THE BUSINESS OF SUCCESSFUL TRANSFORMATION
It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today.
Isaac Asimov
Author
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct or more uncertain in its success than to take the
lead in the introduction of a new order of things.
Niccolo Machiavelli
I am in the business of transformation! I work with organisations to help them move from one state to the next whereby
they will enjoy greater success — however they wish to define success.
There is a major difference between my approach and that of
say a typical large consulting company. The latter have a real interest in how many staff they can get ‘on the clock’ and billing
with a client. So they want to do as much of the work as they can. I am not looking to build a large business! Consequently
my approach is to work with the client staff in a more intensive manner, to develop and use them as consultants during the process. This will often mean actually training staff in specific consulting skills as part of the project. We then do the project together
as a ‘consulting team’. There are many obvious benefits: it’s a lot cheaper for a start! Perhaps more importantly
there is a real transfer of skills because there has been training and follow up practice — for real.
The problem with
change or transformation is that most of us don’t do enough of it because our organisation or business wants stability in how things
are done! As a result many managers and leaders are not trained to take on change, and if they are, they don’t get the chance
to do it often. It is difficult to manage the status quo, be flexible, on the alert for new opportunities and make change happen—all
at once. That’s what I do — help the client to generate real, lasting, beneficial change. I have spent most of the
last 30 years working with clients to make change work.
The high level change process is shown below.
However, transformation or change is never the same thing twice. The only common thread is that it needs to deliver real
benefit, as opposed to theoretical or hoped for benefit written down in a nice report. I work with organisations to provide
process, guidance and support. My experience has shown that the best way to get lasting results is to work through the people who
will have to live with the results of change and get them to do as much of the work as possible! That’s why I use the approach
I described above.
If you want to read more about my philosophy please click on the word to take you to a page with more.
