Working in a knowledge economy, it's all about the people — work gets done through people. Therefore, successful leaders must have effective practices and methods for helping people adapt to new ways of work. One fundamental in this domain of action is for leaders to understand the difference between change and transitions;
- Change is an external event — an action or decision either planned or unplanned — that impacts us as individuals.
- Transition, on the other hand, is the psychological internal reorientation that we go through in order to come to terms with change.
The key to successfully navigating your organization through transition is knowing how the three phases impact individuals. William Bridges authored the book "Managing Transitions" and describes the process in detail. The first phase of transition marks an ending and is characterized by confusion, resistance and loss. The second phase — the neutral zone — is where opportunity exists because you can help individuals open up to a new way of thinking, stretch their skills and welcome innovative ideas. In the third phase — the new beginning — individuals need support, reminders, measurements and rewards to be successful.
Bridges wrote about the "Four Ps" leaders need to communicate for success. In my practice advising leaders who are driving any type of organizational change (and who isn't these days?) I find investing the time to design and craft key messages around these four elements is a critical success factor.
Purpose - Describe why you are making the change
Picture - Describe what the future will look like
Plan - Describe the steps you need to take to get there
Part -Describe the part you need the specific employee to play; specify your requests
Give it a go! The architecture of the Four Ps makes for an excellent 20 minute leadership talk. Make sure you also have the 2 minute version of the Four P's ready at hand to use any time. That's my litmus test of whether leaders and managers are ready to lead - whether or not they have command of the two minute version and can tailor it appropriately.
For more about Bridges and his work on transitions you can visit his website. If you need a partner in building your Four Ps and managing the transition process - contact us for a consultation.
Carpe Manana, Seize Tomorrow!
Business as usual doesn't work anymore. The economy, globalization, technology and competition have all dramatically changed what we all need to do to be successful for the future. So as a business leader, how will you transform your organization in 2010 so that you will be successful and thrive?
These are the conversations we have with our customers to help them prepare for a future unlike the past:
- Organizing people, roles, practices, processes and systems for maximum effectiveness and agility
- Designing services to provide value in the new context
- Adopting new ways to connect and communicate with customers, employees, and stakeholders that exploit new technologies
- Rethinking sourcing models, decreasing overhead and eliminating waste
- Transforming your role as a leader
- Leading change
- Staying ahead of the curve with technology
Contact us if you are interested in exploring these conversations more and transforming your organization.
I was invited to join a team today, and was surprised by the statement of the leader that we would not be leveraging any collaboration tools, but rather just the "reply all" function in email. Ugggggghhhh!!! I had an immediate visceral reaction... "Not me! I don't want an onslaught of unconnected messages in my email! I work hard to be effective and efficient in all aspects of life and work, and don't want this to muck it up. I've got too much to do already!"
As with many of the teams we all get asked to participate on, this team is a great opportunity to contribute to work that is important to me, and get exposure to peers and a leader I respect and could learn from. So I should just get over it right?
What I noticed about myself in this situation is that only working with teams that are open to using modern technology for effective collaboration is now a stand for me. For years I have worked to help the teams I am on adopt new technology, and certainly this is one of the core aspects of creating high performing team that I work on with business leaders. I have quit teams and organizations before because they were ineffective and frustrating (including how they collaborated online.) But this is the first time I have the clarity to say, when I have a choice, I will only participate with groups, organizations and teams that are willing to go to the effort to adopt and use discussion groups, wikis, and other tools outside of email.
I am a self admitted change junky- I thrive on finding and adopting new ways to work. So, I am not the norm here. As a leader, you probably don't have to worry too much about people like me deserting your organizations in mass. BUT, if you are leading a virtual team, and you are not leveraging these tools, there probably are people on your team who are feeling this frustration.
More importantly.... you are missing a fantastic opportunity as a leader! Great teams not only accomplish their mission effectively, but connect people and provide insights on new tools and practices. Yes, it is change; and as a leader, you will have to put some effort into helping people learn and let go of old habits. I don't understimate or dismiss that. The good news, is once you get people going on it, the amount of effort will lessen the next time you charter a team.
It is inevitable that effective virtual collaboration will be required for leaders of the future. Last night I came across an Executive Summary for anew book about it: Leadershift: Reinventing Leadership for the Age of Mass Collaboration. Check it out!
If you are a member of a team or group that needs to collaborate effectively consider these actions:
- Be open and willing to try new practices: it may take a little more effort upfront but you will get exposure to new tools you WILL need for future effectiveness.
- If you are comfortable with online tools, identify someone on the team that is not and set up a 1-1 session and share your insights.
- Make an offer to help the leader institute these practices.
- Speak up, take a stand if you are frustrated. Make a difference!
Need some help identifying how to effectively use collaboration tools for your virtual teams? Contact us, we would be glad to help you identify the right toolset for your team and help you create a plan for engaging everyone on the team in effective new practices.
To be successful in today's market and build competitive advantage for the future, business leaders need to leverage every asset they have. This means business leaders must be aware of their own strengths, capabilities and passions, as well as the strengths and capabilities of their employees. Once you are aware of these assets, successful business leaders arrange the roles and responsibilities of the organization to make the most of them.
A SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis is an important tool in this process. SWOTs can be completed on many levels: you can do a SWOT on your business, your team, yourself, or your employees. A personal SWOT includes reflection on these questions:
- What activities do you do well/excel at?
- What relevant knowledge, experience or natural capability do you bring to your role?
- What are your personality strengths?
- What activities do you have a passion for?
- What do others see as your strengths?
- Which strengths are req'd for success in your role?
All leaders should complete a Personal SWOT and design their own role to play off those strengths and passions. Of course this means, that you then have to find people who possess strengths and capacities you don't have and surround yourself with them!
When we work with business leaders, completing a personal SWOT is one of the first things we collaborate on. Click here to download our template: Personal SWOT. Our Leadership Style report serves as great input for the SWOT as it provides a 23 page comprehensive report of your natural behaviors, values and attributes. You can learn more and request your report by clicking: -Free Leadership Style Report
Remember: Leaders are learners! We all need to be self aware, continuously improving and modeling the way for our teams to do the same.
Related content:
Developing Key Accountabilities
Jim Collins - Hedghog Concept
Smart, effective leaders share a common trait: the desire and ability to learn new things. To be successful in the future, and build organizations that are able to respond to continuous change, learning is a performance essential.
Business leaders need to be able to quickly learn new concepts, adopt them, and put them into practice within their organization. They also must ensure their employees are always learning.
Learning is a team sport, and winning means using the knowledge you and your team accumulate to gain competitive advantage, build a sustainable organization and achieve your vision. Here are three reasons why:
1. Effective learning requires reciprocity - interaction with others.
Every so often I meet a business owner who tells me that they don't need a peer advisory board because they read books. Now don't get me wrong... I love books, and blogs and all sorts of other content that I can get my hands on. But reading books on your own, pales in comparison to the effectiveness of reading something and then having an interactive conversation with peers to delve more deeply into the subject, how it might be relevant to your situation, and what action you can take. The act of interacting with others is called reciprocity and is a fundamental of learning. It is part of our biology since we are inherently social beings.
I am a big fan of online universities. One of the reasons they are effective is because interaction is built into the design of the course. Meetings with study groups, 1-1 conversations with peers and other similar techniques are very effective for learning. Even though the interaction is virtual, it can be more effective than the stale semi-comatose interaction we have all experienced of sitting in a room with a talking head, and not participating at all.
Online learning can be economical and effective. Just make sure your team has an opportunity to interact and continue conversations about what they've learned after watching the information. I work with teams who have unbelievable access to online content, but no one takes advantage of the courses. Make it a team event: set a time, buy pizza, watch it together, and stimulate some conversation afterward. The rewards will be tenfold.
2. Effective learning requires commitment, discipline and a game plan.
Learning is not a casual pursuit. There is a cost for learning, even if the content is free. Effective learning requires a conscious commitment to use time and resources to gain new capacities. Much like the need to practice before a game, you need to learn before you need to use the knowledge. That means you always need to be thinking ahead about the new practices and capacities you will need in the future. Then you need the discipline to devote time to the learning, even when a dozen urgent things are pulling at you.
3. Until you can put what you learned into action, you have not learned it sufficiently.
Effective learning is defined by gaining a new capacity to do something. In business, the new capacity must be relevant. Just understanding something doesn't cut it....reading about golf or Tiger Woods does not mean you can golf. Understanding is an important but preliminary step on the path to gaining new capacity. Practicing the new behavior, process or practice is essential for learning. Again, this requires others: colleagues, customers, coaches, mentors etc.
"Anything that we have to learn to do, we learn by the actual doing of it" Aristotle
If you are a business owner or business leader, make a commitment to your own learning. Find colleagues, peers advisory groups like TAB, teachers, mentors or coaches to work with. Then commit to building an organization that is always learning. Call us if you want someone to reciprocate with, we'll be glad to have a conversation with you about building effective and always learning organizations!
CARPE MANANA...
Seize Tomorrow!
I often use William Bridges work on Managing Transitions to help organizations and people navigate through turbulant times. Here are some key insights:
Change is an external event- an action or decision (either planned or unplanned) that impacts us as individuals.
Transition on the other hand, is the psychological internal reorientation that we go through in order to come to terms with the change.
All transitions have phases, the more we recognize the phases, the more productive we will be in managing ourselves and others through transitions.
- Phase 1 - The Ending. All change is loss, even when it is a happy event like the birth of a child. Say bye-bye to sleep for a while and going out to dinners on a whim! To move productively through this phase, reflect on what the loss is, then consider things you can do to mitigate the loss. When losing a job, losses can include not only income but: regular interactions with colleagues, physical and mental activity, a routine, sense of accomplishment, purpose, etc. The key is to identify for yourself or the person that you are helping through the transition what the loss is, and what you can do about it. For example, setting up regular interactions with a group of people, volunteering, etc. Also, have fun saying goodbye to the things you won't miss!
- Phase 2: The neutral zone. This is a tremendously fertile time of reinvention. People who figure out to take advantage of the neutral zone will come out of the transition better off. Since the old way of working is gone, people open up to new ways of thinking, stretch their skills and are more innovative. This is where opportunity is found for those that are looking for it. Many people find new careers, start new businesses, adopt new technology, or simply find better ways to do things. The key here is to be open and learning so that you can harness the energy in this phase.
- Phase 3: The new beginning. A time will come when there is a new way of working, different than the past. To be successful in this phase, managagers and individuals need to build in support to sustain the change: reminders, measurements, rewards, new structures.
What phase are you in right now? What steps are you taking to move yourself through the transition?
My son worked up his chart of chores for the week this morning. He addded a new one today: Save the World. In Boy Scouts he learned a story about a man who did his part by just picking up one piece of litter a day. My son does that now, picks up one piece of trash a day, and in his mind, that falls into the Save The World category on the chore chart:)
It made me smile, and I am certainly happy that he wants to make a difference. Then I started to reflect on the power of committing to one specific action to make a change. If you want to manage your time better - reviewing your todo list at the end of every day will make a huge difference. When I work with groups that are implementing a new system, or adopting a new way of working, one of the keys is to identify one or two simple new behaviors for employees, and have them take that simple action.
What change do you want to make, and what simple action will put you on your way?