What A Sore Foot Teaches You About Change
To Ponder: Entangled Organisations
For those of you that are Canberra locals - you might have see a man limping around town this week. That'd be me. As a cruel follow-up to my recent post on increasing hope by changing your environment, while prepping firewood over the weekend, the log-splitter bounced off the wood and found my ankle. Thankfully it was the blunt end that did the damage, so my foot is still very much attached - but the brusing and swelling isn't much fun.
The reason for the bounce was simple. The grain and threads of the wood weren't clear. The piece of wood was highly tangled and difficult to decipher. When you throw a log splitter at a log with clarity of grain you can often split it in one strike. However, when the flow of the wood isn't clear then it's hard to find that 'sweet spot', and cracking it apart can be quite the effort.
So too it is at our organsiations. Sometimes our teams and organisations are split into nice clean silos - but more often than not they are tangled messes of reporting lines, organisational duties and duplicate processes. So here's my question for you for the week:
How tangled is your organisation?
The greater the tangle, the (even) greater the need for clarity in your own change. Prepare accordingly. #ValuableChange
To Action: The Exponential Power of Learning
There are three key habits that your organisation must be able to do well to ensure ongoing improvement:
It must be able to fail, and learn,
It must be able to succeed, and learn, and
It must be able to share and make forecasts using those learnings.
So really, those 3 habits are just one.
A habit of learning.
Yes, that old nutshell – Learning.
We usually love to do it. But… we usually don’t love the work involved to get it. And so it gets left in the dust.
But what if I said that learning was more powerful than any amount of new project funding or new organisational resources? Would you believe me?
Let me explain… Read More Here.
To Reflect: A Leader’s 4 Options
(Anecdotally), 95% of change initiatives require someone, somewhere, to do something different. Sometimes this someone does do the new thing. And sometimes they don’t. As Change Leaders we really only have 4 options when driving change:
The ol' Captain’s Call. Mandate it and deal with the poor results.
Don’t do it and stick with the status quo.
Find a way to increase the reward side of the Value Equation.
Find a way to decrease the pain side of the Value Equation.
What’s Coming Up: The Change Leader Podcast
I’m curious - how many of you are like me? Now-a-days I consume the vast majority of information via audiobook and podcast. I can listen while driving or walking and it’s fabulous. (Plus having Stephen Fry narrate The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is a rare treat.) This personal preference shaped my decision to have the fantastically talented Oliver Thompson narrate my earlier book on service-centred change support: Creating High Value PMOs.
And that preference is at play again.
I’m excited to annouce that I’m currently in talks with an audio producer to offer an entirely new improvement avenue for change leaders. In (hopefully!) a few weeks time, we will be launching a companion podcast to this newsletter - The Change Leader Mindset.
In each bite-size episode we will explore key topics and stories that will stretch your mind, stimulate a better approach, and help you realign your change efforts on what truly matters.
So this is a heads up - watch this space.
Please do click the ‘heart’ to let me know you’ve enjoyed reading this week.
Have a fabulous weekend. See you next week.
Brendon