Well by tomorrow we will have survived our first week of 2012! I have to say for me so far my cautious optimism continues to hold out. Part of it may be bluntly that I live in Phoenix and we have been experiencing unseasonably warm, sunny weather. I know there are those who love the seasons, but bluntly I have lived on the East Coast and in the Pacific Northwest long enough that warm, sunny weather doesn’t bore me. 

I am also kind of jazzed to see the stock market up a bit. I will be honest I don’t pay a ton of attention to it as a small business owner. I kind of tend to gage what is happening with the economy by my personal reality- do clients call me to do work and can they pay me once the work is done.

I am starting to hear more and more people talk about doing things differently as well. I won’t say it has become a movement yet, but I seem to be encountering more people recognizing that doing things the way they have always been done may not solve our problems and that working collaboratively rather than finger pointing may even yield some positive results.

I have worked in the area of change management now for going on three decades. I have found the single biggest obstacle to overcome is inertia, taking the steps to do something different. I read a great blog this week on resolutions and motivation. Most people assume that when they have difficulty implementing a new strategy or changing their behavior their issue is motivation. The author of the blog and I both disagree- the culprit in many cases is execution, doing the work.

It is interesting when you look at rice cultures (primarily Eastern) versus wheat cultures (primarily Western) we see this phenomenon unfold. In the West we often ascribe ability to inherited character traits like leadership or athletic ability. It is in your genetic makeup. Eastern cultures pit a lot more value in effort. Natural ability plays a huge part, but how hard you are willing to work plays a huge role for them as well. Their educational systems reinforce a much higher work ethic than ours in many cases.

I have always been a big believer that involving people as much as possible in the changes affecting them is key as well. Our models of organizations are in large part very invested in telling rather than engaging. A large part of our industrial model is based on separating the world into two groups- those who think and those who do. Even our sales models tend to be product rather than solution centered.

I don’t do well with arbitrary or capricious authority. I also am not a huge fan of position power, i.e. my position on the org chart is reflective of my ability and intelligence. If I am higher than you it is because I am smarter than you. My corporate experiences taught me that was a myth.

When you build models based on compliance that model is pretty embedded. You have to have something to justify why you get to make the decisions. Spending all that time on establishing credibility and trust is really time consuming. So you provide people with a trade off- give up your independence and we will provide a degree of security- until we don’t.

Once you have created that codependence, there is a lot of inertia required to overcome it. A lot of the political rhetoric I hear on both sides reinforces codependency. On the far Right we claim we want you to be independent, but we want to help you make decisions about family planning, what constitutes appropriate relationships and other factors. On the Left we want everybody to participate in every decision and protect you from the consequences of your own choices. As you might suspect neither position works well for me.

Every year we invest trillions in new technologies, training, and programs to increase organizational performance and profitability, but the research indicates that applied technology along with relationships and alignment has the highest long term payoffs. But interestingly enough we refer to the ability to create alignment and cohesive relationships as soft skills.

We do seem to be making some forward progress. I really enjoy it when clients or colleagues call me or mention to me, you know this engagement stuff might not be complete bullshit. People do actually seem to work harder and be more productive when they have skin in the game not only financially, bit emotionally and intellectually.

Go figure!

Context is important as well. I read yesterday that 50% of Congress are members of the nation’s one percent financial elite. If they don’t start there when they begin their political careers they end up there. I wonder why they don’t see the issue!

We have created a context where many people are used to being told or had decisions made for them. Asking them to suddenly change their behavior without changing their context is difficult. In many cases that is what we are trying to accomplish.

I am hopeful that the crisis we are experiencing will continue to cause organizations and people to recognize that the old ways of doing thing are not as relevant as they once were.
Maybe I am too Pollyanna, but I find the naysayers and gloom and doom folks tiresome and boring. I am ready for positive movement and I think I am seeing it. 

Let’s make 2012 a banner year…


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