"Before you become a leader, success is all about growing yourself. After you become a leader, success is about growing others." ― Jack Welch, CEO of General Electric
ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT CONSULTING
It is well established among the leading strategy and organizational development consulting companies in the world that the the level of complexity and the rate of change that organizations face is beyond the capabilities of most of the people managing these organizations.
To survive and even thrive in today's increasingly VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) environment, all of us - and in particular organizational leaders - need to increase mental, emotional and behavioral agility and strengthen our capacity to constantly learn and adapt on individual, team and organizational levels.
In our consulting work we distinguish at least four form of complexity that organizational leaders face:
(1) Engineering complexity
(2) Social complexity
(3) Systemic complexity
(4) Dynamic complexity
We help our clients develop the capacity to see themselves as a system, which is in turn nested in the larger systems of relationships, teams, departments and the organization as a whole. Our work generally includes an integration of:
- Culture change
- Skills training
- Mindset shifts
- Systems redesign
Naturally our approach depends upon the unique needs of each specific organization that engages with us.
There is a wide range of interventions that we've done in the past. Here are two examples of components that might be included in the overall design of an organizational change initiative:
(A) Overcoming Immunity to Change
Effective mobilization of an organization towards a new and different future doesn't generally happen without attention towards the counter-forces to change in the organization.
Overcoming Immunity to Change is a methodology for working with those chronic situations in which we say we are committed to something, but our progress towards that commitment is slow or even non-existent because our behavior is in conflict with our stated commitment.
Based on the book of the same name by Robert Kegan of Harvard; this body of work can be done with any intact team or organization from as few as six to as large as two hundred people. We have also found it to be a powerful approach for coaching individuals.
This work includes capacity development around managing organizational agreements, working with conflict, and helping teams achieve and maintain a state of productive flow.
Integrated into a larger consulting process, this work can help to create the alignment - both within individuals and between team members - that is necessary for powerful and effective action to create new and upgraded results.
(B) The VIEW Leadership Process
With the VIEW Leadership Process we help organizations foster deeper collective maturity and greater developmental sophistication along five key dimensions of team functioning:
(1) Trust
(2) Conflict
(3) Commitment
(4) Accountability
(5) Attention to Results
This process, partially based on the work of Patrick Lencioni, is suitable for any intact team that is struggling to function at a high level of effectiveness.
A notable highlight of this process is learning how to help teams manage their time, energy and attention in ways that maximize productive conflict while minimizing unproductive conflict.