The Importance of Rituals.

Royalist or not, you can’t deny that the marriage of William and Catherine has evoked a really strong reaction! (This will be clear to readers in the UK, - what about the rest of you?) It seems for most people, that the reaction has been hugely positive (although I accept that viewing events through the eyes of the media probably means we only see one side!) I was struck by the numbers of people who chose to spend their day off standing for hours on an unforgiving pavement in London on the promise of a fleeting glimpse of a couple of strangers pulled down a road in a horse-drawn carriage!  Why?!

Ritual and tradition  prevails in all societies throughout the world. It happens in families: in mine, we’ve just been through our annual Easter egg hunt… again!  I’m confident that my twelve and seventeen year-olds have outgrown the Easter Bunny, but it’s still an important part of family life! It happens with football fans: the chants, the songs the rivalries. It happens everywhere.

So what about the rituals and traditions that provide unity and commonality in businesses and other organisations? They are there, and they can be a powerful force for good… or for bad.

•       The Christmas party
•       The annual bonus
•       The Friday after-work drink
•       The fund-raising event 
•        The jokes at the expense of the sales team, or HR or Finance
•       The quarterly presentation from the boss
•       The morning coffee break

Some of these rituals are big and inescapable; some are so much the norm, so much part of the culture that we don’t even notice we’re engaging in them! – But they are powerful!

So some questions:

What are the traditions & rituals that characterise your workplace?

Firstly, look at those that have been deliberately created. Are they creating the positive outcomes that were intended? …. Really?  Most times there is a balance – some positive outcomes, but some resentments or annoyances. What could you do to add to the positives and minimise the negatives so that an OK process becomes something fantastic?!

Secondly, what about the traditions and rituals that are just there? These are likely to provide the most accurate reflection of the culture of your organisation. Are they a force of organisational health? Are they pertinent to the current environment? Or do they reflect a situation that existed ten years ago and therefore hold you back?

Do your traditions and rituals have the same positive impact on everyone? What about the groups who feel marginalised by them like the anti-royalists who view the Royal wedding as illustrating nothing more than extravagance in inequality? What could you do to ensure inclusivity?

Rituals are often artefacts of culture so they could use some examination. Making sure that they support the aspirations of your organisation can provide a much more powerful energiser for change that twenty carefully crafted policy documents!

What's your excuse?

This is a bit different.  Powerful & challenging.

Thanks to Neil Cocker   for bringing it to my attention and to Sean Mullens for the artistry.



BIRTHRIGHT from Sean Mullens on Vimeo.

So, now for the challenge:

What is it that's stopping you from doing that thing which you know is of crucial importance to you?

What is the dreadful disability that superimposes "Can't DO" in big bold letters over our aspiration?

Whether it be something in our personal life, or a fundamental belief that there's a better way of doing things at work, most of us are great at expending loads of energy finding reasons not to take the risk!

Our global economic and environmental conditions are screaming out for us to find new ways, radical approaches, different outcomes.  I don't believe we're short of creative ideas and innovative delivery - but we do seem short of the courage to do what really matters to us.

Any thoughts?

Lessons in Leading Change from the Dancing Man

I came across this clip whilst researching for a team-building event for a new client. Take a look it, it’s just short of four minutes long but please don‘t try to take a short-cut, watch to the end!

To me, this presents a great metaphor for the leadership of change and I’d like to offer the following thoughts to those of you who are working hard to create excitement and momentum for change:

1.  If you’re really committed to achieving your change goal, go for it big-time! A bit of self conscious hand jiving just won’t do, - you have to get stripped down and put your soul into it! We don’t know if the dancing man felt embarrassed, but he certainly didn’t show it! Note too, that you don’t have to be a fantastic dancer – but you do have to commit, - and to show everyone just what great fun dancing is!
   
2. Don’t intellectualise too much. I don’t suppose the dancing man crafted a compelling PowerPoint explaining the features and benefits of dancing. Nor did he commit too much time to persuading others to join in (he tried but it didn't work too well!). Yes, talking and explaining is good – but active demonstration is much more powerful!
3. Find the right dance-floor.  Yes, you want to be visable so you can have an impact, but dancing all over someone else's picnic is not going to make you many friends!
   
4. Don’t give up. I suspect most of us, if we had been brave enough to start dancing on our own, would have given up after thirty seconds or so. It takes a long time for someone to grow the courage and enthusiasm to join in. While you’re dancing, and while you’re showing your commitment and enthusiasm is not easily damaged, you’re building up ‘trust-credits’, you’re showing yourself as the sort of person who it’s safe and good to follow.
   
5. Make a big fuss of your early adopters! “Wow! You are the best dancer ever! So tasteful! So classy! You are so much better at it than me!” Allow your new-comer to enjoy the experience on their own terms and don’t try to control them too much. This is often difficult for a ‘change leader’. After all, it’s been your dance for so long it’s only natural you will want to show people how to do it and make sure they do it in the way you’ve been dreaming about for such a long time. Sustainable change needs to be organic. As soon as someone joins in it stops being ‘yours’ and starts being ‘ours’. Welcome the new creativity and energy and if you hadn’t envisaged handstands? – well get over it! Of course in practice there will need to be some rules but try and keep these to a minimum early on emphasising values and commitment instead.
   
6. Don’t let up. It’s a great feeling when one turns into three and three turns into six but remember that these early adopters will probably not have the commitment or staying power that you have demonstrated. A less experienced dancing man might have stood back with delight and pride, taken a well earned rest….. and watched the support disappear! Notice the successes but be aware that change takes time to bed in. Others will not be as resilient as you have been. They need your inspiration and example, they need to see that you are just as committed to the change and just as passionate as you always were.
   
7. Finally, can you imagine how our dancing man felt at the end of the sequence? That’s going to be you someday – maybe sooner than you think!

Making a difference - and getting on with it!

For a couple of years I've been wanting to find a way of making a difference in Africa in relation to poverty, social or economic exclusion. This was given more immediacy by the fantastic "Wales to Africa" programme conceived and run by the Welsh Assembly Government.  I really wanted to take the opportunity to take a short secondment and spend some time supporting an African development project.  But it didn't happen, the time was never right with work and family commitments, - it would have been a selfish thing to do.

Since then, I've become more aware of other opportunities to help, notably micro-finance loans which support entrepreneurs to create their own wealth and to find sustained growth for families and communities.

For the last 2 years I've had the web address for Kiva, an American micro-finance charity. For the last 2 years, I've been waiting for the time when work is secure, when the business is established, when...... when..... when the time is right to make an investment.

This last weekend I looked back at my last blog entry:  Whilst it's rarely the perfect time, it's rarely the wrong time either.  I might want to commit huge sums of cash to support a vision, but what's wrong with starting with a few quid.

I believe that whatever you do, it has an effect.  The same does not apply to dreaming about doing something!

So, I've taken some action.  Now I need to make sure that people know about it.  Lets see what we have to do to create some momentum!

I have taken the decision to:

• support female entrepreneurs - because I believe that women remain systematically disempowered
• support groups - because I believe that communities offer support and sustainability

What should I do to get others involved?

The key to achieving change

"The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The next best time is today" Lao Tse

Organisations seem to spend weeks, months, years planning change.

Here in Wales, our government has spent at least 18 months preparing to levy a charge on the purchase of single-use plastic carrier bags and has just announced that it will implement in 9 months.  I applaud the initiative, but I'm pretty confident that we have to get much much quicker at implementing change. Whether we're thinking environmentally or economically, we just don't have the luxury of time anymore!

OK, I accept that some things need very detailed programme and project management.  Big IT systems being the obvious example (although isn't it well evidenced that nine out of ten of these projects fail to deliver their intended outcomes despite all the planning?) I suppose I'm thinking of initiatives designed to change behaviour - whether it's re-using plastic bags or the subtleties of behaviour that accumulate to form an organisation's culture.

My 'Top Tip' for behaviour change is as follows:

The way to create change is to do something different

-Well there it is - 'bit obvious really!

"Do something different" is not the same as "talk about Change" (although talking is good too).  It's not the same as "write a strategy" or "produce a Managing Change procedure". Do something different means just that, - actually do something, - and do it as publicly as possible.

If you're the boss of a small or medium sized organisation, just doing stuff yourself might be enough.  People will notice, they will use you as an example of how to behave and your 'Do' you do will start to cascade through your organisation. (But do whatever you're doing consistently and genuinely, if you mess up just once, it will be noticed).

If you run a larger organisation, you might need to brief others to do the change too. The key influencers, whether they be your management team, the receptionist or that guy who's always there whenever there's a group of people having fun are your allies. You don't need to ask them to persuade others though, - just get them to do the Do.

If you're not the Big Boss and have less exposure, you might want to be a little more sneaky. Create a little 'geurrilla movement' of doers and get them to create little pockets of 'Do' around the place.  It takes a little longer but if you're doing 'Good Do' others will catch on.

Most of us seem to have this resistance to Do.  Is it just inertia, or perhaps it's learnt behaviour, - we've become defeated or found that stepping up is quite dangerous.

I find myself in a place where, as my own boss, I can do just about whatever I want. Yet I have a list of great things I want to do that has been hanging around for a year or more. Why haven't I got on with it?  The time will never be perfect, but does it need to be perfect?

(I've been thinking about writing this post for a couple of weeks now, but it didn't get any closer to becoming reality until I started typing!)

Next time I get a spare half hour (which will be over the next few days) I'm going to Do something on that list. The Do may not be perfect, it may not be as big as I really want, but 'behaviour breeds behaviour', so if I Do something, other Dos will follow!

What about Followership?

In the UK we’ve been focussing obsessively on Leadership for the last couple of weeks. But there’s no leader without a follower and as, in relation to the UK political environment, most of us have little option but to put ourselves in the ‘follower’ camp perhaps it would be worth thinking about followership for a while.

Followership in not as sexy as leadership of course, so there are not so many academics working on it and no bookshelves groaning under the weight of Followership hardbacks. However I will refer to Barbara Kellerman's "How Followers Are Creating Change and Changing Leaders"

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Followership-Followers-Creating-Changing-Leadership/dp/1422103684/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1274101028&sr=8-1

Kellerman identifies 5 types of follower :

Isolates – these are people who care little for their leaders and will rarely respond to them regardless of who they are. These people tend to keep a low profile, they want to stay out of the way and just get on with their job without ‘interference from above’.

Bystanders on the other hand are the sorts of people who will offer little support to any leader. They will follow passively and really just observe things from the side lines, rarely getting involved in very much. They differ from isolates in that they tend not to hide from being led or managed nor do they resent it like the isolates can do.

Participants do care about the organisation and do usually want to make an impact. If they agree with the leader they will actively support them, however if they think that the leader is wrong they will actively oppose them, sometimes behind their backs.

Activists have strong beliefs both about the organisation and their leaders. They will actively engage depending on how they see both. If they like what they see they will engage and help create even better conditions. If they don’t they will actively try to get rid of the leader.

Diehards have the highest level of engagement in the organisation and with the leaders and have high passions. If the leader is going (in their opinion) in the right direction they will dedicate all to them and become a disciple. If they think that a leader needs some help to develop they will engage with them, however if they think that the leader is destructive they will set out to destroy the leader.

In the Political context, it’s interesting to speculate what kind of follower is most valuable. Ordinarily we value the highest level of engagement, - but these people come with their challenges. I suspect a government would be pretty satisfied to have most of us Isolates and Bystanders – so long of course there are sufficient more engaged followers to actually get something done!

What politics does do is polarise thinking. Those of us who are a bit more engaged will either love what’s happening in the UK or hate it, - not too many half measures! That strength of feeling brings its own risks. If we enthusiastically follow, delivering on any expectation without questioning or challenging, are we not simply abdicating our responsibility to the society in which we live? On the other hand, if our venom for the Coalition is unchecked, are we denying any opportunity for change? If we assume the worst, we create the worst!

A truly great follower treads a middle ground. We challenge, suggest, remind, nudge, - learning and using the skills of managing upwards as we do.

But we also have to swallow hard sometimes and just give it a go!