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Leading Change - A Holistic View

Strategy That Sticks

September 23 sailing retreat

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Set Sail September 23!

inTEgro's SeaChange Ventures has partnered with MaxPerformance and Sail Pepin to offer two unique sailing retreats September 23 and October 7 on beautiful Lake Pepin, a scenic 90 minute drive from the Twin Cities. Join fellow explorers, your captain and coach to connect your sailing experience aboard well-appointed 31' sailing yachts with invaluable insights for increasing your leadership, teamwork and resilience capacities.

Space is limited; click on the photo above or here to learn more and reserve your spot.

Twitter Highlights

I send 15-20 tweets per week with links to useful links and research. Here are a few of my latest, including links:

How mentoring helps prepare new hires at Praxis http://tinyurl.com/gse6scb

Annual Review Under Review

Creating A Strategy That Works
http://tinyurl.com/hfjtce9

Evolution of Governance: The Mindful Board http://tinyurl.com/hgyudcq

One Bad Apple Spoils The Company http://tinyurl.com/z9mbucd

Challenging the claim that 70% of organizational change efforts fail http://tinyurl.com/jxdhg2g

So should we celebrate that 50% in the U.S. are satisfied with their jobs? http://tinyurl.com/hg9g45g

EAPs evolving: Companies provide mental health counseling via smartphones. http://tinyurl.com/jxdxcpe

How to achieve excellence executing strategy http://tinyurl.com/hhnh56u

Big Brains, Small Minds - on the value of a liberal education http://tinyurl.com/h5u3ae4

Companies Try New Strategy: Empathy

http://tinyurl.com/hqezlbo

A "friction free economy" and Why Evey Aspect of You Business is About to Change

http://tinyurl.com/ndtbzrg

Recommended

From inTEgro's Books / Store:

Harvard professor Howard Gardner, "Flow's" author Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Stanford's William Damon bring us a thoughtful work on the meaning of "good work," work that is of high quality and also socially responsible in rapidly changing times. Their in-depth exploration of journalism, genetics apply to dilemmas broadly of adhering to high professional standards amidst market and environmental factors that are countervailing forces.

Click on the cover for more informaton and a link to Amazon.

Whole Foods co-founder John Mackey and Conscious Capitalism, Inc. co-founder Raj Sisodia use some of today's best-known and most successful companies to illustrate how business and capitalism can be inherently good, creating value for all stakeholders-including customers, employees, suppliers, investors, society, and the environment.

Understand how higher purpose, stakeholder integration and conscious leadership, culture and management can help build strong businesses, move capitalism closer to its highest potential, and foster a more positive environment for all of us.

Click on the cover for more informaton and a link to Amazon.

Check out inTEgro Books and Store for recommendations of additional resources to help "transform business
as usual into business at its best."

Welcome to July's Leading Change - A Holistic View. Please visit the blog version to leave comments.

If you missed it, the start of "'Strategy That Sticks" follows. Click on "Read more" at the end to continue, and check out inTEgro's newsletter archive to access all past articles.

Leading Change - A Holistic View

Al Watts

The first definition of "integrity" in Webster's New World Dictionary is "the quality of being complete; unbroken condition; wholeness; entirety." In that context leading change with integrity implies adoption of the broadest possible lens evaluating the merits of change initiatives. In their book by the same name, Harvard's Howard Gardner and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (author of Flow) defined "Good Work" as effective, engaging and ethical. Applying such a "triple-E" framework is a good start adopting a more holistic perspective evaluating change efforts.

Most of us have significant experience participating in or perhaps leading change initiatives to improve organizational effectiveness; "lean" management and the "reengineering" craze of the '90's are

examples. Leading with integrity and adopting a more holistic perspective requires attention to not only organizational effectiveness, but at least equivalent attention to the ethical dimensions of change and its effect on worker engagement. Indeed if we are concerned with the sustainability of change and sustainability of our organizations, adoption of a "triple-E" perspective is more than nice-to-have, it's a must-have. The news media are littered with examples of strategies that failed to give adequate attention to all three "Es" and subsequently backfired or derailed the whole organization; Volkswagen is merely one of the latest.

Leading change with integrity requires attention to four dimensions:

IDENTITY - an organization's "3 Ps:" purpose, principles and priorities. We know that a sense of purpose motivates, and that it is among the chief motivators of millennials. Most of us also want to know our organization's principles or values, what it stands for. At the very least it is essential that change initiatives not violate an organization's purpose or principles; at best they can be opportunities to reinforce them. In addition to communicating what will change when embarking on a change initiative, it is important to clarify what will not change

My experience as a consultant confirms research findings that on average 60% of an organization's workforce do not know its strategic goals; we can likely not over communicate the intent and rationale of change initiatives and the third "P," strategic priorities.

AUTHENTICITY - "Be the change you wish to see . . ." (Mahatma Gandhi) People watch our feet more than they hear our words;

leaders especially must be true their organization's "3 Ps" and to changes that they advocate. Truth and transparency are "coins of the realm" leading change. Lacking information in times of change, we are prone to fill the gap by making things up; leaders need to fill the gap more intentionally.

ALIGNMENT - Are hiring, promotional, pay practices and other organizational systems aligned with your "3 Ps" and desired changes? Are mechanisms in place to help the organization and its members grow and adapt to stay aligned with external changes?

ACCOUNTABILITY - Are we measuring what matters? Adopting a holistic or "triple-E" framework means attending equally to measures of worker engagement, organization effectiveness and ethical practices. Applying integrity's definition of "completeness, wholeness and entirety" to ethical practices calls for a broader interpretation of ethics than is common in business ethics circles. Beyond adherence to laws, regulations and obvious moral codes, leading change with integrity calls for stewardship, a sense of responsibility for the impact of our actions far removed from our immediate realm. We need to adopt more "7th generation thinking" as modeled by indigenous Americans, discerning what impact decisions and actions will potentially have on future generations.

Conscious attention to these four dimensions constitutes a "triple play," helping assure that we lead change and lead our organizations in a manner that nurtures worker engagement and ethical practices as well as organization effectiveness.

There is evidence that potential workers as well as customers and

communities where businesses operate are seeking more than merely transactions with those institutions. Characteristics of Fortune magazine's latest "100 Best Companies To Work For" are indications; the rise of B corporations, organized to provide social benefits, is another. If we do not keep pace with the talent and customers we hope to attract, who expect higher levels of organizational integrity, traditional approaches to change and the sustainability of our organizations itself will be in jeopardy.

You can find more examples and strategies for managing change and leading with integrity in Navigating Integrity - Transforming Business As Usual Into Business at its Best

Open your arms to change, but don't drop your values.

Nepalese proverb

Change your opinions, keep intact your principles; change your leaves, keep intact your roots.

Victor Hugo

Strategy That Sticks

I've helped clients with some form of strategic planning for dozens of years and teach it at the college level. Theories, models and tools come and go, but here are a few fundamental concepts that have withstood the test of time, some for centuries; here are a few that I hope serve you well:

Know the territory.

For millennia military strategists gained advantage by learning about the terrain of a battleground, weather, local populations, likely obstacles and what might present opportunities. In our world today, "territory" includes customers, potential adversaries, market opportunities and environmental trends. Change in all of these variables is constant. Just as military strategists have benefited from observant scouts, it has never been more important for organizations to have their own "scouts" for strategic intelligence.

Our biggest obstacles might not be the competition or "opposing armies" in the classic sense. Weather was a primary determinant of victory at Napoleon's Waterloo; strategists today need to have a keen sense of their own prevailing "weather," external factors likely to influence outcomes. When asked about his phenomenally successful hockey career, Wayne Gretsky's advice was to "skate to where the puck will be;" organizations today need to pool their strategic