blacksmithFar too many times I have conversations that start by asking what methodology I use for change management. Typically, this comes from a client but sometimes a colleague or connection. It’s as if they think I’ve got the secret sauce and three spoons added into the mix will make it all happen wonderfully well. I’m here today to dash those utopian misconceptions. I’m sorry but anyone who thinks they can use the single same approach to every change event is sorely mistaken and doomed to failure more times than they should.

I have many contacts who are certificated in certain methodologies. It’s great they have these in their tool box, but I worry when that’s all I see. The problem is that I see these practitioners forcing their change events to fit their learned methods no matter what the consequences. It’s very naive to think that the change event can be shaped to fit. Do you really think it wise to start your change with a change effort in itself? Fortunately, they often strike lucky and get a change where their approach works, or at least works well enough to satisfy the required change management needs. But I don’t like relying on luck too much.

In a world of continued complex and disruptive change events we need to be able to build the canvas for change activity that suits the change, flexes with it and guides us through the change event. We need to pick up relevant activities to meet the change needs from across a catalogue of approaches as we deploy our strategy. I strongly advocate that change managers who want to truly deliver successful change, should have multiple methods, models and approaches to hand. If you try and make the change fit your preference, then you are undertaking an unnecessary change management activity in itself. Change Management is a multilayered, holistic practice and cannot be undertaken with a cookie cutter approach.

carpenters-toolsSince being part of the founding group and as a longtime volunteer, I’ve been an advocate for the Association of Change Management Professionals (ACMP) partly because of the value it places in being methodology agnostic. Subject to popular myth and conjecture it does not recommend any on approach or methodology. It talks to a likely cyclic experience for change in its Standard® but that is about the journey and activities required not the tools you choose to use for each activity; that my friends is for you to choose.

When I created my certified change agent program I was adamant that the credential would not be about a single approach but about understanding the journey and how to successfully navigate it. Of course it also talks to the whole change agency philosophy I believe is a major contributor to the success of change events in organizations.

By the time I completed my graduate program I had dissected 11 approaches in detail and explored many more. It gave me a multifaceted opportunity to ensure I have more than one set of tools. Like any great artisan, who has some old well used tools together with some new ones; some old reliable that get the job done and some others that are only for those tricky action, my toolbox is much the same. This October marks 25 years in the change field for me – scary times! I’ve had an opportunity to collect like crazy, I just hope that others see the same benefits in a diverse and assorted toolbox to have to hand

Join us at one of our Managing & Leading Change Workshops here or become a Certified Change Agent here.

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!

I’ve seen a lot of chatter about mindfulness recently. It seems to be “in fashion” right now. I have seen it referenced recently for change activity, I’ve also seen it as part of wellness packages and employee assistance programs. It’s definitely something that is permeating to the surface in many ways.mindful

My first confession here is that I really didn’t know much about it. I’d seen some webinars, read some articles but had no true experience or even observational knowledge of the subject matter.

Through the Curiosity Culture journey, we have been providing Curiosity Labs. These supplement the core workshop and provide a safe space to explore a focus area of true curiosity. We did our first lab on vulnerability and we decided to explore mindfulness within the curiosity lab environment. Learn more about glucofort benefits.

Now I work in a world brimming with change challenges. Besides Curiosity Culture I run Capillary Consulting Inc. which focuses on learning, coaching and advisory services for change. I’ve been experiencing a significant rise in requests to understand change resilience and coping mechanisms for change fatigue and its associated experiences of exhaustion and breakdown. So I’ve been exploring, discussing and helping a number of people build managing strategies, action plans and personal contracts to deal with these challenges far more effectively. Now I’ve been looking at how mindfulness can help prepare individuals for change ahead as well cope after the fact. All part of the personal resilience needs for change and life really.

Doing the curiosity lab allowed me to experience mindfulness first hand. To really get a clear understanding and appreciate how it may impact and affect me. I admit I was nervous. I can’t remember the last time I took a half day out just for me and my benefit! I had some adrenaline rushes and some skepticism about the experience. If I’m totally honest I felt both excited by the event and conflicted by the value of taking that much time out of my busy schedule.

So I think I had my own personal a-ha moment! I won’t spoil the experience for others but I will say the way this played with my mind, body and dare I say soul, was a revelation. For the first time in more years than I can count I was able to consider myself as a focus. I was able to find a way to give my mind space to recharge without it involving sleep. I experienced a strong humanity connection and yet also a two-way link to my fellow humans. I also connected with my significance in the world that’s both great and small concurrently. I was both exhausted and energized at the same time after the experience.

In the weeks following the mindfulness experience, I discovered a lot more about my attitudes and approaches to the way I work and live my life beside and intertwined. I realized that living in a world of change I so readily focus on the future; I forget about the current.  I also appreciated that I spend a lot of my energy and effort for the benefit of others first, when I should be balancing this with myself.

I’m still exploring where this journey is going to take me. I have definitely become a convert to the world of mindfulness through this experience. I’m working on connecting resilience for change and mindfulness into an experience for people to engage with – proactive and reactive muscle building for change. I’m also excited to see how those involved in the Curiosity Culture experience take this forward as we look at resilience in a future lab.

I’ve been playing with this conundrum for some time:

“Do change managers make good change leaders or do change leaders make good change managers?”

The origins of my challenge here, come from discussions I had back in April around leadership development being part of change management, or maybe it’s the other way round. When you look at the expectations of senior, experiences and developed change managers, their leadership qualities are paramount. The greater the strategic importance of the change, the greater the leadership needs, and I could spend a whole other conversation on strategic change needs… but not today!

I think my challenge here comes from the words again (not an uncommon problem for me, see my previous posts) and the traditional view of manager versus leader. We use the term or label change manager for someone who executes change management, but significant requirements for that effective execution, requires leadership qualities in abundance. Conundrum part one!

face offWho is a change leader? Change leader is the term often used to describe a senior manager, accountable and sponsoring a change event, who is in a leadership role, yet is not a change management person. I guess we say change leaders are like the change sponsor and a good change leader will be the advocate, ambassador or agent to promote the values of the change to the organization; the PR/Marketing/Seller/Advertiser of the change.

I found myself speaking with an individual at a recent conference concerning a lack of change leadership in their troubled change event. I was effectively talking about a lack of engaged promotion from the leadership to support and promote the change – the passive aggressive resister was in full force! But it made me realise that when we talk about change leadership, we don’t always get the full leadership elements in there yet what’s missing is probably present in the leadership elements of change management, or at least strategic change management activity. For more details follow smart-ak .

So if I break it down, I think a good quality change manager will have leadership qualities, but may not be a change leader. However I think a good quality change leader can have leadership, management and change management qualities and to successfully lead a change they should all be present.

The unfortunate situation arises in appointing change leaders, to lead a change without and change management skills or knowledge. Maybe a competency should be encouraged for leadership, change leadership and change management to be present in those being made change leaders? What do you think?

Since I launched my certified change agent (CCA) program one of the most common questions I get asked is “why should I do this”. ivermectina preço farmácia popular curitiba I usually explain what the learning includes, key take aways etc. but I have now taken a little time to put together something more structured. Here are the seven reason to become a CCA.

  1. Gain an understanding of the impact of change on people, their likely reactions to the change and how to effectively work with them to adopt or implement the change.
    discussion group
  2. Learn what change management is all about and when, where and how to use it most effectively for successful change events to take place.
  3. Learn what it means when you take on a change agent role and get insight into the many different types and roles that require individuals to act as change agent. ivermectin solubility
  4. Understand the role of a change leader and how leadership plays an intrinsic part of successfully delivering change events.
  5. Learn from my own experience, spanning over twenty years in the field, with real life insight and discussion from the many change events I have successfully delivered.
  6. Get an internationally recognized qualification accredited by international professional bodies with pre-approved professional credits. ivermectin heartworm treatment for dogs
  7. Be part of a vibrant network of individuals going through the same experiences as yourself who can share experiences and take the opportunity to connect physically and virtually to explore not just the certification program but also how they have dealt with (or are currently experiencing) many change events.

For me these are the key benefits to becoming a CCA. 

There are many other reasons that are personal to each individual who attends. I have been told it has given attendees renewed confidence with colleagues, helped them to appreciate and manage their investment of personal energy in projects and enhance career opportunities.certified

I encourage attendees to develop their own personal learning experience from within the framework of the program, each will be unique but equally applicable to develop themselves as a change agent.

I look forward to seeing you as part of a future program.

I repeatedly hear that change is getting more and more complex, more and more frequent and more and more rapid. www.beoutq/live The constant demands are for better, faster, cheaper, leaner, brighter and more heroic organizations. They must be more efficient, less complex and more dynamic, making more money and producing higher quality output. It’s all about more, more, more! What can organizations do to be ready for the phenomenal amount of change that they are lining up for their future?

My view is that they need to build greater change capacity, to be change ready and change agile. Having the ability to manage many changes concurrently is a challenge – I remember a change register holding over 300 initiatives at one organization – but if you build a dispersed capacity, to support, assist and enable change at all levels, then you will have a ready build network for greater change capacity.

To build this capacity you need to recognize that organizations are best served by a mix of individual involvement. Many employees with varying levels of change responsibility need to be included. I refer to three levels of change agent activism:

  • Level 1 are your full time change related roles. People employed as change managers, project leads, project managers and some of the business analysts.
  • Level 2 are your “some of the time” change people. These people do change as part of their job, either because they support the roles of full time change agents (think BA and Project support) or because their role has some level of responsibility to deliver communications, learning events or manage people going through changes regularly.
  • Level 3 are your “arms-length” change people. People who experience some level of change but this is not a fundamental part of their role and not something they are allocated time and resourcing to do. Yet often they are the front line or managers of front line staff who are going through the change event whether it be office relocation, policy and process change or the new HR technology being introduced.

3 levels of change agentIt is the level 2 and 3 people that need to be supported and unfortunately are often neglected. Many times over I have seen an organization put effort into tier 1 people and the tier 1 people are then expected to do everything and the next levels are not involved until they are “told what is happening” or “instructed to comply”. العاب عل النت And we wonder why so many people get resistant and change fatigue? Its not the level of change it’s the way they are supported to deal with it and hence the organization as a whole. كزينو

I recommend, encourage and advocate for more organizations to build in wider change programs for those employees in the second and third levels of exposure. The numbers are far greater, but the impact is equally greater. If you increase the knowledge base at this level, you increase the knowledge across the organization and produce a far more change capable organization.

Click for the Certified Change Agent program

How are you Developing Change Agents in your organization? You know those people placed to support a change, but continue doing the day job as well! Possibly you are one of those people or if not, you know someone who is.

I’ve been involved in strategic, organizational and business change confused guyfor almost 20 years. Time and time again I have seen organizations appoint (or is it anoint?) change agents across the business, with a remit that requires them to be local supporter, advocate and eyes, ears and mouthpiece for change, whilst of course continuing to excel at their usual role.

These people are expected to take on the role of change agent and masterfully negotiate the role – off the side of their desk, or beyond. These people are provided with minimal training, coaching or mentoring to prepare themselves for the role – a change in itself for the individual.

In a past role, I worked hard to build up a network of such change agents across an organization. The diversity of operations, size and structural responsibility meant that as the change management person, I needed to rely on people to be the localised presence for my role. Now some of these people I was able to choose, others were chosen for me but the common factor was that these administrators, managers and specialists were all asked to this work as well as their existing role.

To successfully develop these people into change agents I started with Change Management 101 sessions, developing their understanding of peoples reactions to change, how we manage the people side of change and how this interacts with projects and other business activities. Using this knowledge and engaging them in great conversations, I shared my experiences of change and helped them to prepare for the role with shared knowledge and experience.

We also created some cool ways of getting people to share their thoughts, without spending hours in meetings and completing surveys. I got the Change Agents to think and work smart when it came to being the touch points for change in their areas and then worked to develop them into a  successful change agent network through clearly understanding their role, with clear expectations and direction, but also access to a great tool kit of readily available information to support them in their endeavours.

We were able to cascade consistent and influential messages to the right people at the right time through these effective practices and of course create an enterprise wide planning approach using the feedback from all the change agents to inform strategic alignment and operational benefits.

Having been through this pathway and developed this successful network of change agents, I have now developed a workshop for others being thrown into this role. Using some of the work I did on my Challenge of Change workshop and of course my own experience, I’m now launching the Developing Change Agents Workshop as a 2 way interactive workshop, bringing together those that are new to change management and/or being asked to take on the role of change agent in their organization. I take the opportunity to discuss the impact of change, the role of change agent and cover things like the difference between project management and change management. It includes lots of activity and real life examples to help attendees get themselves in the mindset needed to be successful in the role of change agent.

More information on the Developing Change Agents workshop can be found by clicking here. 

What is the best method of describing the organizational culture? You’ve got all the information, positive and negative comments, qualitative and quantitative data and various narratives and observations from walking the floor. Now what?

My experience is to right the beginning summary of observations after the rest of the report is completed. I tend to focus on 5 key areas for the core content of the report, namely communications, leadership, interaction with others in the organization, external influences and adherence to policy and procedure.

Communications covers the methods, style and transparency. Such elements will include appropriate audience, levels of message cascade and identify secrecy and inappropriate restrictions of information and methods for sharing information with accessibility and opportunity to respond. Within communications it would be good to identify how appraisal reporting, performance measurement and individual assessment is communicated. This can be used to neatly lead into leadership as a category.

Within leadership, a vast array of areas are usually covered, but mainly focus on management style, appropriate use of power and control, spans of responsibility both for personnel and tasks, decision making and consultation as well as independency and empowerment. granada vs real madrid

I prefer to use interaction with others in the organization as a topic in preference to team working, because current organizational structures depend so much more on matrix management, integrated and temporary teams that individuals find themselves within many teams, groups and management chains within an organization. When discussing this element of the report I focus on subordinate, level and upward interactions within own areas and other parts of the business. Discussion looks at taking responsibility, ability to work successfully with others to achieve a common goal, types of interaction and ability to fulfill dependencies across the organization.

External influences cover customers, clients and other stakeholders impact with reference to how the organization responds to feedback and changing needs of these. Also the way the business provides service and the approach of the people to these external – do they respect them or find them annoying?

Finally observing the organizations adherence to policy and procedure reflects the respect the employees may have for the organization and its purpose. تصفيات اليورو 2023 If there is a lack of adherence then it could be because practice has developed that has not been assessed and those who follow this informal procedure do so without consideration of consequences of their actions. This can indicate a lack of organizational development and a need for more regular learning needs assessments. سيرجيو بوسكيتس This is a very clear way to address the learning practice in the organization without directly addressing the facilitators or their syllabuses.

Within each of these areas the narrative defines the category scope, provides findings and impact of findings within the organization and then suggested improvements and recommendations where necessary. It is also worth compiling a summary index of any recommended next and future activities to bring about a more appropriate or desired culture within the organization.

Finally, summarise your findings with a few key positives and a few key challenges that have the biggest impact and potential for improvement. With this as the opening executive summary to the report you will have a really good organizational culture appraisal document that provides a snapshot of the time and a reference for future reviews.

Last time I talked about organizational culture and what it means. Now, so many times senior managers in an organization will ask for a description of their organization’s culture. Great ask, but how can we get that picture of the culture? 888casino عربي

In my experience there are things that you should do, things you shouldn’t and then the nice to haves. Let’s start by discussing what you should do. With no pun intended the first thing you should get active on, are investigative discussions within the organization.

These discussions must be 2-way exchanges between you and the workforce. These can be group activities, 1-2-1 or a mixture of both. I favour the mixed approach. Within these exchanges you want to be facilitating answers to some open questions. Questions like “how do you learn things here?”, “why do you think change happens in the organization?” or “how great is it to work here?”. All these questions are hopefully going to prompt several minutes of response but be prepared to follow up the initial questions with, “why do you say that?” and “how has that affected you?”; or any similar drill down probing questions. Those of you with recruitment experience will find this a bit like interviewing job prospects. When you are in the group situation be prepared to encourage comment from the quiet corner and silence the noisy neighbour – politely of course! Throughout this dialogue you will be scribbling notes furiously. I have found some people who have recorded these exchanges but I find it stifles free discussion. If it’s good comment you can write it down and reflect it back for affirmation. In the group setting I have found flipcharts do work sometimes but you have go judge the group dynamic and I have only ever successfully used them to capture summary points of the discussion toward the latter stages of the conversation. Of course, as with any such workplace activity, you need to explain yourself, confirm the confidentiality and how you and you alone will be analysing the information.

The interviewing and information gathered through the process will be one of the biggest contributors to your appraisal but there are a few other things you need to do. The second thing is to make observations. Now I like to find a corner of the office, of a side in the workshop and sit and do some paperwork, while observing what is happening. Try not to make it too obvious but make notes on how the conversation goes between people, what sort of topics are discussed, how the leaders lead and the managers manage. Try and get to a number of mixed vantage points through the experience and at different times of the working day or in the case of shift workers, across different shifts too. You want to be able to see the way things are run and people act while doing their job across as many of the activities and as much of the working times as possible.

The third key element of the appraisal is to look at what the policy and processes are that are in place. Now this is not from a right or wrong, or efficiency viewpoint – you may well have views there! It is important that you reflect the way people are expected to conduct themselves in the organization, what the hierarchal roles and decision making process is and also be aware of just how much or little structure there is to the daily activity.

As well as these 3 key areas of activity, I would also recommend a few beneficial if not essential activities to add to your base of information. Try and attend, sit in or observe a number of team meetings. I would also recommend sitting in on a board meeting or other executive level meeting. If there are projects currently active then make time for one or two project meetings too. I would also recommend sitting in on training or learning event if possible. My last preferred activity is to sit down and read through the company external document and the internal board meeting notes and the like. نظام اليورو 2022 This gives a good insight into company vision and mission with a comparison of the delivery and execution.

Before I finish up, I’d like to mention a few things to stay away from. العب واربح المال الحقيقي Some I think are obvious but worth discussing all the same. Rumour and gossip have no place in an appraisal. The amount of rumour and gossip may well be relevant for discussion, but its content is not. Don’t write anything up until you have got at least 50% of the way through and never ever provide a first draft of the report to the CEO or requestor until after all the necessary activities are completed. You don’t want to get the observations diluted by changed attitudes midway through the review. Finally don’t rush the appraisal. For a company of around 1000 employees this should take a minimum of a month and more likely 2 for an individual to undertake. If you are challenged on this then you need to challenge back about the quality and depth of the review.

That brings me to the end of this post on undertaking the cultural assessment. I’m sure there are observations that many could make from their experience. In the third and final post in this short series, I will be explaining how I go about compiling the client report, what to include and how to explain your findings in the best way.

I was recently thinking about fairy tales, legends and other fantasy type stories. تحميل لعبة طاولة مصرية 31 It crossed my mind that not only is the rule of three very evident within their content time and again, but there are parallels from their content with change management experience – no surprises there then!

So what do the three little pigs, goats gruff or even musketeers tell you about leading change. Well let’s consider the little pigs first. I hope you know enough of the story but to recap – 3 pigs build 3 houses after their mother has sent them out into the world. One house gets made of straw, one of sticks and one of bricks. Big bad wolf huffs and puffs and blows down the first two houses but fails on the final house. The wolf then tries to climb in through the chimney but the pigs put a boiling pot over a fire and he either gets boiled or burned and depending on if your Disney or darker the wolf is scared off or killed by this. قوانين اونو

So the 3 houses made me think of the way people take change. Sometimes they build barriers to accept or even listen. But with some effort these barriers can be broken down. However I have had that experience where one group seem to be inboard only to connect with another group with harder resolve to the change. Eventually they get caught up with a group with such hardened resilience there is no changing them. You then look to a different route into the group only to find yourself heavily scorned and having to run away and either totally regroup or abandon plans. Not a good outcome! Of course they key here is perception as the big bad wolf. This happens when you go to the people as their enemy with evil grins and ulterior motives. Let yourself be seen as the big bad wolf and you won’t get very far, but to use another wolf based fairy tale, try being more red-riding hood!

So what about the Billy goats gruff? The story here is about 3 goats that need to change where they currently pasture and move to a new and better meadow. To get there they have to cross a bridge where an evil troll lives. Each one goes to cross the bridge but persuades him that the next goat is bigger and better and he should wait for them. When the third and largest goat arrives on the bridge, he is so big that he tosses the troll over the bridge and is never seen again.

Where does this connect to change management you may ask? I see this as demonstrating the power of clever communications. As you go to make each change, if you can get adoption and acceptance on a smaller scale, then increasing it with each new communications works well. The audience is keen to hear more information and are often open to being convinced that letting this change happen is worth it and to save any challenges for the next one. Eventually, the size and value of the change communications is so great it can have energy of its own to achieve acceptance. Many stakeholder communication plans have this principle at their heart. If you engage little by little with the stakeholder, when you need to make the big move, they are already sufficiently on board with the smaller changes that it’s not such a big leap to the final large change needed. So perhaps the change manager is more of a goat here, and the troll is the evil organization resisting change. The goats carry a message that convinces the troll to accept each movement because the next one will reward their motives better. When he gets to the third goat, it’s too big for him to deal with and he gets pushed aside. سواريز ليفربول Now I don’t recommend pushing aside the audience, but the audience for your change communications will have to run with the change if you build up to it in the right way. I also think there is something in this tale that relates to organizational culture, but that is probably a conversation for another blog post.

AS for the 3 musketeers, well the motto of one for all and all for one, with the combination of multiple skill sets overlaps with team building, leadership and all elements of organizational development. Am sure there is more to this, perhaps you have some thoughts?