Strategy as Fiction
December 14th, 2009SAVE THE PLANET – Don’t wait for change to be thrust upon you!
December 9th, 2009Isn’t it interesting to watch the manoeuvrings of delegates to the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change. People cling to what they have, in spite of evidence that something needs to change, perhaps until it is too late to save the day. Are we any different? Are we, too, in denial or are we aware that we need to be addressing an advancing threat?
The Copenhagen conference may lack teeth and determination but there is no doubt that climate change is rising quickly up the agenda and response to it will impact hugely on us all. It will change the way we live, what we can afford, how we work and travel. Rich nations will no doubt buck at having to reform themselves to suit a lower-carbon economy and that will affect every business and public sector organisation. Will you be a leader of change or will you choose to fight a rearguard action?
Whether you are carbon conscious, eco-friendly, motivated to rethink your environmental impact or looking to save the cost of waste, Centre For Management Creativity’s carefully managed processes can help you clarify your goals and how to achieve them. By thinking things through and taking a pro-active approach, you can avoid the pain of making changes at the behest of others. In becoming a role model you gain competitive advantage.
Our experience on this subject includes the Trans-Atlantic Environment Conference which we designed and ran in November1998. It has since been honed by smaller conferences, workshops and consultations. We bring useful process knowledge to bear through design, guiding facilitation and knowledge capture. We can help you clarify your values, your strategies and the behaviours needed to deliver the results you seek. We will be delighted to meet with you to explore your needs and develop processes to suit. Contact us for an appointment.
Learn from Research on Change Leadership
December 8th, 2009Change is in the nature of organisational life, especially as we cope with recession and its aftermath, If we are to ensure our organisations are more fit for the future, the leadership of change is a critical success factor. There are many aspects that affect leadership and even the nature of leadership itself is shifting, as the way we organise continues to evolve.
Beinhocker, in ‘The Origin of Wealth’, points out that, for two hundred years, the world’s economy has been wrongly understood as being a balanced equilibrium system – largely because nobody had any way of thinking about complex adaptive systems. Events such as we have just experienced are the result of mental models that no longer match the reality.
An increasingly common perspective is that a 21st century organisation (the way we organise) is also more complex than the hierarchical, control and command paradigm of the industrial era. As evolutionary changes take place we can expect that many change programmes will become increasingly complex, but there is an often quoted statistic that up to 70% of them fail to deliver their intended outcomes. From an evolutionary perspective, this is fine and to be expected. It is more daunting when your own future may depend on getting a positive outcome. So, if organisations are complex adaptive systems, how does one lead change?
As an aspect of his doctoral research, our colleague, Howard Adams, is offering feedback to change teams who participate. He is exploring how team effectiveness is affected by team leadership behaviours and how personal values affect the types of leadership behaviours used by the team. These are clearly important factors and anything that shines light on the issues would no doubt be useful. Get in touch if you want to know more.
Learning to Learn
December 7th, 2009We all believe we learn from experience but it does not happen automatically. Laying blame, making excuses or giving explanations are ways in which we avoid learning, endemic in organisations, the media and society at large. The result is that mistakes are repeated and systemic faults are perpetuated. Hence we need to learn to learn from experience instead of abolishing the impact of the errors that inevitably happen.
The most appropriate medium for learning is the work that you do. However, learning to learn is best done by using experience that is not career limiting or impacting on clients. This can be almost any activity so long as lessons are drawn from it. Tasks that involve collaboration and problem solving are likely to yield the most learning. If you want a comprehensive development process be sure to root it in experience rather than just theory. The activity needs to be well chosen according to learning needs and carefully reviewed to draw out salient lessons.
For twenty years Centre For Management Creativity has successfully incorporated experiential learning, using a great variety of media, including outdoor activities, into strategy innovation, team and leadership development.
Getting Experience as the Basis of Learning
Special Offer – Free Consultation
December 7th, 2009It is said that 70% of change initiatives fail. That is not surprising although we might consider the cost of such failure could perhaps be obviated. One difficulty is that we reduce the complexity of the world to a simple set of rules and principles that are more or less adequate while we do business as usual but are woefully inadequate when we try to make changes. The truth is that the world is more complex than our mental images of it. So, if we want to change, we need to call in a resource to help us adjust our mental models in order that our change programme is up to the job.
Centre for Management Creativity has extensive experience with change and may be able to help. So we can explore such a possibility we are offering you, free of charge and without obligation, an introductory consultation. Call us to arrange an appointment.