Pull intrinsic transformation! Instead of pushing change to people.
This week, me and my colleague had a very insightful conversation about how to lead people through change. The question is, how can we prepare people for upcoming change. Can we really get people ready for change? Or will they always fear it? I suggest a different path of thought. Let the people discover and design their own transformation journey. Create motivation and excitement for a new strategy and then allow them to run towards these goals. As a leader you might only focus on removing the barriers. In this sense, I believe that true success can be reached by creating a meaningful purpose, facilitating cross-silo collaboration and cultivating a willingness to experiment. Where do you see the leading indicators for success?
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IMD Alumni invited us to a speech by Diana Wu David sharing her experiences and thoughts about how we can make ourselves Future Proof! Globalisation, Automation, Longevity all creating the need to look differently at the 'world of work'.
The future will bring lifelong learning, demands flexibility and soft skills, and requires us to be enabled by technology. How can we get there? And her thoughts really resonate with my experiences and believes: * Collaborate * Care * Create These behaviours and routines will lead to creating a more satisfying life for us as leaders and family members. The still open question is: how do we convert our top leaders to stop looking at the past (lagging indicators) and start embracing the future. Any thoughts from your side? Who are the most efficient messengers for your change initiative? Is it the communications department sending out newsletters and distributing posters? Is it the HR team conducting training sessions? Or is it the group of advocates which are excited about the new things to come?
In my experience it is none of the above. Instead, the best result is achieved by focusing on the following two messengers Senior Leadership Team - highlighting the strategic reasoning and implication of the new initiative. Provide a purpose that excites the people. And, living the change themselves. Direct Supervisor - creating clarity what the initiative means for each individual and link it to personal values. Provide the operational impact of the new routines. And, living the change themselves. Quick share on communication... who are the key messengers to get the purpose and mission across?
A) the CxO level to create excitement for the strategic messages B) the direct supervisor to build deeper understanding what the strategy means for our daily operations Let's focus on these two messengers and it is a great start to get closer to our employees. It is Friday and in today's "Quick Share" I am pondering about how close change management and knowledge management are.
A long time ago I was very deep into Knowledge Management; and one key topic was making communities (of practice) successful. When you are doing this, you realise that you need a lot of change management expertise; that is why I evolved into a change management professional. Today, I am driving innovation, new mindsets, nudging new cultures - guess how - with communities. This is a very interesting reflection. Why communities? Because they bring people closer, build relationships, facilitate to have common grounds, etc. Where do you bring people together to work together outside of their daily job? It is 'Quick Share' time and let's look at People Excellence. I spoke about this topic last week and I received a great amount of confirmation for this.
For the last 150 years we keep automating - farming, then manufacturing and now services. This created a mindset that we can control people. In recent years, neuroscience showed people work better when we give them more freedom; with less control we achieve more. I think we need to focus more on the humans around us: 1. Engage in conversations and get out from behind the screens 2. Let's care about the things we are doing 3. Create a drive in people with purpose, autonomy and mastery Day 1 - Great networking and discussions today with peers in operational excellence. My first impressions:
- Focus automation on areas with minimal viable products; and don't forget to clean-up your waste first - Operational excellence is bottom-up and top-down at the same time - Start your transformation journey with the 'why'; and then experiment in high speed to create tangible results - Yes, you can have a global IT organisation with only three hierarchical levels - implementing self-organising teams - Who owns the customer journey in the company? Ideally the Operational Excellence unit; it is a cross-functional topic Day 2 - Excited about the feedback I have received for my presentation about People Excellence; people are not machines and we thrive with freedom and passion. Though the day continued to be exciting with many insights; here is what I got out of it: - Operational Excellence is not a nice to have - it is about surviving in the market - Rule-based activities can be automated with a bot; a great opportunity to up-skill people and engage them in more meaningful activities - Employee Experience is a broad journey with social, physical and technical aspects; and requires a wide set of methods - Drive agility by moving the focus (30%) from big ticket improvements to small Kaisen improvements - Create an environment that allows and pushes experimentation; this is one of the foundation for transformation initiatives - Ownership and curiosity easily compensates for the lack of expertise Motivation is more sustainable when it comes from within - from people's heart and mind. Intrinsic Motivation gives us three simple handles:
1. Purpose - awaken the passion and show the long-term direction; let's aim at something that we care about 2. Autonomy - allow the people to use their experience and brains to decide how we can achieve this common purpose 3. Mastery - aspirations to become an expert is a third driver that makes people excited Adapted from Drive, Daniel Pink Culture is identified as the major enabler of mastering the digital age - how to drive this cultural change?
a - delegate decision-making and enable all levels in the organisation take managed risks b - customer focus across the entire organisation; understand and design the entire customer journey (and this starts at the initial research when identifying the need for a new purchase) c - connecting people across silos to drive innovation and enable systematic problem solving What do you add to this list? How do you drive your teams into the digital age? Here are a few pointers, I see as important to make change journeys successful:
1. Visionary - we create purpose and meaning to strive for the best 2. Connected - we have our feet on the ground within our organisation and in the extended market place; and beyond 3. Delegate autonomy - we enable or teams to act autonomously and move ahead nimble and insightful 4. Fast + accurate decision-making - we create an environment in which we reduce bias and hurdles in making decisions 5. Coaching / mentoring - we develop our teams by giving them guidance and encouragement, instead of telling them what to do 6. Result driven - let's visualize performance data to understand where we are and where we are heading to; with a focus on qualitative information Which qualities do you think are essential for leaders in today's world? The year 2019 is starting on a roll... We conducted an exciting session with the R&D teams in Shanghai. About 75 people gather to be creative and drive innovation, leveraging diversity and external experts.
Thank you Enshan Sheng and William Marks for your support and contribution.
Passion & Purpose
A new 'thing' is heading towards us and our managers explain the journey with financials of the past and lofty EBITA contributions. Is this exciting? Is this relevant? When we lead people through change, let's do this with passion. We can tap into our values and create a purpose with meaning; an exciting ambition that goes way beyond our normal achievements. This is what drives people! And, instead of numbers, let's get these stories out - make that north star tangible, stretched and real. Each Business Plan is a Change Plan And while we are talking about a meaningful purpose, we will also ensure that people are heading down the same path, with the same story and the same goal in mind. This alignment is important to utilise resources efficiently and to reach our ambitions together. Autonomy "These are the new processes and here is how we are going to ensure that you are following them!" Command and control as a leadership style is usually not ideal to create commitment and engagement. We want speed, flexibility and innovation. This means we need to delegate decision making to where things are happening. Autonomy is also supported by creating communities, allowing peers to connect directly in their own language. Let's get out of the parenting mode By the way, purpose and autonomy are two of the three key ingredients for intrinsic motivation; in my eyes, a vital platform to drive people forward through the changes within and outside of organisations. One Tribe at a Time Typical change intervention target a large audience with classic communication and training activities; even change agents and KPIs are held on a broad level. These generic themes are simply not touching people's heart and don't highlight the relevance to each individual. Experiences of military activities in the Middle East have shown that we can achieve a lot more with up-close, personal interventions. Take one group and engage them, guide them to the new place, listen to their situation, etc with deep connection. And, make the change real and exciting for them. Then move to the next group; step-by-step conquer the entire organisation. Continuous Innovation & Improvement Classic change approaches assume one change intervention at a time, followed by a stabilising phase. Reality today is that we are exposed to multiple interference and never have the luxury to breathe after a change project. Change is the new norm. This is because the markets and environments in which organisations are embedded are evolving with a faster pace. We need to be ahead of the curve - all the time. So, instead of guiding people through one change project, we need to provide them with structures, capabilities and mindsets that provoke and strengthen continuous innovation and continuous improvements - for themselves and within their teams. What trends do you see? How can we apply these trends and drive excellence in our organisations? Share your thoughts and experiences! |
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