1. Organizational Culture

Imagine a day when your leader announces a major change to take place on Monday. You had no prior knowledge, you received no further detail, you had not been involved in the discussions and decisions leading up to this moment. The desired outcome and indicators of success have not been mentioned. You have no access to the reasons why the change is happening, nor what will be required of you. Due to this reality, it is likely your confidence levels would decrease when it comes to leading others through the change.

Organizational Culture can be a great source of resistance if this description typifies the way a company operates, and seems beyond the sphere of influence of middle managers.

2. Lack of Awareness and Knowledge about the Change

Adults are babies in big bodies. We know that a child will always ask ‘why’; so too an adult, as this provides the reasons for the need to change and also the consequences of not changing. Through receiving that information, a middle manager would also understand more about the nature of the change. Yet, even with Awareness (the ‘why’ of change), there is still a need for greater depth to Knowledge (the ‘how to’ of change). 

• Imagine a Chef who has been told to change the pie menu, yet not given the recipe nor an understanding of why the prior item is ‘off the menu’.
• Imagine an Accountant who has been informed by the CFO the accounting system is currently outdated and must change, yet provided no insights into its failings and what is required to close the gaps.
• Imagine the IT Officer’s app has just been scrapped, with no reasons being shared, and no idea or direction as to how to evolve to a higher standard.
• Imagine the HR Officer receiving a directive to change the company’s uniform with no understanding of the what, why or new priorities.

The ‘why’ and ‘how to’ of change is imperative for a middle manager as it will fill in the blanks, opening the pathway to clarity, and further action.

Lack of Buy-In

We’re back to middle managers being real people, with real human needs first and foremost. You are a real person too, and consciously or unconsciously filter any change requests through your values, opinions, background experiences, history and credibility of the sender, and the list goes on. When something does not align to your realm of reality, why would you accept to adopt any change?

A middle manager is almost superhuman, stuck between those above (often out of touch with what’s really happening on the ground) and those below (who depend heavily on the one closest to them for support). Being there for both parties is a balancing act for any middle manager – how long could you continue to serve all those around you, compromising the very core of what matters most to yourself? 

Many moons ago, my mentor taught me to behold resistance, grab it and serve it; after all, it is only showing up to be heard. It simply wants attention, answers and opportunity for  alignment. 

If you lead a middle manager:

• Anticipate, and provide for the needs of the manager during change, before resistance shows up.
• Provide the what, why and how of change, so the puzzle is as complete as possible. 
• Allow time for the manager to process and explore the WIFM (What’s In It For Me) factor.
• Walk alongside the middle manager during change, providing consistent and relevant support.

The post The Top Three Reasons why Middle Managers struggle with Change @ Work appeared first on business en motion.

Refreshingly-retro or adaptively-now? We say ‘both’.  Engaging intention or intriguingly-impactful? We say ‘both’.  

The Leadership Challenge® Suite leads in so many ways, through equally as many channels. Workshops are just one of many – what! In 2022, still a workshop! Oh yes indeed, workshops with a difference; we keep them relevant for today’s 70-20-10 learning rule.

Imagine the difference in ‘adaptively-now’, ‘intriguingly-impactful’ workshops. Embedding the 20 into the workshop suite, the social learning, the social media, the social experience, the social communities, the social support groups, the social networking, alongside the 70 of experiential reality, team and relationship application and solution-making makes for a winning combo in 2022.

The Leadership Challenge® Workshop, facilitated by Certified Master, Debbie Nicol

• astoundingly simple to apply the practices and behaviors
• meet yourself from where you are
• data-driven information steers your decisions
• highly dynamic and interactive, online or face-to-face  

The Leadership Challenge® Facilitator Workshop, facilitated by Certified Master, Debbie Nicol

• co-creating resources and pathways that suit differing needs
• find yourself in the methodology, while becoming the methodology
• emerge ‘with title’, while understanding the responsibility you now carry
• create the future with others; digitalize the experience 

The LPI® Coach Training Workshop, facilitated by Certified Master, Debbie Nicol

• short, sharp, indisputable results
• correlations for depth
• a toolbox for coaching

Be the change that keeps workshops (in any format, in any structure, using any mode) alive, dynamic and relevant. Is that your challenge – your leadership challenge?

The post Refreshingly-retro or adaptively-now? appeared first on business en motion.

Have you ever…

• Had a conference participant unable to write key points on a chart during a meeting?
  • We have!
    • He had not physically written for many years; keyboard strokes are the only language he ‘speaks’ right now.
• Had a person convince you to employ them through providing a business case, with an invitation to you to mold it as desired?
  • We have!
    • They knew exactly how their portfolio of skills would benefit as a step to their next accomplishment
• Spent time with a mind you don’t understand initially, only to discover it has a super-power that would bring such value to existing resources?
  • We have!
    • We continue to seek more perspectives as an avenue to open our own mind wider.

 …..and that’s why we surround ourselves with this new generation. We learn so much from them! As we move businesses and leaders ahead through change, they equally lead us, ourselves, through change. This allows us to co-create, fully, together, alongside difference.

•  Who are you surrounding yourself with currently?

• Who else would you like to be surrounded by?
• How will you attract that into your business ecosystem?

The post Surprize will no longer surprize! appeared first on business en motion.

The all-time classic song from Simon and Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Waters, is likely to feel like a corporate ‘achilles heel’ snapping. Business consortia, owners and teams face unlimited challenges in the path of COVID-19 destruction: diminished demands for previously sought-after products, a lack of essential resources due to a challenged supply chain, a lack of market confidence in the future, essential restructuring and downsizing, restricted social contact to name but a few.

As a consequence, some businesses are simply shutting doors, all but given up hope. Then there’s a rare few which are flying high on the unintentional yet rather fortuitous business proposition COVID afforded to them; take for example those who refit hospitals back into an original hotel state, those who provide elearning infrastructures or those who create retail plastic shields. The bulk of business however is willing to make change, yet are perplexed as to where to start for adaptation in order to survive.

To ‘pivot’ is to twist, turn or even toss in a confined space to result in differing outcomes. Pivoting works with what exists in order to manipulate and maximize. COVID-19 has given business little room to squirm yet much opportunity to pivot. When doing so, the following are key to actions and decisions.

1. COVID-19 has taken business to the edge, the exact space we all need to be, a space the future has been demanding of us for some time yet many feared to go. Picture yourself in a precarious situation, clinging to a cliff face that towers over a deep canyon; it’s here where only two choices exist: do or die. And once you’ve chosen ‘do, any and all action will be powered by urgency, focus and precision. COVID-19 has dragged us all from the plateau of business comfort, that dangerous place with the luxury of time, multiple attempts and unlimited resources. 2020 is no longer a dress rehearsal.
2. This space is a great place to ensure you separate the business issue from the cause of that issue; one is reality and the other generated or revealed the reality. Are you focusing on the issue of portfolio relevancy or the market’s restricted movement, the issue of antiquated systems or the downturn in business, the issue of market opportunity or lack of consumer confidence? This does not have to be a long, drawn-out process yet clarity is vital to allow the result of your plan to serve your pivot point. If an arrow shot from a bow knocks down the haystack, is it the fault of the arrow, or the inefficiency of the haystack’s design? What matters today, right here right now?
3. What do the people who interact with your business need? What’s hidden deep within the capability of your business that might address that? What do you have that can be repurposed, repackaged and introduced to attract attention? What consequences will that attract? Ensure your pivot works with what exists, and the externaI environment is one not to be forgotten or marginalized. If your pivot does not increase demand, you likely repurposed out of alignment with the environment. If there’s no change of behavior within the organization, it’s likely you weren’t surrendering to the new norm. Both simply equate to footsteps on that cliff face creating loose rubble under your feet, a sobering thought indeed.
4. Isolated, all-encompassing expertise was always an illusion in business. Partnerships are vital to enhance your surrounding environment with missing resources or capability. Yet, there’s no room for misaligned or unbalanced reactive partnerships; those will neither sustain nor serve. True business partnerships are so in sync they almost defy the reality of difference while transcending all barriers. The commitment to shared beliefs and goals is so strong that ‘we’ overrides the focus of ‘me’. The more that’s known about partners, the more relationships and business results can prosper. Yet is there time for that now?

Challenge is the crucible of true business leaders. Just as Hans Akerblom, creator of Healon®, the substance that is used even today in cataract surgery, hit his challenge many years ago when the one vital element for a global supply had only one source, that being the one last centimeter of a chicken quill which separates the chicken body’s flesh from the bulk of chicken feathers. Urgency, focus and precision carried Hans to success, a feat which millions of people around the world celebrate even til today.

Crises such as COVID-19 have us all coming face to face with ourselves. We will never be immune to crises in business, and neither should we approach them with an air of invincibility. Rather, as Debbie Nicol, managing director of ‘business en motion’ demonstrates, when a structured thinking and development process is applied to an evolving set of non-negotiables for today’s changing world, struggling business will create a customized option for a pivoted business future. No longer shall the rough waters be troubled but rather rippled from essential adaptation.

Dubai-based business en motion’ moves businesses and leaders ahead through change. It offers business consultancy, learning and coaching services to reconnect people, priorities and results.

The post Bridge Over Troubled Waters appeared first on business en motion.

introduction

Robin Sharma wrote a best-selling book called The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. It famously suggested that whatever ceases to serve our desired outcomes should be removed from our lives. More often than not, coaching unearths deeply-ensconced beliefs or behaviours which no longer serve the positive development of self and others; these can be found in everyone, no less senior corporate executives. Yet often, senior executives often resist the opportunity of digging deep with a new lens and ‘letting go’; why could this be so?

when will enough be enough?

What will be the impetus for an executive to discover coaching? Unfortunately statistics show that the majority of leadership training is delivered when most recipients are in their mid-late forties; not a timely intervention at all! Similarly, why do we wait to feel the heat before we need to change, such as having a heart attack to awaken a healthy lifestyle, the loss of job to alert us to a leadership need or an accident to prioritize work-life balance.

Moving into the unknown can be risky, yet what’s more riskier than staying in a non-serving situation? Why not plan to mitigate risk before it hits!

responsibility vs entitlement

Previously a title guaranteed leaders a following – that was yesterday’s myth! Today’s senior executives are as vulnerable, if not more so, than the majority of the workforce; vulnerable to external influences that previously stayed under the radar.

Working with entitlement suggests something is owed, a ‘given’ or a ‘right’. Working from a space of responsibility suggests we must earn that right through dedication, commitment and focus. That at times can be hard work, and we don’t know what we don’t know!

vulnerability

When we are vulnerable, nothing can be hidden; all is exposed! Willingly making oneself vulnerable is a leadership trait, allowing our actions and behaviours to be spotlighted. A mirror does not lie! How often do senior executives use the term accountability, yet how often are we accountable to ourself for ourself? Could the challenges of others be a bi-product of our own?

Senior executives are often heard asking: Why should I pay all this money for people’s development when they simply leave after it? Effective assistants are often heard replying: And what will happen if we don’t pay for that and they choose to stay? Coaching is a choice, a personal commitment and a priority to development. Life can indeed go on without it, yet what opportunities may be passing you by?

The post The essence of coaching appeared first on business en motion.

introduction

The words ‘our world is flatbread’ stood clearly and proudly on the façade of the shop, clarifying to all passing footfall what purpose the business served. The words left absolutely no doubt in my mind what their core business was, who it would serve and why they were doing that business activity. The slogan most certainly reinforced the motto ‘less is more’, clearly communicating their all-important message in four easy words.

Wearing my business consultancy hat, this precise positioning stopped me in my tracks. I wanted to jump up and down and shout from the rooftops ‘see, business doesn’t have to be difficult’, but instead I took one easy snapshot with my ever-ready phone camera. This was bound to become an example I could use time and time and time again, in so many parts of the planning process, be that the vision, the purpose, the positioning statement, the competitor analysis or many others. I could see additional creations in my mind’s eye; our world is comedy, our space is paper, our niche is based on apples, our future is twisted rope; and then, with one forward movement of my feet, my excitement plummeted quickly to despair.

I had walked inside and whilst becoming absorbed in the variety of flatbread concoctions displayed in mouth-watering, full-colour photographs, becoming one of those sandwiches myself, the biggest photo of all jumped out at me, obliterating the flatbread wonderland I was immersed in!. My eyes had fallen on the biggest, clearest and most prominently-placed photo of them all; a whoppingly-wide slice of carrot cake, with the thickest icing layer I’ve ever set eyes on! Is it any wonder my world fell apart? From a world of health, freshness and nourishment, one photograph transported me to a world of calories, sweetness and that ‘over-full’ feeling; worse still, it had taken me out of business clarity into business confusion. Thoughts invaded my peace: ‘but how could they do this to flatbread’, ‘are they truly in love with health food’, ‘real or fake business positioning’, level of transparency?

The rest, as they say, is history; what questions are triggered from this business example?

• What world does your business operate in?
• Which specific part of that world is your expertise?
• What positioning statement communicates your unique business proposition?
• Does the positioning statement help or hinder the business?
• How is your positioning statement maximized in your business?

Debbie Nicol, the managing director of Dubai-based ‘business en motion’, is a consultant working with strategic change, leadership and organisational development. Her motto ‘moving businesses and leaders ahead’

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