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Shaping the Acceptance of Change

17/10/2017

You get the quality of staff you deserve

If you are serious about bringing about significant, lasting and sustainable change, you have to be able to smooth the path and support the key people, usually the senior management group, to take some thoughtful risks, while at the same time removing any fear that if they fail, they will be punished in some way.

Invest in your people

If you don’t invest in your top people how can you expect them to lead the process of change. They cannot acquire these change skills and mindset by osmosis, through YouTube, reading a book, or attending the infrequent and ill-designed ‘catch all’ training course.

Change or face the Consequences

In recent times I have worked with several organisations that have had no alternative but to bite the bullet, restructure, improve core systems and processes or face the consequences. But how do you do that when management groups have never been exposed to real change? – especially if they have been protected, for instance if they reside in the public sector.

Change is not delivered by Magic

If management groups have never had to bring about successful change, how can we expect them to deliver that change? It’s not like they can magic it from somewhere or quickly develop superior change skills after having a lifetime of under investment in their professional and personal development.

Transactional rather than transformational leaders

Critical to any change process is the ability to lead change. Without leadership, the organisation will continue on its current path. At best, many management teams have been equipped with what we call transactional skills to become better at what they do, which is managing operations functions and silos – usually in the short term. What is really needed is equipping all your key people with transformational change skills which enable them to start to think strategically and recognize that their role is to focus on improvement and operating at the next level.

You have to move them through the Mindset of ….

I won’t do it…to
I cannot do it… to
I want to do it…to
How do I do it…to
I’ll try to do it.. to
I can do it…to
I will do it… to
Yes, I did it…

To find out more about how you can develop the core competency of organisational change, you can access this recently published article from the Chartered Institute of Management Services. Reading through this will give you the confidence to move staff from…I won’t…….. to “I did it”.

Please email me to discuss how you can make this work in the real world Philip@philipatkinson.com

atkinson-change_as_a_core_competency_autumn_2017_ms_journal.pdf
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Personal Boundaries - Psychological contracting – how we work together with our Clients

16/10/2017

Interesting discussion with colleagues about recent experiences with clients generated the idea of ‘personal boundaries’ when working together with partners and, more importantly, clients. I guess the conversation focused on the ‘assumptions’ that are made about how we will work together especially around the sometimes unstated issues of defining outcomes.

Relates to anyone driving the Change Agenda

This relates to both external and internal consultants, project managers, facilitators, trainers or anyone else working together to bring about organisational change.

My preferred working style has always been to restate goals as defined outcomes. If a client has difficulty defining the outcomes of a process or event, then that will lead to ambiguity further along the line. My colleagues agreed. So, I decide to write a little on it today and this follows under the next section.

I was so drawn by the subject, I wrote and published an article on this entitled ‘Psychological Contracting’ and if you’d like a copy, of this you can access it at the end of this page.

Setting Personal Boundaries

We’d like to think that we do this automatically – but largely this is an assumed and often ‘unconscious’ decision that we make, but often fail to enforce.

Personal boundaries extend to all areas of life, such as personal relationships, working with others, health, love, nutrition, sex – but I am going to focus on professional relationships.

You know if something is wrong if your personal boundaries are breached from these examples:

Not speaking up when you should
Adopting another’s ideas so to be accepted
Saying ‘yes’ when you want to say no
Failing to assert your rights and your needs in favour of others
Letting your personal standards slip and agreeing to things which don’t fit in with the way you are happy to do things.

Feeling guilty or apologising when you do eventually say ‘no’.

Failing to deal with someone who transgresses your boundaries
Allowing people to say or do things to you that make you uncomfortable

Allowing yourself to be interrupted or distracted to accommodate another person's immediate wants or needs.

Giving too much, just to be perceived as useful or to be liked

Becoming overly involved in others’ solutions to difficulties, when they should take ownership for that change to happen
Acting against your values and integrity in order to fit in or please others

Create and define positive personal boundaries

Personal boundaries are lines drawn in the sand. Often, they are unconscious markers about how you will work with others. Professionally, they are there to deal with creating positive working relationships and they are also there to protect you. These are activities, behaviours, deeds and even words and phrases depict how we will work together. Generally speaking we all have flexibility to deal with little transgressions but there may come a time when these become unacceptable, and if and when they happen, you have to take action.

Don’t let it go

If you let others overstep your boundaries or assumptions collectively agreed, you will feel uncomfortable because our boundaries define who we are, what we stand for and how we view our working relationships with our clients and partners.

It’s too easy to let this go. Some of our boundaries are inviolate and we should not let them go, whereas others can be viewed flexibly, as long as they are not constantly challenged on a regular basis.

Your Clients and the Psychological Contract

If you don’t define and adhere to your boundaries, you are not serving your client. If you have not yet identified your boundaries or defined them to clients, you may experience their not taking ownership for changes they should lead, clients taking advantage of your supportive nature, difficulty speaking up or saying "No" without upsetting others. This also creates a degree of emotional uncertainty when you should be raising key issues to ensure that the assumptions and ways of behaving that bind you together are shared and owned.

Ownership

‘Ownership’ is the major factor here as clients fail to listen for their best intent, and drive forward with their own ill-considered agenda. It is so easy to roll over and not challenge the agenda of the client and serve them well by just going along with things. This is what leads to most ambiguity and unconscious conflict in client vs. consultant relationships.

Beliefs, boundaries, standards, rules

The things you know you need to say "No" to are based on your personal and professional beliefs on working with your client. These should be articulated and shared consciously if you are going to work well and deliver the project. Projects fall down because ‘boundaries’ are assumed, or never questioned, debated and then agreed. It’s important that your boundaries and standards reflect your professional core beliefs and values of how the world should operate when doing business with others. You need to define your boundaries to others to ensure there is synergy in how you can and should do business.

If you are interested in the issues relating to the client consultant relationship boundary issues then you might want to also access this published article and please let me know your views. philip@philipatkinson.com

(Please note the in the article below the publisher 'Train the Trainer' printed it to read in the following order P1, P3, P4 and then P2 to accommodate the full formatted A5 pull-out version of the piece - 4 pages in total.)

psychological-contracting-philip-atkinson.pdf
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Mastering Change as a Core Competency

5/10/2017

Assume change implementation is easy

Just imagine that you have developed internal capability to manage the majority of change projects that you need to implement in the next five years. What impact would that have on your organisational performance, growth, the culture and the external strains and stresses you are currently undergoing? Suppose your staff were sufficiently competent, developed and skilled to manage resistance to change, plan and implement complex projects and deal with dissatisfied customers, over-controlling stakeholders and resistant and difficult staff.

Further, focus on the benefits of not having to employ expensive external consultancy groups, interims and business experts, because you could trust that all your people are able deal with all this as part of ‘business as usual’ rather than having to rely on
the same few enthusiasts. Consider using the Acceptance Curve to assess your current capability for change..... Read the whole article in PDF format below

atkinson-change_as_a_core_competency_autumn_2017_ms_journal.pdf
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File Type:	pdf

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Shaping the Acceptance of Change

Personal Boundaries - Psychological contracting – how we work together with our Clients

Mastering Change as a Core Competency

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