Developing a Change spirit across the teams and the organisation system
Developing a Change spirit across the teams and the organisation system
Service type:
Leadership & Team Coaching, Operational Excellence
Format:
Facilitated in-house practice circles and Guilds to develop continuous learning and knowledge sharing from the practice
Costs:
Audience(s):
Large and Mid-Size Organisations
Details of the service:
The Challenge:
Change management practices are still often overly influenced by consulting practices that define a target state and regiment adoption and compliance to a set of established methods.
Such traditional approaches to Change no longer work:
With "Knowledge Work" (1), much is left to the interpretation of every team member, and it will not join into a collective alignment unless people are engaged in the definition,
Humans have emotions; it is a mistake to think people adopt Change by rationally explaining it. Humans are largely influenced by context and emotions, and it is necessary to stimulate those and understand what context can play against,
Organisations and leaders struggle to effectively create intentionality on intangibles. It often results in over-communication that frustrates people,
For the change to be owned and initiative to emerge, people should be given a chance to frame it for themselves and contribute to the bigger Change, together,
Much is known within the organisational and team systems, and out-of-context methods will inevitably face resistance unless they have been set to fit the context,
And worse, regimenting adaption mutes the people’s input, and using extrinsic motivation for adoption (like paying bonuses) tends to game it too.
Therefore, it is essential to work with the context, collective alignment, and continuous means of stimulation as part of any change initiative and as a way of feedback. This is what the practice circles and Guilds do.
(1) Knowledge Work is when work is performed by applying the workers' knowledge and reflection. Service industries and digital are all about knowledge work. A characteristic of knowledge work is relying upon and developing the competencies of all the people doing the work so they can apply relevant judgement and build autonomy.
Our Differentiated Approach:
Our approach is systemic and human-focused by default.
We offer two key services and can design experiences tailored to your exact needs.
The Focused Circles
The focused circles look to reverse the learning approach, working from what people experience in practice. This makes it a practical and pragmatic learning journey that favours adoption.
The circles are generally themed for focus, and we design a range of considerations around those topics. We have established templated journeys for Engineering Leadership, Quality, Improvements, Strategic Leadership, Flow, etc.
The circles may run in different formats. Typically, we aim for six sessions over three or six months, accommodating twelve people so everybody can be in the “hot seat” once. We can increase the duration or cadence as you wish. It is best to organise those cohorts from diverse people from across the business to bring as wide a perspective as possible.
The sessions include a small preparation (reading or suggested videos) and a brief education as an introduction to the topic. The people in the hot seat explain a practical situation that they are facing and the challenge they need help with. The attendees have two rounds of asking reflective questions (in so doing, practising their coaching skills) and then offering advice and directions. This aspect allows peer-level people to compute multiple situations from within the business, which anchors the learnings and figures pragmatic answers.
Those circles are very effective ways of developing learning from the practice, making it highly effective and practical.
Guilds and Meetups
Guilds are essential for developing and maintaining expertise when knowledge and practices evolve quickly. Many organisations have embraced the idea of creating Guilds, often in engineering domains, to share knowledge.
However, running such Guilds consistently and creatively is often hit-and-miss because it is left to the best endeavours of some coach or engineer who also has a day job to get on with. When delivery pressure hits, the Guild goes quiet.
We offer to manage those Guilds on your behalf. We co-design a programme with you and organise the run of events on your behalf. We coordinate with in-house speakers and can also plan a run of externally sourced speakers amongst our networks.
Additional options:
Optionally, we can also bring personal coaching assistance on public speaking to some in-house speakers, as it is an essential skill to develop in Leadership.
If you want to develop your talents and attract new ones, we can help you share your stories with the outside community. We have operated a meetup group with over 6,000 registered members, so we have the capabilities and connections to help your communities thrive.
We help you identify your business's interesting stories to the outside,
We organise sessions in our Meetup,
We connect you with other meetups and conferences,
We help your people create and deliver those presentations, developing their leadership skills.
Expected Outcomes:
Our approach complements Change efforts with a continuous reflection focused on practice adoption. As a result, you can expect:
A better adoption of Change in practice,
Acceleration of Change,
New ideas, emergence and ownership coming from the teams,
Better relationships and communications between the cross-functional roles,
Better development of expertise and standardisation where it matters,
Eventually, sustainability of the Change efforts.