Importance of Conversations for Change

Change formula nicely captures conditions required/necessary for change, viz:

D*V*F>R where D- Dissatisfaction with current state; V- Vision of the future; F-First Steps; R- Resistance to change.

What formula doesn’t seem to capture is ‘how of/process' for change.

‘Inclusion of’ and ‘conversations with’ affected parties are the two how's that seem to be important.

All affected parties/stakeholders need to be involved in change process. 

They need to see ‘need for’ change and be involved in ‘creating solutions’ for change. This involves ‘conversations’ with them.

‘Conversations’ need to invite two way flow of information and peer exchange.

These ‘how's’ form the bedrock of change process.

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Sourav

Role of numbers in driving culture change

A change in culture involves changes both at above and below the iceberg. Changes above the iceberg (measurable) can only hint at changes below the iceberg.  But measuring change is important, as it gives you a hint of what may or mayn’t be happening below the iceberg.

But should you just stop at measurement?

I think measurement needs to be backed up with ‘conversations’ within relevant stakeholders around important processes that characterize culture.

This combination of conversations around important processes that characterize culture, backed up by metrics can be a powerful potion to drive culture change.

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Sourav

Communities!

How does one build a community out of a large group of managers?

 

I am not talking of just setting up a body and asking them to meet in regular intervals. The members must feel they are a part of the community and they are invested in success/failure of community.

 

Well!  Over last few months we took our first steps towards creating a community of managers.

 

We have rallied leaders/managers around a common purpose. So relevance seems to be there.

 

There was high business involvement in creating community. Leaders and managers are actively involved in running community.

 

So basic design elements for a successful community - relevance and business ownership - seem to have been taken care of. This is getting manifested in predictable periodicity- community has determined frequency in which it meets and agenda items for their meetings.

 

 

So what next? What should be imperatives in remaining months?

 

A core managerial/leadership group has been involved in designing and launching the community.  How do we get even more managers invested in success of community? That surely is an upcoming agenda.

 

We have made decent progress in facilitating sessions. 

But I feel facilitator’s needs upskilling in facilitation skills. Additionally discussion need to be more conversational – this will ensure higher peer learning during sessions.. These two surely are focus areas for next few months.

 

I like the term go-dos. It's catchy and it brings in element of transfer of learnings to workplace. We have made go-dos a unit of conversation of this community. 

But how do we know whether these  go-dos are getting done? How do we enable community members to egg each other on in execution of go -dos?  Are go-dos actionable enough?  These are areas we could further look at.

Technology can play a role here. We can create a virtual community space where managers come together and exchange notes at regular intervals (how do we build consensus around frequency?) on progress against and further learnings from go-dos.

 

 

A related thought – manager community is a large group- consisting of around 90 managers.

‘Large group interventions’ is a separate field of study. I am not sure whether this means that I need to do different things for this community or do things differently. That's something I want to explore further too.

 

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Sourav

 

'Conversations' in Work Teams

Last week i started planning 'deep-dive' meetings with work teams. In my previous role, i used to experiment with something similar - 'Branch Visit' meetings is what i used to call them.

I had already completed introduction sessions with these teams. I was wondering how should i structure the upcoming sessions.

Should i ask them to tell me about their positive and negative experiences in this company, and explore how we could have more positive experiences at workplace? This is something which i have explored in my previous role.

But somewhere down in my gut, i felt uneasy about using the above mentioned method. I felt I should explore a different way of conducting these conversations.

I had a few options. I could use the process route - what do you feel about effectiveness of HR processes in your team? I could use the experience route - tell me about positive and negative primary experiences you have had in last 1 year?
I chose neither of the above.

I decided to experiment with something I had hypothezied a few months back. Basis of any effective HR process is 'adequate number of quality conversations'. So today, in my first deep-dive discussion with a 15 member strong work team, we had conversations around:

• What are platforms for conversations (e.g.-One on Ones) that exist between your people manager and you?
• Are these platforms scheduled in adequate frequencies? You have conversations with your people manager in what frequency (once in --- hours/days/months)?
• Do you need more platforms and if yes, what would they be?
• What gets discussed in these current mediums/platforms?

We additionally explored the following questions. In current/envisaged mediums/platforms what would you want to, with your people manager,

• converse more about?
• converse less about?
• start conversing about?
• stop conversing about?

Today's discussion was energezing. I had planned a discussion for 90 minutes. The discussion actually lasted 110 minutes - and even then i had to stop it - the energy of the group just wouldn't ebb.

By the end of the discussion, i had 5 white boards full with data.

The experiment seems to be working. 'Conversations' does seem to be a useful unit of analysis for working on effectiveness of HR processes.

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Sourav