open-ended?
Jesse's structural answer is the ninety-day Growth Project: a time-bound window, a real piece of work, and a presentation at the end. It lets a coach be patient inside the window while the window itself keeps the work moving, since people progress at different speeds.
What would he do differently on day one of the next transformation?
Start from the bottom much earlier. Rather than opening with here is the model, here is the strategy, here is what we are going to do, ask the teams where they are stuck and what is slowing them down today. Identify the pain points first.
And then what?
Build the transformation around those pain points. His prediction is that doing it correctly creates energy, because people see that their problem is being solved rather than that an initiative is being pushed down at them. That is where the belief comes from.
Does starting from the bottom take longer?
It takes more time and it requires patience, and Dominique accepts both. His answer to whether it is slower is that you invest up front and at least you get the result, which he contrasts with an approach that falls short most of the time.
What does it do to change fatigue?
It reverses it. What he reports is more passion, more energy, a spark in people's eyes, and the shift to it being my transformation rather than yours. Ownership at each level in the organization, and results that arrive quicker than the slower-looking route suggested.
What ultimately makes change stick?
People seeing the results themselves. Visible progress, plus understanding what is in it for them and how they contributed to the impact. Not being told the transformation is working, but observing it in something they had a hand in.
What connects an individual to the change beyond their own interest?
The customer. Dominique's answer is that everything gets connected back to reality and done with the customer in mind, and that this is worth explaining rather than assuming. Jesse's parallel is that people move mountains for others more readily than for themselves.
What career advice does he give?
Fast-track rotation through different departments, functions and regions. Understand what makes the sales person tick, what makes corporate finance tick, what makes the plant manager tick. He adds one thing outside anyone's control: really good mentors.
Why does rotation matter for transformation leaders specifically?
Because moving a large business means working through functions you have not sat in. Jesse's reading of the advice is that rotation is what stops you bringing your own bias about how things should be done to a job you have not done yourself.
What is the argument in one sentence?
Transformations rarely fail in the strategy; they fail where people are asked to change while still owing last quarter's targets, and the fix is to start from what is slowing those people down rather than from the model.
Terms defined in this episode
- Pull innovation
- The shift Dominique describes across his industry. Technology companies used to push innovation at customers and markets. The change is to start from customer pain points and let those drive what gets built, which he credits with driving the transformations themselves rather than being an output of them.
- The red ocean problem
- Why hardware businesses transform. In the hardware world you reach a red ocean fast if you are not careful, and it gets very crowded. Software and AI capability change the solution set, and they also make the business stickier and produce recurring revenue.
- Where transformation fails
- Dominique's central claim: transformation does not fail in a strategy role, it fails in the field. Direction can be clear and leadership support strong, and reality still arrives when the program reaches the regions, where the same teams still owe this month's number on the old way of working.
- The short-term squeeze
- The choice a field team is really given: hit today's targets, in a publicly traded company under real pressure, or invest time in working differently. Strategy says change; the field says I still have to deliver today, and I am still incentivized on the short-term target.
- Transformation collision
- Several transformations running at the same time, not aligned in timing or in outcome. Each may be defensible on its own. From the desk of one person expected to absorb all of them, the combination is very difficult to make sense of.
- ADKAR
- The change-management model naming five sequential conditions for an individual to adopt and sustain a change: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement. Dominique has used it more than once and is clear about what it delivered: it structured the work and gave a common language across functions and regions.
- The Desire gap
- Where the model asks for desire and a program has no way to manufacture it. Dominique's account is direct: they could not explain why the change mattered to the individual, and belief is not something you can force. Training still ran, and people went back to the habits that had made them successful.
- Compliance vs. commitment
- His definitions, in one line each. Compliance is I have to do it, because something bad will happen to me if I do not. Commitment is I own it and I will push it forward, because I believe in it, I understand the end state, and I can see the impact I am going to have on my own team.
- Awareness without ownership
- The state a program reaches when the first stage worked and the second did not. People know what is happening and why the company says it matters, and no responsibility has been taken for making it true. Dominique names the absence of ownership and accountability as where it goes wrong.
- Passive resistance
- People nod and agree in the meeting, then go back to what they were doing the next day. Dominique's explanation is partly about the room: a group setting is not the right forum for some people to challenge anything, so what surfaces is a passive yes, and the behavior at the desk is unchanged.
- The message goes down, not up
- His summary of the failure mode. Vision, strategy and change are pushed downward, and the organization is not set up to listen upward: here are my pain points, here is how we should do things differently. Reversing that direction is what he calls a big shift.
- The frozen middle
- The regional and country managers balancing global direction against local execution. Dominique's experience is that everything turned on them: where they embraced the change, teams followed and it went smoothly; where they were unsure, everything slowed and everything became an excuse.
- Outcome ownership
- Bringing the outcome to the table and letting teams design their own route to it. Different regions take different paths, because the dynamics and cultures differ. Dominique's condition for it working is trust, and his method for building trust is being physically present with people.
- Accompaniment
- The word Dominique reaches for when explaining why training alone does not stick. Training is a piece of the equation and it sticks when it is practiced, so somebody has to go with the individual, hands-on, through the doing. It is what a delivered PowerPoint structurally leaves out.
- Active listening
- What he names first when asked what makes a good enterprise coach, and he extends it past the obvious: listen to more people than the one leading the transformation. His reasoning is that a coach who is not listening to the field, the department, the factory has nowhere to start.
- Bounded patience
- Patience matters and Dominique qualifies it immediately: if you are transforming, ten years is not available. Jesse's structural answer is the ninety-day Growth Project, which supplies a time-bound window and a presentation at the end, so coaching stays patient without becoming open-ended.
“Transformation doesn't really fail in a strategy role. It fails in the field.”
“I have yet to see a fully successful transformation.”
“Strategy will say: change. And the field will say: I still have to deliver today.”
“We couldn't really explain why the change mattered. What's in it for me at the end of the day? We couldn't force that belief.”
“Compliance is: I have to do it, because something bad will happen to me if I don't. Commitment is: I own it, and I'll push it forward, because I believe.”
“We had awareness, but not real ownership.”
“A beautiful dashboard, a bunch of data on it. And then: so what? What do I do with all this data?”
“You get this passive yes, yes, yes, we'll get it going. And then I go back to my desk and I do whatever I was doing before.”
“Most of the time the message comes down, it doesn't come up.”
“If they embraced it, teams would follow and it all went smoothly. But if they were unsure, everything would slow down. Everything would be an excuse.”
“Training is a piece of the equation. It will stick when you practice.”
“Once the PowerPoint is delivered, there's no real follow-up. It's not PowerPoint, thank you, bye.”
“If you're not listening to the field, to that department, to that factory, you can't coach. Where do you start?”
“Instead of saying here's the model, here's the strategy, here's what we're going to do, I would ask teams: where are you stuck? What is slowing you down today?”
“It becomes ownership. It's my transformation, not yours.”
“Information doesn't create results. Action creates results.”
Full transcript
Three decades in the electrical industry
Jesse Hopps: Could you give a quick background on who you are, what kind of companies you have worked in and what sort of roles you have had?
Dominique Signorel: I have been in the electrical industry for about three decades, moving from components to IoT-enabled devices, and I have been working with Amphenol, ABB, and now Honeywell. Very significant companies, most of the time global roles, and most recently transformational roles to help tie customer pain points to business outcomes.
From pushing innovation to pulling it
Jesse Hopps: One thing that comes to mind is organizations with a deep history, very asset-focused manufacturing companies, going from product organizations to solutions companies. Has that been a common thread?
Dominique Signorel: Absolutely. More and more we are trying to tune the offerings to customer pain points, and those customer pain points are helping companies transform. That is what I have been seeing over the past few years.
What is interesting about the phrase pulling innovation is that in the past, technology companies were pushing innovation to customers and to markets. Now we are a lot more customer-focused, customer-obsessed, trying to understand pain points, and that is driving companies to innovate and deliver true value to the customers and to the business.
Jesse Hopps: Did they all at some point start doing software in addition to their products? Did they get into hybrid business models?
Dominique Signorel: Yes, absolutely. In the hardware world you go pretty fast into a red ocean if you are not careful, and it gets very, very crowded. Companies evolve into software and AI capabilities, and that helps deliver a different solution set to customers, but it also becomes a lot stickier and gets recurring revenues out of it as well.
Where transformation fails
Jesse Hopps: You have led major transformations at a lot of these companies. Why do so many fall short when it comes to executing the plan? You have a great strategy, maybe worked with the big consulting firms, the milestones are clear. What happens in execution mode?
Dominique Signorel: In my experience, transformation does not really fail in a strategy role. It really fails in the field.
In a previous company we had a very strong vision to move from a project mindset to a product mindset. There was clear direction and very strong leadership support. But once we hit the regions, reality kicks in. Teams were under pressure to deliver numbers monthly or quarterly. We had to manage installation, deal with customers.
This is when you have a choice between hitting today's targets, under pressure, in a publicly traded company, or investing time in working differently. And that is where the gap is.
Jesse Hopps: That is the contention. Short-term targets and long-term capability building.
Dominique Signorel: And that is where a strategy will say: change. And the field will say: I still have to deliver today. I am still incentivized on short-term targets.
The numbers, and the collision
Jesse Hopps: The ones that have pulled it off, would you say that is the majority, or have most under-delivered on the vision?
Dominique Signorel: I have yet to see a fully successful transformation. The stats, depending on who you look at, McKinsey, Bain, BCG, are somewhere between seventy percent and ninety percent failing to hit the objectives or create long-term shareholder value.
Jesse Hopps: We just did a roundtable. We asked who is batting a hundred percent. No one raised a hand. Who is batting fifty percent. No one raised a hand. Anyone over ten percent, and still it was very few. So either we are really bad at setting goals, or we change the goalposts along the way as we learn.
Dominique Signorel: There is another aspect. When going into transformational initiatives, we have multiple transformations happening at the same time. They may not completely align in timing and in outcome. And that makes it very, very difficult for an individual to look at it and say: what is in it for me at the end of the day?
What ADKAR did, and where it ran out
Jesse Hopps: One of the most prolific change-management models is ADKAR: awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, reinforcement. A linear process to bring people through to a defined future state. Where has it been helpful for you, and where does it fall short?
Dominique Signorel: I have used it a couple of times, and it really helped us structure the whole thing. It was very clear, and it gave us a common language across functions and across regions. You could really land the arrangements, the training and the reinforcement. That part worked pretty well.
The way it actually broke was the desire piece. We could not really explain why the change mattered. What is in it for me at the end of the day? We could not force that belief.
Jesse Hopps: Force the desire.
Dominique Signorel: You will do the training, but you will not get there. In the previous example, some teams would understand the product model, but they still went back to the old habits, because that is what helped them be successful in their environment.
So we had awareness, but not real ownership. The lack of ownership and accountability in a transformation, that is where it goes.
Compliance and commitment
Jesse Hopps: What is the difference between compliance and real commitment? I think ownership might be that difference. I tell my wife we cannot use carrots and sticks to raise good kids. We do our best to incentivize and punish, and none of it works. They make decisions when we are not around.
Dominique Signorel: For me the difference is simple. Compliance is: I have to do it because I have to. Something bad will happen to me if I do not do it.
And commitment is: I own it, I will push it forward, because I believe. I get the destination, I get the end state, I understand the impact I am going to drive in my own team, my department, whatever it is. You can layer it down across the organization.
For example, when we worked on a margin improvement project, the team that owned the pricing logic saw the impact on the P&L, and they became strong advocates. They pushed it further than we expected. That was an example where seeing the impact drove the belief that we are on the right path.
Jesse Hopps: The belief brought ownership.
When the designer is not the user
Jesse Hopps: I was working on a CRM project, and they pulled a guy off the sales team to be a market manager. The minute he was no longer a sales guy he wanted all kinds of data for his own market research and reporting. When he designed the interface and the inputs for each opportunity, he put something like eighty-seven fields in there. He forgot how busy those people are, going to five or six meetings a day, and that they cannot ask ninety questions in a meeting. He built the process around a perfect world of unlimited data. The whole thing fell apart and had to be redesigned.
Dominique Signorel: I see it quite often, where teams are building dashboards that should enable a salesperson to do a better job in the field, or to be insightful in front of customers. And those individuals have never been in the field, never been in front of customers. So there is a beautiful dashboard, a bunch of data on it. And then: so what? What do I do with all this data?
Jesse Hopps: Information does not create results. Action creates results.
Why the yes in the room is not a yes
Jesse Hopps: This phenomenon I call passive resistance, where people nod their head and agree on the surface in the meeting, and then when they go back to work they do not really do it. Why do people agree in principle and then not shift their behavior? Why not disagree in the meeting and hash it out there?
Dominique Signorel: A couple of things come to mind. First, we are all people with different backgrounds, skill sets, experiences and personalities. A group environment may not be the right forum for some individuals to challenge or to have those discussions. So you get this passive yes, yes, yes, we will get it going. And then I go back to my desk and I do whatever I was doing before.
And the challenge is that the individual is not a believer of that change. They do not see what is in it for them in their day-to-day role.
It is all about what is in it for me, and I may be repeating myself. You have tools, you can run your transformation with tools, but at the end of the day if it does not resonate, it does not bring value to the individual. Most of the time the message comes down, it does not come up.
And that is where the failure mode in transformation is. Most of the time we are pushing down vision, strategy and change. We are not listening and not bringing it from the bottom: here are my pain points, this is how we should do things differently. It is a big shift.
The middle, and what it absorbs
Jesse Hopps: Talk to me about the gap between the ivory tower and the front line, and the middle managers who need to protect their field teams from the corporate material coming down while carrying the ideas and challenges upward. What is your sympathy with the middle manager?
Dominique Signorel: A lot. What we saw in the product transformation is that it really depended on those regional product leaders, the middle managers, and the country managers. They had to balance that global direction with the local execution of the business.
If they embraced it, teams would follow and it all went smoothly. But if they were unsure, everything would slow down. Everything would be an excuse.
And you are looking at real pressure at that level: the customers, the revenue, the operations. Setting up a SKU, instead of being immediate, would take ages. So if we do not design transformation with their reality in mind, we lose them. It is that simple.
Handing over the how
Jesse Hopps: Can you share an example where rather than bringing a top-down edict you got them activated, helped them articulate their challenges and built solutions with them?
Dominique Signorel: At the end of the day you bring to the table the outcome you are after, and let them design how to get to that outcome. Depending on the region, a different path, because there are different dynamics and different cultures. As long as the outcome was clear, the how was theirs.
Jesse Hopps: That sounds terrifying for a C-level team. We are going to design the outcome, the place you have to get to, but we are going to rely on you to figure it out. What happens there?
Dominique Signorel: It is a lack of trust, in most instances. You need to build that trust. And you know how much I travel. You build that trust meeting people face to face. You have a drink, you have dinner at night, you are with them. That is how it goes.
What open communication looks like
Jesse Hopps: When it is done really effectively, how do corporate and top-down leadership need to act? And on the flip side, what is the middle manager's role?
Dominique Signorel: Open communication. Open communication is extremely critical.
And you can see when individuals start to challenge an element of an objective or a strategy. I see that as: okay, that individual is passionate about it. Let us listen. What do you have to say? And how do you want to implement it? And then, how can I help? That kind of discussion.
Jesse Hopps: It is a humble servant-leader mentality. It seems risky, because the senior people are smart, they have figured it out, they have a history of solving big issues. Now they have to give up some control over how someone else solves it in their own area. As a senior leader you cannot be in every room. You have to build up your people, let them develop and fail, and support them.
Rotation, trust, and the fifth leader
Dominique Signorel: Another challenge very big corporations face is that senior leadership tends to rotate quite a bit between regions and between functions. It is difficult, because you may want to build that trust and then suddenly you have another role and you move away.
Jesse Hopps: How does that affect the middle managers when they think: by the time I am halfway through this, you are going to be gone and someone else will arrive with something new?
Dominique Signorel: I start all over again. I have seen it personally, where I am number five in the organization and it tends to change quite a bit. People said to me: okay, hey Dom, are you going to stay? We literally had those discussions.
And ultimately, if the vision and the outcome are clear, and we are solving customer pain points, then no matter what the individual leadership position is, it holds.
Jesse Hopps: So it is less about the new leader's agenda and more that if we are always focused on our customers and solving their issues, me being the fifth or sixth leader should not really matter.
Dominique Signorel: Absolutely. And that is my mindset.
Why training is not enough
Jesse Hopps: If training alone and information and tools were all you needed, everyone would be walking around in fantastic shape. It is easier to buy the treadmill and the shoes and the gym membership than to get up at five thirty and have the discipline. Why does training often not create behavioral change that sticks?
Dominique Signorel: Training is a piece of the equation. It will stick when you practice.
So you need to, and I am going to try to find my English word, accompany. You need to bring an individual with you, hands-on, and go through it.
Jesse Hopps: I have four coaches right now. A book coach for the book I am writing, a swimming coach, a coach for spirituality and becoming a more patient human being, and a coach for nutrition. My daughters do gymnastics, and my older daughter just got her round-off back handspring, which she had been working on twice a week for two years. You cannot learn how to do a backflip in a weekend workshop.
Why is coaching so accepted in athletics, but in business we pay lip service to it and mostly tell people what to do?
Dominique Signorel: I do not want to bad-mouth any consultant, but the PowerPoint is one thing. Once the PowerPoint is delivered, there is no real follow-up. And that is where coaching comes in. You are with your customer or with your team, and you are on it together. Being together and supporting the work together is an important piece. It is not PowerPoint, thank you, bye, which happens quite often. At the end of the day it is all about taking the time.
Who can coach, and who will
Jesse Hopps: In the big enterprises I work with there are enough people who could do the coaching. But there are two problems. Some have been in the same organization a very long time and may not have an external perspective on what better looks like, so it becomes coaching on the same. And beyond that, how do you get the people with the most ability to take time out of their day, when they have big problems and goals of their own, to help the next person get better? The talent exists. They do not seem to want to spend their time on it, because there is not much for them personally in it.
Dominique Signorel: Absolutely. And that goes into listening mode. If you are coaching a company and trying to support a transformation, and you are not listening to the field, to that department, to that organization, to that factory, you cannot coach. Where do you start?
What makes a good coach
Jesse Hopps: If you were going to pick ten coaches to work with teams through a transformation, what would you look for?
Dominique Signorel: It goes back to active listening. Really understanding what my viewpoints are. But also listening to other individuals in the organization, not just one individual. Because if you are building a transformation, yes, you will have a leader of the transformation, but taking the time to discuss and understand more widely matters.
Jesse Hopps: What about ego? High ego versus a humble servant leader?
Dominique Signorel: Completely humble and servant leader. High ego, I do not think it is going to work.
Jesse Hopps: And patience?
Dominique Signorel: Patience is important. But I would be careful with patience, because if you are transforming, you cannot wait ten years.
Jesse Hopps: I do not think I am a very good coach, because I get so excited that I want to share my thoughts. I do not always have the patience to listen long enough or let other people form and articulate their own ideas. If you jump the gun on solutioning, you can be a really bad coach inadvertently, by not asking enough questions and telling too much.
Dominique Signorel: And that is where bias comes in. We all have bias, and everybody has a different background and culture. You want to pause, and listen.
Jesse Hopps: We have always done coaching in the context of ninety days, what we call Growth Projects. A time-bound window to get to a result, with a presentation at the end. If it were open-ended, people would progress at different speeds. You need the patience to coach effectively, and on the other hand you need to keep the person moving forward.
What he would do differently on day one
Jesse Hopps: If someone is about to embark on a new transformation of any kind, what would you do differently, knowing what you know now?
Dominique Signorel: I would start from the bottom much earlier. Instead of saying here is the model, here is the strategy, here is what we are going to do, I would ask teams: where are you stuck? What is slowing you down today?
When you look at the complexity of our businesses, it is really important. You need to identify the pain points. Where are the challenges in your organization?
Then you use that to build the transformation around those pain points. And if you do that correctly, it will create energy, because people will see that their problem is being solved, rather than an initiative being pushed down at them. And that is where you get the belief.
Time, and change fatigue
Jesse Hopps: That is a radical approach, and it resonates. But does it take more time?
Dominique Signorel: It takes a lot more time and you have to be patient.
Jesse Hopps: Does it really take more time, if the other way falls short most of the time?
Dominique Signorel: There we go. You invest up front, but at least you get the result out of it.
Jesse Hopps: There is a lot of built-up baggage in initiatives that fall short. It burns the political capital of the leaders, and staff get tired, which is what people mean by change fatigue. How has this listening-based approach affected that?
Dominique Signorel: You get more passion, more energy, maybe a spark in the eyes of those individuals. It becomes ownership. It is my transformation, not yours. And ultimately you get the results, quicker.
Jesse Hopps: It is actually faster, although it feels like it is going to take longer.
What makes it stick
Jesse Hopps: If you could boil it down, what ultimately gets change to stick inside an organization?
Dominique Signorel: Ultimately, it is when people see the results by themselves. Then it sticks.
Jesse Hopps: Visible progress and momentum for themselves.
Dominique Signorel: Visible progress, and I understand what is in it for me and how I participate in that impact we are looking at. I think that is what it is.
Jesse Hopps: A doctor can say you will die of a heart attack if you do not change your diet, and people still will not change. What is different about the people who do?
Dominique Signorel: It connects everything to reality. Everything they do is with the customer in mind. It is important to explain that.
Jesse Hopps: When you think about who quits smoking or starts improving their health, they usually do not do it for themselves. They are motivated by their grandkids, their family. People will move mountains for others more than for themselves. In a business context, connecting the transformation to serving the customer, and connecting that back to their own life, relationships and career, seems to be the ticket.
Advice for someone twenty years behind him
Jesse Hopps: If you had to give advice to someone twenty years younger in the transformation and senior leadership game, what would you send them?
Dominique Signorel: To better understand corporate dynamics and how we run businesses, one key is fast-track rotation through various departments, various functions, various regions. Within the company, to understand what makes the sales person tick, what makes corporate finance tick, what makes the plant manager tick. Rotating through all those environments and spending time understanding would be super valuable.
Jesse Hopps: Was that your path?
Dominique Signorel: Yes. And really good mentors.
Jesse Hopps: If you want to truly move a big enterprise, the way you serve everyone around you best is by understanding what they are going through and how their function works, and not bringing your bias to the table about the way things should be when you have never actually done it yourself.
The operators on this show are some of the best in the world.
The Commercial Excellence Consortium™ is where senior operators compare notes in private. No sponsors, no consultants, no vendors.
Request to Join