Welcome to my Blog.
The aim will be to make this blog informative, amusing (as appropriate, obviously) and interactive (we really want you to get stuck in and add your thoughts as we go along!).
We have called it “Inspiring Change” for two main reasons.
Firstly because that is about the only thing that leaders can do! You don’t have the time to actually make change happen within your business and nor do you have the time to keep on top of everybody that is meant to be making it happen. What you can do is excite people about the prospect of change and inspire them to make it happen.
Our second reason was really simple; it is our business! We can’t make change happen in your business either but we can work with you and those that you have charged with implementing change in order to build the skills and behaviours that will inspire and deliver sustainable change with a significant return on investment.
My personal fascination with change started in 1987, when I joined an American Investment bank in London. I was amazed, amused and shocked at the profligate waste of money that they seemed happy to accept.
Despite my rather puritanical pleas to change the way in which things were done, the constant reply was “that’s not the way we do things here”. Until Friday October 16th when not only did Sevenoaks lose most of the oaks but the FTSE 100 lost 23 percent of its value overnight. Now I had their attention!
Lesson Number 1 – if you can’t inspire them personally due to your position in the hierarchy, find a burning platform that means that it is no longer OK to “do things the way that we always have”!
Three years later, and now acting as an interim Corporate Planning Director for a major publicly owned organisation which, despite annual revenues in excess of £2 billion per annum, was still managing to lose the thick end of £700 million per annum, I was charged with producing a report that would lay out what had to happen to allow the organisation to compete with its privately owned competitors.
After due sweat and tears, a suitably substantial and well-researched report was submitted to the board; but I was already having my doubts about my future as a consultant if what I really wanted to do was to help organisations to change.
Lesson Number 2 – substantial reports, however well researched and written, change nothing, it is only people that change businesses.
Whilst the Board thought that the report really hit the spot and laid out some simple facts of life as well as practical ways to achieve the goal, they did not want to publish it since it contained some very challenging home truths about the number of people in the business and the overall structure of the business in general.
As they sat and continued to discuss the fact that the report really did create a clear vision for the future, absolutely nothing happened and most certainly nothing changed!
Lesson Number 3 – if you don’t tell your people what you want to happen, it is no great surprise if they do nothing to create the change that you are seeking.
Finally, the report was published; quietly. The leaders did not go out and present it; they just hoped that it would make as much sense to others as it had to them. The result, initially fear, uncertainty and doubt followed by resistance.
Lesson Number 4 – it is you, their leaders, who have the capability to inspire your people, consultants and their reports will never have the same influence as you
Anyway – that is enough for this first contribution and I promise not to continue in this style until I have finally explained Lesson 2671. At least I hope not since I passionately believe that change is much more simple than that.
I will attempt to bring you thoughts and ideas as they fly across my field of vision as I travel from place to place and observe change in many different cultures, both National and Corporate.
In the meantime please feel free to ask questions or add your thoughts and stories to this blog.
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