Enabling Change In Turbulent Times

Chief Learning Officer Magazine recently had a feature on 'A Guide To Learning In Turbulent Times', reflecting a business environment showing significant upward trends in the areas of organisational mergers and business unit spinoffs. 

Change will spawn new enterprises and perhaps new industries, which will trigger a domino effect with an explosion in development of new infrastructure to support these enterprises. These new organisational structures and operational systems bring their own problems, which are often linked to multiple barriers that prevent the leader from finding the common ground that could lead to a solution. 

The article also references the research by Chris Ernst and Donna Chrobbot-Mason in their book Boundary Spanning Leadership, where they collected data from 25 organisations across 5 continents to seek insights into how leaders identify and overcome the barriers that inhibit their ability to find common ground among seemingly competing interests.

The approach FranklinCovey adopts to breaking down these barriers - or walls - resonates with both the sentiment of the CLO article and the findings of this research, but while Ernst and Chrobbot-Mason identify some 'macro' boundaries (vertical, horizontal, stakeholder, demographic and geographic) FranklinCovey's advice and insight operates more at the level of individual mindsets, habits and behaviours. For example

• The 3 key elements we recommend (and help to develop) in tearing down organisational walls include thinking 'we' not 'me', listening to understand not to reply and believing in / getting to 3rd Alternatives
• We share insights on how to deal with low trust situations which may have arisen over time, including how to think differently about trust as a commercial driver and how to build it up again across functions.
• We identify the characteristics of key 'transition figures' and consider how the potential to play this role can apply to anyone in an organisation, not just someone in a role of 'formal authority'

While finding common ground across large (and dispersed) groups may be challenging, our experience is that by introducing a series of principle based inputs (such as those described above) and aligning these with a strong intent to do right by the business, its team members and its stakeholders it is possible to enable significant change, even in turbulent times.