Learning how to engage managers in transformation
In this work, we attempted to develop a new IT support service.
There were four people in the team, with one specialist, and the other were repairs people.
The team worked really well, as we managed to reduce failure demand into the support service. One of the top failure demands was "I have forgotten my password". We found that this demand predictably occurred on Mondays and when people returned from leave.
One solution was to make it easy for a front line support person to be on the end of a phone and sort that out immediately, rather than fill in a form, on a computer that they did not have access to!
The team eventually disbanded. and did not continue. This was due to the fact that we kept the operational managers away from the team, until the end of a phase of the work. I did this because I wanted the team to develop their own culture, working practices and values. This created animosity between the team, the consultant (me) and the manager. That caused the manager to become antagonistic towards the team and myself.
The learning was to include managers in the work from the start. And to ensure that the manager in the team was not as a manager, but just part of the team. The manager and I then work together to develop new practices and behaviours that we learn from the team. I wish this was something I learned quicker, as I repeated some of this error in the next work.
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It was working in Yarmouth, with Mark Burns (2009) that we modified this approach with managers. Mark engaged directly in the team, and the development of the work was driven by Mark, rather than top down from myself. The result was a far better method approach, that is now part of the design in future work. Now I provide the context of change, and the methods, and allow the manager to drive their own path of learning.
There were four people in the team, with one specialist, and the other were repairs people.
The team worked really well, as we managed to reduce failure demand into the support service. One of the top failure demands was "I have forgotten my password". We found that this demand predictably occurred on Mondays and when people returned from leave.
One solution was to make it easy for a front line support person to be on the end of a phone and sort that out immediately, rather than fill in a form, on a computer that they did not have access to!
The team eventually disbanded. and did not continue. This was due to the fact that we kept the operational managers away from the team, until the end of a phase of the work. I did this because I wanted the team to develop their own culture, working practices and values. This created animosity between the team, the consultant (me) and the manager. That caused the manager to become antagonistic towards the team and myself.
The learning was to include managers in the work from the start. And to ensure that the manager in the team was not as a manager, but just part of the team. The manager and I then work together to develop new practices and behaviours that we learn from the team. I wish this was something I learned quicker, as I repeated some of this error in the next work.
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It was working in Yarmouth, with Mark Burns (2009) that we modified this approach with managers. Mark engaged directly in the team, and the development of the work was driven by Mark, rather than top down from myself. The result was a far better method approach, that is now part of the design in future work. Now I provide the context of change, and the methods, and allow the manager to drive their own path of learning.
Learning by the team, rather than from me
The initial approach I used was to direct the team to learn specific concepts from certain events. At times, they did not learn these concepts as I had hoped, and my response was to attempt to make this happen. This caused people in the teams to not always recognise that this was their learning, it was imposed.
Simply releasing my role to be more of a guide and facilitator was scary, but it allowed the team to learn themselves. So my role was to provide the situations to learn from, and allow them to potentially make small mistakes that helped them to learn themselves.
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It was working in Yarmouth, with Kate Blakemore in Environmental Health. I had no idea as to where the learning was going to come from or what it was going to be, as this service was very different to that I had been in before. It was not 'demand driven' and was a statutory enforcement service.
On the first day of the experiment I had no idea what to do. So the team went out to restaurant kitchens to 'stand and learn'. The first team came back and said that was embarrassing. The second team said that it was enlightening! Whew. We unpicked what the second team did, and developed that into what became a successful redesign in an area I have not idea about.
Simply trussing in the learning of the team, with my gooding it, became a new behaviour for me that has been immensely successful in so many ways.
Simply releasing my role to be more of a guide and facilitator was scary, but it allowed the team to learn themselves. So my role was to provide the situations to learn from, and allow them to potentially make small mistakes that helped them to learn themselves.
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It was working in Yarmouth, with Kate Blakemore in Environmental Health. I had no idea as to where the learning was going to come from or what it was going to be, as this service was very different to that I had been in before. It was not 'demand driven' and was a statutory enforcement service.
On the first day of the experiment I had no idea what to do. So the team went out to restaurant kitchens to 'stand and learn'. The first team came back and said that was embarrassing. The second team said that it was enlightening! Whew. We unpicked what the second team did, and developed that into what became a successful redesign in an area I have not idea about.
Simply trussing in the learning of the team, with my gooding it, became a new behaviour for me that has been immensely successful in so many ways.
Developing a team
In my early work, I tried to 'develop a team'. And it sort of worked, but they were more of a group rather than a team that truly supported each other and worked well to learn together.
It was through people like Carl Haggerty and Roxanne Tandridge, that I really learned the power that psychological safety can develop a real team in a shorter amount of time.
It was through people like Carl Haggerty and Roxanne Tandridge, that I really learned the power that psychological safety can develop a real team in a shorter amount of time.
Influencing leaders
I used to spend lots of time with reams of data, attempting to get this infront of senior leaders. This will surely tell them how wonderful this work is. And when this did not always work, I blamed them! In my early work I spent far too long with spreadsheets, pushing graphs infront of managers. Sometimes creating pretty reports.
What I do now is to work with senior leaders, and to understand what matters to them. I then ask myself the question as to what is it that we can uncover in the redesign that they will be interested in? And then develop these an indicators. Often these are not direct data, but counts of things, new categories, stories, pictures - all driven by the team themselves. I just stand back.
I now refuse to write reports!
What I do now is to work with senior leaders, and to understand what matters to them. I then ask myself the question as to what is it that we can uncover in the redesign that they will be interested in? And then develop these an indicators. Often these are not direct data, but counts of things, new categories, stories, pictures - all driven by the team themselves. I just stand back.
I now refuse to write reports!
Making change happen
I used to drive change and drive teams to change. Oh dear... Pre-defined timelines and plans were the guide in my attempt to do this.
I had to learn that whilst some the of change can be managed like a project, it is those projects that are logical and where change is needed can this approach work. When doing the same thing, but better.
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Ibrar Hussain showed me that Transformation is not change, it is about doing different things. This type of transformation is about dealing with complex. Therefore we cannot now what the actual outcomes will be in detail, we dont two how long it will actually take, and we dont know the true cost. Therefore the plan has to be emergent over time, as we develop.
To design transformation that incorporates this is quite different but it is encapsulated in Human Learning Systems and other systems thinking based methods, that are now core to my approach.
I had to learn that whilst some the of change can be managed like a project, it is those projects that are logical and where change is needed can this approach work. When doing the same thing, but better.
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Ibrar Hussain showed me that Transformation is not change, it is about doing different things. This type of transformation is about dealing with complex. Therefore we cannot now what the actual outcomes will be in detail, we dont two how long it will actually take, and we dont know the true cost. Therefore the plan has to be emergent over time, as we develop.
To design transformation that incorporates this is quite different but it is encapsulated in Human Learning Systems and other systems thinking based methods, that are now core to my approach.
