WHY SHOULD WE CHANGE?

Why Should We Change?

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. Harold R. McAlindon (also attributed to Emerson and others).
 
I am working this week with a very large global on change. They want faster change, and a more imbedded culture that is adaptable to change and creativity. Not an easy ask. A much harder implementation and making it sustainable- Years? 

We all know the pace of change has never been this fast before and now I must tell you will never be this slow again and resistance to change is a dead-end street.

In my experience, that resistance to change, coupled with short-term thinking is killing modern business. I have seen so many strategy documents produced that are not worth the paper they are written on. 

Yes - we need to be adaptable, but adaptable and flexible in a controlled fashion are very different to knee jerk decision making. Strategies that build forward from where you are now to an aspirational Ideal future are fundamentally flawed. 

Why -because you can only build strategies back from the future. This focuses actions on the typically ignored major business problem- Escalating commitments to a failing course of action. Most companies compare their current business position to their aspirational ideal final solution (IFS)- establish the gap- and try to streamline for efficiency, their existing commitments, obstacles, immunities, structures, assets, systems, resources and people to that IFS or build on their existing processes and structures.-bad thinking.

The only way to survive is to reshape your business and organisation back from that IFS now and this means a brutal examination of all existing commitments, obstacles, immunities, structures, assets, systems, resources and people. 

After that forensic examination we must dump now, even if it is profitable, anything that will get in the way of the change you seek

This week in our workshops we will be Surfing and Exploiting the Sigmoid Curve (S-curve) – a programme that I developed afters years of trying to help Companies change. It is build upon an interactive TDNA Model ©.

 I have noted how successful individuals and organisations are self-reflective and constantly monitor their own position on the S-curve. The S-curve framework is not a new concept. The management thinker Charles Handy first applied it, also known as life cycle thinking to organisational and individual development in the mid-1990s. 

Applying this thinking to the Strategy based TDNA© Model, however, is a new, innovative, and powerful way to apply dynamic cycles of strategies and link them over time. However the really successful ones companies, go even further…….