These are the slides from my Learning Performance Institute's Fellows Day talk exploring why calls for change do not work.
The message, of course, is that change can work and that we need to be more strategic about implementing those changes.
Meagre talk is not enough.
4. Never got going
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Black hole debates that crush ideas
Deferential to existing authority or practices
Inbuilt structures ensure inertia
Committees/`Sign off’/Evidence based
Reactive devaluation
Change is not your responsibility
Overwhelm
5. Never got going
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•
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“Everything we need is right here.”
Ostracise innovators
Inexperience/Past failures/Non compliance
Defensiveness
Invalidate criticism – “Okay, so what is the
answer then?”
• Stories and scars – institutionalised and
individual
8. Stalled
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•
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•
Ground down by the grind
The flight to health
Re-assimilation – “It’s not so different.”
The Ghettoed Innovation – “What? That?
Oh, that’s Neil’s thing.”
• Premature resolution – “What it is, right…”
9. Stalled
• Previously granted authority is withdrawn or
becomes ambiguous or illusory
• We are trying to implement change at wrong
level – individual, team or organisation
• Sabotage – intentional and unintentional
• Obfuscation inc Recurrent objections
• Failure to acknowledge interests and loss
18. d
i
s
t
r
e
s
s
X
Alleviate distress
• Refer to authority
• Quick fix – technical solution
• Work avoidance including
• scapegoating
• minimising challenge
• flight to health
• proxy conflicts
time
Adapted from Ronald Heifetz’ The Practice of Adaptive Leadership
22. Change to survive
Change to thrive
Technical
Adaptive
Preserve status quo
Ongoing disruption
Responsibility is deferred
to others through
granting of authority
Change as little as
possible
Responsibility is handed
back to the constituents
themselves
“Move fast and break
things” -Mark Zuckerberg
Rinse. Repeat.
23. Change competencies?
Make difficult questions the habit
-to ask and to be asked!
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•
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Stretches tolerance for distress
Leads us into conflicted spaces
Disrupts aversion tactics
Redistributes responsibility back to
constituents
24. Change competencies?
• Encourage dissenting voices – “The canaries in
the coalmine” (Ronald Heifetz)
• Put the freaks up front – learn to love your
mavericks
• Shift from individualistic to systemic thinking
• Reflective practice
25. 3 ideas
• Embrace `Not knowing’ as a fertile playground
• Deliberately search out complexity and
resistance
• Develop iterative change processes
OBSERVE
EXPERIMENT
INTERPRET
27. Neil doesn’t
pretend to
have all the
answers (or
any of them
necessarily)
He challenges
me to be
more creative
and take
greater risks
with my own
vulnerabilities
t: 07815 727693
e: neildenny@allLD.co.uk
Twitter @neildenny
www.allLD.co.uk