In with both feet!

Last Week...

The change team has got off to a rather more chaotic start than the classic change theories I have studied would probably recommend.

No consultant-led off-site, for us, no space and time for us to develop our strategy around key strategic goals. To date, only one of the change team has wriggled free of the day jobs from which we have been plucked, and our first and only goal from the leadership team is aimed not at the future, but rooted squarely in the here and now of our current crisis.

But perhaps this was to be expected, and could it yet prove to be our secret ingredient? After all, how many change teams before us have tossed the realities of delivering the day-to-day business aside, in favour of pursuing high ideals, only to fail precisely because they couldn't reconnect with those realities?

My change-baptism came in a hastily convened workshop to thrash through the greatest challenge facing this years business plan. The optimist in me sees this as an opportunity to generate the sort of immediate credibility that most off-line strategic teams could only dream of in an operational business like ours. The rather less optimistic side of my nature has identified countless opportunities to gain nothing, and even worse lose whatever credibility each of us is carrying into the team. How will we be viewed by those we have been asked to assist, as knights on white chargers or as a threat to reputations and careers? And given the magnitude of the challenge, could we break all records for the time taken for members of a new team to have their reputations dashed on the rocks of the unrealistic hopes and aspirations of their leaders?

On a personal level, this was my first real opportunity to work with the leader of the change team. What impression did I leave? Was it the impression I wanted to leave? What was he expecting from me, and was it what he got? These questions may take a while to answer, but what I am certain of is that I was absolutely myself, and if we're going to be successful it will be working with one another's styles rather than changing to suit the leader's style that will ultimately bring us success. As They Might be Giants wisely observed "There's only one thing that I know how to do well, and I've often been told that you only can do what you know how to do well and that's be you, be like yourself, be what you're like..." (they then went on to say that they'd rather be whistling in the dark, which makes rather less sense)

This Week...

A second workshop has been organised, to continue to explore what opportunities exist to rescue this years business plan from the train-wreck that is the current forecast expenditure. The following week will mark the half-way point in the financial year, so it is to be hoped that our second get-together comes somewhere close to generating a coherent plan, or we will have failed before we start.

I have my own plan, which I've set out on slides and it's ready to deliver to the leadership team. But, should I put them on the table? I haven't been asked to do them, and feel that I might run the risk of threatening the change leader's authority by inferring that he is acting too slowly? This, then is my question of the week...

Should I present my new manager with an unsolicited draft of a presentation containing my proposals to our first challenge as a team, or wait to see how he approaches it first?


Thanks for tuning in, see you next week


TheChangeBlogger