Form your guiding coalition

Geoff Roberts change

Guiding coalitionWell any change effort needs a very strong leadership. Kotter suggests the need to form a guiding coalition. You need a small number (in my head, small numbers only have one digit) of powerful individuals who can lead the way both behind the scenes and in public. Although effecting change leadership is not about the exercise of hierarchical power, my experience clearly indicates that the most senior person in the business units or whole business that is being changed must sit on this guiding coalition. If it’s not important enough for the head honcho to spend a significant amount of time on the subject then it’s certainly not important enough for somebody six steps down the hierarchy to commit their efforts. I feel very strongly about this, so strongly that I have vowed never to work on change in an organisation unless the most senior person is both active and visible in promoting the change. Without the active support of the head honcho you are constantly battling uphill.

So who else should be part of your guiding coalition? Basically, this group is about power and influence and those two things do not necessarily correspond with hierarchy. Having got the overall head of the business or business unit on the team, you definitely need the leaders of the particular business units that might be affected; you need the key players in any significant internal customers (I have seen far too many change efforts fail because the leaders of the change became over focused and forgot about the implications of the change on internal or external customers); you need the leader or facilitator of the change effort (their truth about what is happening is more likely to be accurate than the truth being reported by the other interested parties on the group) and finally, you need somebody independent, somebody who will be able to see the wood for the trees and to help keep you at a strategic level. I would even go so far as its suggest that this latter person chairs this guiding coalition.

Having formed the team, and it is a team, there is a need to understand and learn how to work effectively together in this environment. As I have said earlier, hierarchy is not important, indeed sometimes it is positively unhelpful if the senior player keeps insisting they are right. The value of hierarchy is for sending external signals, the reassuring the organisation that the bosses are behind this and satisfying external stakeholders about goals and progress. Work within the team needs to be on the basis of equals with each of the equals having a key influencing role in relation to the change.

My final recommendation is that this team is provided with professional facilitation. Leading change is not ‘business as usual’ and the processes associated with business as usual may well be inappropriate-after all those of the processes that led to the business to the point at which it needs to make significant change! So invest in a professional facilitator who can work with the individuals and the team to help stay objective where appropriate and subjective where appropriate, to support the individuals and the team when the going gets tough (and it will get tough sometime) and to help develop and deliver processes appropriate for this critical time in the organisation’s career.

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Change – management or what?

Geoff Roberts change, flexibility, focus, metaphor, opportunity, strategy

Chaneg ahead road sign

I was recently involved in a discussion about whether change can happen in organisations without the use of Change Management.

For me, the challenge of the phrase “Change Management” is an embedded belief that change CAN be managed. Yes, we may be able to manage the installation of some new piece of kit or software but when it comes to wetware that all changes because people are much less predictable (and more likely to bite back) than machinery.

To be sustainable, change needs to happen at the ‘right’ pace for the individuals (whoops, I nearly typed ‘people’) involved – push them too hard and you will end up going backwards to deal with resistance, move too slowly and you will lose followers’ enthusiasm. For this reason, any ‘change plan’ – and the existence of such a plan is implied by use of the term ‘management’ – is bound to fail.

I prefer to look at change as a strategic thrust – “This is probably where we need to get to, we will find out more along the way, do you want to go there, what can you do to help us get there?” Hold a Vision and then move as fast or slow as you can whilst keeping the people with you.

My metaphor is to light fires within the business. Some of the fires will catch, spread and maybe even attract others; some fires will die out and unless these are really critical areas (in which case keep stoking the fire in different ways until it catches) move on and find someone/somewhere more ‘productive.

One key piece of learning for me over the many years I have spent in change is to “do what you can, where you can, when you can”.

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Life is (not always) good

Geoff Roberts change, choice, focus, perception, selection

Life is good
I have just read a comment on Facebook “X wishes that people would not use Facebook to moan about stuff”.

Do you know people who seem to spend more time complaining than celebrating? More time moaning about how grim the world is than doing something, anything, about it? So did I until…

He had been a friend for many years, generally hard work but occasionally real fun to be with. We had gone out for a Chinese meal one night and for some reason he took umbrage at my leaving a tip for the staff – something, I forget what, had not pleased him abut the service but I had been very happy and I was paying and so left the usual tip. He went on, and on, and on, and on, and on… about how ‘wrong’ it was for me to leave a tip when he had been dissatisfied. Something must have flipped, because I told him there and then that as I was paying I felt it was for me to decide on a tip and anyway I did not appreciate him making a major visible and verbal fuss in a restaurant that I had used for years and hoped to use again. I then chose not to see him again – I deleted his presence from my life. And how things changed; that one action of saying ‘I have had enough of this. I am an adult and I choose with whom I spend my time’ released all sorts of space in my brain. This person had been an energy parasite for years and suddenly I had freed myself.

I guess that my reflection on all this is that we can look at life in two ways (to be a bit simplistic about it!). We can notice and comment on all the bad things – and they do exist – around us, or we can notice and recognise the good that happens.
What mindset do you think develops when we notice and talk about the crap that happens (and it does happen)? How much more positive are we likely to be about the world if we develop a mindset based on noticing the great stuff around us?

Now I am not saying to ignore the crap – it happens and needs dealing with. What I am saying is twofold, firstly deal with the duff stuff and move on, secondly notice and celebrate the good around you.

Today’s challenge – spend 15 minutes during which you actively notice and say out loud something positive every minute.
Tomorrow’s challenge (and every day thereafter) is to notice at least one high point of every day and to record it somewhere.

Isn’t life great 🙂

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Time to stop?

Geoff Roberts change, choice, flexibility, time management

stopAlison Smith runs a great coaching programme (so do we – but that would be blatant self-promotion!).

I was speaking with her a few months ago when she mentioned something that awakened in me this morning – the need to stop occasionally.

We lead such busy lives, filled with all sorts of activity, that sometimes and perhaps especially when faced with a personal/life challenge the most effective thing to do is get off the roundabout altogether.

As long as we stay on the roundabout our view of the world is constantly changing – OK we may come round to the same point again, but something ‘out there’ will have changed while we were having our ride. How important it might be to take real time out – STOP completely – to look at ourselves, our situation, our connections, our aims and goals, our personal vision?

…and I do not mean ‘stop doing this task and start doing another..”, I mean STOP. Take time out, away from where you normally do your work or live your life. Take time to reflect on what really matters to you, whether how you do your work and live your life is really serving your greater vision. Take time to decide what to drop, who to drop, what to change and what action you are going to take to improve your lot. Always remember:

life is not counted by the number of breaths you take
but by the moments your breath is taken away

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I don’t understand…

Geoff Roberts choice, focus, selection

George Osborne behind a pile of pound coinsYesterday morning I was reading an article by George Monbiot about possible changes to the Corporation Tax regime in the UK. The deeper I got into the article, the more I realised how complex issue was and how little I knew about the topic. Now, I run my own company so I probably know more about Corporation Tax than the average citizen and yet here I was completely baffled by changes that the government are apparently considering.

How often do you find yourself on the edge of the subject that is getting so complex that you really do not understand the implications? What do you do in these circumstances? I was left wondering whether I should

    a) simply accept that I would never understand it and move on
    b) continue to surf superficially over the topic
    c) Rams in an uninformed way or
    d) seek an expert who might be able to explain it to me.

In the end this took me back to an earlier piece about whether I could Control, choose to Influence or simply Accept what was going on. I can certainly not control government legislation, I could choose to accept whatever happens or I could choose to influence in whatever way I could. Each of these options would be likely to lead to a different selection from the four above. In the end, I decided that others are more likely to be able to influence significantly than I was and so decided that I would simply accept whatever was going on and move my attention elsewhere.

So, how often are you faced with a situation that you do not completely understand? And how do you respond? What response or action most suits your long-term goals or vision? Think about it. Take you mind off autopilot and make a conscious decision about how to deal with your ignorance.

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Personal Power

Geoff Roberts choice, strategy

power book cover
In an age of collaboration, does personal power still matter? Well yes, albeit perhaps it is more about how you use your power for ther greater good than for personal gratification. Power can be used for good (Mother Theresa) or evil (Hitler) – there’s nothing wrong with power per se.

This whole arena of power, how to acquire and use it effectively, is a key interest of mine, so here’s a rarity – a link to someone else’s blog!

Jeffrey Pfeffer has written such a useful piece of advice about building your organisational power base that I wanted to share it with you. So here you go to Power Rules

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