Transformation
Over time, organizations may harden like arteries. They stagnate unless they are motivated to transform.
Frequently, entrenched organizations need a crisis to begin transforming. For example, an economic downturn may unnerve leadership enough to consider tangible innovation. Before the crisis; evaluation, improvement and refocusing on a current trajectory are dubbed as innovation.
However, during a crisis, changing trajectory becomes possible.
Spencer Johnson correctly observes, “Change happens when the pain of holding on becomes greater than the fear of letting go.”
A suggestion.
Rather than waiting for a crisis try creating a transformational organization, an organization that doesn’t need pain to change.
Create learning cultures.
Learning is change. Change requires learning. Therefore, learning is central to organizational tranformation. You can create a learning culture by:
#1. Embracing systems thinking – look at yourself as an integrated whole. When I look at the organization I lead, I see silos rather than integration. Innovation emerges when silos are integrated.
#2. Committing to personal mastery – honor and reward something more than performance. Honor and tie pay to mastery.
#3. Inspiring shared vision – channel energy toward agreed upon outcomes. Vision motivates learning. Without vision there is no reason for learning.
#4. Enhancing the team – developing your team lifts organizations above individuals and unleashes the potential of multiple perspectives.
#5. Focusing on what not who – stagnant organizations look to the same sources, individuals, and internal structures for innovative ideas. What is suggested is more important than who suggests it. Look for ideas up, down, and outside your organization.
Warning: learning cultures may successfully destabilize internal power structures that frequently maintain the status quo.
*****
How would you create a learning culture?
Fantastic question, Dan! Learning cultures start with leaders who think of themselves first as learners, not knowers. Most leaders pride themselves on having answers. We jump to show how smart we are and add a bunch of value…thereby depriving the organization and ourselves of even more value.
The most important step in fostering a learning culture is institutionalizing a pause before acting. Pause to ask what you don’t know. Ask what might be. Ask where you might be wrong. It might be a 3 second pause or a 3 month one, but the act of pausing opens a door for learning.
Mark,
Ding Ding — Love your quote, “Learning cultures start with leaders who think of themselves first as learners, not knowers.” I tweeted it and gave credit of of course.
Your comment about pausing reminds me that being in a rush typically ends creativity and innovation…jumping on the first solution stunts transformation.
Best to you,
Dan
Thanks to Mark for adding value. His bio http://leadershipfreak.wordpress.com/mark-friedman
What? Not…ready, shoot, aim?
🙂
Great List Dan: Here is my contribution –
“Learning organizations understand that to fail is not a failure.”
When we work together to try new things, not all of them will work. Instead of dwelling on the “failures,” learning organizations seek to understand what happened, how it can be improved on, and then set to work again to make things better.
Transformational organization or teams rarely always get it right the first time but they continue to work to get it right.
Joan,
Thanks for adding your comments about failure.
I’ll add that working on multiple innovations may provide opportunities to succeed as well as fail. In other words, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Of course available resources is a factor on attacking multiple innovations at the same time.
Best regards,
Dan
The Spencer Johnson quote you use: “Change happens when the pain of holding on becomes greater than the fear of letting go” echoes one of my all time favorite quotes: All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on” (by Havelock Ellis). Both hold so much truth.
I am reading a book (Punching In by Alex Frankel) where he gets himself employed by businesses, on the “front line,” to try to figure out how some of these big organizations build culture. Your post today, justaposed with his observations, is good food for thought. For example, one of the organizations he works for is Enterprise Rental Cars. During training, there is a great focus on the concept of innovation, being “cutting edge,” and the organizational approach to maximizing profit by selling rental insurance (definitely a topic for a different kind of post). After completing the training and the rah-rah, he arrives at a branch to discover (or accept the harsh reality) that the organization has never invested in IT to bring them up to modern standards — i.e., no windows interface, antiquated systems that do not support efficient organization. From a technical standpoint, this organization that wants to portray itself as “innovative” is stagnated in outdated technology, creating a downstream effect of morale challenges and lost business opportunities. (Another organization he works for, UPS, does a much more thorough job of a systems approach and embracing technology.)
I wonder what Alex Frankel would think of big organizations transforming themselves. Maybe I can track him down and convince him to weigh in!
Hi Paula,
Thanks for your comment. Love your quote on holding on and letting go.
Thanks for mentioning a resources that helps expand the conversation. I’ve had my share of negative experiences with car rentals… ughhhh
I’ll be watching for Alex.
Best to you,
Dan
Paula is a regular contributor on LF. Read her bio at http://leadershipfreak.wordpress.com/paula-kiger
With organizations, people and nature, entropy happens. In seeking to ‘settle’ on a consistency (and current successes), we lose sight of what got us where we are. Water in a pond has little energy, water in a stream, unsettled, has great energy.
Dan you wrote of ‘trajectory’ a couple of times and I think that is important. First off, is there a trajectory or are you settling in?
The leadership role is to keep redefining the trajectory and nudging the team down the path. But that path has unknowns and we are doing fine just where we are…oops, just got passed by.
How do we learn best? From our ‘failures’ or our successes? Failures are opportunities, all a matter of perspective. Columbus was looking for???
How to create/support a learning culture? Advocacy, transparency and very public ‘celebration’ of errors merged with lessons learned.
Doc,
Great stuff man!
Just a note on trajectory…one challenge is changing trajectory without discrediting both the individuals and the past trajectory.
I find people are quick to become defensive and/or protect turf when trajectory changes.
It’s the leaders job to both affirm the good in the past and at the same time press into the future.
Well, you got me thinking again..
Best to you,
Dan
Doc regularly contributes to the LF community. You can read his bio at http://leadershipfreak.wordpress.com/doc
I agree with you Dan about the challenge of changing trajectory…I have got to track down a great article on timing those changes, often businesses are far behind the curve and have to play catch up.
Also hear you about proper props for the work already or just done. That is a major juggle and incorporates time, space and pace. Giving enough time to acknowledge the great work done, giving people space to bask in the positive effort and energy and still establishing a pace to it all.
Am feeling those challenges currently with several projects coming to a head this month…and of course requests for more to placed on my plate….me and Al D…gotta say ‘no’ more often! 😉
Found the article that included observations on organizational trajectory…by Kostas N. Dervitsiotis in 2003 and the article title is The pursuit of sustainable business excellence: Guiding transformation for effective organizational change…since the article is not readily available on the net, might have to use academic connections.
Dervitsiotis posits that the best time to make that trajectory jump is after facing a challenge, going through some turmoil (“edge of chaos”) and after just a bit of recoup time. Typically, businesses tend to ride the recoup and the still climbing success cycle too long as the business then begins a roller coaster effect, realizing they have peaked and have to scramble for the next change (waste of resources).
Great article, helps me keep a perspective…when I remember to apply his observations!
#2. Committing to personal mastery – honor and reward something more than performance. Honor and tie pay to mastery.
Why not pay and give credit for profit? (no, not profit sharing).
Specifically, pay for intellectual property.
Example:
Hiring – 2 candidates. Both are equal skills, fit in, values match, etc. The difference? One candidate brings a spreadsheet tool that will put the project at 75% complete and ahead of schedule by 6 months.
Which one would you hire?
Example:
An employee develops an innovative training program to achieve Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance – eliminating the risk of losing the ability to accept Visa cards. This training program can be sold to other companies. How much should you pay the employee for the right to resell the training program? (ie reward for something more than performance)
Dear Dan,
I like to create learning culture by inculcating morale factor to all people engaged to the organisation. I agree to your point that crisis leads to transformation. Risk takers transform organisations and risk averse managers stagnate organisation. Crisis provides opportunity to look beyond preconceived strategy. It provides more options to look for, try for and test for. Integrated silos are multiplying force to achieve mission, vision and objectives whereas disintegrated or scattered silos are road blockers to achieve mission and goal. So, it takes a lot of pain to align organisation vision with silo vision.
System thinking is very useful to trace out existing and expected trend or outcome of effort. It provides a systemic structure to predict result. So, even in growth phase, organisation need to analyse, evaluate its direction.
Complacency kills creativity and innovation. So, leader should provide a healthy internal competition and provide people with freedom to make decisions. Efforts and decisions should be more rewarded than outcome itself. Transformation takes place when will power overpowers internal inertia. So, to transform personally or professionally one need to win inertia. When it is done, transformation starts.
Hi Dan,
Your post today goes hand in hand with the one earlier this week on being invisible or stepping up. For leaders to transform an organization before pain arrives, they must convince/influence *** others to welcome transient pain that may come from proactive change.
To use your words: “Warning: learning cultures may successfully destabilize internal power structures that frequently maintain the status quo.” When you, I, and others on this stream read it we see the word successfully. Many many people who resist change, see and experience anxiety from the word “destabilize”.
Notice that many CEOs who are maintaining the status quo — that often creates the pain and decline of an org. — are replaced with another kind of leader who sees the successful outcome more brightly than the destabilizing nature of the journey.
Great post. I wish I could find more people, professionally and personally, that see the value of change more than experiencing the anxiety of it.
Kate
Dan,
I think management has traditionally underestimated the role of learning about ourselves. Self-knowledge and awareness tell us where we need to grow, change, and improve – a critical ability in leadership.
Ken,
Thank you for your first comment on LF.
I think you have a great point. Even though leadership is an outward faced activity, it begins with and always includes an inward look as well.
Best to you,
Dan
Great post Dan. Time and time again we speak about “encourage a culture of creativity and learning” and yet when people get back to their cubicles and offices, this gets thrown out and people operate with a “more of the same” mentality. This is because this is the safe option as failure is seen so negatively and remembered, worrying people that getting it wrong will jeopardize any chance of promotion later. It is almost as if people are on a defensive strategy that the one with the least mistakes will move the furthest up the ladder. If the organization does not stop the perception created that failure is a bad black spot, creativity and innovation will never really come out of the people. Pushing people to change is hard, so much so that we even have to call it transformation to cushion the blow and get buy in as to the value if adds.
Thabo, you make a really good point. How many times have all of us going to a “transformative” workshop/meeting and felt all energized, just to arrive back at our desks and fall into old patterns? I think i takes a true leader with plenty of courage to keep the transformative view that failure can be necessary to long term success.
Dan,
Great points! Organisations may risk expecting changing the structure to change whereas at the heart of it, transformation is mostly about changing core behaviors. That’s got to be emphasized all the way.
Best wishes,
Tojo
Point #5 is totally vital. Too many times I see “change” blocked by pride of who see in the ideas of an external source a potential cause of problems. The idea that something good *has* to come out from just certain individuals (most likely, one, the manager), this is what has to be fought for true change.