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There’s something in the air tonight.

Heard this expression before? It alludes to something encouraging people to behave in a certain way. It’s not easy to see, although people’s actions give you a clue. And you certainly can feel it.

Well the ‘it’ is the environment – and there are many things that influence the environment at work, which in turn influences people’s openness to being creative. Let me explain.

If we think of creativity as being the act of creating new things, then we would see people being creative when they are:

• Attempting to solve a problem in a different way;
• Looking for new ideas in different places;
• See differences or similarities between two completely random ideas.
• Open to asking naïve and seemingly stupid questions; or simply by
• Taking a risk.

Creating an environment for creativity is a bit like setting up the greenhouse. You create this structure, this environment, so that seedling plants get the sunshine and water that they need as well as protection from harsh environmental conditions. (As illustrated in the image below).

How you feel in any environment will influence how you behave. Let’s have a look at behaviours.

Leadership behaviours

As a leader you want to create an environment where people feel safe to explore different ideas and approaches to solving a problem. In a creative work environment, your team members will be curious, ask lots of questions and seek out new information. They will experiment, with failure being recognised as a learning point from which they capture knowledge and continue with the problem-solving process. Failure should not be seen as fatal. With a need to solve increasingly difficult problems, your team will benefit from an environment where collaboration and continuous learning is the normal way they work.

Team member behaviours

Behaviours that build a great climate for creativity include helping each other, seeking help when you need it and rethinking or reframing a problem so that it can be viewed differently. These behaviours often happen together and are typical of a team working in a collaborative manner. While new ideas can be discovered accidentally most will come out of a process that is intentional and deliberately undertaken.

How challenges stimulate creative thinking

Many things influence the work environment. The nature of work undertaken and the types of challenges faced will reveal areas where creative thinking skills are particularly useful. Facing a problem could be a catalyst for the application of problem-solving skills. Indeed, solving problems is one of the characteristics that often make a job valuable.

Solutions to problems often emerge through discussions with colleagues about the source of the problem and possible ways forward. Challenging problems help your team develop a range of skills, and if they are successful in solving a challenging problem, they receive a wonderful sense of accomplishment.

You’re a role model

As a leader and coach your behaviour is key. Your team will watch you closely and are likely to model your behaviours. If, for example, you track trends, are curious, and spend time exploring different ideas, then your team are likely to copy you. Offering encouragement and resources signals support for new ways of doing things. As a role model, your approach should be to empower rather than to instruct. Always aim to offer support first and advice second.

Autonomy is important for ownership

Giving your team members freedom and autonomy in how they undertake their work is very important for creativity. As a leader, your relationship with your team members and their positive attitudes towards new ways of working is a key influencer on their willingness or openness to exploring new ideas. Resist the urge to meddle or micro-manage in their activities and give praise and feedback to encourage further exploration of an idea. Your goal should be to empower them to make decisions. And listening, of course, is very important too.

Along with autonomy it’s important for you as a leader to remove those things that may limit your team’s capacity to undertake their work. What’s the culture like in your organisation to investing in not-yet-approved ideas? And is there enough time to play with these ideas and for ideas to gestate?

Wrapping it up

If you want to build a work environment where creativity flourishes, think about the conditions essential for new ideas to flourish. These include a safe place where new ideas can be explored without harsh criticism, where there is positive input from others and a cosy, collegial environment. Encourage behaviours such as asking questions, looking for answers in unusual places and taking risks.

If you create the right conditions many new ideas (or plants) will establish stronger roots, before they are exposed to tougher, real world conditions.

References

Wilson, B. & Stanley, T. Creativity Cycling: Help your team solve complex problems with creative tools

Many readers of this blog will have been involved in a change project that failed. If you’ve been around for a while it’s inevitable. Perhaps the project crashed spectacularly, or quietly faded away. The reasons for failure could have been related to a lack of time and resources or a failure to identify the multiple people and processes impacted by the change program, among many others.

From my different conversations when I was writing Change Stories: Success and Failure in changing organisations, I’ve distilled the top ten characteristics of successful change management processes and change leaders’ capability. These include:

• Solid governance framework
• Deep understanding of the organisation’s environment and capacity to absorb the demands of the project
• Good relationship between change manager and client
• Active support of sponsors and opinion leaders
• User involvement in design of new systems and processes
• Detailed stakeholder analyses undertaken
• Tailored communication and engagement activities
• Working closely with other groups including human resources, information technology and process engineering
• Needs-based skills development and
• Coaching of leaders.

A few snippets from the conversations in my book are provided below.

Governance and leadership

If you have a very mature project or program, and you’ve got an engaged management layer or an executive layer, you’ve got to start with governance structures, including a very clearly identified scope, understanding of constraints and risk, and all those various contributing factors that determine the success of a project.  Damien

Leadership involvement and decision making are parts of the governance process. Leaders’ involvement in the change process was frequently mentioned as critical for success.

Having active sponsor helps. I think a lot of problems could have been headed off if we’d engaged the sponsor more. I mean, there’s so much a sponsor can do in a half hour or even 15 minutes. And because of their position, they can open doors. Where change practitioners need to be really clear on is what to ask and knowing that you’ve got 15 minutes once a week. Let the leader know the one thing they could do that would make a profound difference to your ability to do what needs doing next week.     Helen

Understanding culture

Any change manager needs to be able to collect and analyse information that helps them understand the business and culture of that organisation. The larger and more complex the organisation, the more information needs to be collected. When two organisations are merging, you need to double that process when preparing your change management plan.

There are a myriad of cultural considerations involved during a large acquisition.

There were ten countries impacted by the acquisition. So obviously there’s a lot of different cultures and everything because they were an American company. Even though you know there’s going to be cultural differences in each of the locations, both companies understood the corporate culture versus local culture.     Wayne

Engagement is key

Activities designed to win the understanding, and hopefully later, the hearts and minds of those impacted by the change program, constitute an engagement strategy. Change management programs typically start by mapping affected people and groups and identifying how they’re impacted.

People often comment on my stakeholder analysis because I spend time on it. I talk to people such as business analysts and project managers as well as the leaders within the business. I start at the top and at all the meetings I ask every person who else I should talk to. Many change managers don’t talk with all the stakeholders. Within the first few months of being in an organisation I will have spoken to all the key stakeholders in the project.     Lyn

We had a representative sample of impacted groups, who then participated in the specification of the system and we involved employees from the beginning.     Carrie

People are your most imperative part. If you don’t have them on board, you don’t have them aligned, you’re going nowhere. You cannot do it yourself. It’s not possible. I would say that you need to concentrate very heavily on the EQ [Emotional Quotient] on the engagement, making sure people want to do it, they’re excited to do it. That they see the challenge and that they are not daunted by it, but are encouraged.     Nigel

Relationships matter

Trust and a close working relationship between the change manager and their client facilitates ease of access and support for communication and engagement activities. Good relationships with other stakeholders in the organisation are also key.

Being able to build a really strong personal relationship with the people on the assignment, and then your leadership teams, you know that that is key. And I think having a customer, who is ready to also take some risks and experiment. We work a lot with very short feedback loops, so it’s a very design thinking/agile approach. It’s almost an intervention or like an experiment, and that has worked well. And we continuously measure perceptions over the following months.     Kyle

Communication

Communication is so important and is often discussed in the context of leadership and engagement. Change managers can help leaders when conversations are hard.

Conversations are sometimes hard. With an email you get time to think about and answer a difficult question. You don’t always have time to think in a conversation. That’s OK. You won’t always know the answers.  Therese

In summary, the most successful programs operate within an appropriate governance framework so people know how decisions are made and resources accessed. Engagement with key people and groups impacted by the change program will ensure their support. Communication needs to be simple messages, shared frequently through the most credible channels for the intended audience. New ways of working often require new skills, so appropriate programs and coaching sessions need to be included in the change plan. Finally, identify the project metrics that most matter and track these on an ongoing basis.

I’ve recently finished reading Managing Change Step by Step: All you need to build a plan and make it happen by Richard Newton. He made the following observations about successful change plans and managers including:

Appreciating that organisations are complex systems of interdependency.

Predicting, understanding, planning and responding to the ways different people interpret and react to change is the core challenge in managing change.  And that

Selecting a great change manager is pivotal for success. This topic will be explored in greater detail in my next blog.

References

Newton, R. (2007). Managing change step by step: All you need to build a plan and make it happen. Pearson Education.

Stanley, T. (2020). Change Stories: Success and failure in changing organisations. Lightning Source. Melbourne.

When Change Management roles were created

Change management roles emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s from dissatisfaction with top-down driven initiatives and from a recognition of a need for greater focus on the human side of change (Ackerman Anderson 2002). Since then the profession has continued to develop and the change management role become more common. However not all change roles are the same.

Major change in an organisation requires that individuals change. The visible measures that change has happened can be seen in people displaying new behaviours and adhering to new processes and ways of working. Predicting, understanding, planning and responding to the ways different people interpret and react to change is the core challenge (Newton, 2007). The practice of change management leverages the normal mechanisms within an organisation to influence and develop employees through broad activities such as training, communication and sponsorship, and through one-on-one activities such as coaching (Hiatt & Creasey, 2003).

Change management as a full-time or part-time responsibility

Many people in organisations have change management responsibilities as a part of their remit. For others, change management is a full-time role focussed on ensuring the organisation receives the business benefits associated with the future state – whatever that is.

In my book of Change Stories, I wrote a chapter on What a change manager does. It’s important to ask this question as the role varies depending on the scope and challenges of the project and the organisational culture.

Below are a few reflections on the activities of those in full time change management roles.

Keeping a finger on the pulse

As a change manager, my role involves meeting with every single division, some of them every week. There are ongoing conversations and constantly being aware of what’s going on, really unpacking it, really reading people, drawing themes together, and understanding from a program perspective what could be impacting some of those responses or reactions. And then looking at what we can do next.     Fiona

Building the change leadership skills of managers

We’re co-designing and facilitating a change leadership program for 42 managers as one of the ways we’re building enterprise change management capability. We need to support them and build their change leadership. We do self-assessments and coaching sessions to help embed the learning. We’ve set up a change champion network and we get insights from people at the front line. A big thing for us is our data and insights from our people and using these to inform our change approach, or able to elevate them to the right people. We very much position ourselves as coaches and enablers and facilitators, not doers. Being clear on roles and responsibilities is important here.     Leanne

Readiness assessment, communication and training implementation

If organisations want to implement a new application, a new type of software, or change from the current way of working to a new way and using a different system, my role is to make sure that when it’s implemented, the people are ready to work with what’s being implemented without too much disruption. So I’ll communicate with them. I’ll work with the sponsors, I’ll do stakeholder engagement. I’ll look at process changes. I’ll look at organisational changes. I’ll help with the implementation of the training program. I’ll do business benefits management. And I’ll do business readiness, adoption and usage measurement.     Neville

Strategic change, process reengineering and running the PMO

I’ve been involved in change management programs for the last 10 years and usually do strategic change. But my very first job also had IT and business process re-engineering. I’ve met other change managers who basically run project management offices [PMOs].     Ingrid

These comments highlight the diversity of change roles. If you work in change management it would be interesting to know what you spend most of your time doing. 

References

Anderson, D., & Anderson, L. A. (2002). Beyond change management: Advanced strategies for today’s transformational leaders. John Wiley & Sons.

Hiatt, J., & Creasey, T. J. (2003). Change management: The people side of change. Prosci.

Newton, R. (2007). Managing change step by step: All you need to build a plan and make it happen. Pearson Education.

Stanley, T (2020) Change Stores: Success and failure in changing organisations. Lightning Source

I coach people and receive coaching from others. I also have an imaginary coach called Veronica. She looks like this.

Just kidding. Well kind of.

She’s actually the self-talk in my head.

I was inspired by the book Be your own mentor by Shelia Wellington to be my own coach. It reminded me that you don’t need to wait to be helped by someone else, you can help yourself. You can use the power of positive self-talk to help you to sort out how you think and feel about a situation or goal, and to identify what’s holding you back from moving forward.

Self talk: Does it help or hurt us?

Now, there’s a problem with Veronica. She can be invaluable or destructive depending on her mood. I pay attention to what she’s saying to me and pull her up when she has an unhelpful tone to remind her that I need positive support and encouragement.

In this blog I want to chat about how I can train her to help me, and by doing this, to help you. As Jessica Abel says in her book, Growing Gills:  How to find creative focus when you’re drowning in your daily life, you should

speak kindly to yourself in the third person because when you do this you distance yourself from yourself.

Before I describe Veronica’s value, it’s useful to revisit what a coach does.

What does a coach do?

There are different types of coaches. At one end of the spectrum, a coach can say nothing, listening while you speak, perhaps nodding while you describe all the ideas or concerns bouncing around in your head.  It’s like she’s on mute in a zoom call – and there’s no way she’ll interrupt your train of thought. You as the one being coached, get the value from the unloading process.

At the opposite end the coach is more an advisor, issuing specific instructions on next steps you can take once you have described the problem.

In the middle of the range, a coach will ask you questions to help you to :

1. Clarify your objectives for a positive outcome
2. Describe your current situation,
3. Review options for moving forward and
4. Develop a plan of action. 

Veronica can help with quite a few of these activities and will in all likelihood, encourage you to write the responses in a journal. This is a part of her sneaky trick to encourage deeper reflection.

Here are questions Veronica asked me about 2020 and 2021. These questions have been drawn from the questions on Ponderfy cards developed by Lena Ross.

It’s curious that one of the first questions I stumbled across was,

Who is my dream mentor and what would they say to me?

Got me thinking about all the attributes and values I want to imbue on Veronica.

Here are some of the other questions on the cards that gave me context when I was reflecting on my 2020 achievements.

Other questions promoting reflection

• How do I define success and how do I celebrate it?
• What was the moment or moments that I was most proud of?
• Is there something I regret not saying or doing?
• What’s getting in the way of doing something I want to do?

I’d encourage you to write your responses down and revisit them on say a monthly basis.

So Veronica can be helpful – but there’s many things she can’t do.

What can’t an imaginary coach do ?

For example …

Veronica can’t place a comforting arm around your shoulder.

They can’t provide different advice to that which you are capable of identifying yourself.

What other things would you add to the list?

So the wrap…

Helping you to work with your Veronica

• Become more self-aware. If you are engaging in negative self-talk, consciously quiet down the mean voice in your head.
• Swap roles and recognised the value in talking to yourself in the third person
• Spend more time identifying what success looks like for you and what are the conditions for you to be happy.
• Pay more attention to how you feel and think

References

Be your own mentor by Sheila Wellington

Ponderfy cards

Growing Gills: How to find creative focus when you’re drowning in the daily life

There was rapturous applause. There were standing ovations.  We sold all our books. Well not exactly. But it was a very convivial evening with wine and reminiscing over travel stories from a time BC, i.e. before COVID-19.

Allow me to elaborate.

Last night Les and I delivered the first of what we hope will be many presentations about the cycling trip I undertook, and Les observed from afar to Thailand and Myanmar in January and February this year.

We’d chosen to present the Soft Nut Story to our neighbours in Aurora Tower in Brisbane. It’s always easier when you know the audience and can be guaranteed a smile from my Mum sitting in the front row.

I shared a few photos and a video about the trip.

Our rollout continues with a book signing at New Farm Editions Saturday 14 November from 10:00 – 2:00pm.   They are located at Merthyr Village Shopping Centre, 84 Merthyr road.  If you’re in the area, pop by to say hi.

And I’ve posted a few snippets from the book on the website Crazy guy on a bike.

Fingers crossed we’ll all be travelling again soon now a vaccine has been developed.

We typically want to work for an organisation with a great culture. We also choose to stay longer with organisations that facilitate learning and help bring out our best.

Many organisations want to enhance their organisational culture so that creativity and innovation flourish. For some organisations this is a huge change, while for others, reinforcing behaviours or processes and systems are needed. In this blog I’ll chat about steps you can take to change the culture of your organisation

In related news, I’ve recently published a book, Change Stories: Success and failure in changing organisations. This book describes a myriad of ways to facilitate change in an organisation including stories covering mergers, acquisitions, new systems and cultural change which is the focus of this blog.

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