Be Agile, Be Ready, Be Bold and Change!

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For some time, I’ve been having this conversation that an agile organization, is an organization that is much more resilient and ready for change. Although I’ve had my Agile journey’s of discovery, I must admit that I’m surprised that, so few people get this. Being agile is about a mindset. Its about culture. Its about people. Its about having the presence of mind and personal self awareness to flex, bend, move and work with a change and not try and snap.

When we consider determining how ready an organization is for change that’s coming, we often think of readiness for a planned change and revert to out tried and tested process. We get “that template” printed off and start ticking boxes and assessing change readiness with some magic formula that then presents us with the planned activities we need by some systematic gap analysis. Its all very dry and functional in approach but it’s the best we must work with. At the start of any change event, we have to assess change readiness. But what if we didn’t?

How about an organization that never needs more than a confirmation of change readiness? An assessment that is nothing more than a short conversation? And no need to create a change readiness plan of action. It may sound far fetched but its not. When you build agility into the workplace culture, you build readiness into the DNA. Now there may be a little work to confirm specific details of each change, but Agile organizations flex to accommodate the changing needs and the people who work in them are up for the challenge, with higher levels of resilience and capacity.

Are we being agile?

Now what about unexpected change, you know the disruptive kind of change? Yes, the changes we face living in a VUCA world! Building organizational agility supports the successful negotiation of these types of changes too. In fact, being agile, supports the resilient mind that doesn’t panic when the unexpected arrives, but stays calm and carries on when it is presented to them.

Now becoming an agile organization requires dedication and hard work as that is a change in of itself.  However, the hard work pays off time and time again on all future change initiatives. So my challenge to you is to find a way to develop your organization’s agility and make all those future changes less painful.

This article is part of the 2019 #ChangeBlogChallenge on the topic of Change Readiness in Quarter 3. Click here to see what other change thinkers say about this topic.

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Communications – sometimes…

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Sometimes the role is confusing… Sometimes we mess up… Sometimes our communications fail… Sometimes we get it right… Sometimes we just don’t know… Sometimes we communicate late… Sometimes we are amazed that we can juggle it all!

I’ve been amazed by the number of conversations I’ve had with clients, colleagues and more, who think that change management is just about communications. Please understand there’s more to it than just telling people what is going on!

I want to tell you a short story here. Around 9 years I was approached to undertake an engagement with a grocery chain. However, whether the fault of the company, hiring manager or HR person I was speaking with, there was a lack of understanding about the role. I was repeatedly asked if I’d come in and tell people about the change and make sure they do it. Now the first time I was contacted, I explored the words with he HR person, but effectively they thought my role would be to be the messenger of the change, so the leadership didn’t have to be, and my purpose was to make sure all staff complied. I was horrified! And when 3 months later the same company contacted me with the same request, I had the response ready, a short sharp “NO”.

I reflect on this situation many times and hear of many colleagues having similar conversations with potential employers and clients and it worries me. Understanding that there is more to enabling change than communications is huge for many people, but realizing that the communications element, which I readily admit is fundamental to the success of sustained change, is more than telling, is vital for them to understand the need of change management professionals.

I’m not a conformist in my approaches to supporting change, but there are simple things to consider when communicating about a change and these are so often overlooked. I want to just give a few tips from my experience that should help:

  1. KISS – Keep it Simple Stupid. I have worked with many organizations and I find that with all those entities they love a good acronym. So many acronyms, there could be dictionaries devoted to them! Avoid the use of acronyms where possible or at least explain them – not everyone knows what you know.
  2. Concise messages. Don’t write a book in an email. We have all fallen into this misconception that email is a time effective method of communications. Well, guess what, that’s not always the case! If you have that much content, demonstrate your leadership, confidence and capacity to engage with people and have a face-to-face conversation! If I see another manger spend an hour writing an email, followed by 2 hours of CC all replies ending up with an in person meeting, I shall have to temper my urge to scream at them why didn’t you do that in the first place!
  3. Transparency & Timing. Too many people feel they cannot say anything about a change until they know everything. I’ve news for you, you will never know everything! All this achieves is a space for rumour, gossip and untruths to formulate with people, while they wait for the truth and then we spend way too long undoing all these falsehoods. Of course the real reason for this arising is the avoidance of difficult conversations. My experience says that people respect early notification of change in preference to late notice. There will be challenging questions presented with either option but the early deal is far easier to manage than the late response.

I have a final response to my tips and its simply saying you don’t know when you don’t know. Its ok to have that response! It may be uncomfortable, but it gains valuable respect from people when you are open about your lack of knowledge. It will also let you gain insight into the focus of their thoughts so you can prepare what needs to be said next time!

As I close this post, I just wanted to acknowledge that this is being published outside the 3 month window for the communications theme of the change blog challenge! Sometimes we don’t manage to communicate on time, but we reflect that it has no detrimental effect on the outcomes, so its OK! I decided that applied for this content!

This article is part of the 2019 #ChangeBlogChallenge on the topic of Change Resistance in Quarter 2. Click here to see what other change thinkers say about this topic.

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R³ – Resisting the Resistant Resistor!

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Verb, adjective and noun – which sends the greater shockwave through the mind of the change practitioner? Why is the change facilitator only called in to help the organization, when the “R” word noticed? What is the big deal here with the “R” word?

I will begin this post with a confession – I resist resistance. Oh great, what the heck does that mean! I hear you moan, but just persevere with my thought process here and indulge my journey in words…

Let’s go back to school! This is what we learn.

  • Change 101 – People resist change
  • Change 201 – People don’t resist change they resist the consequences of the change
  • Change 301 – Not everyone resists change and its not a fixed space.

In other words, we overly generalize when we first learn about the resistance word, starting our understanding in a straightforward manner, but we gain a deeper understanding of the change space we connect with the deeper meanings around the fluidity of such statements. We realise its not as straightforward and understand it changes over time, circumstance and its not the same for everyone – a bit like change itself!

Ponder upon this for a moment – What if we replace resist in the above and use respond(s) to in its place?

  • Change 101 – People respond to change
  • Change 201 – People don’t respond to change they respond to the consequences of the change
  • Change 301 – Not everyone responds to change and its not a fixed space.

To me that progressive understanding doesn’t sound so worrisome and in truth, a little bit more accurate, realistic and manageable? I personally advocate for using the “respond” conjecture as the best way to reflect on how people behave when experiencing change. They may respond well, not so well or downright awful and all manner of behaviours in between. When we use the resist word, we get caught in focusing on the negative response and get ready to use our Jedi mind powers to deal with the resistance – and I for one don’t want to be Darth Vader!

I want to put a challenge out there to all the wonderful change navigators – don’t do resistance and resistance management plans for your change events. Not only are you highlighting the negative with more airspace in conversation, but you are also ignoring those people who are not negative. You also fall in to the trap of making a huge assumption that anyone who doesn’t feel negatively about the change today never will! Don’t make that failure!

Consider if you have ever worked with someone who was nonplussed to a change, but when they were not included in conversation or any other engagement activities about the change, their viewpoint became negative? Yes, me too – part of my early learning journey to stay away from resistance management plans. These plans make you act like Thor swinging his hammer to destroy all who stood before him! Slightly better than Darth Vader I guess, but not really the best approach.

Thanks for persevering, but now I’ve told you what not to do, I guess you are looking for some guidance on what to do instead? My Answer: Build a Stakeholder Response Table/Chart/Map and identify both the good, the bad and the neutral views of the change and create plans on how to maintain those in the good place, and move those you need to move, either from the bad place to the good place, or just the neutral zone! Let me show you what this might look life for a simple software change:

Stakeholder Where are they now? Where do I need them to be? How will you get them to where they need to be?
IT Support Team Neutral Positive Engage in conversations focused on their WIIFM and highlighting the perils of staying as is.
CIO Negative Positive Weekly check-ins focused on benefits of change, provide opportunity to explore fears and concerns effecting role and team
CHRO Positive Positive Occasional conversations to confirm success and reference to support future of change in other communications
Caseworker Team 3 Negative Neutral Deflate their instinct to stall change, by getting them to reflect past achievements and reinforce value of past efforts in all communications

I’m sure you can follow how this might go. If you are feeling colourful you can even use smiley and frowning emojis!

As a bonus, when you use this approach you can generate some clear metrics for improvement through the change journey. Score these positions from say, -5 through to +5 and with regular checkpoints to score current positions, you can easily demonstrate movement across that range for all the included stakeholders – hopefully in the direction you want!

Let me wrap my final words with these challenges, ideas and proposals:

  • Ditch resistance

  • Scrap resistance management plans

  • Develop inclusive response maps

  • Engage with all your stakeholders, not just the resistance!

This article is part of the 2019 #ChangeBlogChallenge on the topic of Change Resistance in Quarter 1. Click here to see what other change thinkers say about this topic.

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My Agile Awakening – an Adventure towards Cultural Agility

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About 6 years ago I first starting consciously noticing the Agile word coming up in many of my professional social feeds. I think it had been popping up before then, but the volume of its presence became more noticeable to me at this time. In total honesty the word scared me for several reasons.

Fear

I was afraid

The first reason was my fear of the unknown. I didn’t really know what it was, and I’ve always been someone who prides myself on being current and up to date on terms, approaches and the like. This was something I didn’t really know a lot about and what I did know added a secondary fear. I knew it was something from software development and back in the dark ages when I was a Mathematics undergrad student, I never got on well with my software development courses – I did what was required but it wasn’t the same comfort zone as the rest of my courses. Thirdly I have never wanted to be at the back of the line for something new, and I physically felt myself slipping back on this Agile thing! In reflection I was afraid of the unknown and yet I was also afraid of the known, or at least my known. Not a good place to start.

During 2013 my curiosity began to get the better of me. I was working at a location anchored in a traditional waterfall project management mindset, in fact they weren’t doing that very well, and I was frustrated by this among other things. So I started exploring and spent the next 12-18 months trying to get my head around this Agile thing that people were talking about. My rapid learning was fueled first by the musings of Jason Little and his Lean Change Agent book, then my mind double flipped with the 2015 Spark the Change Conference in Toronto, and a particular shout out to Riina Heldström who was at that Spark conference and made me ignite my mind to Agile beyond software and PM where she talked Agile HR and my thoughts raced through “of course, isn’t it bleeding obvious” through to “why am I stuck fighting against what is so f**ked up here”?

a gauntlet

the proverbial gauntlet

Anyone that knows me well, knows that this is throwing down the gauntlet to me. And my Agile adventure began. An accelerating learning curve over the last year or two has brought me to the place I’m at now. I’ve learned about elements of the practice, from scrums and huddles, to product-based ownership and customer centric drivers. I’ve learned how people practice it in a way that some think is wrong, and others think is right (isn’t this true for every business practice?) I connected my background and experience in the lean six sigma activity and operational excellence. I looked at the manifesto and then researched the multiple operational translations of the manifesto. I dug and dug until my brain was ready to go pop!

I discovered that there is a kind of hard Agile focused on project management, product development and all things connected to physical delivery. Then there is a softer, almost “agile agile” anchored in mindset, values and behaviours. This latter is where I emphatically gravitated, demonstrating agility in the workplace, with people and their thinking, no doubt heavily influenced by my change management background. I guess I would call it cultural agility in my head and I felt happy in this space.

Rich looking happy

I felt happy

I have continued my learning journey in Agile and discovered some really cool people with thoughts and ideas in the space – my thanks go to recent contributors Sarika Kharbanda and Evan Leybourne (do check out the Business Agility Institute) As with all disciplines, I’ve unfortunately found some people who have an arrogance about the practice – unless you have this cert or that qualification, you don’t know what you are talking about – but I’ve had that in every area I’ve been exposed to over time and let it slip by. I’m now reflecting on so much activity I’ve done over the years that has had an agile ethos about it, leadership styles, HR practices, business improvement activities, even my strong desire to only do what is needed, not what people would like… I think I’m a convert, I just don’t think I have a label for what I’ve converted to … I think I’m going to go with cultural agility as a label, for something I don’t think I really want to label.

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Eight Lessons Learned as I Reflect on 2017

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As I come to the end of the year I have chosen to reflect back on the journey I’ve navigated, the people I’ve engaged with and look to adventures that await me in 2018 as part of a series of learning opportunities that have presented themselves to me.

Professionally it’s been an amazing experience. I’ve continued to engage with great clients, locally and abroad. Some with a purpose close to my heart, finding their potential and supporting them through their own change journeys. My first learning moment of the year came when I realised that although I need financial reward for my endeavours I place equal value on making a difference and releasing other’s potential. This part of the value I place when deciding to begin an engagement.

My first learning moment ... I place equal value on making a difference and releasing other's potential

It was only in 2015 I launched the Capillary Learning offerings. My desire to get people thinking change, rather than just regurgitating a process, led to the Certified Change Agent (CCA) credential that has now been experienced by over 200 people. Learning point two came this year as I reaffirmed my desire to share knowledge with others hungry to learn.

Learning point two ... I reaffirmed my desire to share knowledge with others hungry to learn. Curiosity has continued to be a part of my very existence. Thanks to my sparring partner, Nik Beeson, I've kept challenging and questioning and we've done some great workshops this year with curiosity and now have a Meetup group of over 500 members. My fourth learning came from these, sometimes less is more. I learned that small workshop groups can have the most profound discussions and it truly is more important to have quality over quantity for workshop attendees.

My third learning came on the back of this, I have to take my enthusiasm and the CCA to new people in new places, so London, England is on the 2018 list and more Canadian cities too!

My third learning ... I have to take my enthusiasm and the CCA to new people in new places

Curiosity has continued to be a part of my very existence. Thanks to my sparring partner, Nik Beeson, I’ve kept challenging and questioning and we’ve done some great workshops this year with Curiosity Culture and now have a Meetup group of over 500 members. My fourth learning came from these, sometimes less is more. I learned that small workshop groups can have the most profound discussions and it truly is more important to have quality over quantity for workshop attendees.

My fourth learning ... small workshop groups can have the most profound discussions and it truly is more important to have quality over quantity

I’ve been coaching a number of great executives and leaders in their organization. I love to get the “aha!” moment and I’ve truly heard it and seen it with many of these clients. Learning number 5 came directly from these experiences – you should always be learning! I have committed myself to learn at least one new tool, technique or skill every year from now on.

Learning number 5 ... you should always be learning! I have committed myself to learn at least one new tool, technique or skill every year from now on.

I began applying this learning point, when I finally got to do the big Lego® Serious Play® course I’ve wanted to do for some time. I did a short course several years back but it never lit a spark in me but now I’ve done the 40 hour version I have been inspired to reconnect and 2017 certainly saw me involved in some great Lego inspired actives including incorporation of it into the CCA. Learning item six is not writing something off because it didn’t work in one format or style, everything deserves another chance.

Learning item six ... not writing something off because it didn't work in one format or style, everything deserves another chance. 

I’ve had some great speaking gigs in 2017. In Texas and Chicago I let loose with the Lego and Berlin Change Days was a performance I shall remember for some time! I’ve presented to 200+ and 15 in a room and thoroughly enjoyed both extremes. My key learning here, number 7, is to remember self care. Surprising to most I’m a natural introvert and I need to remember that these events take a lot out of my energy bank, so I should find the time to recharge and recover.

My key learning here, number 7, is to remember self care

My final, eighth learning point builds on the self care. Appreciate the communities you are part of and let them be there for you. 2017 saw me end my time leading the Toronto Chapter of the ACMP and letting go can be hard, as Bill Bridges will confirm and I’m definitely embracing the new zone now. I have many great connections in the change space and I thank you all for the great conversation, thought provoking comments and insights into the field I’d never normally think. Learning point 8 is be grateful for the support of others – Thank you!

Learning point 8 is be grateful for the support of others - Thank you
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Revisiting Change Agents and their Networks

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holding handsIts been a little over 2 years since I first posted about Change Agent networks, the role of Change Agents and their relevant benefits. They are popular articles and I’ve seen readership reach thousands across them all, prompting me to realise that there is appetite out there for their purpose and the topic worthy of an additional visit.

One of my frequent mantras is that successful change is done with people, not to people. When you have a cohesive groups of people all experiencing the change together, they can mutually support and carry each other through the ups and downs of the change. They feel part of the change, have a sense of ownership and are far more readily inclined to engage with the change on a personal and thus professional level.

Change initiatives are generally driven from the top. A strategic delivery, business realignment or improved operational activity is cascaded into the business. For the groups of people at the sharp end of these changes, they frequently resist, push back or become disengaged with the change because they feel it is done to them. Unfortunately, this is often the delivery model organizations follow. These approaches are driven from a focus in project management or technology implementations which focus on deliverables, outputs, Go-Live dates and other such key goals. These are key indicators for the delivery of a change, but not the reflective of the true success needed, that of gaining employee, consumer or stakeholder adoption.

I’ve said before that Change Management is not a one size fits all approach. Driving change management as some side piece to delivering the new initiative or encasing it the same old methodology as every other change, is just asking for failure. Focusing on the people is at the heart of change and Change agents are key to navigating that successful pathway of both head and heart.

lego connectedThe simple truth is that successful change needs many people to play the part of Change Agent where that Change Agent is a role beyond that of the change manager or change lead person for the project, initiative or activity. Change Agents can of course be these full-time roles, but my view defines them as being anyone with responsibility for enabling the people in the organization to engage, accept and move forward with the change as it affects them and those around them. So, for me, Change Agents are people throughout the business who connect the top to the bottom, the process to the people and the operational to the strategic for any change event.

Change Agents may be senior managers, team leaders or front-line staff. Some of the best placed Change Agents will be the go-to people in the organization who readily show they have an informal leadership within their workplace. Connecting all the Change Agents provide us with the network. A network that functions beyond the typical cascading communications and project dictated control processes. These people operate in multiple directions outside the traditional hierarchal structure. Their role is to support each other and work with everyone to help them understand the change and how they are affected. The Change Agent is far more than a champion for the change. The Change Agent is a connector that allows 2-way communications between the delivery focused team and the people at the front-line of the change. All organizations that have these networks in place are far more successful in delivering change.

Why are Change Agent networks successful? Three key reasons:

  1. The Change Agents are supporting the business from the inside out, working with the people affected by the change;
  2. The network has 2-way interactions. The Change Agents are key subject matter experts for their function and providing feedback to the delivery team, yet they also provide a fast and direct access route to those at the frontline.
  3. The Change Agents are trusted advisors to all, understanding the business, its people and with quality education, able to expertly navigate emotion driven responses that go with any change within the business area.

When it comes to the success or failure of a change, the label is often defined by the way we measure it. In my view a change is only a success if it has realised the benefits that were foreseen at the point of origin. Those benefits can only be truly arrived at, when the people are performing the new or different activity in the business. Changes are ultimately successful because of the people, not because of the process applied and people help people to deal with change.

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Brain Bursting in Berlin

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I’ve recently returned from the great Berlin Change Days event. An awesome couple of days over a weekend focused on exploring the art of disruption, with lots of arts and lots of disruption from people, places and the insights they bring.

I’ve been following the evolution of Berlin Change Days over the years with eager anticipation as to when I would make the trip. Ironically given that I had to move from the UK to Canada, to put myself in the position to attend.

explosionI had prepared myself for a heart, soul, ego and more to be twisted, turned and shaken inside out. This would be a group of people who spoke my language but were equally capable of keeping me true to my own self exploration of change and disruption.

I’m honoured that Nik Beeson and I had the opportunity to deliver our Disruption & Dis-Chord session on the first night and get a group of attendees clapping and conjugating the relationship of disruption to change through the analogy of beats. I won’t spoil the content for those that may attend or experience a future session but I pose this thought to you: Culture of an organization is its heartbeat – how do you travel to the new beat of the business heart when a disruption occurs?

I’ve always believed that the best change facilitators have a fluid connection between their creative and analytical sides. Connecting emotion and logic for the benefit of navigating a pathway forward. Its partly reflected in my own company name having a human and scientific reference (see capillary motion for the scientific reference). This conference brought that in loud and clear for me to experience and see others joyfully enthuse over.

Sessions used creative art, music, movement, dance, improvisation and many more incursions within the world of the liberal and creative arts to see disruption. We even started by putting disruption in trial with some awesome for and against arguments as to its “buzzword” multiple usage.

As I’ve said before, with any conference the depth can be measured by the side conversations and when you realize that your conversation has moved into international development being supported through pathways of choice – you truly are freeing your intellect to respond in its best way. I loved sharing my insights of curiosity and I loves being able to discuss the geographic perception differences of change management, leadership and organizational development.

Thank you everyone for massaging my synapses, challenging me and making me see with so many different lenses and making me part of the family. Thank you to Holger, Inge and the team, Berlin Change Days is my best conference ever and I look forward to many more!

If you attended, what were your thoughts, takeaways or insights of the experience?

Thanks to the participants at our workshop below…

disruptionanddischordbcd2016

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Having the Courage to Embrace Change

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5 tips for a healthy diet this New Year

Whatever your New Year’s Resolution, a healthy and balanced diet will provide many benefits into 2019 and beyond. What we eat and drink can affect our body’s ability to fight infections, as well as how likely we are to develop health problems later in life, including obesity, heart disease, diabetes and different types of cancer. Check out the latest tea burn reviews.

The exact ingredients of a healthy diet will depend on different factors like how old and how active we are, as well as the kinds of foods that are available in the communities where we live. But across cultures, there are some common food tips for helping us lead healthier, longer lives. These are the Best semen volume pills.

Eat a variety of food

Our bodies are incredibly complex, and (with the exception of breast milk for babies) no single food contains all the nutrients we need for them to work at their best. Our diets must therefore contain a wide variety of fresh and nutritious foods to keep us going strong.

Some tips to ensure a balanced diet:

  • In your daily diet, aim to eat a mix of staple foods such as wheat, maize, rice and potatoes with legumes like lentils and beans, plenty of fresh fruit and veg, and foods from animal sources (e.g. meat, fish, eggs and milk).
  • Choose wholegrain foods like unprocessed maize, millet, oats, wheat and brown rice when you can; they are rich in valuable fibre and can help you feel full for longer.
  • Choose lean meats where possible or trim it of visible fat.
  • Try steaming or boiling instead of frying foods when cooking.
  • For snacks, choose raw vegetables, unsalted nuts and fresh fruit, rather than foods that are high in sugars, fats or salt.

Cut back on salt

Too much salt can raise blood pressure, which is a leading risk factor for heart disease and stroke. Most people around the world eat too much salt: on average, we consume double the WHO recommended limit of 5 grams (equivalent to a teaspoon) a day. This is how java burn works.

Even if we don’t add extra salt in our food, we should be aware that it is commonly put in processed foods or drinks, and often in high amounts.

Some tips to reduce your salt intake:

  • When cooking and preparing foods, use salt sparingly and reduce use of salty sauces and condiments (like soy sauce, stock or fish sauce).
  • Avoid snacks that are high in salt, and try and choose fresh healthy snacks over processed foods.
  • When using canned or dried vegetables, nuts and fruit, choose varieties without added salt and sugars.
  • Remove salt and salty condiments from the table and try and avoid adding them out of habit; our tastebuds can quickly adjust and once they do, you are likely to enjoy food with less salt, but more flavor!
  • Check the labels on food and go for products with lower sodium content. Try out the best appetite suppressant.

Reduce use of certain fats and oil

We all need some fat in our diet, but eating too much – especially the wrong kinds – increases risks of obesity, heart disease and stroke.

Industrially-produced trans fats are the most hazardous for health. A diet high in this kind of fat has been found to raise risk of heart disease by nearly 30%.

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Change and the Emotional Bank Account

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I’m always interested in exploring the true human elements of change management. بوكر اونلاين I regularly have the conversation with others whereby I explain that change is more than a process it’s a journey of feelings and experience. This emotional side is far too easily overlooked, particularly by those managers who want to manage activity rather than the people doing it!

pinkpiggybankIn the past year or so I’ve been taking a keen interest in discussions around the personal, or human emotional bank account. This is based on the premise that every individual has a set level of emotional energy within themselves and every time they do something, part of this energy is used up. However, there is only a finite amount of energy, so over time it may become dangerously low or even be exhausted. When this happens, people fall sick, become depressed or withdraw from interaction with others, even having a breakdown in the most extreme cases. العاب بلبل As with a Fully-Verified financial bank account, when the funds are perilously low, things get scary.

To prevent going too low on your emotional account, you need to find ways to make deposits into it. Like in the financial space those deposits can be achieved from a wide range of sources, and will vary in amounts too. Now we live in a world that doesn’t create a lot of space to get deposits of emotional energy. Most of the emotional withdrawals are linked to change events, with the extreme changes having greatest impact. Of course, one of my personal challenges is allowing people time to recover somewhat from a change before the next comes along. We never have opportunities to truly grieve on the last change, before the next happens.

mindbreakingNow the whole concept of an emotional bank account I find close to building personal and therefore professional resilience. I talked about this in my last post here. If we do not carve space in our hectic schedules for recharge time we run the threat of a poorly prepared organization, unready for change, lacking resilience to cope with that next piece of activity coming fast over the horizon.

rechargeI think there are a number of easy things we can do to help with building up the balance in this emotional bank account. We can start by recognizing its existence and reflecting on our personal levels. We can find ways to recognize what takes more out than others and prepare for those higher value withdrawals. لعبة الكوبه We can also find ways to newly create or replenish those emotional reserves. To this latter point I have seen a personal change in my levels since embracing elements of mindfulness. I’m not an expert in the field by any stretch, but the short time outs to consider self and be centred around your position in the universe have truly paid me dividends. This article I wrote discussed my journey with mindfulness.

I truly see great benefits in managing your emotional bank account, developing resilience and being better prepared for professional and personal change in your life. We live in a constantly changing world with an ever increasing speed of change and number of changes. We need to find our coping mechanisms proactively and move away from Band-Aids to try and fix it when its too late!

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Disruptive Change and the 3Rs

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Big bang or slow n steady change – which do you prefer? For most people they say that incremental is easier to deal with, not so stressful and more likely to stick. But I ask you, how much of your change is incremental? When was the last time a change manager had the chance to slow things down and have steady paced change?

Disruptive changeI was talking at a small gathering of HR professionals the other night. When the Q&A came at the end, the questions were dominated by disruptive change questions. What I mean by disruptive change? Think discomfort, uneasy and unpredictable change. Consider it more akin to revolution and upheaval within the workplace.

So what were the questions? Typically, the theme was – How do we cope with a totally new “X”. It was less about revisionist tendencies and more about replacement approaches. It was a whole new tech platform, a whole new location or a whole new management. One question even said we’ve been told to be coaches and leaders and stop being managers!

So how do we cope with disruptive change? Unfortunately, all those great change management models struggle to fit this type of change. When dealing with disruptive change we have little prep time, usually the change is heading forward at a rate of knots and the collateral damage is a path of bruised and battered egos left in its wake. Not a good sight!

Recognition, resilience and reputation are my 3Rs for coping with a landscape of disruptive change.

Recognition:

Find a way to recognize the reactions to disruptive change that people will likely express. Recognize those tell-tale signs, the first wave responses and importantly the underlying emotional burden. Remember that what might not be disruptive change from your viewpoint can appear very disruptive from those amongst it.

Resilience:

There’s a lot to be said for the strength of a resilient workforce when change comes along! For me this is all caught up in the change readiness of an organization. If you are ready for change you don’t experience such a big hit when it occurs. You can never be really ready for disruptive change. However, if you have built resiliency into the organization it will have a lot softer landing on arrival.

Reputation:

This may sound strange but I’m not talking about the reputation of your organization to its customers or client base, because there are innumerable websites and large corporations like Salesforce which can easily apprise of where you might be going wrong with your customers. This is about your reputation for coping with change. How well did your last change go? Did it deliver successfully with little damage, or are people still in intensive care nursing their wounds? Your reputation for coping with past changes can inform the workforce how well you will cope with the next.

Coping with disruptive change is not an easy thing to do. I fully appreciate the energy that needs to be exerted and that for me makes resiliency the anchor requirement of those 3Rs. If you can build up your emotional bank account to cope better, you become more resilient and combine this with effective recognition and a high quality reputation and you will come out the other side, better for the change and without the baggage.

Good luck dealing with your next disruptive change!

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