Do you know the 4 elements for successful change?
Change is all around us all the time in our work life. There are small changes of getting someone to turn up to work on time, learning how to run a hybrid team, or just having a conversation with our line managers about some feedback that they may not particularly want to hear. Then of course there are the larger systemic and adaptive changes like cultural change.
It's no secret that the vast majority of change initiatives in organisations fail to achieve their desired outcomes. Yes, the estimate is still in the region of 70% failure. Research from 2021 reveals that the reasons for these failings often boils down to four elements:
An assumed top-down and telling approach to 'change'
A lack of shared vision and values
A lack of change leadership capability
A lack of employee engagement/motivation
So how can we create programs that address these four elements, to allow change in our organisations to emerge?
Last week I was excited to share our new Changing Naturally suite of programs. These are four programs that respond to the needs of the four different groups we often work with within organisations. In addition to sharing the nature of the programs, I shared a little bit of content from each of the programs to give a sense of how we deliver and how we work with people in these programs, too. Importantly, the programs all demonstrate the principles that we teach within the programs. They are based upon adult learning principles, and upon the idea of developing adaptability.
As a brief snippet of the Self-Leadership for Purposeful Cultures program (designed for everyone in an organisation), I spent a little bit of time explaining how we introduce the topic of mental models and how mental models itself is a topic that's at the heart of being adaptable.
Adaptability, of course, is about change. We ran a little experiment in the chat box of the webinar. I asked people to write down the first flower that came into their head when they thought about flowers. Interestingly, when we reviewed the list together, we noticed how we were all deeply socialised to think about English cottage garden flowers. There was a list of tulips, roses, and daisies, but a complete absence of banksias, bottle brushes, gum nuts, and other native Australian flowers. It was fascinating to notice this, and it opens up an entire conversation about how we are each unconsciously and deeply socialised in the ways that we think.
The button below provides the link below will take you to a recording of the full webinar and it has chapters in it so that you can go directly to the program you're most interested in and you can just listen into that part of the video. I know wading through watching an entire hour of content can be quite demanding for many of us in our busy lives.
If you are interested in discussing how these programs may be relevant to you, I’d love to hear from you.