The future is agile - are your people ready?
Stephen Hawking once said “Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.” Rapid adaptation and agility are more important than ever in our increasingly Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) world. But how can organisations successfully navigate and lead this unprecedented change and sustain this over time?
According to research by McKinsey, few executives say their companies’ transformations succeed.
We all know that for any organisation to survive it needs to reinvent itself over time, and indeed recent times have shown us that this is an era of ‘survival of the most agile’ creating even more urgency for this.
Organisations today need to:
- Reimagine themselves and their industries in response to significant consumer, industry, technological and market changes
- Defend against disruption and companies that can innovate quicker and faster
- Find new ways to drive performance, productivity and collaboration in hybrid, geographically-dispersed workforces
- Accelerate digital transformation as consumers move online, while their employees and systems may be slower to change
- Build critical leadership skills and behaviours to retain top talent and develop high performing teams that can solve big challenges with fewer resources
The human factor is often cited as the biggest barrier to leading change successfully, as people process the emotional sides of change and resist changes to the status quo. In the current context, many are suffering from change-exhaustion and burnout is a huge risk.
What we focus on to drive successful change
- We combine pragmatic leadership and change readiness with the often overlooked engagement of hearts and minds through stories and metaphors.
- We target the mindsets and qualities that anchor current behaviour, for example:
- How can we build collaboration and innovation if we fundamentally believe knowledge is power or seek to avoid failure at all costs?
- How can people adapt quickly if they cling to old ways of operating or don’t have a growth mindset?
- Changing behaviours and culture can feel like a daunting task, so we focus on small changes in language, habits and environment that can grow into big changes over time.
- Our learning journeys focus on the context and motivation for change from end-to-end: for change to happen learning cannot be a one off event, but a series of meaningful interactions and nudges that trigger change. These can be simple and easy to implement, but carefully designed and executed to maximise impact with each unique audience.
- We typically start with a group of leaders or change champions to model behaviours. As pockets of the organisation start to shift, new ways of thinking and acting are reinforced and multiplied and we build on our success.
- We offer a range of learning methodologies, from more targeted, intensive, high touch programmes for high potential talent and future leaders to low-touch, asynchronous digital learning to roll out to your whole organisation.
- Our global network allows us to help you scale change with local teams who are sensitive to the needs of different regions and geographies.
Driving the right behaviours
Leaders
- Set an inspiring vision and connect people with a shared sense of purpose and identity
- Create the case for change and a sense of urgency
- Lead in uncertainty and set clear expectations and direction to focus their teams
- Ask questions and challenge to cut through complexity and draw out new ideas, while driving execution and outcomes
- Build trust and psychological safety as a foundation for growth, change and innovation
Managers
- Focus on execution and embedding change in systems and day to day work practices
- Set challenging objectives to support the change and coach their teams to achieve them
- Effectively map and manage stakeholders across the organisation
- Make progress consistently, focusing on small improvements that add up to significant changes over time
- Are confident making decisions with limited information
Teams
- Share learning and best practices across the organisation to benefit from collective wisdom
- Are empowered to solve big problems using a collaborative and agile approach
- Build relationships and coordinate action effectively across functions and geographically-dispersed teams
- Embrace agile ways of working, creating user personas, facilitating design thinking and designing experiments to develop and iterate solutions
Employees
- Show a willingness to accept change, an understanding of their role in it
- Understand their role in the change
- Have adopted new ways of thinking and behaving that help the organisation to adapt to the changing environment
- Share wisdom from the bottom up and actively participate in change
