My wordy! How things have changed? Since publishing the last post on blogs to follow, so many have slowed down or simply stopped blogging. Ten out of the 19 are no longer.
I was wondering about this – I know I struggle to maintain a regular publishing rhythm and that’s often because I’m reluctant to write about the same thing more than once. It’s one of the reason why I am now podcasting – so I can shine a spotlight on others voices and views. As a side note, if you are into podcasts you should also be listening to Enclaria Influence Change at Work, Radio, and Jason Little’s Lean Change – they are the fore-runners in the field.
Blogger Martin Fenwick, in a great post on Linkedin , addresses the issue of the blogger burnout citing frustration that nothing seems to change in change (or in those who are changing) — and paraphrased, so what’s the point of writing.
I have empathy for Martin’s full argument, but remain resolute — if by writing, podcasting, talking about change management we plant nothing more than seeds, we are doing good work. There is a point. Martin – keep writing!!!
I’m not sure why some of these have ceased, boredom, life intervenes with more stuff to do, or different stuff to do, or maybe they never realised that others were reading? Seriously, if you are getting value out of bloggers do leave them some comment love! Let them know! There are some new comers to this list (either new to me, or new to the blogging scene) welcome Bryan, Lena and Matthew!
As per last time, get into it, enjoy, share away and if you know of a dedicated change management blog, let me know (updated 23.08.16). They may not be big social media users or got their SEO cranking.
Dr Jen Frahm – Experienced change management practitioner, communications professional, coach and facilitator. Member of Change Agents World Wide network, author of the Transformation Treasure Trove Series 1 & 2 and upcoming book “Conversations of Change – navigating workplace change” .
This post came about as convergence of a number of conversations offline and online. A build-up of the horror of images and news reports nationally here in Australia and afar. One friend posted this article, another spoke of her fears of another World War. My mother put it more chillingly, more likely a gradual descent into primitive anarchy.
And a number of my friends are asking “But what can we do?”
It is feeling hopeless. And I would posit that is because for too long hope has been the main strategy. And when hope is your only strategy, results can be slow to see. A sole reliance on hope leads to a kind of social atrophy — a sense that there is so much to be done, that the individual is rooted in place in the face of the enormity of it all. And here we are.
I’m pleased people are starting to ask what can we do, because DOING is what is required, I don’t think things are hopeless. Not if there is action.
So putting the change manager’s hat on, let’s use some common tools of trade to see if we can come up with some real and tangible actions we can all do. I say “we” as this post has been co-written with friends and community of change makers, change managers and communication practitioners. If you have additional ideas leave them in the comments – and I’ll edit them in post publishing.
A word of boundaries – this post is about what you can *do* to make a difference to the current state of affairs. Things that are offered outside of that boundary may not be included or deleted if offensive.
Problem definition.
It’s hard to make changes if you are not clear on what the problem is. And this is by far the most challenging aspect of people’s fear and concern right now. There are multiple problems. But I think we can abstract the various acts of terror (police murdering black men in cars, the torture of children in the NT, the torture of asylum seekers in detention, denying LGBTI community equal rights, violence against women, mass shootings galore in the US, the rise of racist and extreme bigotry in elected officials, the imminent election of an authoritarian despot to a super power, the ISIL attacks in France, Brussels, Libya, Syria, Egypt the list goes on). They can all be considered acts of terror.
I would argue that these acts of terror are enabled by fragmentation of society. The more we marginalise people (shun them, make them feel less than others, deny opportunities that others have) the more we push them into a desperate state and they become prey for extremist co-option.
You may see the problem definition as different – and that’s totally fine, that’s your blog post to write. This is the frame of reference for this one. Feel free to use the same template.
Consequence of problem – the neuroscience perspective.
People are scared. Fact. Not an over-reaction. What happens when people are scared? Their amygdala goes into hyperdrive (more popularly known as an amygdala hijack, a term coined by Daniel Goleman ). This is the part of the brain responsible for processing emotions. And in very clumsy terms it is believed what happens when the amgydala is fully aroused is it cuts the neural pathways to logic and reasoning. It is difficult to think rationally in response.
When you can’t process things rationally, the brain resorts to old primal pathways of threat recognition – will this person eat me or are they one of my tribes? And we make instant assessments of people in this way based on occupation, skin colour, race, postcode, dress code. This primal pathway privileges marginalisation.
And so this marginalisation, enables the progression to perpetrator of terror, and the output of fear. Which responds with “are you going to eat me or not” and more marginalisation. So it’s a pretty vicious negative feedback cycle.
The circuit breaker.
The circuit breaker as I see it is community. Connection. Overriding “the will you eat me” response and identifying shared points of understanding and experience. Compassion. Empathy. Humanity.
But not just thinking it or saying it. Doing it. Acting with kindness, building bonds of community. Reaching out and connecting. Action words. If I see one more clicktivist hashtag #loveisall #sendforgivenessviral I will go spare. Get off your butts and do something tangible and concrete to break the circuit today.
So let’s use a common change and communication framework to see if we can break down the change curve to tactical action statements that people can do immediately.
The Change Curve applied
The Change Curve is an 8 stage process developed by Daryl Conner and is often simplified to 4 stages – Awareness, Understanding, Experimentation and Commitment. If we focus on what we can DO to build community and connection within each of these stages we start to see the emergence of a pretty powerful change plan.
Awareness
Use discretion over news sources – if they are paying shock jocks or the uninformed to pass commentary they may not be reliable
Deploy the 10 second rule – will sharing this piece of information amplify fear? Cause distress.
Be self-aware
what are your political positions, what do you believe in, what are your trade-offs
what is your reason for posting something to your social media platform of choice. Are you hoping to change opinions without critique? Are you doing so to poke the bear? Is your posting designed to reinforce your own views by virtue of affirmation from likeminded people?
if a comment online has generated a visceral and emotion laden response from you back away. This person may be a troll of the vindictive nature, or simply some-one who know a different world. Either way responding to them does not benefit anyone.
Understanding
To understand a situation or position does not mean you have to agree with it or support it. But it is very difficult to build connection without understanding.
Meet with people different to you to understand their world, their pressures, their fears, their worlds
Read widely and with diversity
When you are moved to shake your head in disbelief, that is your cue to find out more.
Experimentation
Write personal letters to politicians to let them know your position on things. There is a hierarchy of influence in contacting politicians. Form emails and online petitions are less likely to make an impact than writing a hand-written letter or making a phone call. That said, there is still some argument that online petitions can be effective albeit a slower way to change things.
Go and meet your local politicians when they do community consultation
Volunteer your time with not-for-profit who are seeking to address inequality
Strike up a conversation with a neighbour you haven’t met
Say hello to a stranger on a tram, at a café, at your gym
Do one act of random kindness every day
Commit
Make donations to not-for-profit who address inequality and the forming of connection and community
Commit to a role with a not-for-profit profit group or a political party
Start a community group that promotes social cohesion
Initiate dialogue groups on topics that concern you – invite people over to discuss and work through what the next steps might be
You need to make a decision. Are you going to take accountability for being part of the change you think is desperately needed. And do something that reflects that accountability. I’d love to build up more resources in this post that help people with what to DO … your accountability might just be to make another suggestion or offer a resource that we can include in this post.
With gratitude to Melissa Dark, Andrew Webber and Amanda Boland for actively contributing to building community and connection and contributing to this post.
For the Australians.
List of charities and not-for-profit that promote social inclusion
Dr Jen Frahm – Experienced change management practitioner, communications professional, coach and facilitator. Member of Change Agents World Wide network, author of the Transformation Treasure Trove Series 1 & 2 and upcoming book “Conversations of Change – navigating workplace change” .
In this #ChangeChat, I talk social anthropology with Bronte Jackson.
Bronte featured earlier in the year in a Sharp Hit of Change. In the #SHOC she provided a great example of the use of symbolism in change with the “tunnel” – here’s more on why symbols are important.
Social anthropology defined – study of how people make meaning / attribute meaning to their environment.
What does a social anthropologist lens bring to organisational change work
– Working with symbols
– People who are impacted by the change are best placed to design and implement the change
– Change should be iterative and collaborative
Example of how symbols are important
In the UN – how much carpet you had in your office denoted hierarchy. If you had a square of carpet it denoted you were very important and you would be listened to.
So to use in change – symbolism of senior leaders seen to be leading change and committed to the change has much greater impact than communicating the change.
Examples of people impacted by the change best to manage it?
Only people who are part of the culture can change it – external vendors cannot achieve this
There needs to be a partnership – organisations need to bring in change expertise, but they need to work with people in the organisation to make it work.
Social anthropologists believe that you cannot have the answer until we share information, design and plan together.
Examples of iterative
Organisations are never really standing still. What we do is plan based on what we know now, we implement and we see how the organisation reacts. There is not a focus on right or wrong, simply what is working and what needs to progress.
Trust is undermined by a focus on right or wrong.
How does a social anthropologist make sense of the change management profession?
I don’t use the language or term of change management.
Favourite question: Can you tell me what this change is about without using the words transformation, system or even the software? If we are talking about these we are talking about the solution, the new world, not the transition.
We can get lost in the jargon of change management
Tension between change management and organisational development?
It’s a divide between between people who see change management as people based v process based. To me it doesn’t make any sense to differentiate between them – if there’s a change, there’s a change. They still need support – whatever gets you through that is what is managing the change. Both perspectives provide value – traditionally OD people have not focused enough on the reality of business acumen. But change managers need to work deep in the business to make it stick and understand the time that it takes for change to actually occur.
Dr Jen Frahm – Experienced change management practitioner, communications professional, coach and facilitator. Member of Change Agents World Wide network, author of the Transformation Treasure Trove Series 1 & 2 and upcoming book “Conversations of Change – navigating workplace change” .
This week I speak with Alan Herrity of Momentum Search and Selection, a specialist project and change management recruiting firm. We talk about some of the themes in the space and some of the challenges faced in the field. Alan shares his tips for those thinking of getting into change management.
Why did Alan do a change management accreditation (PCI)?
Important to invest in the industry, helped me have conversations with clients and candidates and to build my credibility in the field.
What are the trends in the Australian market?
Permanent roles at senior level – which is a good thing, means organisations want to build in-house change capability.
NSW is more buoyant than Victoria – more roles, less candidates
Consistent themes or challenges in recruiting change managers?
1)All their CVs look the same – clients don’t know how to progress
2)Needs to be alignment between talent acquisition departments and agencies – eg what does good like with a change management practitioner, very ambiguous briefs.
3)A lot of clients look for subject matter experts (SMEs) rather than a change manager
Can good ever come from the slashie?
Project Manager / Change Manager / SME? (the unicorn)
It’s important for Talent Acquisition to push back on this, need to be clear on what you want. You want some-one with breadth and diversity of views rather than subject matter expertise.
It is important to build change capability of Project Managers if they can’t afford to bring in a change manager. But better to find out why they need this version and how it has worked for them previously. This question should reveal what they really need and help you educate them on what a real change practitioner can bring them.
Project Management roles are much easier to place – very black and white requirements. There is a lot of grey in the change management role.
Challenges from the candidate perspective?
Understanding and articulating what the change practitioner brings
How long does it take to do the educating of the client? Whose role is it?
It’s part of my role (as a recruiter) and it takes a while.
Other observations
It’s an evolving field, a lot of differences between Europe and Australia with change maturity.
Personal vision for Alan’s company
Growing at the moment, supplier of choice in the project, change management domains .
Continue to build partnerships with great people
Why the involvement with the Change Management Professionals Community of Practice
It’s an investment in the industry, I come out with new ideas and I’ve learnt things.
Advice to people looking to get into the change field
Consider your motivation – need to have a passion for it, don’t jump on the bandwagon
Junior people look at certifications for new insights
Make sure you are going to the right networking groups and meet with the right people
Immerse across social media with information on change management
Dr Jen Frahm – Experienced change management practitioner, communications professional, coach and facilitator. Member of Change Agents World Wide network, author of the Transformation Treasure Trove Series 1 & 2 and upcoming book “Conversations of Change – navigating workplace change” .
Alrighty, be calm fan girl. You got a chance to talk with Daryl Conner. There’s going to be a whole stack of you out there who’ll know immediately why this was SO cool. But for the uninitiated, Daryl is the founder and Chairman of Conner Partners and behind much of the change methodology and tools we use today in contemporary practice. Author of Managing at the Speed of Change (1993) and Leading at the Edge of Chaos (1998), Daryl’s content creation is prolific with more than 250 blog posts, articles, video talks, book chapters and the like!
There is so much to say about Daryl, but I think it’s probably best if you head to his bio here.
After 40+ year of working with the most successful companies in the world, Daryl has embarked on his own workplace change agenda! I talk about that with him in this change chat! For those experienced change practitioners who are curious about his Raising Your Game workshops, head here or reach out to your local CMI chapter if in Australia. We also talk about his new initiative Conner Advisory that focuses on “change that matters” .
Jen: Hello everybody, this week in our change chat, I’ve got the extreme pleasure of being able to speak with Daryl Connor. Now, I could speak for three to five minutes, citing all of his various accomplishments and bonafides, but you know, that’s going to cut into our time, so, we will leave that information in the blog post notes. Suffice to say, if you have ever used the Burning Platform Metaphor, that’s Daryl’s work, if you’ve talked to the Change Commitment Curve, that’s Daryl’s work and simply put, Daryl or Dazza, as we know him here in Australia, is the ‘yoda’ of contemporary change management and it’s a true honour to have you on the show; Daryl, welcome to our change chat.
Daryl: Thank you Jen, I’ve been looking forward to us having a little time to together, so thanks for the invitation.
A change expert goes through change
Jen: Absolute pleasure. So, first question Daryl; after what forty plus years at the coal face, with Conner Partner’s consulting, you’ve now moved away to focus on developing high impact practitioners with Connor Academy and working with NGOs in Connor Advisory, can you tell us a bit about that shift, what was the impetus for it? What brought it about? How that has gone for you?
Daryl: Sure, well, if you ask me, moving… first of all, Connor Partners is still alive and well and moving forward, just with a lot less of my energy. I actually came back from giving a speech years ago and the speech was about how our profession, it was largely practitioners, and the speech was about how I thought ways of the profession needed to be much more attentive and mindful, not just about being good at what we do, but about being attentive to where we do it and then, I feel like that, you know, the change management either really makes a difference or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t make a difference, for instance, we have some responsibility to apply it to what I defined as ‘changes that matter’ and it is a broad definition but I see change that matters, is a change that that will actually have an impact on the human experience, not just profitability for particular organization.
Well, you know, the speech was well received but I came off the stage a bit destabilized by my own speech because, I realized literally, when I was in the process of giving it is that, I wasn’t at all confident that I was living up to the challenge, that I was asking other practitioners to consider and so, I got in a plane, came back to Atlanta and within a couple of days, I called the staff together and I said; “I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do, but I need to shift my energy into focusing on changes that matter at the level of humanity” and so, over a little bit of time, that took two forms; Conner Advisory, is a separate company that works exclusively with international NGOs, they’re dealing with no different, the same dynamics around executing large scale change and I work with the CEOs and the senior staff, in helping them in being clear about their role but what’s at stake isn’t profitability necessarily, it’s really impact on humanity and maybe, working with, our work with Habitat for Humanity. So, it may be building houses or Doctors without Borders and it’s obviously medical care. Just several different organizations that we work with and is just incredibly fulfilling, to practice the craft in such a way, so that the impact is at that broader human level and so, I thought about the actual way to serve leaders of changes is what mattered and the other side.
Connor Academy, was formed to work with practitioners, the people in our profession because, when leaders that are really trying to make a difference through change, when they decide to be serious about it, they need to turn to those in our profession for guidance and sometimes, that’s an internal practitioner, sometimes, it’s an external consultant, but let’s say to our professional field. And the Connor Academy is not about tools and techniques because, I think that our profession has plenty of options about methodologies and training for that, what I want to focus on in honest, is not what we do, but who we are, what kind of character and presence do we bring to your work? So, Connor Advisory works with international leaders of international organizations, that are focused on shifting the quality of life in some way for humanity and change, and the Academy, focuses in on practitioners, you know, putting them up to that mastery level, where they’re not just relying on the proficiency that they’ve developed around tools and techniques, but they’re also relaying on their character and presence and bringing that into the value stream for their clients.
Jen: It’s interesting, you know, that in terms of the change language we use, that’s more than a step change, in terms of where you’re going there and it makes me curious. That has been a big change particularly for the people who you had previously working with, in terms of Connor Partners. As an expert in change management, what surprises you about your own change process?
Daryl: What a great question. I haven’t heard that question before.
Jen: You see; I was under pressure with these questions.
Daryl: So the surprise Jen, was… I anticipated some grieving that didn’t occur. In Connor Partner, I mean, I started Connor Partner in 1974, okay, so, it’s been the primary expression of personally and professionally who I am and you know, it’s just a wonderful platform and so, it’s been so much part of my life, that I anticipated really a sense of loss about it but you know, certainly it took some adjustment to be in other, you know, I’m still involved, I mean, I still own the company, so it’s not like I don’t care, right, but the energy, my focus has shifted and so, it was a bit of a surprise that there wasn’t, you know, there wasn’t that kind of grieving that and I think two things probably contributed to it; number one, Connor Partners didn’t go away, it’s still there but number two, all of that energy around creating, that I set into Connor Partners all those years, that I had two new vessels to put it to that year.
In the Academy, well, it worked, it’s just phenomenal, you know, we only accept really seasoned practitioners, you know, into this these programs. On the Connor Academy side, is we are going to work with professionals that are serious about change management and are ready to move to a mastery level, I mean, that’s…what an honor, what a gift to do that and then, to have the privilege, to take our profession to leaders that are serious about making a difference in humanity and so, I think I just was expecting there to be grief but that didn’t stop us.
Jen: How interesting because, that really, I guess one of the debates in the change field is of, you know, whether the Kubler Ross’ Cycle is appropriate and when we have assumed that everybody’s going to go through shock, despair before they get to the good bit and you know, you’ve just provided a proof point that not everybody does go through that.
Daryl: Well and by the way, I’m a real subscriber to that model and just as a side note, I had a wonderful fortune of actually having some training by her.
Jen: Beautiful
Daryl: In an earlier part of my life, so I think it’s a wonderful model and how I made sense out of that in my own experience years, that nothing really went away. I just had an opportunity to expand, without having to give up and that’s the best I can make sense out of that, you know, why there wasn’t. Now, I think that if our partners disappeared and or I didn’t have new vehicles to express my, you know, myself and to try… I see this these particularly, the Academy, as a way of not just supporting individual practitioners as they pursue mastery, but really to try to help the professionally involved and I think without those vehicles, it would probably be a very different story for me.
Of high impact, adequate and inept practitioners
Jen: Yeah absolutely. So, in Raising Your Game, you made the distinction between high impact practitioners, those who are adequate and those who are inept, can you tell us a little bit about how you came those distinctions? And what have been the implications of those categories?
Daryl: Yeah. So, I began a very informal non-academic, non-rigorous research project a couple of years ago, I started asking consumers of change management what they saw, what value they thought they were getting from our profession. By consumers, I mean leaders who either hired somebody full time to be an internal change agent or hired a consultant. I started saying; “What do you think? You know, are you getting your money’s worth?”
And I got back some, you know, as the patterns evolved, I got back what I thought was pretty sobering findings. Twenty-five percent of the time, what I got back was… the question was; what value are you getting from working with your change practitioner? And twenty-five percent of the time, what I got back was; “I’m not getting any value, this person is useless, I avoid them if I possibly can, you know and no, I’m getting no value at all”, twenty-five percent of the time.
Sixty percent of the time what I heard was; “I have got no complaints, you know, I asked for something, they give it to me, they do a good job, I don’t expect a lot out of them, I don’t consider them strategic resources, but if I have a tactical need, you know, if I need some communications or some training, anything I think that would help a change, hey, I think change management is fine, no complaints at all”
Ten percent of the time, what I got back was; this person… sometimes it was a team , usually it it was a person that I’ve worked with Again, inside or outside practitioner doesn’t matter, “this person is not a vendor, this is a partner with me. I think I would never go into a serious change project without this person being surgically attached to my hip and change. I believe this is a true trusted advisory”. Really, amazing testimonials about these people and by the way, they came from all… It didn’t matter what discipline they were using, it didn’t matter what certification, I saw no pattern at all about the training they have got but there was clearly this separation of those in it and they were having unusual levels of influence with their clients.
Now, no client was going to give you carte blanche and do whatever you say, but these clients, they were deeply listening and valuing to the advice they got. So, of course I got intrigued with that and wanted better understand this distinction between… what’s separates adequate from high impact, the sixty-five or forty percent? And as I called into that, I gained a further appreciation for the value that was being provided by the sixty-five percent or so. So Jen as we talk about this, I want to be really careful that what I came out of this investigation with, it’s by no means is there a pejorative spin here, about the adequate practitioner. They’re being asked for tactical work and they’re doing a good job of delivering tactical results.
So, you know the inept is a whole different category, I wish that they didn’t exist but the adequate practitioner is doing a perfectly, honorable job and yet, you know, I think it’s important that we be honest with ourselves, that there is ten percent of our profession, that is just having, just this disproportionate kind of impact. When I crawled into the separation between the two, yes, those of the ten percent, certainly were more proficient with their tools and techniques and methodology, yes that was true but that ended up not being the critical differentiator. The key differentiator was that; adequate practitioners were bringing tools and techniques to the table, the ten percent high impact, were bringing tools and techniques AND the uniqueness of their character and presence and what I mean by that is, adequate practitioners would spend a lot of time making sure nobody gets upset and you don’t get, you know, you don’t get offended by the feedback…
Jen: Yeah
Daryl: “Let me make a little suggestion…” but the ten percent were not doing that, they were just in your face, “this is what’s going on”, you know, I don’t mean it in a disrespectful way but they put very little attention to making sure everybody was comfortable, they were focused on creating value.
Jen: Yes
Daryl: And they did that by bringing that uniqueness of how they saw this information, they would bring wisdom if you will, but they didn’t come out with just the tools and techniques and so, that helped me begin to shape this distinction between; who we are as practitioners and the shorthand for that is; that’s our methodology. It doesn’t matter what methodology we use, we all have one or two or three, that’s who we are, then there’s that’s what we do, then there’s who we are and that’s when we stand on our truth and whatever our methodology has taught us is going on, that we actually are really honest with the client about that and we bring real mitigations strategies to it, not just tell them comfortable words, we’re brutally honest on all of those sorts of things. Mastery, the mastery isn’t simply getting another certification, mastery is taking our certifications and adding the uniqueness that we have to offer as individuals and another finding that came up for me was, when I would ask the adequate category; why aren’t you being more honest? A lot of them would say; “well, yeah, you know, I got a mortgage to pay and kids to go to school” and so, it was a safety issue whereas the ten percent were like; “it’s safer to be really honest with the client because, clients want that kind of truth, like at least the right kind of client”, you can’t you can’t be this way with every client but if you match up with a client who not only wants somebody that knows tools and techniques but wants somebody to be really truthful about what’s going on and not put veneer on it. If you match up with that kind of client, the last thing they want to do is to get rid of a practitioner like that. So…
Jen: Yeah.
Daryl: I felt the ten percent actually didn’t feel like they were taking a risk, whereas the sixty-five percent were afraid of taking risks.
Jen: Yeah I think you’re right there because, like if I think about when I face into those conversations which are difficult and one might think you need courage to have, when I frame it up, which I do and say “I do you an injustice and a disservice, if I sugar coat this” because, they seem quite comfortable with it. You know, I think to some extent, it’s about the intent that you have in delivering those messages, you know…
Daryl: Yes
Jen: is it in service of the client or is it in service of yourself, which sometimes the mortgage is what’s holding you back and that’s the intent behind it, it’s fascinating.
Daryl: That’s the intent that you were just mentioning, the language we use in our profession years, you know, of course we’re all in service to our clients, right but again, if you look at our behaviour and much of our behaviour as profession is; yes, I’m here in the service of the client, in the unspoken, then in coaches, as long as I don’t jeopardize my business, as long as I can still pay my mortgage. So, in reality what I’m saying is, the client comes first, unless I’m in risk, then I’m going to put myself first.
Jen: Yeah.
Daryl: So, even if the CEO. hired me to find out what’s going on in the organization, I’ve learned that he or she is actually at the epicenter of the problem. Now, the issue is; am I going to be in service to the client and tell the CEO all that or am I going to be in service to me and find a way to water all that down and make sure that he or she doesn’t get upset?
What’s in a metaphor?
Jen: Yeah. Now having, you just mentioned the language that we use and it prompted me, having done the Raising You Game workshop with you, metaphors plays a really big structural part in it. You’re working the clay, playing your music, finding your fans, you know, revealing the inner sapling. Tell me a little bit about your relationship to metaphor, has this always been an important modality for you in your change work.
Daryl: Yeah, you know, I feel a bit apologetic about it. I seem to not be able to get through very many client conversations without inserting metaphors. Yeah, it’s always been. I think it’s because, you know, at the heart of my work all these years, I’m a researcher, now it’s field research, it’s not academic research but I’ve always been about trying to identify patterns of success and failures about change, but I’m into research that can be applied. So, I can’t just come up with interesting findings, I’ve got to craft it in such a way so that the client can actually get practical value.
Jen: Yeah.
Daryl: In my early years, simply feeding back data of findings from research that doesn’t help, but if I can craft those issues into a memorable story or just a narrative or a metaphor that has more sticking power, you know, that you mentioned, the burning platforms and various things. People can remember images filled with content better than they can remember content alone. And so, I just early on, just got really drawn to watching a person or a crowd of people react to a story that they could see themselves in, much differently than data that may or may not be so relevant for them.
The year ahead?
Jen: Yeah, beautiful. Daryl, now I know there’s potential for you to be coming back to Australia perhaps in around September for more of your Raising Your Game workshops. Tell us, in 2017, what’s exciting you besides potentially coming back to Australia, about the field of organizational change management?
Daryl: Well, that I’ve got to say this; that’s high on my list! So last year, I was there with just two wonderful cohorts, the cohorts from these workshops are very small, we only have fourteen slots. So, there was one cohort in Melbourne and one in Sydney, unbelievably phenomenal practitioners coming together. So, I’m looking forward to coming back in September and meeting with… this time, I think we’ll do one in New Zealand as well. So, that’s a big something that really has me energized. We’ve also, the Academy, you know, we’re not only conducting more workshops this year and we’ve got one in South Africa, we’ve already done some in Europe but we’re also moving into trying to address, you know, people are coming out of the workshop saying; you know, I’ve begun a journey of mastery and I want to keep it. So, we’re looking for ways to try to support that journey.
As a profession, Jen, I’m concerned about our profession in that, it’s become so focused on certification and by the way, I support certification, I think we need that to stabilize the profession, so it’s not that I’m anti-certification but most of the certification is about what you do, not who you are and if mastery is the integration of not only what I do but also who I am, there’s got to be some place to go and foster that kind of introspective work and so, that’s what these workshops are trying to provide and it’s already there, just that doing more workshops is a big energizer for me. We’ve got some add-on options for people, to be able to go to after the initial workshop just to help people continue on this journey of mastery development
And then, I got to say this; the nature of the work with the nonprofits and the international NGOs. is very humbling very humbling. Over the years, I’ve, you know, I’ve got used to senior leaders, granted, you know, some credibility and moving in a direction that I would suggest around change but what was at stake was profitability or market share or whatever. Not that that’s unimportant, but in this zone, to be a part of taking our profession and applying it to something that actually could have a qualitative difference in the life of our grandchildren, I just feel really blessed by it and I’m mentioning all this about my passion for it Jen, because, I want to encourage other practitioners, you know, you don’t have to work for a big NGO, you can find a local, anybody, but to me, it’s not even a matter of whether it’s a profit or nonprofit, what’s what matters is; what are they up to? What’s the nature of this change? See, most of these forty plus years that I worked, I didn’t pay too much attention to what the change was going to do, I was trying to look for people who were serious about the change.
Jen: Yeah
Daryl: And, you know, to my knowledge, I never helped with an unethical change but I wasn’t looking to focus myself on what changes that would make, you know, huge difference in the quality of life of the people, for our profession to have that kind of impact, I just, you know, it’s there, it’s there for us. So, I encourage other practitioners to be looking for places and, you know, you may not be as nuts as I am to, you know, to really want to do this full time but any part of your practice that can go to helping organize patients make a difference in life, as opposed to just profitability, I just, I encourage people in taking those steps.
Jen: Daryl, I can’t think of a better encouragement to the change community to be really focusing on what matters than the more you just shared with us. So. Daryl, it’s been an absolute joy to have you as a guest on the change chat. Thank you so much for your time.
Daryl: Thank you Jen, it was really great spending time with you
For more about my Raising Your Game experience read here.
Dr Jen Frahm – Experienced change management practitioner, communications professional, coach and facilitator. Member of Change Agents World Wide network, author of the Transformation Treasure Trove Series 1 & 2 and upcoming book “Conversations of Change – navigating workplace change” .
It’s a curious thing is “change fatigue” – seemingly in epidemic proportions, at a time when we are more equipped than ever to embrace continuous change. Lena Ross and I recently tackled the topic in our latest #brainpickers episode. Here’s what was on my mind when thinking about the topic.
Change fatigue is defined as a mathematical equation — the rate and volume of change is exceeding the recipients ability to deal with that change. For this reason it can be really tricky to ‘solve’ for change fatigue – the maths differs for each person as the ability to deal with change is a highly personal factor. That said, it is clear that change fatigue can have a cumulative impact and be experienced at a group and organisational level.
Some of the signs of change fatigue include: disengaged workforce, poor performance, decreased health, increase absenteeism, refusal to acknowledge the changes being introduced.
The cause can be organisational or individual.
At an enterprise level (organisational), it’s often not deliberate, it’s just the leadership don’t always communicate with each other what they are doing and so are unaware of what others are doing.
At an individual level it’s usually personal development concern (eg self esteem, inability to assert, emotional intelligence, mindfulness)
How can it be managed?
At an enterprise level consider:
Portfolio planning and scheduling, decisions made on absorptive capacity
A public change radar – people can see what is coming, and pull for more details on the change
Bundle changes into common theme – so easy to make sense of them eg 10 discrete changes fall under a regulative change agenda
Communicate in advance – reduce the shock, give people time to process
Actively sense-make for people, and align with purpose
Provide training and capability uplift and time in the day job to do the trainin
At an individual level
Build the dopamine – reduce the threat
Praise, acknowledge good work, show gratitude – say thank you to your team members
Take time out to celebrate achievements or previous changes
Run lessons learned that feed into future change so that individuals are more optimistic
Ensure that loss is countered with gains
And finally, get off email! Most organisations that I hear of facing change fatigue are using emails as their default communication mechanism. That’s just craziness. Let’s get back to being respectful of the audience you want to introduce a change to. There’s better ways of doing it.
Dr Jen Frahm – Experienced change management practitioner, communications professional, coach and facilitator. Member of Change Agents World Wide network, author of the Transformation Treasure Trove Series 1 & 2 and upcoming book “Conversations of Change – navigating workplace change” .
In this podcast episode I chat with Liam Hayes, Chief People Officer and an experienced Change Sponsor at Aurecon. Aurecon is a global engineering company, with offices in 28 countries and I have been fortunate to work with Liam. We met to discuss some of the themes in my upcoming book. In Chapter One of my book Conversations of Change – A Guide to Implementing Workplace Change, I establish that there are four change adventures that people might be facing.
Adventure 1:
You do not know what the change is to be. You do not have any internal change resources. You do have budget.
Adventure 2:
You do know what the change is to be. You do not have any internal change resources. You do have budget.
Adventure 3:
You do know what the change is to be. You have internal change resources. You do have budget.
Adventure 4:
You may or may not know what the change is to be. You have no internal change resources. You have no budget to hire anyone.
In this #changechat we talk about the “adventures” Liam has had, his experience in working with change managers, what his hot tips are in leading change, and the future of change practitioners.
We also reference the work he has led in redesigning the future skill set of Aurecon employees which can be seen in this clip
Jen: Hello everybody. Welcome back to the #changechat podcast. A number of the listeners will be aware that I’m in the current process or the midst of writing a book called, Conversations of Change, A Guide to Implementing Workplace Change. The audience that I’m writing this for really are managers who are looking to introduce change in the workplace and has been brought about by the type of calls I get from coaching clients saying “I’d like some help in, helping us, guide us through this change.” And I thought how timely it would be then, given the kind of queries I’m getting about it, is to actually have a change chat with a real-life leader of change in industry. In full disclosure, this is one of my clients who has hired me into the business. We’re going to see how game he is in terms of actually being really truthful about change management consultants and contractors in the workplace. But a very big welcome to Liam Hayes, Chief People Officer at Aurecon.
Liam: Thanks, Jen.
Jen: Liam, thanks for coming in. The first question I’ve got for you, when was the first time you put your hand up to lead a major change? And what was that experience like?
Liam: So the first time I led a major change was working for one of our predecessor businesses called Connell Wagner. And at that point a new CEO had taken over, the previous one had retired. And the organization really hadn’t gone through any major change in at least 10 to 20 years. And the new CEO had a vision in terms of the future of the organization and embarked on really a business transformational project. And as part of that I was asked to lay the culture / change stream that worked across the other functional bodies. They were looking at anything from organizational structure to leadership to business strategy.
Jen: So that’s really in at the deep end. That’s as big as a change as you’re going to get to be asked to lead. In the book, one of the things I’ve grappled with is how to distinguish between organizational change management and change management which is often more aligned with the project phasing. How much you have to find that change is, did that come to you as an organizational change management piece or did you see it as more a discrete change process?
Liam: Yeah, it looked certainly was an organizational change piece. We really tried to shift the whole organization and not looking at just one particular thing. Everything, systems or processes to org structure. So they are different to a more recent change management project that we’ve had which, you been working with us on, which was the implementation of our new global HR system, Workday which was very discreet around one piece of work. Whereas I go back to the Connell Wagner one, it was a very large program of work that was set to go over multiple years and we’d engaged IBM business consulting to actually come and help us with that change.
Jen: Right. So prior to that piece of work kicking off, what had been your knowledge of organizational change?
Liam: Very little. Probably what I learnt at university but really when I went through university, organizational change in HR add business degrees wasn’t really a topic. So the extent of my knowledge was really through reading books out of my interest. But I really learnt a lot in that first change program that I did and was lucky enough that the consultants that I worked with from IBM and from some other organizations really mentored me and was really lucky that they were experienced change professionals that had been there and done it before with larger organizations and really took me under their wing and I got a lot out of that. I think you can read books which help in terms of learning from other people’s experiences. The problem I found with a lot of books on this topic is they’re very theoretical. And I think change has to be very practical. And then through you’ve been through an experience and come work alongside others that have done the same, you kind of learn as you go. Jen: Which adventure does this belong to, if we think about what we framed up in the book?
Liam: I think it was Adventure 1. Everything about both that and also a more recent Workday change resembles Adventure 1. Albeit with the Connell Wagner one, we knew we wanted to shift the organization. We knew the types of things we had to do to shift the organization. But we really didn’t know what that looked like. We had an idea. But when we started it, we really had to work out what were the things we’re actually going to do and then that how did that impact our staff. Likewise with the Workday one, we knew we’re implementing a new HR system. That’s all we really knew and particularly because Workday use the agile methodology in terms of implementing their system, we were really discovering what the impact of the change was going to be as we were going and design the system and then obviously working with yourself then the other change practitioners that we had in the team to say what does that mean in terms of how we communicate, how do we train staff.
Jen: I guess it’s interesting because Adventure 1 being that you don’t know what the change is per se but you’ve got budget and you’ve potentially got resources there. For me they would find that really uncomfortable, the fact that there is this ambiguity and uncertainty around what the final stage is. Did you find it that way or does it become something that’s more empowering and liberating because you can be more creative with it?
Liam: I find it more empowering and liberating because you can be more creative. I think sometimes the danger with change or transformational projects, if you’re going with a fixed mind view in terms of what the end outcome must be, it does limit you in terms of possibly coming up with better ways of implementing the change. And we certainly, with Workday, we learnt along the way. We knew the end goal was to implement one global HR system across the business. That was really our end goal. And we had a budget to do that. We had a team in place to do that. But we didn’t know the design that was going to look like and one of the things we went into that project saying was, we actually, in a lot of cases wanted to start with a blank sheet of paper because we had processes and systems that had been in the business for a long time, we didn’t want to take bad processes and put them into a new system. So I actually think it’s better starting with that mindset of, yes you’ve got something you have to deliver but how you deliver and what that looks like you really should keep an open mind. And particularly is you want to engage with wider stakeholders in the business is very important in terms of helping co-design that.
Jen: In terms of your experience, so you’ve started off with that experience quickly with IBM and the consultant and you’ve had in-house change practitioners at Aurecon. You’ve bought people like myself in as externals. How would you categorize your experience with working with change practitioners? What’s the value in it? What’s the challenges? What’s the frustrations? Where’s their benefit?
Liam: Mine’s been positive and it probably goes back to my Connell Wagner example of having people that were not just here and interested in terms of helping us implement the change but actually helping building my capability of change, that they saw that their role would come to an end at some point but this change of transformation would continue. So that was a really positive experience for me and I think it’s probably helped me in terms of that being out to, I’d like to think good change practitioners that kind of work within the business because I know what good looks like. You hear a lot of horror stories in terms of change programs and you’ve mentioned in your book, Jen, in terms of 70%, 80% of change has failed. I think there are people out there that promote themselves as change practitioners but I do think there’s a big difference between someone that may have worked once on a change project that’s part of a team and someone that is a trained change professional that has worked on a number of change projects and they are the people you’re really looking for. And I think that’s where sometimes maybe the change practitioners get a bad reputation because people, telling themselves as change practitioners when they’re really not.
Jen: It’s definitely one of the challenges to the industry. Let me put you on the spot, because you are in a unique role as the chief people officer. You have done some really super interesting, exciting work around defining future-ready capabilities of your people. And I’ll link the listeners back to the Aurecon. Actually it’s really interesting, so I think that tells that story really well. What do you see of, in terms of future-ready and change capability, where does that, are we going to look towards making change practitioners extinct because that should be an in-house capability? Does that continue to be a role for change practitioners? Are you expecting all of your line managers to be really good change managers? What’s your view at that macro level?
Liam: I kind of look at that from the point of view of HR practitioners, as well, that ultimately we want to build a leadership capability and have leaders that are good in terms of leading people and leading change. I don’t think that necessarily does away with change practitioners or HR practitioners because a role in some sense becomes more strategic because we become the coaches to these people. You actually, in your book, Jen talked about change agents and change champions, that actually those people that we do need to be communicating the messages and driving change just become good at it. But they’ve got a day job. So they’re not going to be able to have the time to be able to think about what does this whole change program look like? What are the different touch points? Who do we need to engage with? I think hopefully over time, what we’ll find maybe in five to 10 years that more changes succeed than what they do today because we do have more people in business that understand change and therefore become drivers of change. I think where we’re going in terms of looking at future-ready capability and so forth and using design thinking as a way to help shape what that looks like for us. I think there’s an opportunity for design thinking to come into the toolkit of change practitioners that will be really beneficial to them and to the business.
Jen: It’s interesting because I think one of them, there’s a chapter later in the book about discussing one of the challenges for people in understanding practitioners and their toolkits is that we have such a diverse toolkit. So you will find change practitioners are really synced in design. You’ll find others who are very strong on their structure and their methodologies and stuff like that. But it’s then how do you determine what the right practitioner is for your engagement? How do you go about that? How do you scope out what type of change practitioner do I need?
Liam: Probably now, I’ve been looking for a change practitioner that’s less structured because I’ve seen the value of design thinking and how we’ve applied it in the business. And also, I think that a lot of the projects that we’re doing require more of an agile approach than a structure approach. I think sometimes the structure approach leads to limit thinking and ideas. But that’s opposed to a point you had, no doubt there are still projects out there that require more of a structure approach to them.
Jen: Okay, so if you’ve gone out for lunch, a networking lunch, sitting next to someone who’s just said that they’re about to introduce a major change in their organization for the very first time, what’s going to be your advice to that person?
Liam: Hire a specialist change person if you don’t have one. Because I think too often organizations fall into the trap of looking at say, yes, we’ve got this change project. That we’ve got a project that we need to deliver and yes, now I’m into those change and that person right there has got some spare time. Let’s get them to lead the change. And I think that’s why we see such a high failure of change projects. It’s because we don’t get the right people leading it. And so if you have a major change project, yes there is a cost. But the greater cost is failure. So invest up front and put a change person in place. Because I think you’ll see the real benefits in terms of a more successful ad hoc greater chance, the more successful outcome.
Jen: I love that message. What are the hallmarks of successful change based on what you’ve done?
Liam: So for us, if I look at the Workday project, obviously user adoption, which really a key there. And not just user adoption but the user experience. So we were coming off platforms that were very outdated. The user experience was not great. It was one of the key reasons for us making there such an investment in a new system. So for that project it was very much about, we could go out and survey the business and say, how do you experience using this new system? And if that was positive, which it was, then we’ll need to live it in terms of what we’re looking to achieve. There are obviously other things in terms of consistent data and so forth but those things more benefited HR or leadership in terms of reporting. For us for 7,000 staff across 26 countries it was, did they actually enjoy using the system? Because if they enjoyed using the system then we could get them to do the things we need to do around updating skills and experience or doing a performance involvement, et cetera.
Jen: Excellent. Liam Hayes, it’s been a pleasure to have a change chat with you. Thank you so much for your time.
Dr Jen Frahm – Experienced change management practitioner, communications professional, coach and facilitator. Member of Change Agents World Wide network, author of the Transformation Treasure Trove Series 1 & 2 and upcoming book “Conversations of Change – navigating workplace change” .
Last night it was a terrific gathering of the CMP community of practice. In a very cleverly designed night, beautifully facilitated by Kym DeLany and Kim Cadigan. A group of 20 practitioners worked in three groups to design a change approach for three scenarios to analyse what if anything changes with digital disruption. Scenario one, a village in the industrial revolution looking at automation of glass mouth blowing artefacts, Scenario two, the technology era – the movement from typing pools to individual PCs and Scenario three, a company introducing a mobile CRM platform. The activities really had you thinking in terms of what changes and what doesn’t in the world of change management.
OCM 3.0
The term OCM 3.0 has started to be bandied about (or third wave change management). If OCM 1.0 is old fashioned top down planned change management, and 2.0 is more collaborative and engaging of employees, bordering on a bit of co-creation, then 3.0 represents change management that is driven by digital disruption (as the content of change), and uses data driven insights, Artificial Intelligence, agile practices and digital tools as standard in the change management tool kit.
Last night’s meeting raised a very valid and useful question: Does anything really change in what a change practitioner does in digital disruption as opposed to previous changes and transformation agendas.
Here’s how I distilled the conversation, and my views on that question.
What stays the same?
Commitment curve (kinda) – commitment is transient and temporary, the next change will be roughly in 9 – 18 months but we still want to take people through awareness, understanding, buy-in and head to commitment.
The integration of people, process, and technology to achieve success
The use of a generic methodology (the actual methodology may differ, but you still need one)
Consideration of the loss / gain ratio in change
Consideration of how different audience will be affected and how to make it a better experience
Consideration of the ‘benefits realisation’ and how long that will take
What changes?
The role of the change manager in interrogating the sponsor on the assumptions behind the change. With digital disruption and increase in social media “news” – “me-toosim” is rampant. We all want to look like Spotify and restructure with squads, tribes and run business plans in sprints. Faddish adoption of digital solutions without considering the ROI, benefits realisation require change in behaviours, identity and culture – and sometimes it seems like the only one pointing this out is the change manager.
The technology the CM has to do their change work – mobile and cloud based technology platforms for community management, project management, needs analysis, impact analysis, stakeholder analysis, communicating change are the norm. If you are a change manager who is not abreast of what is available and using the new digital tools you are on a fast track to irrelevance.
This is because big data drives insights and evidence based interventions – and you get that data from the digital tools.
You need this data driven insights as there are much faster cycles of experimentation and feedback loops (Build-Measure-Learn)
Change champions are eschewed for a more anthropological approach with consideration of the social architecture – work smarter, not harder. The tribes already exist. Empower them.
WIIFM is replaced by invitations and agency. Your employees have a choice and options to walk away. It is not a hostage negotiation (you didn’t give me my WIIFM, therefor I won’t change)
Change work is highly transparent with less focus on control (or control is achieved through rapid cycles of feedback)
So all in all, yes, a lot does change – definitely the way we execute change”. But perhaps the upfront work is closer to how it’s always been done (discovery, and design).
Dr Jen Frahm – Experienced change management practitioner, communications professional, coach and facilitator. Member of Change Agents World Wide network, author of the Transformation Treasure Trove Series 1 & 2 and upcoming book “Conversations of Change – navigating workplace change” .
You’d have to be living under a rock or operating in a very protected industry if you haven’t had your leadership team tested with the “we need to be more agile” imperative.
The rationale is clear – rapid paced social and technology changes drive the need for continuous changes to your company’s products and services. Innovation becomes the critical source of competitive advantage. In order to innovate on a regular basis and not incur the high cost of trying new things, you need to be “more agile”.
Being ”more agile” means:
Basing strategic decisions on real time data and insights
Embracing a culture that rewards openness, transparency, collaboration and risk taking
Flattening the structures and connecting the previously silo-ed components
Deploying operating models that connect you quicker to clients, customers and colleagues and promote increased communication
It’s a huge undertaking – a major operational and cultural transformation to occur.
So what is scaled agile?
Scaled agile has become phrase of the month with big banking giant ANZ announcing their move to ‘scaled agile” over the next 12 months. Scaled Agile (or SAFe) is a formal approach for implementing ‘agile’ across the whole enterprise or organisation (as opposed to just at a project level) built on nine principles:
Take an economic view
Apply systems thinking
Assume variability; preserve options
Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles
Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems
Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths
Apply cadence (timing), synchronize with cross-domain planning
Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers
Decentralize decision-making
It’s still a change to be managed.
Regardless of whether you are “being more agile’ or scaling agile you are in effect introducing a very large business transformation. That still requires a consideration of change methodology and approach.
The basics will be needed: vision, purpose, communication, leadership, and capability.
While some of your people will be wildly enthusiastic, you will have others concerned about what these changes mean to their roles. And there will be a big testing of the organisational willingness to embrace such different way of working.
You will have a choice to make on whether you introduce the transformation in a traditional change approach or whether you use more of the Change Management 3.0 models to reflect the agile nature of the change.
But you do need to make that choice – you don’t just wave a wand and “thou now shalt be more agile’ . It doesn’t just happen by proclamation and osmosis.
Anyway, the good news is you don’t have to bet the bank on it. You can start small, and test it first. A minimum viable change if you like? Happy to help you with that…
Dr Jen Frahm – Experienced change management practitioner, communications professional, coach and facilitator. Member of Change Agents World Wide network, author of the Transformation Treasure Trove Series 1 & 2 and upcoming book “Conversations of Change – navigating workplace change” .
Technology is something that many change practitioners struggle with. In the latest podcast episode I talk with Ralleo CEO Joe Hutton on the role technology can play in organisational change management. The audio is a bit dodgier than usual – but Joe comes through loud and clear!
We talk about:
How Joe got into change management?
Common themes in change practitioner work?
How did you come about to do a start up – entrepreneurial wise?
What did you have to give up to create this company?
You spoke at Convergence – what was the reception?
What do change practitioners need to be thinking about with technology?
Open your phone – tell us your top 5 apps?
What’s the state of the change practitioners and technology?
What one thing would you like change practitioners to know about technology?
Dr Jen Frahm – Experienced change management practitioner, communications professional, coach and facilitator. Member of Change Agents World Wide network, author of the Transformation Treasure Trove Series 1 & 2 and upcoming book “Conversations of Change – navigating workplace change” .
Some-one asked me the other day what I thought were the principles of good change management based on the work I had done. I’ve been really fortunate to work with a lot of good companies that do change well, and in reflecting on why those changes worked well these were the 7 principles that came to mind! I’d be most curious to hear yours… do share in the comments.
Principle 1: Co-create where you can
It’s hard to push back on the plan, if you’ve taken part in designing it. Bring in the end audience in the design of what the change is, and how you will roll out the change. Beyond reducing resistance to change, you may actually be designing a better change!
Principle 2: Take the blinkers off
Make sure you know what else is going on that could get in the way of your change OR could be an opportunity to leverage. Make the time to speak with other leaders and find out what’s happening in their parts of the business. Generate a change radar that tells you what is dropping at what point. Clear the runway for your change or juice it up.
Principle 3: Resource for success
Bringing in something new is not the time to be stingy and expect your managers and employees to wear multiple hats. Multi tasking during change means everything is compromised. Create backfill for your employees, resource with dedicated change practitioners.
Principle 4: Communicate what’s known, what’s not known and when you expect to know more
To wait for perfect information is to create a vacuum, and that vacuum will surely be filled with rumour and innuendo.
Principle 5: Engagement wins every time
Change resistance is inversely proportional to the amount of stakeholder engagement that occurs. You don’t need a strategy to deal with the blockers. You just need to engage with people who will be impacted by the change. Engage with empathy, curiosity and frequently.
Principle 6: Purpose matters.
Purpose is bigger than What’s In it for me? (WIIFM). Purpose is big, enduring, the reason why people get out of bed to go to work enthusiastically. If you can align your change with purpose, people get it. It makes sense. If it’s not aligned to the companies purpose, then forget about it.
Principle 7: Change leadership is critical.
The fish rots from the head. If your leadership team is not fully and visibly committed you can’t expect anyone else to make the changes. A fully committed leadership team will override poorly designed change every time.
Introducing Conversations of Change: A guide to implementing workplace change!
Where it all began…
So people had been telling me for ages that I needed to write a book. And I had been resistant to the idea until I could come up with a frame that was new / or unmet in the market.
It struck me the piece that was missing was the methodology agnostic sense-making tool. Something that would help managers make sense of all things change management to help them with the challenges they were being thrown.
“Of course, Joanne, I’m excited about the opportunity, I believe I can make quite the difference.”
Sitting at your desk now, those words are coming back to haunt you. Only six hours ago, you confidently told your manager you were certain of delivering the biggest workplace change of your career. And now you have no idea where to start. Well, that’s to say, you have an idea of what needs to happen and your manager had provided some direction on that – ultimately, she wants to see a 25% reduction in operating costs. You can see some opportunities for improvement and have some good ideas on what to change.
But how? How to make this change happen? What if your employees don’t like it and won’t make the changes? What if other managers are resentful and try to sabotage? What if the customers and suppliers become nervous of the changes? Knowing what to do is very different from knowing how to do it. Welcome to the world of organizational change management.
So, you sit down and fire up Google. Keyword by keyword you get further confused. The results seem to contradict each other and throw up more jargon by the minute. Apparently 70% of changes fail. It appears that people’s default is to resist change.
There seems to be 100 different methodologies on how to implement change. How the hell do you navigate this stuff and not screw it up? Have you just accepted a career limiting “opportunity”? You’re thinking back to past experiences and can remember initiatives where there was little change management. There were signs…
And so to this
The books are here!
By the time I wanted it finished I was too impatient to go shop it to publishers and chose to self publish.
That is probably worth a post of itself! Suffice to say its a fascinating industry. One ripe for disruption and change.
Co-Founder of Zoetic Agency Trevor Young spoke with me about it the other day and that interview is here.
The book is structured in three easy to read parts.
Part 1: Shaping up – the decisions you need to make
Clarity on 4 universal points of confusion in change
Who’s who in the zoo! Easy to understand explanations of 10 necessary roles in change
Change success – a three legged stool, pull one element away and it falls over
6 most commonly used change models explained
Part 2 Moving forward – the 5 pillars of change success
6 elements of change capable organisation
Change readiness and how to assess if you are ready for change
Dealing with change resistance – three key considerations
From the trenches – 5 pitfalls of change communication to avoid
12 truisms of change leadership
Part 3 Check the peripherals – things that you should be aware of
5 Future of Work practices and how they can be used in your change efforts
6 myths of change management that can get in the way
The ultimate information on how to develop your knowledge in change management – including associations, formal knowledge, communities of practice, self study with 11 change experts to follow on twitter and 17 change management blogs to bookmark
Bonus chapter! A full summary of all four adventures
Where do you get it?
But for now, if you want a signed copy you need to order from here. If that doesn’t worry you, and you are outside Australia you may prefer Amazon for paperback or kindle
And if you think you’ve got it sorted but you know some-one who really needs it… well catch this little concept
And here it is, the 2017 list of change management blogs to follow …
And while I am a fan of change, I was very sad to see so many of the previous bloggers have gone quiet. Perhaps blogging has had its day? It’s not to say that there isn’t quality contributors on LinkedIn or Medium. Or perhaps the readership is just not there any more.
There are however some new contributors and also some who have been out there for ages, but just not big on SEO or sharing socially. And I’ve opened up the criteria a little wider. But first hurdle is to have blogged in the last 6 months!
So as usual, if something resonates leave a comment (trust me it is the fuel that keeps us going), and share them via twitter, linkedin, facebook or in your internal platforms like yammer!
In this podcast episode I chat with Liam Hayes, Chief People Officer and an experienced Change Sponsor at Aurecon. Aurecon is a global engineering company, with offices in 28 countries and I have been fortunate to work with Liam. We met to discuss some of the themes in my upcoming book. In Chapter One of my book Conversations of Change – A Guide to Implementing Workplace Change, I establish that there are four change adventures that people might be facing.
Liam’s story can be read in the book – available now here.
Adventure 1:
You do not know what the change is to be. You do not have any internal change resources. You do have budget.
Adventure 2:
You do know what the change is to be. You do not have any internal change resources. You do have budget.
Adventure 3:
You do know what the change is to be. You have internal change resources. You do have budget.
Adventure 4:
You may or may not know what the change is to be. You have no internal change resources. You have no budget to hire anyone.
In this #changechat we talk about the “adventures” Liam has had, his experience in working with change managers, what his hot tips are in leading change, and the future of change practitioners.
We also reference the work he has led in redesigning the future skill set of Aurecon employees which can be seen in this clip
Jen: Hello everybody. Welcome back to the #changechat podcast. A number of the listeners will be aware that I’m in the current process or the midst of writing a book called, Conversations of Change, A Guide to Implementing Workplace Change. The audience that I’m writing this for really are managers who are looking to introduce change in the workplace and has been brought about by the type of calls I get from coaching clients saying “I’d like some help in, helping us, guide us through this change.” And I thought how timely it would be then, given the kind of queries I’m getting about it, is to actually have a change chat with a real-life leader of change in industry. In full disclosure, this is one of my clients who has hired me into the business. We’re going to see how game he is in terms of actually being really truthful about change management consultants and contractors in the workplace. But a very big welcome to Liam Hayes, Chief People Officer at Aurecon.
Liam: Thanks, Jen.
Jen: Liam, thanks for coming in. The first question I’ve got for you, when was the first time you put your hand up to lead a major change? And what was that experience like?
Liam: So the first time I led a major change was working for one of our predecessor businesses called Connell Wagner. And at that point a new CEO had taken over, the previous one had retired. And the organization really hadn’t gone through any major change in at least 10 to 20 years. And the new CEO had a vision in terms of the future of the organization and embarked on really a business transformational project. And as part of that I was asked to lay the culture / change stream that worked across the other functional bodies. They were looking at anything from organizational structure to leadership to business strategy.
Jen: So that’s really in at the deep end. That’s as big as a change as you’re going to get to be asked to lead. In the book, one of the things I’ve grappled with is how to distinguish between organizational change management and change management which is often more aligned with the project phasing. How much you have to find that change is, did that come to you as an organizational change management piece or did you see it as more a discrete change process?
Liam: Yeah, it looked certainly was an organizational change piece. We really tried to shift the whole organization and not looking at just one particular thing. Everything, systems or processes to org structure. So they are different to a more recent change management project that we’ve had which, you been working with us on, which was the implementation of our new global HR system, Workday which was very discreet around one piece of work. Whereas I go back to the Connell Wagner one, it was a very large program of work that was set to go over multiple years and we’d engaged IBM business consulting to actually come and help us with that change.
Jen: Right. So prior to that piece of work kicking off, what had been your knowledge of organizational change?
Liam: Very little. Probably what I learnt at university but really when I went through university, organizational change in HR add business degrees wasn’t really a topic. So the extent of my knowledge was really through reading books out of my interest. But I really learnt a lot in that first change program that I did and was lucky enough that the consultants that I worked with from IBM and from some other organizations really mentored me and was really lucky that they were experienced change professionals that had been there and done it before with larger organizations and really took me under their wing and I got a lot out of that. I think you can read books which help in terms of learning from other people’s experiences. The problem I found with a lot of books on this topic is they’re very theoretical. And I think change has to be very practical. And then through you’ve been through an experience and come work alongside others that have done the same, you kind of learn as you go. Jen: Which adventure does this belong to, if we think about what we framed up in the book?
Liam: I think it was Adventure 1. Everything about both that and also a more recent Workday change resembles Adventure 1. Albeit with the Connell Wagner one, we knew we wanted to shift the organization. We knew the types of things we had to do to shift the organization. But we really didn’t know what that looked like. We had an idea. But when we started it, we really had to work out what were the things we’re actually going to do and then that how did that impact our staff. Likewise with the Workday one, we knew we’re implementing a new HR system. That’s all we really knew and particularly because Workday use the agile methodology in terms of implementing their system, we were really discovering what the impact of the change was going to be as we were going and design the system and then obviously working with yourself then the other change practitioners that we had in the team to say what does that mean in terms of how we communicate, how do we train staff.
Jen: I guess it’s interesting because Adventure 1 being that you don’t know what the change is per se but you’ve got budget and you’ve potentially got resources there. For me they would find that really uncomfortable, the fact that there is this ambiguity and uncertainty around what the final stage is. Did you find it that way or does it become something that’s more empowering and liberating because you can be more creative with it?
Liam: I find it more empowering and liberating because you can be more creative. I think sometimes the danger with change or transformational projects, if you’re going with a fixed mind view in terms of what the end outcome must be, it does limit you in terms of possibly coming up with better ways of implementing the change. And we certainly, with Workday, we learnt along the way. We knew the end goal was to implement one global HR system across the business. That was really our end goal. And we had a budget to do that. We had a team in place to do that. But we didn’t know the design that was going to look like and one of the things we went into that project saying was, we actually, in a lot of cases wanted to start with a blank sheet of paper because we had processes and systems that had been in the business for a long time, we didn’t want to take bad processes and put them into a new system. So I actually think it’s better starting with that mindset of, yes you’ve got something you have to deliver but how you deliver and what that looks like you really should keep an open mind. And particularly is you want to engage with wider stakeholders in the business is very important in terms of helping co-design that.
Jen: In terms of your experience, so you’ve started off with that experience quickly with IBM and the consultant and you’ve had in-house change practitioners at Aurecon. You’ve bought people like myself in as externals. How would you categorize your experience with working with change practitioners? What’s the value in it? What’s the challenges? What’s the frustrations? Where’s their benefit?
Liam: Mine’s been positive and it probably goes back to my Connell Wagner example of having people that were not just here and interested in terms of helping us implement the change but actually helping building my capability of change, that they saw that their role would come to an end at some point but this change of transformation would continue. So that was a really positive experience for me and I think it’s probably helped me in terms of that being out to, I’d like to think good change practitioners that kind of work within the business because I know what good looks like. You hear a lot of horror stories in terms of change programs and you’ve mentioned in your book, Jen, in terms of 70%, 80% of change has failed. I think there are people out there that promote themselves as change practitioners but I do think there’s a big difference between someone that may have worked once on a change project that’s part of a team and someone that is a trained change professional that has worked on a number of change projects and they are the people you’re really looking for. And I think that’s where sometimes maybe the change practitioners get a bad reputation because people, telling themselves as change practitioners when they’re really not.
Jen: It’s definitely one of the challenges to the industry. Let me put you on the spot, because you are in a unique role as the chief people officer. You have done some really super interesting, exciting work around defining future-ready capabilities of your people. And I’ll link the listeners back to the Aurecon. Actually it’s really interesting, so I think that tells that story really well. What do you see of, in terms of future-ready and change capability, where does that, are we going to look towards making change practitioners extinct because that should be an in-house capability? Does that continue to be a role for change practitioners? Are you expecting all of your line managers to be really good change managers? What’s your view at that macro level?
Liam: I kind of look at that from the point of view of HR practitioners, as well, that ultimately we want to build a leadership capability and have leaders that are good in terms of leading people and leading change. I don’t think that necessarily does away with change practitioners or HR practitioners because a role in some sense becomes more strategic because we become the coaches to these people. You actually, in your book, Jen talked about change agents and change champions, that actually those people that we do need to be communicating the messages and driving change just become good at it. But they’ve got a day job. So they’re not going to be able to have the time to be able to think about what does this whole change program look like? What are the different touch points? Who do we need to engage with? I think hopefully over time, what we’ll find maybe in five to 10 years that more changes succeed than what they do today because we do have more people in business that understand change and therefore become drivers of change. I think where we’re going in terms of looking at future-ready capability and so forth and using design thinking as a way to help shape what that looks like for us. I think there’s an opportunity for design thinking to come into the toolkit of change practitioners that will be really beneficial to them and to the business.
Jen: It’s interesting because I think one of them, there’s a chapter later in the book about discussing one of the challenges for people in understanding practitioners and their toolkits is that we have such a diverse toolkit. So you will find change practitioners are really synced in design. You’ll find others who are very strong on their structure and their methodologies and stuff like that. But it’s then how do you determine what the right practitioner is for your engagement? How do you go about that? How do you scope out what type of change practitioner do I need?
Liam: Probably now, I’ve been looking for a change practitioner that’s less structured because I’ve seen the value of design thinking and how we’ve applied it in the business. And also, I think that a lot of the projects that we’re doing require more of an agile approach than a structure approach. I think sometimes the structure approach leads to limit thinking and ideas. But that’s opposed to a point you had, no doubt there are still projects out there that require more of a structure approach to them.
Jen: Okay, so if you’ve gone out for lunch, a networking lunch, sitting next to someone who’s just said that they’re about to introduce a major change in their organization for the very first time, what’s going to be your advice to that person?
Liam: Hire a specialist change person if you don’t have one. Because I think too often organizations fall into the trap of looking at say, yes, we’ve got this change project. That we’ve got a project that we need to deliver and yes, now I’m into those change and that person right there has got some spare time. Let’s get them to lead the change. And I think that’s why we see such a high failure of change projects. It’s because we don’t get the right people leading it. And so if you have a major change project, yes there is a cost. But the greater cost is failure. So invest up front and put a change person in place. Because I think you’ll see the real benefits in terms of a more successful ad hoc greater chance, the more successful outcome.
Jen: I love that message. What are the hallmarks of successful change based on what you’ve done?
Liam: So for us, if I look at the Workday project, obviously user adoption, which really a key there. And not just user adoption but the user experience. So we were coming off platforms that were very outdated. The user experience was not great. It was one of the key reasons for us making there such an investment in a new system. So for that project it was very much about, we could go out and survey the business and say, how do you experience using this new system? And if that was positive, which it was, then we’ll need to live it in terms of what we’re looking to achieve. There are obviously other things in terms of consistent data and so forth but those things more benefited HR or leadership in terms of reporting. For us for 7,000 staff across 26 countries it was, did they actually enjoy using the system? Because if they enjoyed using the system then we could get them to do the things we need to do around updating skills and experience or doing a performance involvement, et cetera.
Jen: Excellent. Liam Hayes, it’s been a pleasure to have a change chat with you. Thank you so much for your time.
Last night it was a terrific gathering of the CMP community of practice. In a very cleverly designed night, beautifully facilitated by Kym DeLany and Kim Cadigan. A group of 20 practitioners worked in three groups to design a change approach for three scenarios to analyse what if anything changes with digital disruption. Scenario one, a village in the industrial revolution looking at automation of glass mouth blowing artefacts, Scenario two, the technology era – the movement from typing pools to individual PCs and Scenario three, a company introducing a mobile CRM platform. The activities really had you thinking in terms of what changes and what doesn’t in the world of change management.
OCM 3.0
The term OCM 3.0 has started to be bandied about (or third wave change management). If OCM 1.0 is old fashioned top down planned change management, and 2.0 is more collaborative and engaging of employees, bordering on a bit of co-creation, then 3.0 represents change management that is driven by digital disruption (as the content of change), and uses data driven insights, Artificial Intelligence, agile practices and digital tools as standard in the change management tool kit.
Last night’s meeting raised a very valid and useful question: Does anything really change in what a change practitioner does in digital disruption as opposed to previous changes and transformation agendas.
Here’s how I distilled the conversation, and my views on that question.
What stays the same?
Commitment curve (kinda) – commitment is transient and temporary, the next change will be roughly in 9 – 18 months but we still want to take people through awareness, understanding, buy-in and head to commitment.
The integration of people, process, and technology to achieve success
The use of a generic methodology (the actual methodology may differ, but you still need one)
Consideration of the loss / gain ratio in change
Consideration of how different audience will be affected and how to make it a better experience
Consideration of the ‘benefits realisation’ and how long that will take
What changes?
The role of the change manager in interrogating the sponsor on the assumptions behind the change. With digital disruption and increase in social media “news” – “me-toosim” is rampant. We all want to look like Spotify and restructure with squads, tribes and run business plans in sprints. Faddish adoption of digital solutions without considering the ROI, benefits realisation require change in behaviours, identity and culture – and sometimes it seems like the only one pointing this out is the change manager.
The technology the CM has to do their change work – mobile and cloud based technology platforms for community management, project management, needs analysis, impact analysis, stakeholder analysis, communicating change are the norm. If you are a change manager who is not abreast of what is available and using the new digital tools you are on a fast track to irrelevance.
This is because big data drives insights and evidence based interventions – and you get that data from the digital tools.
You need this data driven insights as there are much faster cycles of experimentation and feedback loops (Build-Measure-Learn)
Change champions are eschewed for a more anthropological approach with consideration of the social architecture – work smarter, not harder. The tribes already exist. Empower them.
WIIFM is replaced by invitations and agency. Your employees have a choice and options to walk away. It is not a hostage negotiation (you didn’t give me my WIIFM, therefor I won’t change)
Change work is highly transparent with less focus on control (or control is achieved through rapid cycles of feedback)
So all in all, yes, a lot does change – definitely the way we execute change”. But perhaps the upfront work is closer to how it’s always been done (discovery, and design).
You’d have to be living under a rock or operating in a very protected industry if you haven’t had your leadership team tested with the “we need to be more agile” imperative.
The rationale is clear – rapid paced social and technology changes drive the need for continuous changes to your company’s products and services. Innovation becomes the critical source of competitive advantage. In order to innovate on a regular basis and not incur the high cost of trying new things, you need to be “more agile”.
Being ”more agile” means:
Basing strategic decisions on real time data and insights
Embracing a culture that rewards openness, transparency, collaboration and risk taking
Flattening the structures and connecting the previously silo-ed components
Deploying operating models that connect you quicker to clients, customers and colleagues and promote increased communication
It’s a huge undertaking – a major operational and cultural transformation to occur.
So what is scaled agile?
Scaled agile has become phrase of the month with big banking giant ANZ announcing their move to ‘scaled agile” over the next 12 months. Scaled Agile (or SAFe) is a formal approach for implementing ‘agile’ across the whole enterprise or organisation (as opposed to just at a project level) built on nine principles:
Take an economic view
Apply systems thinking
Assume variability; preserve options
Build incrementally with fast, integrated learning cycles
Base milestones on objective evaluation of working systems
Visualize and limit WIP, reduce batch sizes, and manage queue lengths
Apply cadence (timing), synchronize with cross-domain planning
Unlock the intrinsic motivation of knowledge workers
Decentralize decision-making
It’s still a change to be managed.
Regardless of whether you are “being more agile’ or scaling agile you are in effect introducing a very large business transformation. That still requires a consideration of change methodology and approach.
The basics will be needed: vision, purpose, communication, leadership, and capability.
While some of your people will be wildly enthusiastic, you will have others concerned about what these changes mean to their roles. And there will be a big testing of the organisational willingness to embrace such different way of working.
You will have a choice to make on whether you introduce the transformation in a traditional change approach or whether you use more of the Change Management 3.0 models to reflect the agile nature of the change.
But you do need to make that choice – you don’t just wave a wand and “thou now shalt be more agile’ . It doesn’t just happen by proclamation and osmosis.
Anyway, the good news is you don’t have to bet the bank on it. You can start small, and test it first. A minimum viable change if you like? Happy to help you with that…
Technology is something that many change practitioners struggle with. In the latest podcast episode I talk with Ralleo CEO Joe Hutton on the role technology can play in organisational change management. The audio is a bit dodgier than usual – but Joe comes through loud and clear!
We talk about:
How Joe got into change management?
Common themes in change practitioner work?
How did you come about to do a start up – entrepreneurial wise?
What did you have to give up to create this company?
You spoke at Convergence – what was the reception?
What do change practitioners need to be thinking about with technology?
Open your phone – tell us your top 5 apps?
What’s the state of the change practitioners and technology?
What one thing would you like change practitioners to know about technology?
Some-one asked me the other day what I thought were the principles of good change management based on the work I had done. I’ve been really fortunate to work with a lot of good companies that do change well, and in reflecting on why those changes worked well these were the 7 principles that came to mind! I’d be most curious to hear yours… do share in the comments.
Principle 1: Co-create where you can
It’s hard to push back on the plan, if you’ve taken part in designing it. Bring in the end audience in the design of what the change is, and how you will roll out the change. Beyond reducing resistance to change, you may actually be designing a better change!
Principle 2: Take the blinkers off
Make sure you know what else is going on that could get in the way of your change OR could be an opportunity to leverage. Make the time to speak with other leaders and find out what’s happening in their parts of the business. Generate a change radar that tells you what is dropping at what point. Clear the runway for your change or juice it up.
Principle 3: Resource for success
Bringing in something new is not the time to be stingy and expect your managers and employees to wear multiple hats. Multi tasking during change means everything is compromised. Create backfill for your employees, resource with dedicated change practitioners.
Principle 4: Communicate what’s known, what’s not known and when you expect to know more
To wait for perfect information is to create a vacuum, and that vacuum will surely be filled with rumour and innuendo.
Principle 5: Engagement wins every time
Change resistance is inversely proportional to the amount of stakeholder engagement that occurs. You don’t need a strategy to deal with the blockers. You just need to engage with people who will be impacted by the change. Engage with empathy, curiosity and frequently.
Principle 6: Purpose matters.
Purpose is bigger than What’s In it for me? (WIIFM). Purpose is big, enduring, the reason why people get out of bed to go to work enthusiastically. If you can align your change with purpose, people get it. It makes sense. If it’s not aligned to the companies purpose, then forget about it.
Principle 7: Change leadership is critical.
The fish rots from the head. If your leadership team is not fully and visibly committed you can’t expect anyone else to make the changes. A fully committed leadership team will override poorly designed change every time.
Introducing Conversations of Change: A guide to implementing workplace change!
Where it all began…
So people had been telling me for ages that I needed to write a book. And I had been resistant to the idea until I could come up with a frame that was new / or unmet in the market.
It struck me the piece that was missing was the methodology agnostic sense-making tool. Something that would help managers make sense of all things change management to help them with the challenges they were being thrown.
“Of course, Joanne, I’m excited about the opportunity, I believe I can make quite the difference.”
Sitting at your desk now, those words are coming back to haunt you. Only six hours ago, you confidently told your manager you were certain of delivering the biggest workplace change of your career. And now you have no idea where to start. Well, that’s to say, you have an idea of what needs to happen and your manager had provided some direction on that – ultimately, she wants to see a 25% reduction in operating costs. You can see some opportunities for improvement and have some good ideas on what to change.
But how? How to make this change happen? What if your employees don’t like it and won’t make the changes? What if other managers are resentful and try to sabotage? What if the customers and suppliers become nervous of the changes? Knowing what to do is very different from knowing how to do it. Welcome to the world of organizational change management.
So, you sit down and fire up Google. Keyword by keyword you get further confused. The results seem to contradict each other and throw up more jargon by the minute. Apparently 70% of changes fail. It appears that people’s default is to resist change.
There seems to be 100 different methodologies on how to implement change. How the hell do you navigate this stuff and not screw it up? Have you just accepted a career limiting “opportunity”? You’re thinking back to past experiences and can remember initiatives where there was little change management. There were signs…
And so to this
The books are here!
By the time I wanted it finished I was too impatient to go shop it to publishers and chose to self publish.
That is probably worth a post of itself! Suffice to say its a fascinating industry. One ripe for disruption and change.
Co-Founder of Zoetic Agency Trevor Young spoke with me about it the other day and that interview is here.
The book is structured in three easy to read parts.
Part 1: Shaping up – the decisions you need to make
Clarity on 4 universal points of confusion in change
Who’s who in the zoo! Easy to understand explanations of 10 necessary roles in change
Change success – a three legged stool, pull one element away and it falls over
6 most commonly used change models explained
Part 2 Moving forward – the 5 pillars of change success
6 elements of change capable organisation
Change readiness and how to assess if you are ready for change
Dealing with change resistance – three key considerations
From the trenches – 5 pitfalls of change communication to avoid
12 truisms of change leadership
Part 3 Check the peripherals – things that you should be aware of
5 Future of Work practices and how they can be used in your change efforts
6 myths of change management that can get in the way
The ultimate information on how to develop your knowledge in change management – including associations, formal knowledge, communities of practice, self study with 11 change experts to follow on twitter and 17 change management blogs to bookmark
Bonus chapter! A full summary of all four adventures
Where do you get it?
But for now, if you want a signed copy you need to order from here. If that doesn’t worry you, and you are outside Australia you may prefer Amazon for paperback or kindle
And if you think you’ve got it sorted but you know some-one who really needs it… well catch this little concept
And here it is, the 2017 list of change management blogs to follow …
And while I am a fan of change, I was very sad to see so many of the previous bloggers have gone quiet. Perhaps blogging has had its day? It’s not to say that there isn’t quality contributors on LinkedIn or Medium. Or perhaps the readership is just not there any more.
There are however some new contributors and also some who have been out there for ages, but just not big on SEO or sharing socially. And I’ve opened up the criteria a little wider. But first hurdle is to have blogged in the last 6 months!
So as usual, if something resonates leave a comment (trust me it is the fuel that keeps us going), and share them via twitter, linkedin, facebook or in your internal platforms like yammer!
My wordy! How things have changed? Since publishing the last post on blogs to follow, so many have slowed down or simply stopped blogging. Ten out of the 19 are no longer.
