Managing Evolutionary Change

by Judy Ryan

“The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” — Albert Einstein
“Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” — Rob Siltanen

From senior leaders to front-line staff, we ensure all employees complete a process of culture transformation together, in order to become personally responsible and share in the growth, development, and agility of your business. Each learns to manage his or her own relationships, productivity, engagement, and purpose, values and visions, including how to implement all the goals and procedures needed to successfully achieve them. This is awe-inspiring to witness; like seeing a dramatic before-and-after photo of an obese person grow thin.

Resistance
For some, there is strong resistance to picking up responsibility to this degree; a consequence of centuries of control methods, used to get compliant behavior from people, that undercuts internal motivation and full engagement. Changing this is as radical as my recent switch to a ketogenic diet, in which I replaced a life-long habit of burning carbs for energy, to burning fat for energy instead. Similarly, the shift from a conventional to a responsibility-based culture model based on self-governance, values, and task ownership, can feel foreign and overwhelming at first.

It’s always a question of value
When we make any significant change in our lives and work, spending time, and money, one factor is crucial to this choice: the value we place on what we invest in. For example, if I don’t understand the value of my health or the consequences (short and long-term) for whether I maintain it well (or not), I won’t commit to adopting practices needed to gain and maintain excellent health. Most people don’t value something until they either recognize its positive consequences, or lose it.

The value of a responsibility-based workplace is that leaders create other leaders at all levels; teaching people to fish, instead of feeding them fish. This eliminates enormous amounts of stress, the imbalance of the all-too-common 20/80 rule, burnout, disengagement, and many other negative effects that cost on every level of your business. In this new model, no one does for another person what they are capable of learning and then doing for themselves. Today’s complexity, advanced technologies, globalization, diversity, and challenge require we grow in responsibility and agility to carry our future and our progress together as a whole community.

Fast food approach or new systems
Culture improvement, like improvements to our physical body, are either approached from a cheap, fast food, silver bullet mindset and behaviors, or focus on correcting underlying systems to instill professional behaviors that bring about lasting success. Are your people sharing responsibility for managing emotional and social intelligence and directly supporting creation of the agile systems you need? Are they responding well to what’s coming next, your customer’s evolving needs and where the health of your business must shift to remain high performing and profitable?

Changing the status quo
You have hired people who don’t always act the way you want, and many will continue to be exhausted and burnt out by working too hard or by shutting down and being mediocre. The signs of this are everywhere. You can make it a long time without changing, just as people can live on a bad diet or alcohol or smoking for a long time until the effects catch up. But they DO catch up. Here is the daunting task…How do you train, instill and create an engaged workforce process across a large group of people? If you want this to ensure a profitable and highly successful business, let’s talk. I am happy to share the incredible positive and life-altering changes I’ve witnessed when a responsibility-based workplace culture framework has been fully adopted.

Judy Ryan (judy@LifeworkSystems.com), human systems specialist, is owner of LifeWork Systems. Join her in her mission to create a world in which all people love their lives. She can also be reached at 314-239-4727.
People hire LifeWork Systems because we help businesses become agile and manage their priority system: their human system. I hope this article helps you make sense of what’s most crucial to your evolving organization!