Organizational Change

Exceptional Team Performance Critical to Business Success

28/11/2019

Progressive team building as an essential of building a successful organisation is too important to be left to chance. It requires deliberate attention. Many organisations could be benefitting massively from a relatively minor investment in Team building and development.

A large number of companies and organisations invest very positively in Team ‘away-days’ but they could reap huge advantage if they based their ‘away day’ activities on a Team Diagnostic. This is undertaken with the ‘Team’ focused on bringing people closer together, rather than identifying flaws in Team activities or interactions.

What is a Team Diagnostic?

This is a brief review of specific teams whether they are functionally based or in a more diverse virtual setting. Focus is on positive interaction and bridge-building on people and team strengths and reinforcing the behaviours that will bring people together.
Surprisingly, there is no causal relationship between ‘team cohesion’ and ‘team performance’. There can be a positive link, but cohesion may stop the Team moving beyond their collective comfort zone.

A ‘cohesive’ team may unknowingly be working on goals which are not their prime purpose. It may be time to reset, adjust and refocus on Team strategy, especially if the Team has been exposed to a great deal of pressure to change, and not been involved in choosing how to change and grow.

Team Cohesion & Resistance to Change

We have even witnessed many positive and forward-thinking management teams who are very cohesive, but who could be more effective if they were supported in managing those things that block their own progression to implement change.

Not all of us welcome change. Sometimes we need to be mentored to overcome self-imposed barriers to make needed changes in how the Team works. It is not team cohesion, which is important, it is also a higher calling of ‘team purpose’. And that’s the reason you may want to consider undertaking a sensitive and uplifting ‘Team Diagnostic’.

Undertaking a Team Diagnostic

Most Teams could improve their performance and productivity, but the problem is that many Team leaders do not know where to start. There are several tiers of team maturity to work through if you want to avoid unnecessary Team conflict and get people working together across boundaries.

Symptoms of poor Team Performance and Cohesion include:

Unfocused Team leadership or sub Team leadership
Frequent none completion of tasks as per schedule
Poor morale and trust amongst Team members
Lack of momentum and Team spirit
Failing to commit to Team development
Distrust and conflict within the Team, and between team members
Personality clashes and disputing roles and responsibilities

Two Key Themes of an Effective Team Diagnosis

The first is to consider the relative degree of maturity of Team cohesion and development.

The second is to consider the composition of the team in terms of Team personalities and how to develop a working climate of win-win between different personality types.

Here are some of the questions to address.

How mature are your key Teams in terms of Communication, Interaction and Working across Boundaries with other teams?
Do you see the benefits of undertaking a Team Dynamics audit to improve Team performance?
Do you find that you need to work on building Team cohesion and productivity?
Would you like to know how to get the best out of your people?
What do you need to know and do, to refresh a failing or toxic group of individuals to build a strong, high-performance Team?
Do you understand the simplicity and enormous benefits of using Team Psychometrics and developing a Team Action Plan for improvement?
How would you like to improve and build Trust in and between your key Teams?

If you want to experience the benefits of undertaking a ‘soft due diligence’ Team Diagnostic and want to build a strong team performance culture, please contact us - philip@philipatkinson.com

How to develop a Strategic Model: Vision to KPI's

18/10/2019

We have developed a great model that helps translate your organisational Vision into Key Performance Indicators. We will share some of the ideas here that we are progressing with several organisations. It is really simple.

Here are some questions you might want to consider.

Vision & Leadership

Where are we going?
What are our strategic goals?
What are our organisational goals in your key area?

Values & Culture

What should our culture become?
What values bind us together
What do we stand for and what do we value in how we treat partners and stakeholders?

Priorities, Goals, CSF’s and Strategies

What are our key priorities and how do they fit with the larger organisation?
What are our key goals in the year ahead?
What are your CSF’s that reflect goal achievement?

Behaviours & Actions

What behaviours should we start?
What behaviours should we stop?
What behaviours should we continue?

Structures, Relationships, Role, Responsibilities & Processes

Identify our key roles and responsibilities
What are the core processes which we should master to support our responsibilities?

KPI’s

What are the KPI’s that reflect whether you can measure how well you are doing in your CSF’s

philip@philipatkinson.com

Strategic Thinking for Not for Profit Organisations

24/9/2019

Most organisations in the commercial sector commit to developing a robust strategy for their organisations – otherwise they would not have a business, but we find this impetus to work through this strategic process is not widely shared amongst organisations in the ‘Not for Profit’ Sector.

You might find this newly published article from the Chartered Institute of Management Services (Autumn 2019) of interest if you are currently developing a business strategy for your NFP.

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Team Performance

24/7/2019

Most Teams could improve their performance and productivity, but the problem is that many Team leaders do not know where to start. There are several tiers of team maturity that you have to work through if you want to avoid Team conflict and get people working together across boundaries. Any team development has to undergo 2 key themes. The first is to confront the relative degree of maturity of Team cohesion and development. The second is to consider the composition of the team in terms of Team personalities.

Here are some of the questions you might what to address.

How mature are your key Teams in terms of Communication, Interaction and Working across Boundaries with other teams?
Do you see the benefits of undertaking a Team Dynamics audit to improve Team performance?
Do you find that you need to work on building Team cohesion and productivity?
Would you like to know how to get the best out of your people?
What do you need to know and do to refresh a failing or toxic group of individuals to build a strong high-performance Team?
Do you understand the simplicity and enormous benefits of using Team Psychometrics and developing a Team Action Plan for improvement?
How would you like to improve build Trust in and between your key Teams?

For more information use our Contact page or email Philip direct.

Becoming a highly effective internal Consultant, OD Advisor and Change Maker

26/3/2019

Managing Transformation

“Many people are facing the challenge of driving change within their business or organisation. They may be a technical manager or specialist in any chosen field – and they will have a responsibility for driving change.

In this article, Philip Atkinson outlines how managers and leaders can prepare themselves and make the personal transition to change maker, consultant, advisor, facilitator executive coach or trainer.

Most organisations need their people to develop and practise the ability to lead, manage and coordinate change implementation. Instead of relying on external consultants, it makes sense to develop internal change agents. This is about developing a culture of change leadership within the company or organisation. This article covers the main ways to develop these consulting skills to become of high value to the organisation”.

The Challenge of Change

Organisations are under so much pressure to implement change that many can not keep up the momentum or the enthusiasm for continually renewing themselves. There are huge benefits for those which have painstakingly crafted and designed the business culture to welcome change.

At the same time, they have equipped their leaders and managers with core change agent skills. What follows describes the journey that can be taken to become a highly valued ‘change maker’.

Read the whole article as it appeared in the Chartered Institute of Management Services Journal, Spring, 2019 Spring...……... below

Email Philip

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Going beyond SMART to set meaningful and compelling Goals

17/1/2019

At this time of year, many of the personal and organizational Goals that have been set are finally dropping down to the bottom of your ‘to do’ list. The new running shoes have not been out of their box, been introduced to the gym or the outdoors, the diet has fallen by the wayside and your personal career plans for 2019 becoming your ‘best year yet’ are already on hold.

Perhaps one of the reasons that we don’t achieve our Goals is that we don’t build a big enough WHY we want to achieve them and leverage the benefits that will accrue to us personally.

In this short article Philip Atkinson presents a new way to set meaningful and compelling goals. This goes beyond the old SMART acronym and uses a novel approach based on four learning styles. Here you can address any Goal and be sure to achieve it by following this simple formula

2019 – Best Year Yet

10/12/2018

It’s at this time of year that we start wrapping up on our current business and start planning ahead for 2019. I am constantly thinking of how to creatively plan new projects, form new relationships, win new clients, organise, do things better, declutter, plan how I am going to spend my time in 2019 and looking beyond that to 2020 and 2021. There is a quite a complex planning tool I use to assess current personal strengths, limitations, opportunities and threats but I like a very simple tool that is comprised of six questions and is illustrated below (PDF at the bottom of this posting).
Here are the six question and if you make use of it don’t just consider your business interests but your home life, relationships and community, personal learning physical, emotional and spiritual development. Using this will help you work through the important issues for yourself.

For what am I grateful?
The people, places and experiences that make my heart sing
Lessons learned this year
What’s not worked or still needs fixed?
What’s working well that I can bring into 2019?
What are the personal and organisational Skills I need to acquire that will promote all I want in my personal and business life in 2019 and beyond?

If you are interested in personal and life-planning, we run an extensive workshop for small groups of people. Just contact Philip here.

2019_best_year_yet.pdf
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Mentoring: Your Achievement Today is the Sum Total of the Your Life Choices

22/10/2018

The life you have today and how you operate is fundamentally down to the influence of the average of the six or seven people you associate with most. Ostensibly, you are influenced by the quality of the decisions they make or don’t…..

You are a Magnet

You are a magnet that can be attracted towards people who display the same energy as yourself.

If you are surrounded by like-minded ‘high flyer’ types, who are prepared to take and make better life choices, you probably emulate their success and display similar or identical attitudes and behaviours.

If you surround yourself with people operating at a lower level of energy, it will also have a similar impact on what you are able to become, do and have.

What happens if you want to change the results you are attracting?

It is time to assess who is going to take you to the next level. It is time to find a mentor who has trodden the same path, but who can short-circuit the process.

Sometimes you need support to get you started

If you want to change things for yourself, you must take ownership. Developing success for you is determined by how you manage your energy and your time to raise yourself well above the average standards and norms.

Mentoring Success

Mentoring and motivating others is central to work I do in enabling people to become change makers in their business. I have been fortunate to we have worked 1:1 with leading players at major blue chips including General Electric, Diageo, Volkswagen and Case CNH.

Working closely with them I have witnessed the outstanding levels of success they have achieved. It is no surprise that successful people often leave behind clues from which others can speedily learn, adapt and install in new personal behaviours. Over a lengthy period of time and much research have collated, analysed and developed this learning into a positive, uplifting Mentoring processes.

Challenges at Work

Those who benefit most from this Mentoring programme include people who are facing the following challenges:

Rising from team management to a Leadership position
Moving from Management to Leadership
Working on and implementing Change programs
Shaping a new team culture by overcoming resistance to change
Leading and making Customer Focus processes work
Introducing special projects such as Team Leadership, Lean initiatives, Communication processes and performance management

How does this work?

It means being exposed to and pursuing a highly structured program of learning. It requires a personal commitment and ownership to work 1:1 with me, or a favoured associate.

Is this for You?

We have found that many of our Mentoring projects evolve from working on larger initiatives with clients. Working with senior teams on ‘big ticket’ projects often generates the personal opportunities to work with small functional or operational teams, as well as working 1:1 with people who are on their way up, or needing structured support to take the next step.

Who benefits?

This may be for you or for others with whom you work. You may have teams that need structure and drive. You may want to go beyond the typical coaching program which creates a positive ‘feel good’ factor, but is light on results.
You may have high potential or enthusiastic people who currently need additional support to enable them to move on up and increase their personal impact, sustain their momentum and effectiveness.

Mastering Potential

Because I have been working with like-minded individuals, I have had the opportunity to develop a short and powerful program to support small teams and individuals. Thorough the medium of:

One to one mentoring
Undertake and assess their potential; and personality using the most valued and respected psychometric instruments
Access to a structured and tailored Learning Management System to deal with very specific issues that relate to change
A video library focused on ‘Mastering Potential’ and ‘influencing Anyone Anywhere’

Participants can radically improve their performance, set a new career direction and excel in their chosen field.

Investing in the Future

For a modest investment in Personal Mentoring, we can equip people and small teams to deliver outstanding results through a new in-built confidence in managing self and implementing change.

Designing for the Unknown

Who knows what challenges you face in the uncertain future? The best way we can successfully deal with the ‘uncertainty’ is by building our own character strengths: our personal, leadership, persistence, belief in our ability to improve, flexibility, empathy, confidence, self-control, and the ability to implement changes when required.

Each person or small team has their own Mentoring Strategy & Program which is undertaken and is delivered between specific time periods – depending on their desired outcomes. No two programs are the same.

If this is of interest to you for yourself or others, please get in contact as numbers for this cohort are restricted to 12 people from a variety of organisations.
Email philip@philipatkinson.com

The Third or Voluntary Sector: Is there a Panacea for Mastering Change?

20/9/2018

"In this age of turbulence, uncertainty and complexity, organisations, in whichever sector, have to act strategically and position themselves to anticipate and drive home change.

Whether you lead or manage a commercial, not for profit or a third sector organization, you must take the strategic management of change seriously, or you can join the line of businesses and organizations which no longer exist.

In this article, Philip Atkinson and Daniel Burger focus specifically on the voluntary or third sector and maintain that too many of these organisations prevaricate and delay making decisions about how to structure themselves for change and improvement. They maintain that there are some trusted commercial remedies for resolving severe organisational threat that can be easily replicated, and if accepted, rather than resisted, can develop a much stronger and more resilient organisation."

If you want to read the whole article you can download this PDF below.

atkinson-burger-panacea_for_change_in_voluntary_sector.pdf
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Developing a Cultural audit for Business Expansion, Mergers & Acqusitions and JV's

1/7/2018

Soft Due Diligence is about finding out what makes the engine of the business tick, and how we can best leverage our skills to make the two or more businesses who are close to forming a partnership, acquisition or joint venture get the most from the alliance.

Forget any ideas of merging cultures. Merging or integrating cultures ends up in confusion and ambiguity. The resulting averaging process would create a cocktail of cultures, which would confuse all parties.

As it is required to consider strongly the dominant aspects of each corporate culture, it is worthy to note that most cultures have evolved more by accident than design. We do find that many organisations have been shaped by times of intense control in creating a specific culture to deal with a crisis or an opportunity, and periods of more of less slack or non-existent influence when the organisation has drifted.

Every CEO and senior person influences the culture, and not always in a good way. What you can be sure of when you look at a culture and assess its relative strengths and limitations, is that you need a rigorous and robust approach

Robust & Rigorous Model

A variety of tools including interviewing, focus groups, and questionnaires to assess the relative health of merging the businesses are applied. These should be designed around a unique approach and a robust model for change.

The design of the initial diagnosis is important. Consider working in a cross border deal. As well as studying ownership, control and organisational culture, the context of the cross-border partnership and the transactions and markets, that will be focused upon are critical in supporting a correct diagnosis.

Cross Border Deals

Consider an example of working in Europe with a German and a Swedish business. The National cultures have similarities and major differences – of which these consequences have to be analysed, especially when the key markets for growth because of the acquisition (for illustration) will be in Southern and Eastern Europe. You will note, there is no more complexity here than in most businesses. Is this an impossible merger? No, it just will require analysis that is more detailed and rigorous integration plans.

UK IT Solutions

Another comparison is a British IT solutions provider with strong ambitions to form joint ventures in Germany and Austria to fill a strong market demand will have to assess their relative chances of success. Because they undertook Soft Due Diligence of several businesses they now understand that they have to create a strong permanent presence in Germany before they can form any alliances. Being aware of the Germanic culture, that company will site an office in the heart of the major city that services their key market – in this case Stuttgart.

Political & Economic Context

Consider several businesses in an African state of such as Nigeria. One would have to take account of the National culture, its religious and political heritage. It would also be wise to consider political conflicts that have arisen between the three key tribal groups and contemplate also how this will affect your business if you are going to trade in specific geographies. For instance, in some regions the dominant tribal grouping may exert more influence in some territories than others, and this could impact on human resource, supply and logistics issues.

We can see how one model may be suited for Sweden but would clearly be inappropriate for work in Africa. It is important to work extensively to understand the political and economic context in which the deal is has to be finalised in order to avoid the potential of business failure.

Partnering with Dealmakers

It is clear that one approach does not fit all, and the approach to cross border work is unique and tailored with precision. This is because those undertaking the research to work very closely with the partners of the businesses and to confront potential problems early on. Only by doing this, can we develop strategies to resolve key issues for immediate action.

What is important is that there should be no surprises along the tortuous route of business expansion due to merger or just organic growth.

Corporate Culture

In some cases, nationality can have a profound effect on post acquisition integration because it may favour one particular style of management akin to the relative culture of a country or a region, but it is also important to consider corporate culture in different functions, territories and specific facilities.

Nobody has time to run around businesses handing out questionnaires, then assessing, and ranking these by site and function. Soft Due Diligence is not a corporate climate survey to assess the relative state of teamwork, communication and the role of training – rather it is strategic, not tactical, and focuses on how to resolve issues that will arise when the businesses come together to form the new larger business entity.

Speed & Confidence in the Approach

Speed is of the essence, and rapid improvement and implementation must be the key strength. When one understands the process of change in this context, one can anticipate problems and address them before they become a major barrier to integration.

Of course, one has to realise the considerations of the strong Investor groups and institutions as well as the behaviour, both actual and predicted, of the existing and the new management team.

“Sensitive” and “incisive” are two words, which come to mind in this study. The study is a quick and reliable series of storyboards and scenarios that capture the spirit, the opportunities, and the scope for growth are identified and presented.

Ultimately, the data generated from Soft Due diligence, and the decisions that flow from these studies are the direct input for post acquisition strategies for speedy integration.

<<Previous

Exceptional Team Performance Critical to Business Success

How to develop a Strategic Model: Vision to KPI's

Strategic Thinking for Not for Profit Organisations

Team Performance

Becoming a highly effective internal Consultant, OD Advisor and Change Maker

Going beyond SMART to set meaningful and compelling Goals

2019 – Best Year Yet

Mentoring: Your Achievement Today is the Sum Total of the Your Life Choices

The Third or Voluntary Sector: Is there a Panacea for Mastering Change?

Developing a Cultural audit for Business Expansion, Mergers & Acqusitions and JV's

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