Drip Feeding Change Leadership
Let's go back several years ago when it finally occurred to me that I was simply never going to get people to 'be more resilient' by running a workshop once a quarter. I don't know why it even took that long. The 10-20-70 learning model has been around for what feels like forever, and my engaging little extended TEDTalks barely hit the 10, let alone motivate people to actually change themselves. Maybe I was too lost in weeds of individual change projects or too caught up in strategy, planning, and optimisation of our reporting tools. I do distinctly remember, however, lying in my hot tub one night and watching a cloud swallow the stars one bright light at a time and having this epiphany: workshops are worthless.
Of course, that was way too harsh. You can't start grasping a new idea unless someone somewhere somehow introduces you to it. Even if there isn't a class to take, something in the world triggers the cascade within yourself to apply some effort to learning and changing. So workshops are not entirely worthless. It's just that they are merely a prelude, an appetiser if you will. What people really need, however, to become more resilient is a constant drip feed of small prompts, wee nudges, little dribbles and droplets of energy and motivation. Many of us have such a person in our lives, mind you. If you're lucky, you had a parent, mentor or teacher when you were young, or a coach, boss, or peer at work. My own acquisition of change resiliency and self-awareness was started decades ago but really took off in the presence of Ruth,Natalie and Allison when I started at IAG. Having such amazing change pros around me nurtured my soul.
The problem is scalability. You can't clone a Ruth or a Toast and drop one into each and every team in a 3000 person business. You can't put one in every classroom or add one to every retail outlet. Or... can you? Maybe you can. Encouraging people to take a deep breath, change their seat on the bus periodically, or learn a new skill isn't actually rocket science. It doesn't require a degree or two decades as a change manager. What if you could just equip a battalion of mini-mes to inject some positive energy into every wee group everywhere. And >poof< thus was born the resiliency gardening concept.
Now I'm pivoting from individual change resiliency to change leadership. It's not the same problem... but it's adjacent. In this case, the scalability problem relates more to the availability of leaders. Their time constraints are mad. So for most leaders in most companies, learning is an event. It's an expensive exercise where we pull them out of the business for hours -- days even -- throw a brain-bending number of concepts at them, hand them a glossy spiral binder full of pretty SmartArt, and then just expect them to magic their way into being good at applying the ideas we've royally handed them. I've seen this done over and over again to the point where my cynicism is high, my patience low, and my interest in any of it non-existent. Leadership training courses are worthless.
What if... and follow me here... we try a gardening approach instead. Rather than force-feed these poor people in bi-annual buttnumbing offsites, we instead drip a little bit of positive energy on the fertile soil of their needs and pain points over the course of a year or two. Now the downside is that ultimately it is probably a greater investment of time and dedication on the part of both an organisation and the individual leaders. It also costs more given that the only way to build and deliver a series like this would be for the instructional designer/trainer to live in-house. On the other hand, my hypothesis is that this method will prove more effective in up-skilling the leaders involved, can be adapted in the moment around the specific pain points of the leader group you are working with, and ultimately has a path forward for scalability. If the individual learning units are small enough, well enough crafted, and sufficiently distinct, a leader accomplished and knowledgeable with the skill could then turn around and cascade the learning to their own promising leaders.
That's my theory, anyway.
Perhaps I'm cocky coming off the success of the resiliency gardening approach in my last role, but I'm feeling very confident and bullish about building out a change leadership capability series. My real challenge right now is where do I start? What topics are the most important to lead with? The first few units are the most critical as they build the awareness and desire for the series as a whole. What can leaders use immediately, effectively, and to their own personal benefit? Out of my own desperate need to get folks where I am to stop asking for comms key messages and start thinking about the story they want to tell, I began with stories, but that probably isn't the most useful place to begin. To buy myself more time, I'm rolling out 10-20-70 itself this week. Honestly, I probably coulda woulda shoulda started with that as it explains why we aren't going to a retreat to the hills, sip seltzer water, look at fancy graphics and 'teach them how to lead through change'.
I am open to suggestions of where to go next. Also, I would simply LOVE a branding idea as flexible and delightful as the resiliency gardening seeds, flowers, and growth story. I'm so tempted to use it again, but this is -- while adjacent -- very different.
"True leaders don't create followers. They create more leaders." ~ Tom Peters
