The Missing Link to Successful Change

Our collaboration partners, Cerebyte, discuss in their recent blog that change cannot happen inside an organization unless the change is desired. The link to their blog is posted below. In fact, that concept is central to their successful wisdom capture and dissemination methodology. Their process engages each individual affected by the change at a personal level, so each person makes the change their own.

At Leadership Beyond Limits, we know the same is true for full system cultural transformation. Cultural Transformation typically fails because leaders fail to connect the transformation to the values of the people, who are the organization. Most organizations spend a lot of time building the foundation and structures to support a change, but fail to support their employees' exploration of what this change means to them. This step is scientifically proven as necessary for success. Without it, what organizations will get is resistance to change - something we are all familiar with.

Think about a time when you resisted change yourself and then a time when you embraced it. Chances are, the difference was your involvement with the process and your ability to internalize the change. Change does not have to be difficult, in fact, it can be energizing for everyone involved!

http://www.cerebytejournal.com/?p=324

Shifting Collective Consciousness

Transforming organizational culture begins with transformational leadership, which was briefly defined in our last blog post. What we are talking about here is a shift in individual consciousness from a primary concern about the self to a broader concern for the common good. As leaders in an organization shift their consciousness, the culture of the organization shifts with them. We know the effects of individual transformation can be dramatic within a relatively small eco-system like organizational culture. But do individual shifts in consciousness affect the larger community, or even the global community?

The Institute of Noetic Sciences is a pioneer in leading-edge research into the potentials and powers of consciousness - including perceptions, beliefs, attention, intention, and intuition. The Institute explores phenomena that do not necessarily fit conventional scientific models, while maintaining a commitment to scientific rigor. These folks are definitely on the leading edge, and their research findings challenge many of our traditional beliefs. They recently released a short animated video, starring Dr. Dean Radin, a world-renowned researcher of psychic (or "psi") phenomena, as Jedi Master Oh Be One Kenobi, as he takes viewers on an amusing foray into quantum entanglement and planetary fields of collective consciousness. Click here to learn more about research findings into how our collective consciousness shifts with world events.

They are also running a special Trial Month of the Shift in Action program for a $1 donation to the Institute of Noetic Sciences. May the Force be with you in 2009!

An Integrative Definition of Leadership

Leadership has many definitions. At Leadership Beyond Limits, we subscribe to the efficacy of transformational leadership as presented by Bass and Avolio (1994). This leadership definition implies that leaders lead followers to levels of higher morals. In addition, transformational leadership implies that the followers are better off with the four I's of:

1. Idealized influence - does the right thing for the right reason
2. Individualized consideration - treats each person as an individual and with care and compassion
3. Intellectual stimulation - offers employees stretch goals and encourages creativity and innovation
4. Inspirational motivation - lives from his/her values and inspires employees to build on the vision

I recently came across an excellent scholarly article that painstakingly researched the various definitions of leadership. The authors identified 92 discrete dimensions of leadership, along with a 93rd miscellaneous list of 20 more leadership characteristics. The authors believe that researchers, scholars, consultants, and leaders have helped create confusion around the definition of leadership in that we have examined the parts of leadership but not the whole. They draw on the story of the blind men describing the elephant and the different accurate descriptions that each blind man gave, yet each was insufficient to understand the whole.

The article is definitely worthwhile if you haven't yet read it, you can find it here:
http://www.regentuniversity.org/acad/global/publications/ijls/new/vol1iss2/winston_patterson.doc/winston_patterson.pdf

If you find that interesting, you will likely also appreciate their longer working paper, which includes the above analysis, along with a more in-depth discussion of servant leadership:
http://www.regent.edu/acad/global/publications/working/integrativedefinition.pdf

I admire the authors effort at creating an integrative definition of leadership, and appreciate their metaphor that reminds us that leadership is a large, complex animal.

Unleashing Employee Creativity

When organizations undertake cultural transformation, they believe that by fully engaging employees they will ignite new levels of employee creativity and higher levels of productivity. That is expected.

What is never known, however, is how that creativity will manifest. Often, it transcends even the highest of expectations and deeply inspires customers and fellow employees alike.

If you haven't heard the story of Johnny the Bagger, you are in for a real treat. Follow this link and be inspired to ignite your own unique passion.

Go to http://www.stservicemovie.com to see the inspirational movie of Johnny the Bagger.

Appreciative Inquiry Culture: We Have a Dream

One of Leadership Beyond Limits foundational beliefs is that organizations that are committed to an appreciative inquiry culture are dynamic and resilient.

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is currently revolutionizing the field of organizational development. First articulated by David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva, two professors at Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management, AI is now widely recognized as one of the most practical tools in the rapidly growing discipline of positive change. Why are forward thinking business leaders embracing AI? The results speak for themselves. Here is a sampling of results reported at the recent 2007 International AI conference. See if you agree that these are examples of dynamic and resilient businesses.

Two, four-billion dollar companies used Appreciative Inquiry to create 'a merger of strengths' realizing $75 million in synergies in the first 100 days, and an estimated $300 million in synergy savings in the first year.

A cover story in Forbes told the story of the application of Appreciative Inquiry at one of America's fastest growing Fair Trade premium coffee roasters and their subsequent revenue growth. When the company began using AI as its organizational development approach, stock prices hovered around $18 per share- today, five years later, the stock continues to skyrocket at over $61 per share. (NASDAQ).

A Fortune 500 telephone company used AI to improve union-management relations and to re-write the contract. Estimates place the value of the initiative in the millions of dollars, saving the company thousands of jobs, and securing a stronger competitive positioning in the field.

A large retail grocery chain involved more than 500 front-line employees and managers in the development of customer service innovation projects. Results include 35% higher sales per man-hour ratio and powerful stories of how employees have transferred this experience to their families.

A crippled defense program was over budget, behind schedule, and facing cancellation. Relationships between employees, unions, and customers were at an all-time low. AI approaches were implemented for strategic planning and transformation to a team-based culture. Within five years the program became the 'cash cow' of the largest aerospace company in the world. It won the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award.

AI works so well because it is based on some very powerful principles. The Positive Principle states: The more positive the question, the greater and longer-lasting the change. This is very different from the traditional "problem-solving" approach that is deeply embedded in the American business tradition, where the focus is on fixing what is wrong. The underlying belief is that we already know what is wrong and if we can just "fix" the perceived problem and return to the status quo we will achieve an ideal state.

The idea that we already know what "should be" is itself very limiting. Although he was talking about education when he said it, Enstein's observation rings true for the business "problem solving" approach: "It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry."

Peter Senge put it another way: "We often spend so much time coping with problems along our path that we only have a dim or even inaccurate view of what's really important to us." This leads us to another AI principle, The Anticipatory Principle which states: "Images of the future inspire present day changes." The success stories described above came about because people were invited to pose positive questions about their future. In doing so, they came up with innovative new solutions that would have been impossible to imagine had they taken a problem solving approach.

We intuitively know that dreaming future is more inspirational than planning one. After all, Martin Luther King did not say, "I have a strategic plan." Instead, he shouted, "I have a DREAM! and he inspired a movement. When business leaders encourage employees to ask positive questions about a shared vision of the future, amazing things will happen.