<![CDATA[Views through a lens]]> http://localhost/blog/ EN Fri, 31 May 2024 08:10:00 +0000 Incomedia WebSite X5 Evo <![CDATA[Core Social Motive Three - Trusting (Part One) - Trust & Attachment Theory]]> imblog
The Core Social Psychology Motives in Change Management

Core Social Motive Three - Trusting

Part One - Trust & Attachment Theory

(Listen to the Podcast version HERE)

Welcome back to our journey through the Core Social Psychology Motives, and to the first part of this discussion around the third core social motive: Trusting.

I’m going to make these a bit shorter, as feedback from a couple of folks said whilst interesting, the complexity and length was a bit much, so hopefully this ‘episode’ hits the mark.

So, what is Trust? A straightforward definition is “an individual’s willingness to be vulnerable to others”, which comes from ‘ten Have, Westhof and Risman.’

To be trusting, we need to see the world as generally a benevolent place, and to view others as benign actors within our environment (Fiske, 2004). This is because in order to operate in the most optimum way, we have to avoid being distracted by concerns around any likelihood of others we depend on acting in a way that negatively impacts us and our ability to deliver.

It is therefor clear why trust involves vulnerability, but vulnerability can also facilitate highly effective interactions with others. In fact in the world of counselling & psychotherapies, it is widely accepted, and heavily evidenced by decades of research, that the success of therapy depends significantly on the quality of the relationship established between therapist and client, which critically is highly dependant on the ability of the therapist to provide a safe environment to be vulnerable.

As we know everyone is different, and whilst most people are relatively trusting and tend to see the better side of people, there are also those who are a little more suspicious and maybe even a bit paranoid, so when it comes to group dynamics and behaviours, trust is an integral part of strong group cohesion (see social cohesion theory in episode one), and therefor is important to consider when managing change initiatives within an organisation.

Underpinning trust, is the individual’s (people and group) belief in the presence of fair process, as well as key characteristics of ability, benevolence and integrity. There has to be a belief in the ability of those being trusted to be able to behave as expected. There needs to be an assumption that those people also intend to act positively towards you, and the perceived integrity of those individuals therefor provides important indicators as to how ‘trustworthy’ they are likely to be. All of this plays into building strong social cohesion, belongingness and support, within organisational change.

Clearly for leaders to successfully manage a change, they need to take steps to build or establish trust and a belief that they will act in the best interest of their employees (Fugate, 2013). Mishra & Spreitzer (1998) described the four dimensions of trust expected of management that are needed to reduce uncertainty around change: (1) concern for employee’s interests; (2) strategic competence; (3) reliability; (4) openness and honesty.

Finally, Maurer (2010) even went so far as to say: “Trust can make or break a change. But, sadly, many who lead change seem to ignore this critically important ingredient. They seem to believe that a good idea will win the day. It won’t!”

Okay, we’ve looked at Trust, so let’s now look at attachment theory.

Attachment theory relates to social and interpersonal behaviour of individuals (initially to describe mother-infant relationships), and describes the formation and quality of such interpersonal relationships as an innate human tendency, often established to ensure support and a form of protection in times of uncertainty and stress.

There is also a very specific focus for attachment theory, this being how we respond within relationships when hurt, perceiving a threat or separated from loved ones, and is not intended to be a general theory around relationships.

When it comes to organisation and change, this theory is primarily associated with areas such as leadership relationships and interactions, change capacity and resistance, organisational structure and cultural dynamics.

For change leaders, the key observations are that for those employees with a secure attachment style, benefits are seen in their psychological and physical well-being, with increased trust and loyalty to the organisation and its leaders. Employees whose attachment style is more anxious and avoidant, often experience detrimental impacts to their well-being, and an increased likelihood of leaving.

Finally, it is important for managers and leaders to recognise those who lack the secure attachment style, and focus heavily on the type of relationship they develop with them, because that relationship is of critical importance to them, as they will have few other emotional, physical or cognitive resources to draw upon to remain productive in the face of change.

So, that’s it for this time. I hope being a bit shorter, and a little less ‘sciencey’, this episode style is easier to read and assimilate. In the next part, we move on to the sub elements of fair process: justice theory and procedural justice.


]]> Fri, 31 May 2024 08:10:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?trusting-part-one-trust-and-attachment-theory http://localhost/blog/rss/00000001F <![CDATA[Core Social Motive Two - Understanding (Part Three) - Social Interdependence Theory & Social Exchange Theory]]> imblog
The Core Social Psychology Motives in Change Management

Core Social Motive Two - Understanding
By Laurence Nicholson

Part Three - Social Interdependence Theory & Social Exchange Theory

(Listen to the Podcast version HERE)

Welcome back to this series on the Core Social Psychology Motives, and to the third part of this discussion around the second core social motive: Understanding.

As usual, let’s remind ourselves what is meant by ‘understanding’ in the sphere of social psychology, and revisit Have, Rijsman, Have and Westhof’s (2019) definition of ‘the need for shared meaning and prediction’.

How individuals, both on their own and indeed as a group, perceive the relatedness of their goals, will heavily influence their view of the dynamics between each other; are they in competition or cooperation? This is the concept of social interdependence theory.

In 1989 and 2007, Johnson & Johnson commented that social interdependence exists when the accomplishment of every individual’s goals is affected by others’ actions. Conversely, there is no interdependence if they believe others’ goal achievements cannot, or do not, affect their ability to achieve their own goals; basically they don’t need (depend on) others to achieve their goals, to be successful themselves.

Deutsch (2012) likened such cooperation and competition to a positive and negative interdependence, pointing out that when you are positively linked to others, depending on their success for your own, you essentially rise or fall together. Naturally, this extends to if being negatively linked (i.e. depending on their failure for your success) if they fall, you rise, and if they rise, you fall.

Now, due to varying motivations and abilities, actions (not goals) relating to interdependence, can be either effective or destructive (deliberate or unconscious) in nature, with the former improving likelihood of success and the latter, not.

When considering both goal and action interdependence, they can impact a number of basic social psychological processes; inducibility, cathexis and substitutability.

Inducibility is about the readiness to accept another person’s influence to do what that person wants, essentially being willing to take part in actions that are helpful. It is associated to substitutability, which allows you to accept the others’ actions to fulfil your own wants and needs.

Cathexis, however is evaluative in nature. It talks to our predisposition to respond positively or negatively to aspects of our self or our environment, effectively directing us to support beneficial actions and distance ourselves from harmful ones; important when thinking about engendering support for changes we want to make.

In the environment of organisation and change, there are many proponents of both competition and cooperation, each believing there choice is more effective within society and the workplace at achieving goals, and whilst support and consensus is increasing for cooperative goal structures (Kistruck, 2016), it is still going to be a balance depending on the particular area of focus; positive competition for promotions, revenue generation techniques and targeted motivation, for example; cooperative approaches for team goals, wider supply chain ecosystem interactions and complex problem solving requiring multiple skill-sets and collaborative execution.

For a business to thrive, both are needed and typically visible. Without competition, stimuli are absent to perform at optimum efficiency and push into the unknown, and without cooperation, organisational functioning and combining team abilities to be greater than the sum of their parts, suffers.

To sum up, ideally, the cooperation within a group that is socially cohesive, to compete against another group(s) to create motivation to excel, provides the best of both worlds, where it is practical. I say practical, because it is not a universal formula; it doesn’t work in organisations such as healthcare.

So, now to social exchange. This is the simple concept of acting in expectation of reciprocity.

At the centre is the psychology suggesting that interactions eliciting others’ approval are more likely to be repeated. A form of conditioning. It even has a formula:
Behaviour (The profit of the interaction) = Rewards of interaction - Costs of interaction
From a social psychology perspective, rewards are wide and varied from social recognition, to monetary compensation or even just a smile. Predictably conversely, the costs are also wide and varied in a similar vein; public humiliation, pay reductions or emotional displeasure and reprimand.

In its simplest form, despite the fact that our brains consider the workplace as a social environment, firing in the same neural areas as social activities, our behaviours are guided by a social transactional continuum, in that we act and expect some form of reciprocity, whatever that may look like. This is, indeed, the same broad foundation that neuroscientific emotionally intelligent communication models such as SCARF (Rock, 2009) are based on; Threat/Reward Responses.

Understanding this, it should be clear from an organisation and change perspective that ensuring appropriate rewards are understood, and threats (costs) are minimised in relation to relationships and activities necessary for successful change.

Michel et al (2009) explain that sufficient participation in planned changes and fair decision-making processes are perceived by employees as a sign of leadership’s appreciation and support, resulting in the employees ‘reciprocating’ with favourable behaviour in support of the organisation and the changes being made.

Well, that’s it for this time. In the next part, we move on to the core motive of ‘Trusting’, and sub elements of trust and attachment theory.
]]> Mon, 11 Mar 2024 08:00:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?core-social-motive-two--part-three http://localhost/blog/rss/00000001E <![CDATA[Core Social Motive Two - Understanding (Part Two) - Social Learning and Social Impact Theories]]> imblog
The Core Social Psychology Motives in Change Management
Core Social Motive Two - Understanding

By Laurence Nicholson

Part Two - ‘Social Learning Theory’ and ‘Social Impact Theory’

(Listen to the Podcast version HERE)

Welcome back to this series on the Core Social Psychology Motives, and to the second part of this discussion around the second core social motive: Understanding.

Let’s remind ourselves what is meant by ‘understanding’ in the sphere of social psychology, and Have, Rijsman, Have and Westhof’s (2019) definition as ‘the need for shared meaning and prediction’ I mentioned in part one.

In this episode I will take a look at the second set of concepts and theories relating to Understanding; social learning theory and social impact theory.

So, what is social learning theory?

In many ways, it is the extension of psychodynamic perspectives which posit that we learn from direct experiences and the corresponding consequences, a dimension of the nurture principle, by including indirect, or vicarious, learning from the observation of others and their experiences of consequences.

It has its roots in the work of Albert Bandura from the 1960’s, where he exposed children to adults displaying either aggressive, in group 1, or passive, in group 2, behaviours towards a doll, and noticed they developed behaviours similar to that of the adult group they witnessed. This led to his exploration of the roles played by vicarious, as well as symbolic and self-regulatory processes, in differential reinforcement as part of social learning.

It is known that as well as being susceptible to reinforcement conditioning like all animals, humans have the additional ability of higher cognitive functioning, and apply thought to potential consequences through the observation of their own and others’ behaviours and corresponding outcomes; essentially providing a ‘database of scenario experiences’ from which to predict a likely result from certain behaviours, and adjust their reactions accordingly. We gather information from personally experienced and observed consequences to behaviours, and adjust based on what we predict might happen.

This is extremely useful in identifying potentially positive outcomes, and constructing a motivational framework around that, to encourage those behaviours associated with those outcomes that is not limited to direct reward or punishment, but also to displayed examples of others benefiting from it.

This higher cognitive functioning of our brains means we are not simply passive recipients of information from which we base our behaviours. Indeed, social learning is about reciprocal determinism; cognition, context and behaviour mutually influence one another (Grusec, 1992). We learn much through cognitive modelling. In fact, Bandura said in 1971 (Bandura, 1971, p. 5):

“It is difficult to imagine a socialisation process in which the language, mores, vocational activities, familial customs, and the educational, religious and political practices of a culture are taught to each new member by selective reinforcement of fortuitous behaviours, without the benefit of models who exemplify the cultural patterns in their own behaviour. Most of the behaviours that people display are learned, either deliberately, or inadvertently, through the influence of example.”

Whilst it is by no means suggested that all behaviour is learned, the view is that much of it is a result of a respondent, operant and observational learning process.

It should be clear from this that within an organisational setting, and most importantly within a change programme, the fact that people tend to copy the behaviour of others in order to obtain the same benefits, advancement and privileges, especially their leadership and significant role models, the creation and promotion of a motivational framework founded on exemplars of required behaviours by those individuals, is critical to success.

Right. Now let’s take a look at social impact theory.

Latané (1981) describes a social impact as ‘any influence on the feelings, thoughts or behaviours of an individual resulting from the social context of that individual’. Where the influence is caused by the presence of others, that presence is not limited to real, direct or experienced effects, but can be perceived, implied and even imagined.

Like many socio-environmental impacts, social impacts are determined according to a set of factors, especially when trying to determine how a set of individuals impact a single individual, and I go into more detail regarding these and the Law of Social Impact where I = f(SIN) and the 3 individual laws of the variables of S, I and N in my training, but Latané (1981) and Brown (1986) summarised them as follows:

  • Strength - a measure of age, status, experience, expertise and the quality of the relationship with the individual.
  • Number of individuals
  • Immediacy - not limited to only literal proximity but also any presence, or lack thereof, of psychological importance of the group (barriers/filters).

Such elements are open to wide interpretation, and thus have some shortcomings, and so become very complex to apply, resulting in having to include concepts of persuasiveness and 'supportiveness' to determine likelihoods of behaviours.

Some determination of how easy it is, or how much pressure is needed, to induce a change of opinion (persuade), as well as how able the group is to assist individuals in resisting the influence of others, is required in the application of the theory. When used together, change can be achieved. Using these determinations, the likelihood of an individual to change and be influenced is a direct function of the factors mentioned above from a strength of persuasiveness dimension, and an inverse function of the same factors from a strength of supportiveness dimension.

Simply put, if an individual is easily persuaded and/or the strength of persuasion is strong, their likelihood to change is higher, as it is also if the strength of resistance through supportiveness is weak, assuming the remaining factors are equal in each case.

Obviously, organisations, like social systems and cultures, are always changing, reacting to a variety of social influences, but having some ways to help understand how the relationship and interaction between leaders and followers develops, and the origins of such underlying concepts as group dynamics and ‘lead from the top’, will help leaders of change to preempt resistance. This latter point is critical in achieving successful change, and Paul Lawrence (Harvard Business School professor) stated in his paper “How to Deal with Resistance to Change” (1954):

“…failing to understand workers’ resistance can sabotage the whole effort.” (p. 187)

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Well, that’s it for this time. In the next part, we take a look at the next sub-elements of the core motive of ‘Understanding’; ‘Cooperation / Competition (Social Interdependence Theory)’ and ‘Social Exchange Theory’.

As always, leave me comments, good bad or indifferent, by email or against the article (on the ‘blog’ page if you are listening to the podcast).
]]> Mon, 12 Feb 2024 09:00:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?core-social-motive-two-part-two http://localhost/blog/rss/00000001D <![CDATA[Core Social Motive Two - Understanding (Part One) - Social Representation, Attribution Theory, and Social Judgement Theory]]> imblog
The Core Social Psychology Motives in Change Management
Core Social Motive Two - Understanding

by Laurence Nicholson

Part One - Social Representation, Attribution Theory, and Social Judgement Theory

(For the Audio Podcast, click HERE)

Welcome back to this series on the Core Social Psychology Motives, and to the first part of this discussion around the second core social motive: Understanding.

First let’s think about what is meant by ‘understanding’ in the sphere of social psychology. As far as a definition goes, ‘the need for shared meaning and prediction’ (Have, Rijsman, Have and Westhof. 2019), is as good as any.

In order to function as an effective group, or even an ineffective group, there needs to be a level of shared understanding, and in an organisational context, this is often evident in a well-supported vision or corporate mission, a positive culture or set of values, and positive social cohesion aligned with the leadership. Of course, negative social cohesion of a group operating against a common enemy (the leadership or suggested changes), also requires a shared understanding.

In essence, there needs to be a focus on understanding when facing change elements such as leadership, organisational culture, resistance and vision support.

In this part of the series, I will take a look at the first set of concepts and theories relating to Understanding; social representation, attribution theory and social judgement theory.

So, what do I mean by social representation?

Well, social representation can be seen as values, beliefs, ideas and behavioural practices shared by a group’s members, and such representations are constructed from a shared knowledge and understanding of generally accepted reality, and this forms the ‘vehicle’ for inter and intra group, and interpersonal communication.

Of course, over time, positions, opinions and consensus changes, so social representations also change over time, being both the process and result of social construction that is constantly being re-interpreted.

The term ‘social representation’ was created back in 1961 by Moscovici, who also stated that its fundamental aim is to “make the unfamiliar familiar” (Moscovici , 1984), and who had defined it in more detail in 1973 as follows:

“Systems of values, ideas and practices with a two-fold function: first, to establish an order which will enable individuals to orient themselves in their material and social world and to master it; secondly, to enable communications to take place amongst members of a community by providing them with a code for social exchange and a code for naming and classifying unambiguously the various aspects of their world and their individual and group history” (Moscovici, 1973, p. Xiii)

The purpose is to represent issues in socially recognisable constructs, according to a socially shared set of schemas, enabling them to be anchored in a common understanding and thus consistently interpreted.

The process of taking a new, abstract representation and ‘normalising’ it, can be seen in the ‘Toblerone Model of Social Representations’ (Bauer & Gaskell, 1999), showing a relationship between the carriers of a representation ‘S’ (subjects); objects ‘O’ as the activity or idea being represented; and social group projects in which the representation meaning (‘Surface’) makes common sense.



When considering this from the perspective of organisation and change, by anchoring a concept (the object) through establishing a meaning and relating it to an already established common frame or view, it takes on a familiarity, and then objectifying it through the association with familiar images to produce its own iconic form, it can become socially familiar and more established, or concrete, than abstract.

Consider the ‘fair trade’ concept, well known in the west, for a moment. This object (idea) is now easily recognised as being a method of helping developing world farmers achieve better trade deals and conditions, encouraging sustainable farming, yet ‘fair’ has no actual contextual meaning as it is a subjective norm, but as a group (the Western World) we gave it a more concrete understandable principle and thus an easily accepted idea.

With change, the ‘new’ proposed norm(al) can be seen by many as abstract and lacking concrete meaning, so the leaders need to ensure key social objects such as vision, mission statement, corporate values and strategy, etc, are clearly and transparently defined, purpose explained and end state elaborated.

Belasco (1990) suggests that experience shows an energising and compelling, inspirational vision, properly communicated (Moscovici’s ‘socially shared and recognised’, conditions), is key to mobilising support, in his statement: “This vision is the picture that drives all action” (p.11).

We must not also forget that other ‘objects’, such as sense of urgency, are also key, as illustrated by Kotter’s (2012, p.4) statement:
“By far the biggest mistake people make when trying to change organisations is to plunge ahead without establishing a high enough sense of urgency in fellow managers and employees”

Okay, so now let’s take a look at ‘Attribution Theory’.

We, as a species, tend to look at events and behaviours, and try to attribute causes in order to make some sense from them. Essentially this is attribution theory; the assigning of causes to behaviours of both the self and of others.

It does go a level deeper though, and tries to understand the ‘how’ and ‘why’ people explain the things as they do, generally by asking two primary questions: Why do I do what I do? And; Why do others do what they do? And this is coming from the knowledge that emotional and motivational impulses, such as anger and commitment, are the drivers for most of our attributions.

When non-psychology trained individuals look to explain behaviours, especially that of others, as part of the attribution process, there are typically three areas focused upon: consistency (whether this is typical behaviour for the person(s) in most/other situations), consensus (whether others behave in the same way under the same circumstances) and distinctiveness (when a behaviour or action by an individual is judged by another to be common or unusual). These are important as we use them to determine our decisions such as whether to follow a leader, or support or oppose a change process or plan.

The big problem we have, though, is when we tend to fill in gaps (heuristics) because it is easier and quicker than following all the information to a complete and detailed conclusion. In applying such shortcuts as patterning, applying stereotyping, and benchmarking, because the information is either sparse or ambiguous, our personal biases direct our ‘filling in’ and we then attribute based on our prejudices.

It is this very lack of completeness of information, and opaqueness of explanation, that interferes with appropriate attributions, and start to impact relations as well as performance, and the ultimate outcomes driving the change, within organisation and change. Resistance in the form of dragging feet, or interfering with the change process, is often the result of this problem not being addressed by leaders.

Let us now turn our focus on social judgement theory.

What we know from psychology, is that when we make judgements, we do so against the backdrop of our personal attitudes towards the idea being advocated, and our own position regarding it.

Sherif & Hovland (1961) defined social judgement theory as the perception and evaluation of an idea by comparing it with current attitudes. These current attitudes are in fact the anchoring point for our own personal position, being the preferred position by consensus or majority, however there is also interplay from our judgement of any alternatives, and our ego involvement in the advocated idea or position.

It is worth noting that for those more ego-involved, meaning the idea is more important to, the more likely they are to have a larger latitude of rejection, and any suggested change could appear to them to be further away from their anchoring point, and they are unlikely to be easily persuaded otherwise. In contract, if the idea/change is closer to their anchoring point (personal attitude), their latitude of acceptance is also greater, and will potentially make them open to persuasion.

It is this involvement that is seen as a core concept in social judgement theory. Effectively, persons who have strong affiliations to the present ways and strong personal opinions, are typically not willing to change, and are thus the ones who need the most communication and clarity of the basis or need for the change.

It is worth recounting the concept of conformity and social identity here, and more specifically the fact that the drive to belong to a group will see shifts in people’s opinions and attitudes to fit in with the group norm. Resistance to change often sees individuals coalesce into a resistant group, and leaders need to be watchful for signs of this happening, to avoid resistance gathering strength and momentum.

Understanding of this should be built in to the strategy and design of organisational culture, as well as in leadership behaviours and reactions to issues of commitment to change.

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Well, that’s it for this time. In the next part, we take a look at the next sub-elements of the core motive of ‘Understanding’; ‘Social Learning Theory’ and ‘Social Impact Theory’.

As always, leave me comments, good bad or indifferent, by email or against the article (on the ‘blog’ page if you are listening to the podcast).
]]> Mon, 29 Jan 2024 09:00:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?csm2-understanding-part-one http://localhost/blog/rss/00000001C <![CDATA[Social Psychology - Motive One 'Belonging' - Part Four - 'Terror Management Theory' and 'Broaden & Build Theory']]> imblog
The Core Social Psychology Motives in Change Management Series
Core Social Motive One – Belonging

By Laurence Nicholson

Part Four - ‘Terror Management Theory’ and ‘Broaden & Build Theory’

(For the Audio Podcast, click HERE)

Welcome back to this series on the Core Social Psychology Motives, and to part 4, the final part of this discussion around the first core social motive: Belonging.

In this article, we are taking a look at the final two sub-elements of ‘Belonging’; ‘Terror Management Theory’ and ‘Broaden & Build Theory’.

When a mission, be it a change or a new company vision, is considered meaningful to us, we feel we can securely dedicate our time and effort in contributing to this cause, and this represents one of the defence mechanisms we have developed as a species, to manage the fear and anxiety attributed to our mortal salience (the awareness that our ultimate death is inevitable).

I will talk about the defence mechanisms in a minute, but first I will explain Terror Management Theory.

At its heart, terror management theory places the desire to stay alive central to explaining our individual and social behaviour (remember our social identity discussion previously about having an individual identity and a social identity). It proposes that by being aware of our inevitable mortality, almost everything we do is driven, at some level, by fear and this creates anxiety (see para. 3 above). It is here that terror management identifies defence mechanisms we use to deal with this, and suggest they take one of the following paths: our proximal system (downstream or directly affecting health) that aims to distract and distance us from awareness of potential, or real, loss; our distal (upstream or indirectly affecting health) system that operates to prevent awareness of potential, or real, loss from reaching our consciousness by using existential buffers, such as money in the form of savings,  or from a more psychological perspective: a ‘quiet ego’.

When we feel our mortality, we experience existential ‘terror’, and we look for ways to feel like we are contributing to something meaningful, such as a team, culture, organisation, religious order or society as a whole. In understanding this, establishing a culture within the organisation that offers meaningfulness and develops self-esteem, will go some way towards reducing the anxiety of mortality.

When further considering the process of organisational change, the mortality salience can be thought of as being the ‘burning platforms’ popular in organisational change literature, and creates the urgency dynamic. In addition to this, there is often a sense of ‘enemy’ within an organisational change programme (see part one on ‘social cohesion’) which can be deliberately established in order to bring to awareness existential threats and various possibilities to enhance self-esteem, by leaders exploiting the terror management functions in order to provide impetus for the change they desire.

Ultimately, there is a high importance to accurately and appropriately communicating the needs and reasons for a change to occur, because only then will people form the groups (social cohesion, belongingness) that will act positively in embracing and delivering the change. That communication should also address the ‘terror’ of loss that employees will feel relating to the potential, whether realised or not, of job loss or changed roles, and having a well communicated and meaningful cause to ‘get behind’ represents our distal system of distraction.

Okay, so that is terror management theory. Now let’s take a look at ‘broaden & build theory’.

Now, where terror management theory relates to dealing with the fear of our mortality, and on the surface appears to be a positive approach, it is really ‘avoiding the negative’ by stimulating the fears.

This might be suited well to addressing a sense of urgency in relation to changes needed, it does represent quite a narrow focus, namely the fear of mortality (or loss - see above), many feel there are better, more positive ways to generate or encourage supportive behaviours and circumstances. That is where broaden and build theory comes in.

This is intrinsically an environment which facilitates positive ambition and emotions, and increases personal and organisational resources, through leaders who enable resilience through higher positive self-evaluation, a supportive social climate, and clarity of high-quality goals combined with higher functioning social interaction.

Research has established a strong link between strengthening team resilience and positive emotional cultures, leading to better team performance , as well as higher hopes which seem to be a significant contributing factor towards increased vigour, dedication and workplace integration.

I am going to leave the final word here, very much supporting the positive option of ‘broaden and build theory’, to Glass (2009):

“Positive emotions were found to be pivotal in enhancing employee performance, helping organisations make good decisions, facilitating workflow and motivation, and in developing authentically and charismatically. They also influence leadership styles, job enrichment, better team performance and satisfactory customer relations.”

In our society where we are actually hardwired to default to the negative, due to the negative bias of the limbic system in our brains, always asking what we did wrong? What can be better? Why didn’t we succeed? Applying positive psychology, such as that encapsulated in broaden and build theory, is both important and beneficial.

Well, that’s it for Part One: Belonging.

Parts two (Understanding), three (Controlling), four (Trusting) and five (Self-Enhancement), are all covered extensively in my coaching, along with a deeper look at all of the part one topics we have talked about.

If you are interested in reading (or listening) to those parts two to five in this level and format, contact me through our website ‘ncubedgroup.com’ and I can discuss how to make these available to you, or ask about the coaching in ‘Social Psychology for Change Leaders’ and how to arrange this for your leadership or management team.

As always, leave me comments, good bad or indifferent, by email or against the article (on the ‘blog’ page if you are listening to the podcast).

]]> Tue, 05 Dec 2023 08:00:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?terror-management-theory-and-broaden-and-build-theory http://localhost/blog/rss/00000001B <![CDATA[Social Psychology - Motive one 'Belonging' - Part Three - ‘Self-Categorisation and Pro-Social Behaviour’]]> imblog
The Core Social Psychology Motives in Change Management Series
Core Social Motive One - Belonging

By Laurence Nicholson

Part Three - ‘Self-Categorisation and Prosocial Behaviour’

(For the audio podcast, click HERE)

Welcome back to this series on the Core Social Psychology Motives, and to part 3 of this discussion around the first core social motive: Belonging.

This time, we are taking a look at ‘Self-Categorisation and Prosocial Behaviour’.

In the previous articles, we have talked about the fact that people (individuals) have both a personal identity and a social identity, and when we psychologically depersonalise our ‘self identity’ it produces ‘group behaviours’ which can become group norms. This also generates group processes for cooperation, influence and a group cohesiveness (think back to social cohesion through the common enemy)

As a species, we can actually operate both as an individual and a group(s) member, and it the element of this process of seeing ourselves as belonging to a group, that is called ‘Self-Categorisation’.

Now, self-categorisation theory (Turner, 1985), which shares the foundations with social identity theory,  has been defined as:

“A theory of the nature of the self that recognises that perceivers are both individuals and group members , explains how and when people will define themselves as individuals and group entities and the implications, and examines the impact of this variability in self-perception (I to We) for understandings of mind and behaviour” (Van Lange, Kruglanski, & Higgins, 2012b, p.399)

This theory provides definitions of when a group is ‘a group’ and explains how the human mind works in, and is influenced by, constructing and defining human beings as social animals, and not simply individuals (a singular mind built of a single set of neurotransmitters); Individuals, groups and inter-group relations are present.

We ‘feel’ the experiences of other members of the same ‘self-category’ through our sense of belonging; what is done to them is also done to us.

When we are looking at change situations, particularly those in an organisation with high capacity to adapt (adaptive capacity relates to the capacity of systems, institutions, humans and other organisms to adjust to potential damage, to take advantage of opportunities, or to respond to consequences), we find people tend to share responsibility for the larger organisation’s future as well as identifying with specific roles and functions within the process.

Where there is high self-categorisation within an organisation, it often benefits from the sense of identification of the group and the associated social cohesion, along with the members’ commitment to the group itself, and so self-categorisation has potential for increasing productivity and employee satisfaction, which in turn leads to higher performance, and in a change programme, this can create a strong collaborative impetus between both leaders and staff, to drive forward and embed the vision behind the change.

This concept of self-categorisation is often applied to topics such as group (social) cohesion (see previous article or listen to previous podcast), group polarisation, social influence and collective action, leadership and personality type identification and re-alignment, and is highly relevant when organisations care about their performance and change capacity, and are in the process of designing and subsequently deploying internal change.

Ok, now we have considered self-categorisation and its impacts on change and group social psychology driving belonging and general directional loyalty (to the change or against the leaders), let’s take a look at prosocial behaviour.

Prosocial behaviour is concisely defined as ‘voluntary behaviour intended to benefit another’ (Eisenberg et al., 2006), but can also be considered as follows:

“Prosocial behaviour is a broad class of behaviours defined as involving costs for the self and resulting in benefits for others.”

It is worth noting it is closely associated to positive social actions, because where prosocial behaviour results in net benefits for both the receiver and giver of the prosocial act, it is referred to as mutualism, but where it benefits others but confers a net costs to the giver, prosocial behaviour becomes altruism.

If you are interested in a deeper understanding of the concept and connection between altruism and prosocial behaviour, I recommend reading ‘Sociology of Altruism and Prosocial Behaviour (Rafael Wittek, René Bekkers, in International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences (Second Edition), 2015)

This sub-element 'prosocial behaviour' is highly associated with personal ‘wellness’ benefits, because living and working in harmonious conditions results in less stress related effects on both the physical and psychological person. When stress is experienced, such as when feeling ‘outside’ the social group, the brain will trigger a release  of cortisol, which in small doses is fine, but in prolonged periods of overproduction has harmful effects on our cognitive functions of memory and state of mind, often leading to depression and other mental conditions.

Counter to this, the act of helping others will result in a release in oxytocin, and in a positive social environment such as a socially cohesive group where there is often laughter, happiness and shared experiences, chemicals like dopamine, endorphin and serotonin are also released, as we experience pleasure.

Now clearly, we are going to gravitate towards pleasure (think of the threat/reward response system behaviours), which is why we have an inherent need to ‘belong’, and so we learn that prosocial behaviour helps us in achieving this drive by connecting us with other prosocial beings, and thus to the group they belong to.

Now you may be thinking that if this is the case, why aren’t we all prosocial in our behaviour and belong to one big group?

Well it turns out, unsurprisingly, that the acts of help, kindness and support, are more focused on those in the group, than those outside the group (in-group favouritism), because the group members define themselves as in the same social category (see self-categorisation above), having the experience of a shared social identity or a common direction (such as the common enemy driven social cohesion) and a sense of ‘we’ rather than ‘I’.

When we place the lens of organisational change over this motive sub-element, we can see that a prosocial group being ‘helpful and supportive’ to all group members will be highly satisfied in their membership, and when this group is organisational, or even just a change programme team, they will have higher job satisfaction because their experience is more enjoyable, and this will lead to higher productivity and performance as well as commitment to the vision or mission of the change being undertaken. This will inevitably lead to a more successful and persisting change outcome.

It is because of this that prosocial behaviour should be the driving force behind organisational culture, team development and cooperation based values, and can successfully give a human face to leadership and performance management.

Now I mentioned change capacity a little earlier, and want to bring that together into how it is impacting change success, and thought I might quote Connor (2006) as he puts it so well in his book “Managing at the Speed of Change” where he wrote:

“People can only change when they have the capacity to do so. Ability means having the necessary skills and knowing how to use them. Willingness is the motivation to apply those skills to a particular situation. If you lack either ability or willingness, it is unlikely you will successfully adapt to change”

If leaders, especially those driving change, practice prosocial behaviours and focus on developing change capacity, it is hugely motivational, and actions such as emphasising people’s strengths will build esteem, and encourage self-improvement and development, not just in those strengths but also in areas of weakness.

So, as a final thought, whenever you are involved in leading change, it is always a good approach to remind your teams of how competent they really are, and how they already have the skills to be successful in their part of the delivery of change and in their roles in the ‘new’ normal that will result. Make use of even small expressions of gratitude as this makes people feel socially valued, and increase equitable management as a display of procedural justice. This will result in the release of all the positive neurochemicals mentioned, encouraging the members of the (change) group to collectively drive forward positively and supportively, getting pleasure and job satisfaction from delivering and evangelising the change required, to both improve the health and potential of the organisation and themselves. Keep in the back of your mind too, that lack of satisfaction or equity can create social comparison to occur, and this often leads to decreases in prosocial behaviour.

Well, that’s it for this time. We have looked at ‘self-categorisation’ and ‘prosocial behaviour’ and its importance in change management. In the next part, we take a look at the final two sub-elements of the primary motive of ‘Belonging’; ‘Terror Management Theory’ and ‘Broaden and Build Theory’.

As always, leave me comments, good bad or indifferent, by email or against the article (on the ‘blog’ page if you are listening to the podcast), and watch out for the next topic in a few weeks.
]]> Tue, 21 Nov 2023 07:19:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?part3-self-categorisation-and-prosocial-behaviour http://localhost/blog/rss/00000001A <![CDATA[Social Psychology - Motive One 'Belonging' - Part Two - ‘Conformity’ and ‘Social Identity']]> imblog
The Core Social Psychology Motives in Change Management Series
Core Social Motive One – Belonging

By Laurence Nicholson

Part Two - ‘Conformity’ and ‘Social Identity’

(For the audio podcast, click HERE)

Welcome to part 2 of this discussion around the first core social motive: Belonging.
 
This time, we are taking a look at ‘conformity’ and ‘social identity’, but before we start, I wanted to mention a conversation had recently, where a perfect example was highlighted of how the formation of ‘social cohesion’ (see part one of this discussion series) can be a negative element, as is the case within this particularly poorly managed organisational change programme following an acquisition, and has led to confusion, anger, frustration and  unnecessary complexity, all of which are contributing to increased time, cost and loss of many of the top performing individuals.
 
A large IT consultancy is undertaking an assimilation of two small businesses it acquired, but has no suitably trained change specialists with social psychology knowledge, and this is clearly evident in the lack of transparency in many elements of the ‘balancing’ of old contracted packages and benefits to those that will operate in the ‘new world’. This has led to inequities, unjust handling of transferals and the formation of bitter feelings of favouritism, discrimination and unfairness. This has then further led, predictably, to highly damaging effects to the organisation, the persons (individual) involved and the change programme, including:
 
•             Creation of a divide between management and staff
•             Aggression as a default emotion in the staff towards any proposals and statements
•             A complete mistrust in both the process and the management
 
More significantly, though, is the creation of a sense of belonging of the persons (individuals) to a new group, with a strong social cohesion all built on their new common enemy of the management and the change process. A perfect example of the very foundational elements of a core social motive but in the negative, and thus working against the change. This is the very reason change specialists with a good working knowledge of social psychology are essential to every change programme, especially organisational ones.

So, on to this part, part two, and we shall start by looking at ‘conformity’.

Allen (1965) defined conformity as the convergence of individuals’ thoughts, feelings or behaviour toward a social or group norm. There have been some seminal research studies carried out over the past 90 years, which have shown (and proven what we all see in everyday life) that persons (individuals) are influenced by and regularly adopt the opinion(s) of other persons in the group, typically as part of forming a consensus (see Asch (1951, 1955) and Sherif (1936)).

There is a fallibility in us when it comes to forming consensus as part of a group, and it is driven by the fact that we form a false expectation that others see the world in the same way we do. This overestimated belief also reacts to the importance of the connection to the group, by increasing in line with ever greater import.

Remember that this (conformity through consensus) is a sub-element of belonging, and we know that persons (individuals) strive to relate and belong to a group, and we all, at some level, make both conscious and unconscious shifts to align with a group’s consensus in order to ‘fit in’ with that group, so consensus is pivotal in this.

It is easy to see, especially in this day and age of global media and the almost limitless amounts of ‘opinion’ blasted at us online, that where persons (individual) or persons (group) have disagreement or ‘dissensus’, uncertainty and discomfort follows, and persons (individual AND group) become more vulnerable to social influence. Just think about the high running emotions relating to topics such as climate change, racism, gender dysphoria, etc., and how ‘factions’ have emerged through the coalescing of individuals ‘choosing a side’, even though they may not have particularly strong convictions or knowledge of the topic, just in order to satisfy a need to belong. This is the same psychological approach used in all forms of extremism.

So, with consensus vital to group social cohesion and belonging, and conformity being a foundational pillar for consensus, it should be easy to see why clearly defined and communicated corporate visions and missions, a shared sense of urgency, or a core set of corporate values are instrumental in the development of group consensuses or agreements.

There is a caution here though, with the need to consider the difference between norms of critical thinking and consensus norms, as anything that impedes or prevents critical thinking, such as an over-conformity based on consensus norms, will negatively impact the quality of decisions and can lead to increases of ‘groupthink’ as well as undermine the likelihood of success of the change. In addition, intra-group peer pressure can erode productivity of those critical thinkers who have a strong need to belong or remain within the group, as they can become disillusioned and minimise effort in order to ‘not rock the boat’.

Having considered conformity, now let us look at 'social identity'.

Tajfel (1978) described social identity as “that part of an individual’s self-concept which derives from his knowledge of his membership in a social group (or groups) together with the value or emotional significance attached to that membership”. In plain English, this can be simplified as ‘the way we identify ourselves through our group membership.

The theory of social identity rose from trying to understand the psychological basis of inter-group discrimination, and looking for the minimal conditions under which a group’s members discriminate against another group and for their own, and it implies that classification of self and others is according to typical characteristics of members of that group, such as religion, gender, age or simply organisational membership. Such classification is also relational and comparative, so is only done in comparison to others, so young in relation to old, male in relation to female, in an organisation in relation to being not.

From an organisational perspective, a person’s (individual) identity is positively aligned with satisfaction in their role and their perception of the ‘correctness’ of behaviour expected of members of that organisation (citizenship behaviour). What is important to understand is that persons (individuals) go through a stage of ‘self and others’ categorisation in order to determine what they see as the environmental model. They then adopt the identity of the group they most closely align to, and then set about comparing themselves and their group against others and their groups. All this gives satisfies the psychological need to belong, with the associated sense of belonging to a defined part of the social world.

In 1992 Conner called out that a strong and shared social identity may be the heart of a strong organisational culture, and it follows that persons (individual) identify more strongly with organisations sharing their self-defined attributes, and will be far more supportive and engaged, but also follows that their concept of self can be confused when the underlying attributes change such as when a company re-brands, is assimilated or merges with another. In such conditions, highly identified group members have been found to emphasise the  process of change, more than the outcomes, which are emphasised by less identified group members, meaning that the former may even agree to significant change processes if they are viewed as being fairly managed (Drzensky & Van Dick, 2013, p279).

The research over the years has borne out that social identity has a positive effect on job performance, satisfaction, and the behaviour of the organisation’s citizens. This also indicates in the case of acquisitions and merging organisations that extra attention and focus needs to be placed on the ‘smaller’ organisations because of a higher susceptibility to the negative effects of a perceived threat to their identity in the face of larger established groups in the larger parties.

Off the back of such a long history of research, there are guidelines that help develop or improve social identity from an organisational context before, during and after change. These are numerous and complex, and covered in my formal coaching and education sessions, here in NCG:Corporate, should you be interested in learning more.

So, we have this time looked at ‘conformity’ and ‘social identity’ and its importance in change management. In the next part, we look a bit more at ‘self-categorisation’ and also at ‘pro social behaviour’, as other sub elements of ‘Belonging’.

As always, leave me comments, good bad or indifferent, by email or against the article (on the ‘blog’ page if you are listening to the podcast), and watch out for the next topic in a few weeks.
]]> Thu, 02 Nov 2023 07:48:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?csm1-part2-conformity-and-social-identity http://localhost/blog/rss/000000019 <![CDATA[Social Psychology - Motive One 'Belonging' - Part One - 'Belongingness' and 'Social Cohesion']]> imblog
The Core Social Psychology Motives in Change Management Series
Core Social Motive One – Belonging

By Laurence Nicholson

Part One - ‘Belongingness’ and ‘Social Cohesion’

(For the audio podcast, click HERE)

People (individuals) have a natural drive to form social bonds and expend effort to maintain them, primarily because of being social animals. Through such social connections (connectedness) people can be, and are, unified, and this unification is stimulated by goals and interests they have in common; a common interest or a common enemy elicit the same stimulation of the desire to be unified.

In 1954, Gordon Allport, one of the pioneers of social psychology, defined Social Psychology as “..the scientific attempt to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other human beings” (Allport & Lindzey, 1954, p.5). Why am I quoting this? Well if you consider the aforementioned desire and drive for unifying with others, and the title of this piece, “Belonging”, it should be clear that if this, the most fundamental of the core social motives within organisational behaviour and change, is to be achieved it can only be aided by an understanding of the psychological, emotional and physical effects of the presence of others, actual or perceived, and conversely their absence.

Whenever there is a cohesion, even if it just perceived, it has an influence on the behaviours of the individual persons, and the group persons, through the seemingly simple sense of belonging and the intrinsic boost to both individual and group morale it brings.

Within the change management theory ‘need-to-belong’, self-esteem is explained as the personally established (internal) measure of our individual chance of having good relationships (Van Lange et al., 2012, p.121). This presence or lack of belonging, ‘belongingness’ if you like, generally has a profound effect on our cognitive processes and emotional patterns, which is often easy to see and feel; just think back to a time when you felt ‘outside’ of the social group in a past situation, and remember how you felt and what the foundations were to any decisions or thoughts you had as a result.

Establishing an environment within any change management that offers this sense of belonging, will be a positive contributor to the journey, especially when we know a shared vision (both between the group individuals, and sometimes more importantly as communicated by the leaders of the change) or some collective sense of mission, is a positive factor in realising the change desired. Walton, Cohen, Cwir & Spencer (2012) showed in their research that even the merest sense of a social connectedness can lead to better acceptance, and even adoption, of the goals and drives of others, in this case the leadership.

What is interesting is that there are a number of social psychological theories and concepts that can be seen operating within ‘belonging’, including

• Conformity (individuals will conform to a certain degree so as to fit into a group)
• Group think (desire to maintain harmony and conformity within the group)
• Social identity (being part of the group)
• Social exchange (this primary desire to be a group member drives people to search for social contact and to maximise the value of such and minimise the risks)

Belonging(ness), as described, plays a key role in organisational change key themes such as shared vision or mission (as mentioned previously), organisational culture and change capacity (to adapt).

As a consequence of change within an organisation, the sense of belonging can be tested at both individual and group levels, which can easily influence social identity (including identity within the organisation), and thus the social cohesion. If the change also leads to a reduction and subsequent scarcity of resources, this will further impact social cohesion and reduce prosocial behaviours, from the perspective of the organisation leadership. It could simultaneously increase cohesion and prosocial behaviours within the individuals and groups, however, due to a collective sense of a common enemy or challenge as understood within the theory of ‘terror management’.

Now we have looked at 'belongingness' and its application to change, let us now consider what is meant by social cohesion.

Social cohesion, a concept from the days of Emile Durkheim (late 19th and early 20th centuries), is often analysed within the life-cycle of social integration, stability and subsequent disintegration (Chan, To, & Chan, 2006). It is seen within social psychology as a trait that combines with others to influence the way a group operates, and has been defined by three core dimensions, these being:

• Quality of social relations (trust, diversity acceptance, and participation)
• Identification with the social entity
• Orientation towards the common good (social order, responsibility, and solidarity)

When thinking about social cohesion, it is important to note the concept of social norms, which are the generally accepted ways of thinking and behaving agreed upon by the group in respect of the dimensions, and the glue that can maintain the performance of the group overall.

Within organisational change, social (or group) cohesion is generally found to be more positively associated with performance, due to the findings that a cohesive group will be more motivated to be successful and thus participate more fully and enthusiastically in its activities (Evans & Dion, 1991), which is why it is at the core of change and performance as an organisational activity, so much so that Connor (1992) stated:

“Successful change is rooted in commitment. Unless key participants in a transition are committed to both attaining the goals of the change, and paying the price those goals entail, the project will ultimately fail. In fact, most change failures trace back to a lack of commitment, with obvious symptoms like sponsors terminating projects, and more subtle signs such as target apathy as leading indicators” (p. 147)

He also went on to say:

“Given that committed people will devote the time, money, endurance, persistence, loyalty and ingenuity necessary, it is easy to see why commitment is critical for successful change. It is the glue that provides the vital bond between people and change goals. It is the source of energy that propels resilient people and organisations through the process at the fastest, most effective pace possible - the optimum speed of change” (p. 148).

So we have seen how ‘belongingness’ and ‘social cohesion’, part of the superior element of Belonging, are crucial parts of change management, and need to be included as foundational dimensions to any change activity. In the next article, ‘’conformity’ and ‘social identity’ are explained and their impacts on success in a change programme are considered.

As always, leave me comments, good bad or indifferent, by email or against the article (on the ‘blog’ page if you are listening to the podcast), and watch out for the next topic in a few weeks.

]]> Tue, 17 Oct 2023 06:00:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?csm-belonging-p1 http://localhost/blog/rss/000000018 <![CDATA[Are You Underpinning Your Change Management Practices and Programmes with Social Psychology?]]> imblog
Are You Underpinning Your Change Management Practices and Programmes with Social Psychology?

 
 
By Laurence Nicholson

(For the audio podcast, click HERE)

Following on from my articles for NCG:Mediation on the ‘Understanding Threat/Reward Response Psychology For Effective Challenge To Suggested Offers’ and ‘Finding Emotional Encouragement to Help Realign a Dispute Situation’, aimed primarily at Mediators, but relevant to anyone in a management position, I am talking today about the presence, or lack thereof, of any depth of social psychology within most organisational change management practices and organisational programmes.

10 years ago, Edgar H. Schein said “The world is becoming more technologically complex, interdependent, and culturally diverse, which makes the building of relationships more and more necessary to get things accomplished and, at the same time, more difficult”, and I doubt anyone would challenge that statement today, as it is arguably more so now in 2023.

Schein’s statement was made against a backdrop of his work into organisational change and development, and the foundations of social psychology these need to be built on.

So, what is social psychology?

Gordon Allport, one of the pioneers of social psychology, defined it as “..the scientific attempt to understand and explain how the thoughts, feelings and behaviours of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of other human beings” (Allport & Lindzey, 1954, p.5).

In this vein of trying to determine these elements, Fiske (2010, p.14) described what he calls the ‘social core motives’. These are the fundamental, underlying psychological processes that determine these thoughts, feelings and behaviours of people in situations in which they have to deal with others. These five motives are ‘belonging, understanding, controlling, trusting and self-enhancement.[i]

In the pursuit of the goal of making the world a better place, social psychologists (being social scientists) study practical social issues, like those relating to change management, and their application to real-world problems is one of their key goals.

It is believed that we could understand and reduce some of the negative influences people present, if we truly understand how people influence one another, either directly or indirectly.

“And what has this to do with change management?” I hear you ask.

Well, given the challenges people and organisations have had and continue to have today, the discipline of change management needs to keep developing positively and effectively to encompass both the individual person and the social person (the isolated, unique individual and the person as an element of the group).

As we know, or should know, change management is predominantly about behavioural change in individuals and in the group, and these are intricately woven together, both impacting the other and each providing a catalyst to the other in a complex behavioural dance.

Exactly because change is a very human experience, and played out within an environment that is a complex construct of behaviours, emotions and perceived values, both of the individual and the social persons involved, it is important, if not imperative, that advisers and consultants engaged in the practice of change management know and understand the socio-psychological aspects of organisational change. Unfortunately, as found and stated by Strikwerda (2002) and more recent studies (Fiske, 2010. Aronson, 2016), this knowledge in many advisers and managers is too superficial, if not entirely absent, and so is missing, or underutilised, in a large percentage of the available ‘specialists’ literature’ on change management.

There is a way to improve on this availability and application of said knowledge, and that is through the employment of a set of four foundational insights into social psychology, that I have summarised next. In my change management coaching, I explore each in much more detail, including how to apply them as foundational pillars of organisational change.

The first actually echoes an element of my Neuroscience In Management training and materials[ii], and that is that people are social animals. Our brains do not experience the workplace as a transactional environment (you provide work for a monetary/benefits compensation) but as a social system (Rock, 2018). Change in organisations is thus inevitably a social process.

The second highlights why some form of cohesion and structured methodology are so important, in recognising there are a number of psychological forces and factors at play during any change, and that subsequently requires a variety of theories and insights. Something Rijsman (1990) referred to as “an inventory of social influences”.

The third relates to the central mechanics within social systems during change, and that is to assign meaning to the change and its motivation. It is clear that stating a ‘mission or vision’, announcing a ‘set of values’ or offering some type of reward system, generally achieve next to nothing. These will only accomplish something if they are meaningful to those people, both individually and as a group, who are involved. Meaning is thus key to successful change.

The fourth runs somewhat counter to much of the optimistic rhetoric usually found in the numerous books put out by the self-professed change ‘gurus’ and ‘specialist consultants’ within the change management industry. It highlights that people, both the individual person and social or group person, reacts in unique and variable ways within the social environments, depending on the multiplicity of factors (see insight 2 above) at play, so it is essential to be able to explain, understand and predict, as much as possible, the actual and likely reactions, paying special attention to the negatives and capitalising at both individual and social (group) levels on the positives.

These foundations, when applied appropriately and with evidenced knowledge and understanding, will provide for a strong platform from which to manage any organisational change programme, to more successful conclusions.

If you would like to learn more about the details behind these four foundational pillars of insight, and how to implement them within your own change programmes, as well as the five core social motives, contact us here at N Cubed Group and ask about our Social Psychology In Change Management Coaching Programme.

As always, leave me comments, good bad or indifferent, by email or against the article (on the ‘blog’ page if you are listening to the podcast), and watch out for the next topic in a few weeks.
 
 
[i] For further details relating to the five core social motives, contact N Cubed Group and ask about their coaching workshops on social psychology in change management
[ii] See N Cubed Group website at https://ncubedgroup.com/cognitve-strength-workshops.html
 
 
]]> Tue, 03 Oct 2023 06:38:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?social-psychology-in-change-mgmt http://localhost/blog/rss/000000017 <![CDATA[Achieve a better work-life balance]]> imblog
I am re posting this 2021 article, as many people are talking to me about how to achieve a better balance in reality, not just talking the talk...the concepts are more relevant now than ever. Read on...

Today, I am talking about time and the use of 'goals' to balance that all-elusive work-life balance.
We all know we rarely have a healthy work-life balance these days, and many people try lots of ways to improve theirs, including using techniques such as setting SMART goals.

SMART goals are those which are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound, which when got right are a great way to get real focus on the best things and most important things in life......

BUT.....it is very important to understand each element of the acronym, especially the S (Specific) definition.

When defining the Specific details of your goal, you MUST consider not just yourself, but also everyone who will be affected by your actions, and make sure you are very clear on how they understand or interpret what you are saying and promising to try to achieve.

A perfect example of this not being fully considered comes from a conversation I had whilst having a casual dinner in Singapore in 2019, when one of the guests was telling me how they had set a 'goal' of "leaving the office at 5pm every day" so they could be at home earlier than they currently manage every day.

I noticed whilst they were speaking that they were leaking 'signals' (non-verbal information) telling me they did not entirely believe what they were saying and were clearly not as happy as I would expect them to be with this extra home time, so I asked how that goal was working out?

They said "O-kay" with a strained smile, so I asked them what the purpose of that goal had been when they made it, and they replied "well, to spend more time with my family, of course".

When I pressed them a bit more about what they had said to their family about their goal, and then about how many times they had 'failed' to leave at 5pm, it began to dawn on them that not only was the goal 'Unrealistic', because there will inevitably be days when it will not be possible to leave at 5pm, but also that they had unwittingly set expectations in the minds of their family members, which would not actually always be achievable, so they had set them selves up to fail occasionally and thus to disappoint their family occasionally also.

I also asked how many times when they HAD left at 5pm, had they 'taken their work home', either literally by carrying on working from home, or mentally by not being 'present' at home other than physically? "Quite a few" was the sad answer.

On this realisation, I sat with them and walked them through determining what the real result they were trying to achieve was, which was to spend more TIME with their loved ones, and that setting a realistic and achievable goal of 'trying to leave work earlier more often' but more importantly communicating to them that for those days when they DID get home, they would be present fully in mind and spirit, so that they realised it would not always work out that they left early, so would not feel let down by a failed promise, and that they could look forward to REALLY having them home early when they did, and not just watch  them head off to the study or a table to carry on working, or even worse, sit by them completely disengaged through being preoccupied with their mind still being 'at work'.

SMART goals are fantastic and a powerful tool but they MUST be understood and created correctly, otherwise they can cause more harm than good.

I have a short online course for understanding and making SMART Goals, available on my 'Courses' page HERE.
]]> Tue, 19 Sep 2023 06:05:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?better-work-life-balance http://localhost/blog/rss/000000016 <![CDATA[WFH: Good Or Bad For Us?]]> imblog
Is Working From Home Really Good For Us?

 
There continues to be much conversation about the benefits from being able to work from home, as the ‘new way of working’, from higher productivity, to greater staff freedoms around their family life, but how much have we really dug into what this ‘newfound freedom’ means across all aspects of our lives?

In this article, I am looking into a number of distinct areas unrelated to business or work dimensions, to consider whether the impacts of working from home are actually doing more harm than good.

I started trying to order these in terms of seriousness, but found each had significant levels in their own right, so will just take them one at a time in no particular order, starting with one that I believe has the most empirical evidence than the others, and that is the startling, and indeed frightening impact on our optical health.

Research by such organisations as the World Economic Forum, indicates that approximately half the global population are likely to be short-sighted by 2050. This represents an increase of over 33% on today, which is already massively increased from 1995 levels.

In 2000, the number of people estimated to have myopia was around 1.4 billion (globally), and by 2015 this number was 2.3 billion. Plotting this pattern will have some 3.2 billion by 2025 and near 4.8 billion by 2050.

Researchers attribute this to two significant, and related, contributors; our addiction to smartphones, tablets and TV screens, and the reduction in the amount of daylight we are being exposed to, very typically due to our predominantly indoor use of such devices. The fact that a study published in Ophthalmology found myopia much more prevalent in developed economies, the very areas with the highest device and screen use and the consequential reduction in exposure to daylight, does appear to substantiate this.

Why does this cause short-sightedness? Well, we have known for more than 10 years that exposure to sunlight encourages the release of dopamine, and dopamine is known to inhibit eye growth, the elongation of the eyeball being the very cause of myopia. In fact, many studies, including one of schools in Guangzhou, found that students who spent more time outside had an average 23% lower incidence of myopia.

If we look at East Asian countries, where tech addictions are well documents, the prevalence of myopia in 20-year-olds has risen from around 20% in the 1940’s to around 80% in 2010

Now think about how many hours you used to spend in meeting rooms without straining your eyes on screens, talking and using whiteboards or flipcharts, that you now spend on a videoconference screen? How is that going to affect your eyesight?

Tip #1: Limit screen time and take advantage of getting outdoors to be in bright daylight and sunlight. If working, take breaks and get outdoors, and even go for a local walk during lunchtime.

 
Whilst we are talking about the release of chemicals in our bodies, let’s consider the lack of co-location of working from home.

Oxytocin is often affectionately referred to as the “hugging drug” because it is released by the brain during physical contact with others. It's also the feeling behind love, friendship, and deep trust.

Accepting that humans are social animals, oxytocin is one of the main reasons why. Most current neuroscientific studies of oxytocin indicate that oxytocin doesn’t just always make people happier and more social. Instead, it seems to act like a volume control, amplifying brain activity related to whatever we are already experiencing, playing an undeniably important role in establishing and maintaining relationships.

The significant reduction in co-located interaction due to the physical self-isolation of not going to the office, leads to a reduction in the release of oxytocin. Video meeting functionality does not go near to compensating for this, resulting in shallower relationships, less trust and I have even found varying levels of paranoia in many clients I coach, because they are less able to ‘relate’ to people on a screen.

I am looking into a correlation with their feeling of having less ‘gut feeling’ about people, when interacting on video sessions, and the significant loss of information available to us through situational cues and body language, especially the latter where we cannot see a large part of the body that furnishes us with important messages, even for those of us trained in reading this.

Tip #2: Attend your office whenever possible, co-locating with colleagues and clients, and you will elevate your oxytocin levels, and as a bonus, get more outdoor light and sunshine on the journey!

 
Let’s now talk about the home environment itself.

It is admittedly nice to not have to make that average 1 hour journey, often on crowded public transport, to get to your place of work, however there was a very positive psychological benefit to this ‘enforced’ activity, in the form of creating a definitive period of ‘switching off’ from work mode, and releasing more of those lovely chemicals to reduce the levels of stress we have experienced during the work day.

Another thing we know is that consistent exposure to elevated levels of cortisol increases the destruction of neurons in our brain, above the natural maintenance levels, leading to reduced cognitive performance. That ‘calm down’ (notwithstanding the frustrations of god old public transport) time played a vital role in limiting the exposure to high stress levels and avoiding unnecessary neuronal damage.

So missing the journey creates problems on its own, but it is also important to consider the environment in which this working day is now taking place, and how much the benefits are globally recognised.

For those who have a large enough property to create an ‘alternative’ office environment, physically distinct from the home, and one where preventing distractions is possible, this can be considered a viable option, notwithstanding the loss of physical co-location and the ‘calm-down’ journey mentioned.

However, how many people actually have that luxury? I certainly don’t, living in London where space is at a premium. In these situations, your work has now firmly invaded your home, and more importantly the home of your partner and family, usually without their agreement or even a choice.

Add to this the strain this can put on relationships, where personal space and alone time is suddenly ripped away from family members, it is certainly no surprise I have seen a huge increase in clients looking for relationship counselling, and reported divorce applications sky-rocketing by over 250%.

If that is not bad enough, even when relationships are strong enough to adjust, how many have thought about the impact to the psychological development of young children. Who are forming their internal world view of who is trustworthy and who they should create a distance from, emotionally?

If your youngster(s) are developing this trust profile in their primary caregivers, that’s you, and had established that when ‘mummy’ or ‘daddy’ was in their presence, they had their attention and felt safe and looked after, now suddenly find that same ‘mummy’ or ‘daddy’ is not available to them, does not interact with them as they did before, it is possible that trust get’s broken, and they ‘learn’ that you are now not someone to trust, resorting to pulling in their emotional connections in case they are hurt. This is potentially a lifelong issue for them, and I see many people in counselling who are suffering from a lack of trust stemming from this stepping back at an early age.

Suddenly, this option to ‘work from home’ starts looking like a nice commercial decision for the company, as they offload valuable office space, but not one which really paid much thought to the employees’ long-term wellbeing, physically, mentally or socially. It served its purpose when we legally had to lockdown, but is not a viable longer-term benefit for individuals, but one which is creating a volume of longer-term problems.

Tip #3: Return to placing your working environment where is should be, in a place of work, unless you either live on your own and don’t care if you have no definitive ‘home’ environment, or have sufficient space at home to create a physically distinct ‘office’ environment, and are not interested in all those other issues identified above, of physical and mental wellbeing, emotional and relational stability and your children’s’ emotional development.

If you absolutely have to work from home because your company has sold off the premises and just rents small amounts of space, ensure you put strict and definitive schedules in place, and where possible avoid family and non-work distractions during your working hours.

Finally, ask yourself whether the ability to get up 5 minutes before starting work, or being able to do 2-3 hours extra work (for which you are most likely not getting paid any extra) during your old journey time, is really worth the impacts few have even thought about, all for a financial benefit the company sees more of than you.
]]> Tue, 05 Apr 2022 16:29:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?wfh-good-or-bad http://localhost/blog/rss/000000015 <![CDATA[2 Top Tips to Turn Negative Thoughts to Positives]]> imblog
Struggling with Negative thoughts? – Here is how you can turn them to positives…
We all have them at some point in our lives, some people more than others, and for some people this can become a debilitating problem.

I’m talking about Negative Thoughts, Self-Doubt, Negative Self Talk. All of these are terms used to describe the act of telling yourself you cannot do/be/achieve/complete/prevent (delete where applicable) something.

They are thoughts you have which lead you to believe you are not good enough or that others will see you as having no value or worth.

Beck described these thoughts as 'automatic thoughts'. We have positive automatic thoughts, otherwise known as 'PATS', and negative automatic thoughts, known as 'NATS'.

The term ‘Negative automatic thoughts, is used to describe a stream of thoughts that almost all of us can notice, if we try to pay attention to them. They are negatively tinged appraisals or interpretations. They are meanings we take from what happens around us or within us.

If you consider for a second, times in your own thinking when you were anxious, you might have had thoughts about the threat of something bad happening to you or people you care about.

There is unlikely to be much actual evidence of such things being a probable outcome, yet those thoughts came into your mind.

Now think about a time when you were annoyed. You might have had thoughts about others being unfair, or not following rules you consider important. How about when you were fed up, there might have been thoughts about loss or defeat, or negative views of yourself.

These are all examples of ‘NATS’.

The thing about these thoughts is that they just happen automatically, without effort, in your unconscious mind, which makes them hard to deal with or prevent. They are part of a ‘pattern’ or neural map which associates an activating event with a core belief, typically created by a past experience, which triggers an emotional response that is internally reinforced by negative thinking.

In my Mental Health (Burnout Prevention) Workshops, and in my Online training, I go into detail about how to identify these and their root causes, and then how to challenge and ultimately change this type of thinking, but here I am going to tell you a couple of techniques which will go a long way to stopping or at least slowing down the process enough to diminish their impacts.

Tip #1: When you find yourself in a situation where you are feeling like everything is dark, pointless, or you can’t see a positive future, often when relationships are either ending or going wrong, and you begin thinking it is your fault and that nobody will ever love you or want to be with you (who hasn’t been there, right?!)….STOP.

Ask yourself what you would say to your best friend, if they were the one going through this and feeling this way, not you?
We almost always have the answers inside us for our problems, but we can’t always find them, or even realise they are there. By taking ‘ourselves’ out of the equation, we see the situation much more clearly and rationally, and can see the bigger picture.

Tip #2: When you experience an emotional distress of some kind, such as a feeling of anxiety, immediately note down the thoughts and images that are going through your mind simultaneously to the feeling/emotion. Use a pad or a digital note on a phone, etc.

Think about that particular emotional feeling in steps:
1. How do you feel and react when faced with this particular type of issue or situation?
2. Determine what kinds of events (situations, conversations, activities) that are happening when you experience this emotional feeling.
3. Write down how you would like to feel and react when these types of events happen.
4. Now consider the things you noted down initially (the thoughts and images going through your mind at the exact time of the emotion). These are making you feel worse and react accordingly.
5. Now decide on a different way of thinking about the event, that would result in you feeling and reacting in the way you described in step 3.

What you have now is the blueprint for recognising the types of events which trigger an emotional response/behaviour accompanied by negative automatic thoughts, a goal for how you would like to react to such events, and a different ‘rational’ way to think about the event which leads to a better outcome for you, in terms of stress, anxiety and potentially life experiences.

You can find out much more about the ways of actively working through these and how to set appropriate goals, along with how to set out goal plans, in my workshops or my online course. Go to https://ncubedgroup.com and look under ‘courses’ or use the ‘Talk to Us’ page to get in touch.

]]> Mon, 26 Jul 2021 09:49:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?turn-negative-thoughts-to-positives http://localhost/blog/rss/000000013 <![CDATA[Brain Training Apps: The Real Deal or the new Snake Oil?]]> imblog
Brain Training Apps: ‘The Real Deal or the new Snake Oil?’ and ‘How to use them successfully’
For anyone who has been on my Proactive Executive Corporate Mental Health Training course, they will know I mention using ‘brain training’ apps as part of the approach to optimising brain performance around attention, selective attention and impulse control, and even mention one specifically because of its ability to adapt to the user’s performance.

Firstly, no. I am not altering my opinion nor my recommendations around using them, but I am going to provide a bit more guidance in relation to what they can achieve, why they are useful and when to use them.

What has prompted me to write about this, is the ever-increasing number of such apps available which promise all sorts of long-term benefits and ‘miracles’ of longevity of brain performance, for a short-term use in earlier life, which is definitely not the case....

]]> Wed, 28 Apr 2021 07:55:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?brain-training-apps http://localhost/blog/rss/000000011 <![CDATA[Helping Achieve a better work-life balance]]> imblog
Today, I am talking about time and the use of 'goals' to balance that all-elusive work-life balance.
We all know we rarely have a healthy work-life balance these days, and many people try lots of ways to improve theirs, including using techniques such as setting SMART goals.

SMART goals are those which are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Timebound, which when got right are a great way to get real focus on the best things and most important things in life......

BUT.....it is very important to understand each element of the acronym, especially the S (Specific) definition.

When defining the Specific details of your goal, you MUST consider not just yourself, but also everyone who will be affected by your actions, and make sure you are very clear on how they understand or interpret what you are saying and promising to try to achieve.

A perfect example of this not being fully considered comes from a conversation I had whilst having a casual dinner in Singapore in 2019, when one of the guests was telling me how they had set a 'goal' of "leaving the office at 5pm every day" so they could be at home earlier than they currently manage every day.

I noticed whilst they were speaking that they were leaking 'signals' (non-verbal information) telling me they did not entirely believe what they were saying and were clearly not as happy as I would expect them to be with this extra home time, so I asked how that goal was working out?

They said "O-kay" with a strained smile, so I asked them what the purpose of that goal had been when they made it, and they replied "well, to spend more time with my family, of course".

When I pressed them a bit more about what they had said to their family about their goal, and then about how many times they had 'failed' to leave at 5pm, it began to dawn on them that not only was the goal 'Unrealistic', because there will inevitably be days when it will not be possible to leave at 5pm, but also that they had unwittingly set expectations in the minds of their family members, which would not actually always be achievable, so they had set them selves up to fail occasionally and thus to disappoint their family occasionally also.

I also asked how many times when they HAD left at 5pm, had they 'taken their work home', either literally by carrying on working from home, or mentally by not being 'present' at home other than physically? "Quite a few" was the sad answer.

On this realisation, I sat with them and walked them through determining what the real result they were trying to achieve was, which was to spend more TIME with their loved ones, and that setting a realistic and achievable goal of 'trying to leave work earlier more often' but more importantly communicating to them that for those days when they DID get home, they would be present fully in mind and spirit, so that they realised it would not always work out that they left early, so would not feel let down by a failed promise, and that they could look forward to REALLY having them home early when they did, and not just watch  them head off to the study or a table to carry on working, or even worse, sit by them completely disengaged through being preoccupied with their mind still being 'at work'.

SMART goals are fantastic and a powerful tool but they MUST be understood and created correctly, otherwise they can cause more harm than good.

I will be releasing a short online course for understanding and making SMART Goals, at the end of May, so watch for that being announced on my 'Courses' page.
]]> Thu, 15 Apr 2021 14:05:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?helping-achieve-a-better-work-life-balance http://localhost/blog/rss/000000010 <![CDATA[Interview with Brainz Magazine]]> imblog Check out my recent interview with Brainz Magazine to find out how I got involved in Proactive Mental Health and why, at 'My Interview' ]]> Mon, 22 Mar 2021 12:29:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?interview-with-brainz-magazine http://localhost/blog/rss/00000000F <![CDATA[Training The Executive Mind]]> imblog
Did you know that multitasking is actually impossible? We think we can multitask, but really we force our brain to switch between different contexts. Studies also show that the chance of making mistakes increases by 50% and that it can take up to twice as long to perform an action or task when trying to multitask.

Decline in fluid intelligence (our ability to access and use our crystalised intelligence) happens to us all, starting at a younger age than you might expect.

As we collect information through learning and experience, we store this up for application against problems we come across at work and in life, and because we are a problem solving species, when we struggle to solve things, it can affect us psychologically as well as emotionally.

Learning how our brains work and why, and about what we can do about reducing the decline and increasing our brain's resilience to ageing and efficiency, is more important than ever in these days of added stress relating to the impacts of COVID and social isolation, and applying a few techniques, exercises and practices can go a long way to fending off poor mental health and declining performance.

My standard Corporate Mental Health Training, and my Executive Corporate Mental Health Training, provided as online sessions over 6 to 8 weeks, will show you:

  • how our brains work in different 'systems' and how it can be exhausted quite quickly,
  • how you can apply techniques to optimise the application of the limited resources against the most important problems,
  • how to increase attention spans and deal with interruptions more effectively,
  • how to deal with impulsive and reactive behaviours, and
  • how to extend as well as improve your mental performance

Contact me today to find out how you can register for my next course, and why it is the best thing you can do for yourself, your family, your business, and for your workforce.
]]> Tue, 02 Feb 2021 15:12:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?training-the-executive-mind http://localhost/blog/rss/00000000E <![CDATA[Defusing that Anxiety Attack]]> imblog
(Listen to the Podcast HERE)

We have all been there at some point in our lives, and many more than once; the sudden increase in heart rate, the increase in body temperature, the feeling of lightheadedness, shallow breathing and nausea.

The causes can be numerous, but all share a common theme: we are facing something unknown or something we fear in some way.

It can be an upcoming presentation at work, or a strange noise in the night, or an oncoming person or group of people who look intimidating, all of which trigger our 'Freeze - Flight - Fight' response. This age old survival mechanism is not required much these days in the way it was for our distant ancestors, but even though our environment is very different to way back then, the response can still be valid, especially if feeling threatened.

The chemical shifts in our body are designed to prepare us for taking some sort of action, and ensuring our muscles are primed to react swiftly if needed, so our brain floods our nervous systems with hormones such as Cortisol and Adrenaline, and shuts down our digestive system in order to focus all our resources onto our physical ability to react (fight - flight).

Often, this is an overreaction in today's environments, and we need to have a way of 'turning off' the automatic (limbic) response by recognising the fear is not as we believe it to be.

We teach a number of techniques in our workshops and online training sessions, relating to how and why this happens, and how to better control our arousal response system, but here are a few you can try yourselves should you feel an anxiety or panic attack coming on:

  • Apply the 4-7-8 Breathing technique. When you feel your breath quickening, focus your attention on inhaling through your nose for 4 seconds, holding this full breath for 7 seconds, and then slowly exhale through your mouth for 8 seconds. Repeat until your breathing slows. This is extremely effective for those pre-presentation or interview anxiety nerves.
  • Recognize and accept what you’re experiencing. If you’ve already experienced an anxiety or panic attack, you know that it can be incredibly frightening. Remind yourself that the symptoms will pass and you’ll be alright. Also, if the issue is related to a phobia of some kind, tell yourself that the level of perceived threat is not accurate and that this response is not required, as the situation is rarely as threatening as you believe. Repeating this in a type of mantra can help to reduce your stress response.
  • Practice mindfulness. Mindfulness-based interventions are increasingly used to treat anxiety and panic disorders. Mindfulness is a technique that can help you ground your thoughts in the present. You can practice mindfulness by actively observing thoughts and sensations without reacting to them.
  • Use relaxation techniques. Relaxation techniques include guided imagery, aromatherapy, and muscle relaxation. If you’re experiencing symptoms of anxiety or a panic attack, try doing things that you find relaxing. Take a walk in a garden or park if available, close your eyes and apply the breathing technique above, take a bath, or use lavender, which has relaxing effects.

If your anxiety and panic attacks are, or become, regular, this can have a longer lasting effect on your body and it's immune system, and symptoms such as constant digestive issues, increased potential for depression, weight gain through the constant increase in hormones like cortisol, and more frequent dizziness and headaches, so talk to your GP as well as consider programmes such as ours which provide techniques to reduce the frequency and intensity of such attacks.

Please get in contact with us if you want more details of our Corporate Workshops or our online training sessions.
]]> Tue, 05 Jan 2021 11:09:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?defusing-that-anxiety-attack http://localhost/blog/rss/00000000D <![CDATA[Return To Work: Leaving The Safety Bubble Anxiety]]> imblog
(Listen to podcast here)

I have had a significant rise in the number of people coming to me, to talk about how they are beginning to feel trapped in their homes because of the constant lockdowns and restrictions, which in itself is quite a normal reaction and only to be expected.

What was more worrying was that as many of these discussions progressed, it became clear the feelings were less about the lockdown restrictions and guidelines related to the attempts to reduce the spread of SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19), which have created a sense of fear of mixing with strangers in case one is a carrier, but more about actually leaving the cocoon of safety which is the home.

The neural link to the anxieties had been replaced, but not in a good way.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy uses the principle of understanding the 'activator' (A) or event which initiates a 'behaviour' (B) or response based on a previous experience or learning, which results in a 'consequence' (C) or outcome, and replacing the neural association or pathway linked to that previous experience or learning which is responsible for our reaction, with a better one which will result in a more positive outcome and an improvement in our view on life and our environment.

We are capable of making these changes unconsciously too, as strong emotional responses such as fear can affect the way we react, and I am seeing the start of a pattern where many of my clients are becoming so fearful of 'catching the virus' from other people, that they are avoiding going outside their safety zone of their home, but when challenged on what they are fearful of, they are associating their 'going outside' with their anxieties, instead of their 'failing to avoid a situation which could lead to infection'.

Their neural-association-shift has potentially set them on a path of developing panic disorders, a condition of which is agoraphobia, which is actually a fear of being in situations where escape might be difficult or that help wouldn't be available if things go wrong, and not as people tend to think, simply a fear of open spaces.

If you feel yourself experiencing such a symptom, there are some things you can do to reduce this anxiety, and to keep the 'activator' where it originates, allowing you to understand the cause and implement some strategies for minimising the effects on your lifestyle.

Instead of associating the 'outside world' with the risks, consider the circumstances under which contraction occurs; touching hard surfaces and then touching your face, or being within 8 or so metres of a carrier when they sneeze or cough directly at you, etc, and develop ways to avoid such situations. These can be such strategies as planning specific directions for your journeys, going at less busy times, having alternate routes to take should unexpected crowds appear, and being mindful to avoid touching hard surfaces as much as possible and carrying and applying anti-bacterial gel to your hands after doing so, if it was unavoidable.

These tools should keep the 'activator' focused as the situations which carry the risk, and not allow it to expand to an 'all-or-nothing' type of flawed thinking ("I can't go outside because it is not safe"), commonly associated with depression and anxieties which tend towards depression, and therefor keep your behaviour (reaction) appropriately focused on positive ways to avoid the specific situation which carry the most risk.

One word of caution, though. Be sure to understand and be mindful of the possibility that behaviours such as constantly applying anti-bacterial gel to your hands, after each time you touch a hard surface, could become so habitual, that it strays into the obsessional and a form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, which might be a good thing under current circumstances, but will need to be addressed at a later date, should it become something which impacts your everyday behaviour.

Above all, keep things in perspective and don't let fear and anxiety create a prison of your own making. Seek help if you feel you are already suffering from this, or encourage anyone you know, to do so if they are exhibiting such symptoms.

Stay safe and apply common sense, and we should all get through this relatvely unscathed.
]]> Wed, 02 Dec 2020 13:22:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?leaving-the-safety-bubble-anxiety http://localhost/blog/rss/00000000C <![CDATA[Responding to a Viral Disrupter]]> imblog
Considering the impacts and challenges of SARS-CoV-2

Nobody expected 2020 to be such a disrupted year, especially on such a global scale.

Seven months later, the darker days of autumn and winter are beginning to appear. On top of this, psychological conditions like seasonal adjustment disorder (SAD) exacerbate the effects of isolation for many. Companies need to take stock of where they stand, what they have learned and what they can expect in the future; they need to plan how best to protect their employees and their business to emerge as a high-performing and operationally optimised company with satisfied and motivated employees.

In this article, written in partnership with Product-Smart, we take a look at how companies are facing changes in working practices and the introduction of new techniques for communicating and involving different workers to maintain productivity and meet the increasing challenge of maintaining motivation and concentration in these new working conditions.
1.    Background to the trigger for disrupted change
The WHO1 declared the COVID-19 outbreak, caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Since then, the rate of global spread has accelerated.i
2.    Impacts of SARS-CoV-2
The initial response to the outbreak included immediate travel restrictions, interaction with others in a tight environment, and a reduction in the means of transport available to all but key workers.

Following the government's advice, workers were advised to work from home if possible. This prompted initial reactions from business leaders.

Companies around the world have been using technologies available for some time for long-distance communications, including video conferencing, and have largely succeeded in making it the norm for everyone, from the CEO to the entire company.
According to a recent study by BCG2 ii, "Remote working" is one of the main priorities for companies.  It will likely be a much larger element of many new TOMs3 defined as the way forward - a common view, given the ongoing feedback from this real-time experiment we were forced to do during the lockdown.
 
In this study, BCG found that around 81% of companies have already taken steps to develop a digital approach to information exchange, with a further 9% planning to do so. 86% have developed flexible work plans and a further 3% plan to do so as a new way of working.

Communication with video-based technologies facilitates much of this new approach, but it isn't without drawbacks.

Infrastructure has reached its limits in terms of the bandwidth needs of those working from home and social communication. This sometimes leads to a decreased service or a lower quality of the video images.

Furthermore, those of us who have experience of reading non-verbal signals during face-to-face meetings are aware of what is also overlooked in video conferencing, but tend to acknowledge its better than audio-based solutions, and where this level of observation is crucial. Careful positioning of cameras, high-quality microphones and the individuals themselves can provide the bulk of what is needed to access this non-verbal communication.

This also has a psycho-social element, because although the BCG study showed that employee perceptions of productivity have improved in individual and managerial tasks, more (56%) believed worse for collaborative activities, performance and productivity under COVID conditions of remote work. It states:

“Social connectivity, it turns out, is what enables us to be collaboratively productive. And collaborative productivity is essential for any company looking to improve communication, increase efficiency, accelerate skills acquisition, or harness innovation.”

What is clear from our discussions with many organisations’ employees is they miss the connectivity they have within the office. They particularly miss both “being able to spontaneously walk to a co-worker’s desk and talk about a particular issue” and “impromptu as well as planned social gatherings at work.”
  
If you put a product development lens on the study data, you distinguish the claimed increase in productivity differently.  Most tasks in the product life-cycle require significant collaboration with colleagues, internal functions and the supporting ecosystem. Today, the volume of "collaborative tasks" is much higher than individual and management tasks, so any perceived reduction in productivity due to remote work would have significant impact to the business.

It is clear that for many, remote work is increasingly perceived as a temporary or partial solution. Physical isolation not only affects the productivity of cooperation, but also affects their mental health. Physical closeness and contact, including handshakes, have long been understood as an extremely calming psychological experience and part of our social and emotional needs, as well as a non-verbal indicator of emotional and contextual states.
 
What this means is that one of the biggest challenges for companies planning to apply remote working as an integral part of their future operating model, will be to create an optimum environment, balancing it with in-office working to greatest effect.

This new landscape of employment and organisational models must take these effects on performance into account and recognise the importance of employee wellness programs and social interaction opportunities in the future approach.

Issues that have already been highlighted, as well as longer-term problems, including psychological effects, which we will now address, require long-term / permanent solutions.

The disparate team model has been partly addressed with the maturity of connectivity technologies, particularly in software development and "agile" approaches, but support functions like finance, law, procurement, and human resources tend to lag behind in implementing the changes required and adapting to support the agile environment.

Management methods and behaviours required to provide optimum support to the identification, experimentation, development and realisation of new products or product improvements must be implemented. The Servant Leadership Modeliii introduced to a modern business world by Robert K. Greenleaf in 1970, has been described by Larry Spears, the Executive Director of the ‘Robert K. Greenleaf Center for Servant-Leadership’, as a model:
 
“based on teamwork and community” and that it “seeks to involve others in decision-making…to enhance the personal growth of workers while improving the caring and quality of our many institutions”.iv

The effects of isolation on mental health are well-known, and supported by the results of a 2015 study co-authored by Julianne Holt-Lunstad, PhD student, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Brigham Young University. According to her study, inadequate social bonding increases health risks, as does smoking 15 cigarettes a day or alcohol-related disorders. She has also found that loneliness and social isolation are twice as harmful to physical and mental health as obesityv, explaining:

"There is robust evidence that social isolation and loneliness significantly increase risk for premature mortality, and the magnitude of the risk exceeds that of many leading health indicators."

Widespread use of interconnection technology will undoubtedly help mitigate these serious effects, but to what extent we will have to wait and see.

Motivation and commitment are other challenges that workers face when operating at a distance, especially when it comes to staying motivated and dealing with their tasks and the purpose of the company.

A good deal of corporate wellness and corporate proactive mental health programs, including those offered by us here at the N Cubed Group4, are heavily influenced by the field of sport, where a considerable amount of research has been conducted on techniques and practices used by elite athletes to maintain a high level of self-motivation, set effective priorities, and how to deal with negative self-talk.

Here, we combine this elite sports research with an understanding of how the brain works and how to optimise the use of our System 1 (Limbic) and System 2 (Pre-Frontal Cortex) brain functions, as identified in Dr. Daniel Kahneman's researchvi, to improve individual performance and productivity, typically resulting in measurable improvements when these programs are provided in a worker wellness program.

When combined, such rapid reactionary changes and job insecurity mean an increase in stress. Studies into workplace stress have been identified as significant costs for companies worldwide, ranging from £45 billion a year in the UKvii, to between $80 billion and $100 billion a year in the USviii.  Although this is a major topic, which I will discuss in a later article, research by Jean-Pierre Brun (Director of the Chair in Occupational Health and Safety Management at the Université de Laval) and the World Health Organization (2020) has identified isolated or solitary work as a factor in increasing stress:

'Interpersonal relationships (inadequate, inconsiderate or unsupportive supervision, poor relationships with colleagues, bullying / harassment and violence, isolated or solitary work, etc.)'

The same source identified that an organisational culture that didn't provide clarity about organisational goals, is another cause of increasing stress at work, a finding supported by BCG in their study, which also recognised the need to make employees aware of the company's "purpose" to reduce ‘uncertainty stress’5, commenting that:

“One CEO talked about how purpose enabled her to help “people move beyond grief to action” while another emphasized that “by reminding teams of our purpose and why we are working hard, we can do more to handle the crisis and strengthen our reason for existing.”ix

Although work-related stress and anxiety are still evasive concepts for many, a growing body of evidence points to the risk factors that affect these two conditions and the commonly used term in today's workplace, burnout.
2.        Conclusion
SARS-CoV-2 (COVID19) has had, and continues to have, profound effects, including communication problems, isolation effects on wellbeing, restructuring of organisations, and new topologies of the employee landscape, which will all eventually establish themselves in a position in which much is familiar and some is new.

The biggest struggle seems to revolve around the psychosocial effects of isolation restrictions and relying on technology to stay in touch.

In the future, as we experience a period of recovery and adaptation to new operational practices, leaders need to place a strong focus on corporate wellness programs and optimising the mental health of their workforces.

To account for the physical, psychological and emotional impact of the new work environment and the satisfaction of employees, many experts claim that employee engagement in terms of well-being and happiness, will be the only metric CEOs that will worry about in the future.

Through increasing the organisational support for employee well-being, ‘people management’ functions will be better placed to focus on this as the number one measure of an organisation's health.

Footnotes
[1] World Health Organisation
[2] Boston Consulting Group
[3] Target Operating Models
[4] See https://ncubedgroup.com
[5] Anxiety related to not understanding one’s role and expectations of management of them.
References
[i] The Lancet – Infectious Diseases, location: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30484-9/fulltext.
[ii] 8 Ways to embrace the new reality – September 2020, Boston Consulting Group
[iii] Greenleaf developed his idea of servant as leader after he left AT&T in 1964 from the position of the Director of Management Research,      Development and Education.
[iv] Larry Spears, (2005): The Understanding and Practice of Servant-Leadership.
[v] Perspectives on Psychological Science, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2015 – American Psychological Association at https://www.apa.org/monitor/2019/05/ce-  corner-isolation.
[vi] Kahneman, D. (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow, Farrar, Straus and Giroux
[vii] Deloitte Study - Mental health and employers, Refreshing the case for investment, January 2020
[viii] Forbes (2019) Corporate stress costs in American businesses report.
[ix] Boston Consulting Group - CEOs Reflect on Leadership in Perilous Times, August 2020
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
]]> Mon, 02 Nov 2020 11:08:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?responding-to-a-viral-disrupter http://localhost/blog/rss/00000000B <![CDATA[Can you do without an experienced Change Specialist?]]> imblog
Change, and Change Specialists!

When considering, designing and implementing change in a business, it is never wise to avoid using a Change Management Specialist, because there are various elements of change to be considered and managed, including:

  • Systemic (technology and methodology)
  • Process (optimisation of business process)
  • Organisational (changes to structure and hierarchy)
  • Behavioural (reaction to events)
  • Cultural (understanding reactions and customs in multi-cultural environments)
  • Inherited (change originating from a different programme but having impact)
  • Misplaced (unnecessary or misunderstood changes)
  • Flawed (poorly designed or under-researched)

Understanding the importance of Managing Change
Change needs to be carefully managed, and the skills to do this do not come from being involved in a project or programme which introduces some variation, or alteration, in working practices or business systems & processes. Nor does it come by default from being a project or programme manager.

Change is a powerful emotion which brings about highly charged environments and can be the cause of professional, personal and corporate confrontations.

It doesn’t have to be that way though.

If you understand enough about your own skills and those required to manage and nurture the change in a positive way, and accept when there is a gap between the two, a seasoned Change Interim can provide you with the ability to make a success of the initiative as well as earn yourself kudos for recognising the need for such specialist direction.

A true interim is not a threat to any staff or executive, but an asset to be applied in a focused and timebound way, to the benefit of all.

Quantum Change: both simple and complex
Change can be a bit of a Schrödinger’s Cat, being both simplistic in determining the most powerful source of its effect (behavioural) and highly complex in understanding the most powerful source of its effect (behavioural), simultaneously, until you cast focus on it and determine what you are wanting to change, and how you are going to do it.

When considering the list of elements of change, system process and organisation can all be almost considered as binary in that they are all subject to a set of rules or determinable guidelines. These can be managed fairly easily, comparatively to behaviour.

Behaviour, with its many facets derived from individuals influenced by their cultural, social, educational and familial backgrounds as well as their own personal heuristics and biases due to exposure to past experiences and habits, is by its very nature immensely complex to both understand, and address, on an individual level.

Now multiply that by the number of people affected by the change and apply all the interdependencies between them organisationally, professionally, politically and socially, and you can start to understand why true large scale change is almost a science (with some considering it one).

It is easy to see how someone looking at what they believe the focus of a change programme contains can consider it simple, if they think only of the systemic and process variations.

Even organisational change can be considered somewhat simplistic in nature when compared to facing the daunting challenge of behavioural change. It is no surprise to anyone who has studied behavioural change to see study after study accentuating the finding that the driving force for this must come from the top. The leadership.

We see it in organisations where there is an inherent blame culture, typically noticeable at the top, proliferating down through the management ranks, ultimately to taint the organisation's ability to function effectively, by introducing a damaging concept which discourages open free thinking, and encourages people to avoid accountability for fear of being blamed for mistakes or failures.

To change the behaviour of the Executive and Senior management is often a far harder task than changing people’s views toward a system or a process, or their organisation’s hierarchy structure.

Experience and Instinct: Primary requirements
What is required is a combination of experience of all the elements of change, specifically for the binary types, combined with an instinct or intuition for the unpredictable nature of the reactions of each individual and how to best harness the experience to address it.

People are unpredictable. Nobody will dispute that. Behavioural therapists will tell you this themselves, with numerous horror stories to support their statement.

It is because the very nature of other management skills such as project management are ordered and structured that makes those people with those skills only, do not typically make the best change managers; the psychology is different.

That is not to say they should be written off, as sometimes such a person will have developed the intuitive, empathetic and emotional intelligence required for change, separately. However it gets there is not so important. The fact that it IS there is paramount.

Targeting your most powerful Change Advocate
Often, Change Specialists are viewed with scepticism and even experience vehement disagreement, when they target the most vociferous, argumentative and stubborn individual opposed to the changes being brought in, as their primary change advocate, being told "This is a waste of time and not focusing on all the positive supporters".

The question to ask those sceptics is “what would have the most impact on the minds of everyone, positive and indifferent alike? Wouldn’t it be having the most renowned opponent become the most vocal advocate?”

If you can turn those people around, everyone else will begin to consider there must be something in this whole change thing, and will start to consider the impacts more carefully and in our experience, generally from a positive mind-set rather than a negative one; not what this will do TO me, but what this will do FOR me.

For each individual, this is a journey and if you can make the most obstinate understand, and even contribute to their journey in a positive light, the way is made easier for you with everyone else.

Just remember it is not easy, and requires special skill and understanding to do this, hence a change specialist.

Agility is Key
In the same way a behavioural therapist will alter their approach and techniques, according to how their patient is reacting to their treatment, so a good Change Manager will react to every individual in a different way when it is related to behavioural change.

This is a use of the Agile way of approaching things much utilised in technology spheres, but has been the staple tool used by skilled change managers for years, adapting to each reaction accordingly to make each person’s journey as easy as possible, working within the bounds of practicality.

Of course there is a limit to the amount of individual attention, determined by the size of the resource pool and the number of affected individuals, as well as the timetable and budget, but for the best chance of success, much focus should be placed here.

Leaving the Map when they depart
Just as important is the knowledge that change is continuous and not a one-off.

As an Interim, they are not around forever, so it is imperative that a journey map is prepared for the business to take the success of the initial change impacts and understand how to embed that into the DNA of the company.

If possible, use the interim to help build an in-house capability, however light, that can deal with the bulk of the ongoing change. They can always come back to be used for short coaching programmes to further develop this capability to be a more permanent resource for future initiatives.

Summary
Change is complex because it almost invariably includes some alteration to behaviours. This requires a specialist skill if you do not have such a resource in-house, and be honest about whether your in-house resources truly have this.

Understand the role of a true interim is to help with getting you to your destination, making it as painless as possible and to leave you better positioned for the future. They should never be seen as a threat but as an opportunity for you to learn, develop and grow as an individual and a company, and to be recognised as the one with foresight to see the need and benefits of engaging such a resource for the good of the business.

Now, isn’t that worth paying for?
]]> Fri, 30 Oct 2020 10:28:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?experienced-change-specialists http://localhost/blog/rss/00000000A <![CDATA[Agile: Myths and Truths]]> imblog
Agile : Myths & Truths. An Executive Overview
Today there are conferences, forums, professional coaches, expanded techniques, optimised agility, even specialist ‘Agile’ recruiters. So what is all the fuss about?

In this article we take a look at the history of this type of software development technique, what the current incarnation is promising adopters and what are some of the truths from the front line. We also highlight some of the elements ‘Agile’ struggles to deal with from a business perspective.

In our breakfast briefings we expand more on the things you will need to consider as an executive thinking about how ‘Agile’ would benefit your business and if you should adopt it. (Contact us here to find out more about these events).
What is Agile
Incremental software development methods have been traced as far back as 1957at IBM’s ‘Service Bureau Corporation’, which was superseded after a paper by E. A. Edmonds in 1974, introduced an adaptive software development process.

Concurrently and independently the same methods were developed and deployed by the New York Telephone Company’s Systems Development Center under the direction of Mr Dan Gielan.

During the mid to late 1970s Mr. Gielan lectured extensively throughout the U.S. on this methodology, its practices, and its benefits.
So-called lightweight software development methods evolved in the mid-1990s as a reaction against heavyweight methods, which were characterized by their critics as a heavily regulated, regimented, micromanaged, waterfall model of development.

Many proponents of lightweight methods (and now agile methods) contend that they are a return to development practices from early in the history of software development.

Early implementations of lightweight methods include Scrum (1995), Crystal Clear, Extreme Programming (XP) (1996), Adaptive Software Development, Feature Driven Development, and Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM) (1995). These are now typically referred to as agile methodologies, after the Agile Manifesto published in 2001
Uses
Development methodologies such as ‘Agile’ are essentially tools for software developers to allow them to produce applications whilst keeping pace with change during the Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) and thus avoid the pitfalls of waterfall methods where the requirements for the entire solution are specified in detail up front, only for the developers to find out after months, or years, of coding and testing that the business needs have moved on and requirements have changed.

The optimum use of ‘Agile’ is against small independent pieces of functionality, allowing the full process to be completed and signed off (‘done’) within the Sprint process. Larger, interrelated functions, especially ones which combine to form a single business process, create significant problems for the methodology and some of its underpinning principles.

These can be overcome, but will lead to a ‘Hybrid’ form of ‘Agile’, and is a topic covered in our Breakfast Briefings.
Expansion outside the development boundaries
When project management became popular in the 1980’s, the traditional approach of most project managers was what was known as a waterfall. A strict, rigid stepping from one stage to another in the process for gathering requirements, building the solution, testing the solution built and then putting this live.

Whilst this was a successful method for delivering benefit to the business, it soon came under scrutiny as businesses became more dynamic, reacting rapidly to changing needs. The limitations of the waterfall design were based ironically in its very strength; the strict control of the stages of a project.

What was needed was a way of ‘trying out’ solutions on the fly and making changes throughout the process. Prototyping became the way forward for many, but this was difficult for the traditional project methodology to manage.

Prototyping became a series of small waterfalls, which worked for a while but still had the inherent limitations associated with it.
Something new had to be designed, and the profession turned to the software development and engineering industries, and discovered ‘Agile’. A cyclical set of activities called Sprints, during which an agreed set of requirements were designed, built and tested in a short time frame.

‘Agile’ methods break tasks into small increments with minimal dependencies and do not directly involve long-term planning. Iterations are short time frames (timeboxes) that typically last from one to four weeks. Each iteration involves a team working through a full software development cycle, including planning, requirements analysis, design, coding, unit testing, and acceptance testing when a working product is demonstrated to stakeholders. This minimizes overall risk and allows the project to adapt to changes quickly.
Stakeholders produce documentation as required. An iteration might not add enough functionality to warrant a market release, but the goal is to have an available internal release (with minimal bugs) at the end of each iteration. Multiple iterations might be required to release a product or new features to market.

All of this however can lead to a conflict with large scale end to end business processes, which will be discussed more a little later.

Interestingly, the idea of disciplines such as Project Management becoming ‘Agile’ is in the most part a jump on the bandwagon by the PM Industry because any ‘old school’ project manager will tell you they are already well versed in managing dynamic changes to requirements in a similar way to the ‘Agile’ development techniques, and the above only goes to substantiate that they are still fundamentally a series of waterfalls, albeit carried out in a more flexible and dynamic way.

The Myths
There are many ‘Agile’ evangelists who claim that going ‘Agile’ is the answer to all your problems. It isn’t.

Now, we are big fans of incremental software development techniques, and ‘Agile’ is as good as any, but it can throw up as many problems as it professes to solve.

The claim from the governing body is that ‘Agile’ frameworks help companies accelerate time to market, increase productivity, and respond to changes in priorities.

Let’s take a look at these along with the beliefs that it is easy to implement and is widely accepted.
Myth #1: It is quicker to market
This is based on the fact that each Sprint should produce a releasable product, although not always releasable externally. It means a product can be brought to market in stages, after each external release is made available, giving the appearance of a speedier market entry.

Assuming the products are individual and not dependent on other functions yet to be developed, the process of definition through to delivery under any project management technique would be similar, so not necessarily quicker.

Once the products become interrelated and dependent on other deliverables (stories) and combine to create a single large scale business process, the challenges begin to appear, including when external releases can realistically be made.
Myth #2: Increased productivity and more reactive to change
The benefit of ‘Agile’ (or Scrum) is its ability to adapt quickly to changes, thereby allowing the rapid reactionary development of needed functionality in iterative cycles, encouraging re-use and shared knowledge which makes the team more productive. Not in speeding up the development process.

Again, this is typically only true under optimum circumstances of small independent pieces of functionality and a mature and well managed ‘Agile’ team. This suffers once larger interrelated and dependent functions combine in order to satisfy wide ranging single business processes.
Myth #3: Easy to implement
Technically, ‘Agile’ is actually a simple process, and can be adopted easily within the development teams after the required training from either an ‘Agile’ coach or trained professional.

The problem is that unless the whole business is behaving in an ‘Agile’ way and feeding the process, you are not ‘Agile’, but a hybrid, which is actually what almost every implementation is.

Extending this approach across the traditional business disciples is far more challenging and unless close attention is paid to the psychology of the roles and individuals moving from a traditional to an ‘Agile’ environment, it more often than not, struggles to gain acceptance or achieve the claimed benefits
Myth #4: Widely accepted
This claim is a little more subjective in nature and depends on your reference point. As a software development methodology, it is very widely accepted within the software industry, but as pointed out in the earlier section about the history of incremental software development, it would be, because it is nothing new and possibly even a return to new incarnations of previous techniques.

The claim becomes a bit more clouded when you consider its adoption by non-technical corporate support functions.

Coming up, we look at where we have experienced our greatest challenges to acceptance of the concept, and why, through a look at what we found to be true, and what tends to be industry hype or urban type myth.
The Truths
Truth #1: Pure doesn’t exist.
Having spent over 30 years involved in projects and programmes often involving software development, including running a number of application development divisions for some household name companies, we have yet to come across any organisation that has redefined itself into a ‘pure’ ‘Agile’ one.

More often than not, it is due to the immense challenges in the corporate and contractual disciplines, that result in a hybrid approach, which can work very effectively if done correctly.
Truth #2: Extending beyond development teams into support functions is difficult.
When considering expanding ‘Agile’ outside of the technical environment, you have to bear in mind this is a technique created in the engineering world, including software engineering or development as we now call it.

Extending it to corporate disciplines is difficult to say the least, and if asked, project managers will tell you that they have always had to know how to react as quickly as possible to changes in the project requirements, and are already using techniques to do just that, albeit in a more structured and formal way.
Truth #3: There are contractual impacts and required alterations.
One element of the challenge often not considered when transforming a business to be more ‘Agile’, is the structure and content of service contracts with your customers, current and future, as well as with your supplier ecosystem.

Most contracts are heavily based on the concept of defined deliverables, deliverable based payments, contract estimates based on requirements and standard waterfall based terms.

Creating contracts based on an ‘Agile’ approach where requirements are far less defined and definitely not static, becomes a challenge for the legal and procurement teams and needs specialist input from someone knowledgeable in ‘Agile’, as well as legal contract constructs.
Truth #4: It can be a commercial minefield.
At one large global engineering company, we were called in to advise on one of the greatest challenges faced in making the software delivery and supporting services programme ‘Agile’ in approach, which is the question of re-work due to bugs in the deliverable and the commercial implications to both parties.

After a manager had explained the process of creating a new User Story for any re-work and adding it into the product backlog for possible inclusion in the next sprint, the implementation partner was confronted with a question of “why would we pay for your errors in deliverables?” from the client.  We stepped in to work with legal and contractual teams to create an acceptable process for both sides, whilst maintaining the client-supplier relationship.

As always, the result was a compromise and both parties had to accept some commercial impact, but the resulting hybrid approach was well received.
Truth #5: It is not easy for large scale global functional processes.
Consider the situation where a business process spans a number of business disciplines and a set of functionality in a large ERP is required to allow this single business process to complete.

Each user story (requirement) can still be managed in the ‘Agile’ process, however the business cannot sign off on the delivered release at the end of each Sprint, because they are unable to complete the user acceptance testing on the whole business process. They will not then be able to close out each Sprint as ‘done’ until the whole set of functionality is delivered and tested working together, end to end, which could be at the end of a large number of Sprints, maybe as a Release, or even at the end of the whole contract.

This calls for a creative way to work together in using the best parts of ‘Agile’ and maintaining some more traditional control on testing and sign off, which affects commercial staged payment contracts.
Truth #6: It is not easy.
When you consider all the non-technical challenges involved in transforming your business into an ‘Agile’ one, the process stops being so easy and becomes a complex mix of methodologies, psychologies, disciplines and negotiations, that needs a very experienced director to navigate the pitfalls and not just an ‘Agile’ specialist who does not have a broad business acumen covering IT, procurement, legal, HR, commercial and executive relationship management.

Some things you need to know.
Roles do not map directly old to new.
One company we worked with could not understand why their switch to ‘Agile’ had not gone so well, even at the development team level.

For them, one of the fundamental issues was that they had assumed their project managers would, after training, become the ScrumMasters. They had not put any thought into the psychology of the two roles and the skills required by each. The fact that the two roles require very different characteristics and psychologies meant they ended up with people in the wrong roles, not only doing a less than acceptable job, but not enjoying their work either, causing many to leave.

You must consider your people and their match to the roles very carefully.
Procurement rules are a real challenge.
Procurement has a remit to challenge costs, achieve savings and to control everything tightly within contract terms. You can imagine the reaction when faced with an ‘Agile’ contract which has no formally stated deliverable functionality, a changing landscape of resources and requirements and no tangible deliverables to associate payments to.

‘Agile’ requires a ‘leap of faith’ across the business, especially with traditional procurement teams who view this as a relinquishing of controls associated with often very large contractual sums of money. It is as much a journey for traditional business processes as for the development teams.
Time required from your customer is greatly increased.
In order for ‘Agile’ to work well and be as dynamic and reactive as it needs to be, the profile of involvement from the business owner, the business’ counterpart to the ‘Agile’ Product Manager, becomes far less front and back loaded and more levelled throughout the lifecycle, which means this becomes much more of a day job than before. When the desired result is a complex set of interrelated functionality, often the businesses involvement is full time. Make sure all parties are fully prepared.
You can’t change over the weekend!
This is a journey, as any true transformation is, and you cannot train people, even assuming you have done the due diligence described in section above, one week and have then come in on the Monday as ‘Agile’.

Engage a competent transformation director who knows and more importantly has experience of ‘Agile’ to plan it properly and create, direct and control the roadmap.
It gets better over time.
Like most things, if you have done the planning, preparation, training, implementation and adoption right, the effectiveness of ‘Agile’, even in hybrid form, increases as everyone get more proficient, so stick with it.

Try to maintain your ‘Agile’ teams and bring work to them, rather than raise the team when work comes up as a project, because their efficiency increases as they mature as a team and get to know each other’s strengths and weaknesses, making their velocity (amount of work completed per Sprint) increase.
Should you do it?
The answer to the question of whether you should consider taking your business into an ‘Agile’ environment is dependent on a number of considerations.

As a company with many years of experience and 'scars' from implementing and training in such techniques as ‘Agile’, we would generally say yes, do it, but only under careful consideration.
Do you understand the effort and journey?
Make sure you do your due diligence and fully understand the effort of what is involved, what your specific journey will look like and how long it will take.
Will it actually benefit you?
Have a knowledgeable and experienced consultant review the benefits for your company specifically to determine the ROI and timeline. As effective as ‘Agile’ is when done correctly, it is not for everyone and may not provide sufficient, if any, long term benefit.
Consider your customer and supplier ecosystem.
Make sure the evaluation considers your customer and supplier profiles. If your customer base is predominantly large, traditional, bureaucratic based organisations, and your supplier partners are not experienced in Agile, the depth and scale of the challenges will be considerable for your commercial and legal teams.

Who should you ask?
Talk less to ‘Agile’ specialists and more to customers who have been there.
‘Agile’ specialist are a great source of information, however they can be too enthusiastic and not possess a broad enough business acumen to carry out a thorough evaluation of what it will mean for your business as a whole and the impacts across your customer and supplier base.
Use ‘Agile’ advisors with experience, not just certified.
Make sure any ‘Agile’ advisors are also experienced and not just certified. It is only through experience that they appreciate the finer nuances and limitations of ‘Agile’ and the ways in which it may need to be adjusted to suit your circumstances.

If you are interested in finding out more, or hosting one of our Briefings, click here to contact us, today.
]]> Wed, 30 Sep 2020 09:21:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?agile--myths-and-truths http://localhost/blog/rss/000000009 <![CDATA[Should a Cellist Conduct the Orchestra]]> imblog
They may be the best cellist in the world, but would you really let them conduct the orchestra?
It seems lately that the in vogue thing to do is to have your change project manager lead a transformation programme, which not altogether surprisingly does (or will) lead to problems, failures and very costly initiatives being cancelled or needing to be recovered (even more costly).

When talking about a transformation, be it a full business transformation, which considering few businesses actually transform into something altogether different and so are particularly rare, or sub-transformations such as finance, organisational, operational or technological, because these are more than a change project, they require a different resource profile.

Often described as ‘complex choreography’, this description of transformations began appearing in a number of posts and articles across the web, so extending the analogy to that of an orchestra, which is closer to the reality, hopefully this will go some way to help in the understanding of the difference between change and transformation management.

Of course it could all boil down to a play of semantics, and arguments can be found for calling a change a ‘transformation’, and a transformation a ‘change’, but when you stop trying to work out what the title is and consider the roles required, and more importantly the psychological profiles for such roles, to lead (read: Direct) the initiative, you should see the two are very different.

A transformation will have a number of business areas being affected and so a number of project managers or leads (let’s call them sections – brass, wind, percussion, etc..) and like an orchestra, a ‘conductor’ to make sure they all do what they should in harmony with the other sections and with full awareness of each others part in the ‘composition’ or ‘symphony’.

No matter how great the lead cellist or trumpeter is, you would not have them stand on the podium and conduct the orchestra.

To balance that, nor would you put the conductor in the seat of the lead cellist. They are very different skills and psychologies.

Recently however, leaders in businesses seem to be making decisions to do just that, no doubt in an attempt to reduce the cost of engaging a skilled and experienced Interim transformation director.

For those executives and senior managers with experience of transformations, they know this is a false economy and all too short sighted, as the risk of failure or encountering problems increases greatly by failing to put in place appropriate direction, and the costs being ‘avoided’ up front invariably comes back with a vengeance at a later stage when recovery and rework efforts are needed.

With a number of sources of advice available, including networking events, foundation organisations and online specialist groups, I would advise asking a few peers who have successfully finished their ‘overtures’ about how they avoided the pitfalls, and what resources they deployed in order to de-risk their investment and increase their likelihood of success.

Transformation requires a specific type of direction which you don’t find in change project managers (typically) and almost certainly not in staff members, who are excellently skilled in other areas with different psychological profiles.

Talk to us for impartial and independent advice on transformation and turnaround skills and resources.
]]> Sat, 01 Aug 2020 16:25:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?should-a-cellist-conduct-the-orchestra http://localhost/blog/rss/000000008 <![CDATA[Who Will Deliver your Transformation]]> imblog
Who should you trust to manage your transformation?

There has been a lot of discussion recently across business media and more traditional hard copy business newspapers, about transformation and the resources needed (and offered) for getting it right.

Most of what has been written is valuable and insightful, as you would expect from the business community, however only if taken in context of the bigger picture, and not necessarily to provide a complete method to produce the suggested outcomes in the articles themselves.

Let us first look at what constitutes a transformation, and I don’t mean a change no matter how complex, but a real transformational initiative (see previous articles on transformations for more information).

We know change is typically focused on single (or a few related) disciplines within a business, such as organisation, business process or systems, and as such is often seen as ‘isolatable’ in terms of disruption and impact. This can be true if it is approached, carefully constructed and directed from a holistic view of business impact.

In this situation it could form part of a transformational process, but would certainly not qualify as a transformation in its own right.

For it to be a transformation, the outcome would, as its name suggests, be a new direction for the business or some significant element of the business, which would impact all transformational pillars or elements (see definition of the pillars of a transformation in the previous article) both operational (enablement) and strategic (directional).

These transformational elements include the 5 primary operational pillars of a business (business process re-engineering, information systems, organisational change, HCM (competency and training) and programme management, as well as the 3 strategic pillars (strategy, risk and value).

When a business truly transforms, every element of its corporate DNA is altered, and that is where the real value, and indeed need, of an interim transformation director comes to the fore. They should be able to take ownership at a meta level, understanding every element of impact to the business and direct the initiative to maximise the effectiveness across all 8 pillars.

This is where our second aspect of delivery partner becomes interesting, as much is being made of the big Tier 1 Consultancies, and the ‘close-cousins’ of the major service providers, being the best option for handling transformation, which is not surprising when many of these articles, or reviewing bodies producing them, are sponsored or supported by these same organisations.

This is not to say these big players are not the optimum solution for handling and delivering your transformation, as it goes a long way in terms of having an integrated team for the diversity of the skills needed to successfully navigate across all 8 pillars. However many believe, based on surveys and experience, a smart way to de-risk further and improve chances of success, would be to have the transformation director be independent of the Transformation Service Provider (TSP), working as a client side interim, ensuring not only the best integrated service is maintained by all the working parts of the TSP teams, but also that the client is still engaged and consulted by the transformation director, to allow them to make informed decisions based on independent analysis of the state and progress of the initiative.

This is, incidentally, by no means a new way of working, as this type of role has been employed many times since around the end of the 1990s, under the guise of a client-side advisor on large initiatives, as they get delivered by some of the big name consultancies, very successfully.

Having the comfort of knowing your TSP can bring in consultants across most if not all of the elements in a transformation is a definite benefit, but having an independent transformation director overseeing what they do on your behalf is adding another layer of safety and control.
]]> Wed, 01 Jul 2020 16:08:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?who-will-deliver-your-transformation http://localhost/blog/rss/000000007 <![CDATA[Communication]]> imblog
Transformation Success and Communications – a quick opinion:
What Contributes to Transformational Success?

Successful Business Transformation is less a work of art and more a complex and impressive choreography.

To achieve harmony across the 8 pillars of a Transformation (see previous article on Transformation Management) requires a talent for integrated Meta Management, and a personality that motivates and encourages talented and masterful project managers to do more than own their respective silos, by symbolically becoming the driving figurehead who both directs and understands the “troops” and everything they experience.

It is not by accident that a tradition of engaging only the best “generals” for directing each pillar, each of whom have a wealth of experience in their chosen field, developed over many years of grass roots delivery, leads to quantifiable and improved outcomes.

Without a talented and experienced Transformation Director working the integrated Meta Management activities, supported by strong project managers for each of the relevant pillars, it is less likely the Transformation will be as successful as it could be.

Communication during Transformations

It is true that many Transformation programmes and change programmes fail, often on simple elements such as use of the appropriate communication medium, content and regularity.

This is a skill which, despite all the social media technology, still seems to elude many.

This particular challenge can be mitigated by ensuring the Executives fully understand the basis of the programme, and share a level of transparency in communicating the reasoning, and approach, of the programme to the business and its employees, in order to greatly enhance chances of success.

Once people understand the what, why and when of the response being proposed to a business challenge, they will engage in the who, how and where of delivering the solution as defined.
]]> Mon, 01 Jun 2020 15:54:00 GMT http://localhost/blog/?communication http://localhost/blog/rss/000000006 <![CDATA[Transformation Management]]> imblog
Transformation Manager and Programme Manager: Are they really different?
What exactly are a Transformation and a Programme, and how do they differ in management?

Firstly, let’s take a look at the grammatical definitions for each:
Programme: noun – “A planned series of future events or performances”
Transformation: noun – “A marked change in form, nature, or appearance”
(Oxford English Dictionary)

It appears from these definitions that a ‘Transformation’ is a change in something and a ‘Programme’ is a vehicle within which to manage such a change.

Before we explore these further, let’s see what the Project Management Institute (PMI) says about these terms:
Program (US Spelling): “A group of related projects, subprograms, and program activities managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits not available from managing them individually”

Interestingly, the PMI has no formal definition for ‘Transformation’. In the entire Third Edition of the Standard for Program Management there is no use of the word ‘Transformation’.

So what does this tell us? To me, this supports the idea that they are not the same thing, or at least not different ways of saying the same thing.

If this is the case, what exactly IS a ‘Transformation’? We already know what a ‘Programme’ is from the published definitions, but from a business perspective, what is a ‘Transformation’ and who would manage one?

In order to understand more about what a ‘Transformation’ is, let’s consider the definition SAP uses in its industry standard Business Transformation Management Methodology (BTM2)©:
Any radical organizational change can be termed business transformation. Typical transformation projects include mergers and acquisitions, business process outsourcing, and the introduction of shared service centers, enterprise software, and initiatives motivated by sustainability requirements. Unlike business process re-engineering, which closely focuses on business processes, business transformation requires a more holistic approach.

What can be surmised from this is that a ‘Transformation’ is something more than a simple (or even complex) change project and needs to incorporate emotional management as well as hard skill practical management.

So far this doesn’t shed any more light on whether a ‘Transformation Manager’ is a ‘Programme Manager’ and therefor why these terms seem to be used interchangeably by many organisations and recruiters.

If you consider the definitions for ‘Transformation’ and ‘Programme’ for a moment, it points toward them being different concepts, possibly related by the need to have a ‘Manager’ manage a ‘Transformation’. This certainly fits to the understanding by those academics involved in the guidance and process definitions for how to manage a ‘Transformation’.

Certainly when I think about the ‘Transformations’ I have been involved in, they have been considerably more challenging than any of the ‘Change’ programmes because of the fact that typically more varied skills are needed and more dimensions are involved especially related to the human elements.

A ‘Transformation’ will include a holistic view of not just the specific changes that are planned but also the impacts to the business and its personnel. All too often a change programme such as a new Finance system is seen as being limited to the IT department and the finance teams who will use the system. Business processes are defined, structures for reporting and capturing data are created and a plan put in place to manage the lifecycle from definition through to adoption.

Rarely though does enough, if any, consideration get placed on how the changes will affect the business as a whole, such as the corporate strategy, which if changed could affect the value of the company both holistically and to the markets, and this will alter the risk profiles. How will the employees feel about changes? Will they need to learn something new? Are they ready or capable? What happens if they don’t want to or can’t?

A seemingly simple and straightforward IT project now includes executive decision making on strategy, value and risk, and a host of HR related activities to ‘manage’ people into or out of the roles. Any training curriculum needs to be developed and delivered.

It should now be becoming clearer as to why many change projects or programmes fail to deliver the benefits expected.

When making ‘radical’ organisational changes, often prompted by projects considered less invasive across the other business disciplines, an extended set of skills is needed to manage this, which is where a ‘Transformation’ Manager comes into play. They will consider and plan for all of the following pillars of business impact using hard and soft management skills to ensure the often overlooked impacts are evaluated, scaled and estimated.


Figure 1 - Pillars of a Transformation

The next question is whether a typical Programme Manager has the skills required to manage a ‘Transformation’ programme. We already know the skills required to manage a ‘Programme’ are different to those required to run a ‘Project’, but considering what we have learnt about a ‘Transformation’, does this add additional requirements to our Programme Manager’s skillset?

The answer is yes, and whether your particular Programme Manager is the right one, is really down to whether or not they have experienced ‘programmes’ that covered the soft skills and the corporate analysis needed to assess the cross company impacts of a ‘Transformation’, and whether they have developed those extended capabilities to be able to provide the ‘Holistic’ management at the ‘Meta-Management’ level, that considers and guides all of the impacts and inter-operational elements shown in the core pillars of a ‘Transformation’ (see figure 1).

If they have added this dimension of expertise to their armoury, they can be considered a ‘Transformation Programme Manager’ or ‘Transformation Manager’, otherwise I would suggest they are better positioned to manage one or two of the pillars, supporting the ‘Transformation Manager’ in the overall ‘Programme’.

Summary:
So what have we learnt about this currently popular buzzword or hot skill that is doing the rounds and how can it be positioned in the established world of Programme Management?

First, Transformation is more than just change. It includes soft human skills such as ‘Emotional Intelligence and Management’ for those elements of a transformation that affects individuals in the organisation.

Secondly, a Transformation is a specialist type of programme, but a programme none-the-less, and as such needs a suitably skilled and experienced Programme Manager to head the initiative.

Finally, the ‘Transformation Manager’ needs to have the relevant experience of using soft skills in order to successfully navigate and guide the relevant activities in the ‘Programme’ related to individuals and cultural considerations.

A Transformation is a real and tangible type of programme, and is a complex initiative that requires a seasoned and experienced Programme Manager to make a success of it. If you really want to get close to your desired benefits from such an undertaking, it would be folly not to engage an interim with the skills to deliver the Transformation as successfully as possible.
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Thinking about Transformation? It is undoubtedly more complex than you imagine.
True detailed 'Transformation' is a very complex undertaking, far in excess of a focused change project.

There are many elements to consider, and the inter-relationships between each and every change across the business have consequences that need to be identified, quantified, qualified and considered, before each step of the 'Transformation' is made. The effect then needs to be measured and validated before each next step, to ensure the desired path is still appropriate and of value, to your organisation, but more importantly that it still represents the optimum position you are striving for.

Taking on a Transformation Director to be responsible for steering the programme may seem a high cost strategy, however when measured against the potential cost of failure (or partial success), it is a cost effective and lower risk approach.

They have to consider all the options, assess each impact and keep the programme moving in the desired direction (or identify and communicate an alternative direction) in order to deliver the benefits in the business case. To this end they are constantly reviewing, considering and calculating every step across each of the business functions.

This is an activity that cannot be performed by one of the change project managers working on one or two elements across the business, because to do so would reduce their much needed focus on those projects and endanger the outcome.

As a role, the Transformation Director is a more cerebral character, constantly evaluating and correcting, with the individual change project managers controlling their individual projects, safe in the knowledge that the cross discipline communication and impacts are being monitored and managed by the Transformation Director to ensure any potential or realised impacts in other parts of the business are identified and either addressed or mitigated.

Studies have shown that when a Transformation Director is engaged to co-ordinate and manage the senior level activities and decision processes, the programmes are more successful.

Contact us if you are interested in discussing the need for an experienced Transformation Director for your programme.
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