EHS Today recently reported on the opening address Peter Sheahan, founder and CEO of ChangeLabs, gave at the American Society of Safety Engineers 2013 conference in which he shared four steps to effectively address change and turn it into a competitive advantage.
Throughout his work implementing platforms for change all over the world, Sheahan said he has witnessed only three responses to change: curling up in the fetal position and simply hoping it all goes away; acknowledging that change exists but being unwilling to do anything about it; and recognising not only that change is happening, but that the organisation must do something about it. It is this final, most constructive approach to change that Sheahan focused on.
“It turns out that just being open to change and acknowledging it and being willing to do something about it is not enough,” he said. Instead, organisations and leaders must take additional steps to ensure they can turn change into an opportunity and create a competitive advantage.
- Step One: Question your assumptions . “When you start moving forward from what’s changing to how to address it, the very first place you must start is to question the assumptions you’re making,” Sheahan said.
- Step Two: Create clarity and alignment . “Let’s say you have a vision for something – the next step is to very clearly articulate what success would look like if you do it well. Align everything in the organisation toward that vision,” he said. “Large-scale, fundamental change is never about intent. Your desire to create change is not enough. Execution always comes down to alignment.”
- Step Three: Actively reposition new vision for safety in the business . Do not assume your stakeholders, staff and partner will automatically understand this new reality. “You have to actively go and reposition the new reality,” Sheahan said.
- Step Four: Collaborate . “Collaboration is the fastest way to drive engagement,” Sheahan said. “Don’t create it in a room and give it to people; create it with them,” Sheahan said. “Once they create it, it’s theirs. They own it.”
Focusing on a constructive attitude to executing change is also the approach that FranklinCovey takes and, what's interesting in reading the 4 steps outlined above is how they align with the Disciplines of Execution approach we have refined over 10 years of organisational application. For example, to help business unit leaders to question their assumptions we start by providing them with new 'lenses' to look at the issue of organisational execution through, so that they can refine and define their key areas of priority effectively.
We then focus on the repositioning step by helping a business unit leader ratify this new direction with their team, and getting them to define what contribution their group can make so that 'the sum of the parts comes to equal the whole'. Following this is creating clarity and alignment down through the levels of an organisation so that there is a clear line of sight between executive goals and front line goals and so that people feel involved and engaged at every level in what they are being asked to contribute to. Finally, for FranklinCovey, the process of collaboration is about front line leaders engaging team members to get their input on how they can achieve whats most important and then playing a role of support and accountability in following this through.
The typical response when we describe this approach is that it helps people make sense of what can appear to be a 'big, uncertain thing' and so ensures that a business unit can approach the process of executing on change and creating competitive advantage with high energy and an expectation of success.
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