How to Work Yourself Out of a Job
“A true voyage of discovery does not consist of seeking new landscapes but rather of seeing with new eyes.” —Marcel Proust
As change professionals, we often say that we want to leave clients free from the need for additional services from us. Unfortunately, our track record doesn’t support that claim. This is less true for pure training interventions; however, consultants (both internal and external) engage in more “doing” than in “transferring capability.”
I realize not all change facilitators share this view, but my personal bias is that teaching clients to execute change on their own is a crucial part of practicing our craft. Some internal practitioners lack the charter to do anything but solve problems. (“Just help us get this project implemented. We’ll worry about learning how to do it ourselves later.”) Some external practitioners operate within a business model that doesn’t include teaching clients how to stand on their own without the consultant’s help. This series, however, is for a third category of practitioners more
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©2011 Conner Partners, Inc.
www.connerpartners.com
Road Blocks to Empowerment
(1) CommentYou can gain many benefits when empowered relationships exist between you and your clients, and among key people within your clients. Yet, given how few empowered relationships exist during the execution of critical change, it is clear they’re not easy to develop. Here are some of the obstacles that can get in the way of empowerment:
- The definition is often vague or confusing—Many people think empowerment means autonomy, delegation, democracy, consensus management, etc. People sometimes don’t understand what it is and how it is secured and maintained.
- People think it gives them the power to act—Many people interpret empowerment as the entitlement to take whatever action they deem fit for a particular situation, instead of a charter to influence sponsors’ decisions.
- Political correctness is in play—In some organizations, sponsors ask for others’ “empowered” observations and suggestions primarily to appease them; the input is seldom truly considered. more
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©2011 Conner Partners, Inc.
www.connerpartners.com
Using Errors to Our Advantage
In the last two postings, we discussed the fact that mistakes are inevitable during major change—essential to the learning process, and an inherent part of transition itself. We also distinguished failures (falling short of expectations without learning) from corrective experiences (missed goals that lead us to learn how to avoid or minimize the same error in the future).
There are clear patterns displayed by people who view missing the mark as a corrective experience versus a failure. more
ChangeThinking.net
©2011 Conner Partners, Inc.
www.connerpartners.com
What Have We Learned About Learning?
(1) CommentEnlightenment isn’t about knowledge you learn, it’s about knowledge you turn into. ~Deepak Chopra
In my opinion, learning is one of the indispensable bedrocks of our craft. I layer many concepts, tools, and techniques on top of this core element, but fostering learning—my own and my clients’—is at the heart of what I do.
Recently, though, I realized that I haven’t been paying enough attention to what I’ve “learned from learning.” This prompted me to go back and reexamine a variety of learning models that I’ve used over the years and ask myself to what extent I apply, by design and with forethought, the concepts or tenets from these frameworks. I didn’t merely ask, “Have the models influenced my thinking or impacted my actions?” but “Am I intentional and mindful about their application?” My answers varied from model to model—sometimes it was encouraging, but mostly it was sobering. more
ChangeThinking.net
©2011 Conner Partners, Inc.
www.connerpartners.com
The Characteristics of Nimble Execution
In a previous post, I defined a nimble organization as one that has a sustained ability to quickly and effectively respond to the demands of change while continually delivering high performance. Gaining and sustaining nimbleness is not easily or casually achieved. To fully leverage its potential requires commitment and tenacity from the very top of an organization. This begins when members of the Board (or equivalent strategic sanctioning body) and senior leadership declare their deeply held belief that nimble execution is a vital strategic advantage. This conviction must then be translated into two levels of intention: more
ChangeThinking.net
©2010 Conner Partners, Inc.
www.connerpartners.com
Patterns Aren’t Created, They Are Revealed
We don’t own patterns, yet we are all responsible for them.
Some of us might be fortunate enough to be the first to observe and document a pattern, but we didn’t invent it, we uncovered it. Adjusting to the unfamiliar has been part of the human experience since the beginning of time. Any change-related pattern we use was in play long before any of us started practicing this craft. And even though some of us have fashioned our own particular way of articulating transition dynamics (nomenclature, principles, guidelines, axioms) the basic patterns can’t be commandeered by any of us.
So, we can’t take credit for conceiving the patterns of change, but because we did discover them, we have a responsibility more
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©2010 Conner Partners, Inc.
www.connerpartners.com
