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This Sunday, every single person in the UK will unite and take action, with a clearly defined and common purpose. We have done so twice a year since 1916, with a couple of exceptions.

Amazing – the fact that people, all of the people, will mobilise and co-operate to change something as ubiquitous and vital as the time.

The outcome of this change is predictable and absolute – by turning our clocks forward by one hour British Summer Time will begin, we will lose an hour of sleep and gain lighter evenings, until we turn the clocks back again on October 27^th.

According to change management and neuroscience expert Hilary Scarlett, it is changes that have unpredictable outcomes that cause us to struggle. Studies have shown that people cope better when they know that the outcome of a change will be negative than they do when faced with uncertainty about what the outcome will be.

Uncertainty activates the parts of our brain that deal with fear and pain. We’re less able to think clearly in these situations. Anxiety increases, we feel more threatened and we expect the worst. Scarlett gives the example of a child being punished, where “Go to your room and just wait until your father gets home…” is far more frightening than “Go to your room and don’t come down again this evening.”

It’s no co-incidence then that the term ‘Brexit Anxiety’ is now widely used to describe the impact of indefinite outcomes and shambolism on increasing numbers of our population. The effect of Brexit on mental health services has been a key topic discussed at the NHS Confederation’s recent mental health network conference. Not just with regards to staffing challenges and the funding of mental health research, but also in relation to the mental health of UK people and the impact that uncertainty is having on wellbeing.

Neuroscience (the study of the nervous system including the brain) is being used increasingly as a means of understanding the impact of change on people, in their lives and in their work, and insights are informing change management approaches. It is acknowledged that change is a constant – we go through major changes ever more frequently in our work spaces and smaller changes almost continuously.  Yet our brains rely on stability and predictability. It is the brain’s job to protect us and therefore it constantly works on our behalf to seek out threats.

To understand the impact of threat on our ability to think, and to respond accordingly; to support people in feeling stimulated and challenged but without being overwhelmed; and to stimulate the reward centre of the brain that brings focus, resilience and creativity can help to maintain performance during anxious times.

Whilst writing this article I flicked open a news page and found that MEPs have proposed an end to the twice yearly clock change. The plans will have to be agreed with EU member states and the European parliament if they are to become law.

The post The Neuroscience of Change appeared first on Catalyst Consulting.

Increasingly often these days we get greeted with the phrase “May you live in ‘interesting’ times”. Then we may pause a minute to think whether that was meant as a constructive positive wish – or whether there was something deeper meant by it. ‘Interesting’ sometimes seems more to mean ‘turbulent times’ rather than ‘fascinating’. Either way it is becoming a feature of life these days – and Brexit – whatever your views on that – certainly raises the level of uncertainty.

Business is at its heart about prospering from risk. There will always be unavoidable risks – and the winners are those who most effectively manage and mitigate them, seeing them as a competitive opportunity rather than just as a threat. The question of course then is how best to do this, especially during turbulent times.

For me the answer has two key components:

Firstly, manage the risks that you do know. This is the relatively easy bit – we have all the traditional risk management tools including FMEA (Failure Modes Effects Analysis), and established governance approaches (including maintaining an appropriate Risk Register). If you’re less familiar with these then of course come and speak with us – they are a standard part of Managing Change and are of course in our Lean Six Sigma Improvement and Transformation set.

But the bigger issue is managing the risks that you don’t know – and can’t know. Here’s where we’re getting into ‘VUCA’ (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) times. A key to managing this type of risk is Business Agility. Gone are the days when we could afford to take considerable time to plan, consider every option, select what seemed best, and then drive along that – steering our way from time to time – essentially knowing that at the speed at which we were driving we could see the bends and the crossroads sufficiently well in advance to make the call and steer the path ahead. Now it’s more like we’re travelling so fast that we can’t see the road ahead, and in any case the landscape is changing faster than we’re driving (and unpredictably so)!

The metaphor shows us that two things will mostly often happen:

We could for the most part stay on the road and make turns without full knowledge of where they could take us but being guided by a general sense of direction. We’d probably soon enough then find out whether we were on a sensible path – if so continue, and if not learn and change direction as quickly as possible. The key thing is being not to go too far down any one path before confirming our position and direction. Arguably this wouldn’t be the ‘perfect’ route – but in most cases it will work provided we keep a clear sense of direction during turbulent times (here read ‘constancy of purpose’ for our business situation). A case of not letting ‘perfect’ get in the way of ‘good’ or indeed ‘better’. Here we’re being ‘agile’ – taking small ‘bites’ at the journey, rather than one single long jump. This is analogous to avoiding large batches in Lean Manufacturing but rather shooting for the smallest practical ones – ideally single piece flow – and we know this works well even if it seemed counterintuitive the first time that we came across it.

We could go off the road. Yes, we could fail. But provided the accidents are small and we can recover from them – then the damage is small, we can continue our journey and learn from our experience not to make the same driving error again. This concept in Agile is ‘fail fast and learn’. With sufficiently small steps an individual failure is rarely catastrophic, our ‘hit rate’ (depending which way you look at this – sorry for the pun here) is high (for success) and low for accidents (or failures). Over the journey we may have a few set-backs but we get there for the most part.

In our analogy we cannot rule out the risk of catastrophe, but that’s why we carry insurance. At the individual level serious accidents do occur, but overall the risk of them is acceptable to us – otherwise we’d never go out of our houses. (Not to carry the analogy too far most accidents occur in the home anyway, but let’s not go there). We all use the roads every day, we know they can be dangerous, but that doesn’t stop us going out – we have simply learnt to live with that risk and to manage it. Similarly, with business in the VUCA world; there is no escaping down a simple path and ploughing on no matter what. We have to embrace the risk, learn to ‘plan, do, check and act’ repeatedly in smaller steps at pace, fail fast and learn when we have  to, but for the main part succeed in small steps banking progress and realising benefits as we go – not waiting for the gold at the end of the (waterfall) rainbow.

OK – so the trick is to combine Lean (or Lean Six Sigma) and Agility (Agile).

Click the image to learn more.

The devil is of course in the detail – but suffice here to say that at Catalyst we have enabled clients to prosper and accelerate the realisation of improvements this way starting through a collaborative development with several of our customers. If you want to know more then please contact us.

The post Ways to prepare your company for turbulent times appeared first on Catalyst Consulting.

Enlightened leaders, however, consider people and culture to be their most important concern, not just because it’s a principled approach and the right thing to do, but because engaged and empowered people are a key source of competitive advantage. Therefore, these leaders invest as much time in planning and creating a sustainable culture of excellence from the beginning. These are leaders who recognize that their “prime responsibility is to create and manage culture, or the culture will manage them, and they won’t even know the extent to which this is happening” (Edgar Schein).

Culture can be simply described as the prevailing behaviours in an organisation, and behaviours give an indication of what is truly valued. Senior leaders, whilst small in number, influence culture the most: they set the tone and are role models. Furthermore, they can focus on creating the right culture by embedding the right principles – they can be proactive with culture, and recognise that we are the result of our choices. So how can they do this? Here are a few examples…

Leadership Principles. The first step a leader must take in leading culture is a personal “inside-out” journey. Without understanding what the principles mean personally, e.g. respect for every individual, focus on process, seek perfection, constancy of purpose, it becomes impossible to lead the development of a principle-based culture. Whilst practices are based on the “what” and “how”, principles provide the “why” which is essential for sustainable change.

Envisioned Future. A shared, compelling and positive vision of the future should be inspiring for employees and provide a “North Star” and a common purpose which is bigger than any individual. If this is underpinned by a shared set of values (aligning personal values with business values) and desired behaviours we can start to make work meaningful and align the team, creating a “burning passion” inside people. The organisation can then recruit, develop and reward people based on these values, not just skills and capability.

Strategy Development and Deployment. Strategic objectives are required to drive the organisation towards its vision and provide focus and direction over the medium term. These objectives need to be deployed throughout the organisation in a way that creates ownership for initiatives and results at all levels – defining not just the ‘what’ but the ‘how’.

Systems and Processes. The right process delivers the right results. For sustainable excellence, systems and processes should be established which embed the principles and “make it easy to do the right thing, and difficult to do the wrong thing” in a consistent and repeatable manner. This will include a CI framework with performance metrics, visual management methods and standard daily, weekly and monthly management reviews driving appropriate accountability. In this environment, problems become visible and opportunities for improvement rather than mistakes to hide or defend.

Leading culture is about reaching deep inside of people, at an emotional level, to engage with their hearts and souls, not just their heads or their hands.  When people feel empowered and safe (in the widest sense, not just physically but emotionally and intellectually) and that they truly belong, then remarkable things happen.

So how can Catalyst help?

Catalyst can support your culture change and business transformation in multiple ways, for example:

Culture Assessments: We can conduct a comprehensive assessment your current state culture and behaviours at all levels against established excellence models and summarise your key strengths and opportunities for improvement. We can then work with your leadership team to identify priorities and actions required to positively change your culture in line with your vision and strategy.

Strategy Development/Deployment: We can help you establish a management process that aligns, both vertically and horizontally, your organisation’s functions and activities with your strategic objectives. Using collaborative approaches we establish a ‘line of sight’ between individual objectives and the strategic priorities, ensuring all contributions combine to enable successful achievement of strategy.

CI System Development: We can provide a tailored programme of activities and services including leadership development, PMO/governance design and formation, project selection and communication strategy and staff skills assessments and training to build improvement capability.

Leadership Development and Coaching: We can deliver bespoke workshops with leadership groups and 1-1 coaching to build competence and capability and help develop role model leaders who exemplify the principles and vision you are seeking to create.

Accelerating Transformational Change: In the face of increased volatility and uncertainty, we can help you maximise the opportunity for effective and rapid organisational change/transformation. This is typically achieved by assessing the organisation’s readiness for change, supporting leadership in navigating through the challenges of change and transformation, and coaching and guiding leadership in their role and the specific behaviours required to model and accelerate the change, including articulating and reinforcing the ‘why’.

Best Practice Visits: We can facilitate best practice visits and tours to ‘experience excellence’ with world-leading host companies. These include ‘go look see’ visits to operational areas and the opportunity to interact freely with leaders and associates at all levels in the organisation, and to learn and be inspired by the ‘art of the possible’.

E-mail us at info@catalystconsulting.co.uk to schedule a conversation with one of our consulting team or to arrange a visit to your site for a diagnostic/review meeting.

The post Creating a Culture of Excellence appeared first on Catalyst Consulting.

Martin’s article has been featured in the following publications:

Hotel Business – 22 November 2016
HRM Guide – 9 January 2017

What does the future hold for the UK’s hotel industry? This year’s PwC UK hotel forecast predicts that UK hotels will continue to see further RevPAR growth in 2016, but at a much slower pace.

So, what can hoteliers do to overcome this slowdown?

Although PwC’s forecast is positive, and the UK’s economic performance has been strong throughout the year, there have been a number of external factors causing the slowdown. A lack of large events for UK hoteliers to leverage rates over the summer, coupled with a weak pre-Brexit euro challenged London’s competitiveness for Europeans seeking a city break.

[box style=”rounded”]approaching the EU referendum RevPAR growth was recorded at a high of 2%[/box]

Furthermore, since the Brexit decision, although the hotel sector will face opportunities, the industry must also be prepared for long-term alterations that will arise once the direction of Brexit becomes more apparent. Fluctuation in the market is already evident; European security concerns in 2016 caused UK hotel performance to decline, yet approaching the EU referendum RevPAR growth was recorded at a high of 2%.

Opportunities for the UK hotel sector could also be created as a result of Brexit. Most significantly, a weak pound – dropping to a 31-year low against the Euro, Dollar and other world currencies – has made Britain a more attractive destination for foreign visitors. Hotels outside of London, have also benefited through a resurgence of the ‘staycation’ – British people holidaying in the UK, rather than opting for foreign travel due to the poor exchange rate. The decreased value of the pound also provides the opportunity for increased long-term overseas investment in the UK hotel industry.

[box style=”rounded”]During times of uncertainty it is vital that every organisation define its goals and streamline the processes required to achieve them[/box]

Ultimately, much uncertainty lies around the future of the UK hotel industry, one of the consequences of this is that problems dealt with on a daily basis in ‘fire-fighting mode’ are never tackled at the root-cause. During times of uncertainty it is vital that every organisation define its goals and streamline the processes required to achieve them. When budgets are tight, it is the perfect time to reduce internal waste and improve customer satisfaction.

It is key to continue to offer an outstanding service to ensure that rates, reviews, and re-bookings do not decline.

Process Improvement

As little as 10-15% of process steps actually add value in an organisation. Conduct a performance review of internal processes to serve as a baseline to measure future improvements against.

An Improvement Charter is  a great starting point to document the purpose and goals of the improvement project, creating an understandable framework that everyone can follow, outlining clear roles and responsibilities.

[box style=”rounded”]It is important to complete this project with a team, enabling key staff to voice their opinion in an open forum[/box]

Three key questions must be asked:

1. What needs to be achieved?
2. What needs to be resolved?
3. How does this affect the customer?

It is important to complete this project within a team, enabling key staff to voice their opinion in an open forum. This document must be concise and simple, providing a helpful template to reference throughout the process.

Once the Charter is agreed, formulate how the work will be deployed, completed, and how the success will be measured. Thinking about how the process links to the customer and their needs will help to determine this.

Heading in the right direction

Develop a ‘storyboard’ summary of the key decisions and outputs to review progress, capturing outputs and findings from the improvement journey to communicate progress within the business.

The what and the why

Data collected throughout the project is crucial in helping hotels to improve processes, generating ideas for possible solutions and then implementing and testing these. Weekly reviews are important to measure progress; hoteliers should evaluate themselves with the following questions:

1. What is going well and what is not?
2. Will the project achieve its initial goals?
3. Is value being added for the customer?
4. What conclusions can be drawn?

Take this time to re-evaluate and improve processes that underperform. Do the customers notice an improvement? Can these new improvements be applied elsewhere in the business?

Regard the slowdown in growth being predicted as an opportunity to act now ; improvements made at this time are key to foster and encourage growth. Additionally, with the uncertainty caused by Brexit and the potential implications of the decision being far-reaching for the UK hotel sector; there is a greater incentive for hotels to act efficiently and effectively to ensure competitiveness within the market.

Read our luxury hotel industry case study here.

The post What hoteliers must do to avoid a post-Brexit slump appeared first on Catalyst Consulting.

As the 2016 Olympics and Paralympics have demonstrated, unlocking our own potential, and that of others, must rank as one of the most powerful and inspiring human experiences. This takes on even greater significance when the achievements exceed, even ‘smash through’, our often unconscious expectations or assumptions.

Lean Six Sigma tools like Assumption Busting can help us break throug

h our own paradigms and self-imposed limitations to open up new possibilities. But how can we encourage this type of mind-set and behaviour on a more routine basis, that is, embed it as part of our organisational culture? This is more than a quick fix of course, and needs to be enabled through leadership behaviour in terms of establishing trust and building empowerment.

For this to happen and become sustainable, there are (fortunately!) some guiding principles which leaders can reflect on and place at their centre as their “true-north” compass. Change is an “inside-out process” starting with each of us taking responsibility as individuals. The principles I’m referring to are universal, are timeless and have consequences. Particular examples of these leadership principles are ‘respect every individual’ and ‘lead with humility’, and they provide guidance on ideal behaviours.

Rooted in Lean thinking, respect for every individual goes well beyond simply being courteous and polite to everybody, but means acknowledging their value, nourishing their potential, listening more than speaking, and encouraging them to try something new.  As Eric Reis, author of The Lean Startup, says “Respect means ensuring that everyone in the organisation knows that their contribution matters.”

Lead with humility, a key characteristic highlighted by Jim Collins in his book Good to Great, is exemplified by welcoming the ideas of others, being willing to change when learning something new, trusting others to make good decisions, and giving credit to others rather than claiming it for yourself. Leading with humility opens the door to more meaningful conversations, and helps maximize the contributions from others.

To change behaviours and organisational culture leading to sustainable performance improvement, people need to know what to do and how to do it of course, but they also need to understand the ‘why’. Real empowerment occurs when principles and practices are applied at all levels in the organisation: the practices (including tools) guide us in what to do, the principles guide us in why we do it. And hence organisations can truly begin to exceed expectations and realize their potential.

In the next blog in this series we will look at some key principles which are particularly relevant in supporting Continuous Improvement.

Find out more

• What is Lean Six Sigma?
• Lean Six Sigma Training
• About Catalyst

The post Achieving Potential through Principles and Practices appeared first on Catalyst Consulting.

Martin’s article was published in the August 2016 issue of theHRDirector. Read Martin’s article on theHRDirector website here, and a PDF version of the August issue can be found here.

Future proofing your business is one of those massively laudable aims that seem crushingly simple in theory but are a little more difficult in practice. All you need to do, after all, is replicate the successes and avoid repeating the mistakes. Over and over again. The entire raison d’etre of Lean Six Sigma is to create precisely that kind of virtual circle – breaking down the processes upon which your business relies into their smallest component parts, pinning those parts down in order to examine them minutely, and using this analysis to remove anything which isn’t entirely necessary to the success of your business, this success being defined via customer satisfaction.  Once these lessons have been learned they are then inculcated throughout your business, on a cultural rather than simply managerial level, and the process, rather than beginning again, simply carries on rolling forward, feeding off itself in order to maintain continual improvement.

Put simply, mistakes cannot be learned from and avoided unless they are recognised and owned up to in the first place.

There are two main obstacles to this process being as simple in practice as it is when set out on paper, however. The first is that, like any system, Lean Six Sigma is only ever as effective as the individuals applying it – even if promoting individual buy-in is a built-in component of said system. Whilst the second obstacle lies in the problems associated with differentiating success and failure. Highlighting the successes within your business is generally a simple process, being the stuff of every performance review, award ceremony and bonus scheme. Identifying the failures and mistakes can be more difficult, not least because people are generally loathe to admit to getting things wrong, either to themselves or, perhaps more pertinently, to their colleagues and superiors.  Put simply, mistakes cannot be learned from and avoided unless they are recognised and owned up to in the first place, while lessons learned don’t count as lessons unless they are then put into practice, and the HR department of your company can play a key role in dealing with both of these issues.

The culture of your business, spreading from the HR department outward, becomes a non-judgemental culture in which ‘mistakes’ can be admitted without fear of blame or scapegoating.

The clue is in the name. The Human Resources department, thanks to its continuous contact with individuals working at every level of an organisation, can play a key role in both gathering the relevant data on the problems which stand between you and the future proofing of your business, and then in spreading the solutions to these problems through every level, from management to ‘shop floor’. The fact that the purpose of the HR department is to keep the people charged with delivering your business strategy happy means that it is a focal point through which they are most likely to give genuinely honest and insightful feedback regarding the things which your business could be doing better. However, this is only going to be the case if the culture of your business, spreading from the HR department outward, becomes a non-judgemental culture in which ‘mistakes’ can be admitted without fear of blame or scapegoating, and in which it is realised that every example of a process going wrong, once it has been eliminated, was simply a step toward the process being perfected.

There are examples to be taken from the worlds of both business and sport of this approach being used to aid the drive toward success. The most striking and probably well documented field within which the reporting of mistakes has become a virtual reflex action is aviation, a fact which is doubtless a reflection of the genuinely catastrophic consequences which can arise when the people in charge of an airplane in transit make mistakes. Pilots who do so – by flying at the wrong altitude, for example, or suffering a near miss – are given a ten-day period during which they can file a report of the incident under conditions of anonymity and immunity. Thus the more traditional approach toward the making of mistakes, which might be characterised as ‘What went wrong, who was to blame and how can we punish them’ (which generally leads to never even finding out that anything did in fact go wrong), is supplanted by ‘What went wrong and how can we stop it happening again?’. Ally this to the fact that the vast bulk of planes also automatically record data detailing and reporting problems, and you have an industry in which, in 2013, there was a global accident rate of just 2.8 per million departures. This is clearly an approach which is HR driven, treating the staff in question – the pilots – as both a valuable source of data collection and as the driving force behind spreading the practices suggested by this data.

A similar approach was adopted by Virginia Mason, a hospital based in Seattle. The HR approach was, again, altered in order to encourage staff to report incidents when things went wrong. As with aviation, medicine is a field in which mistakes, due to the gravity of their possible impact, are less easy to own up to, whilst being, conversely, the kind of field in which the honest reporting of mistakes is of the upmost importance. After all, mistakes in the average business may well impact upon the bottom line or customer satisfaction, whilst those within aviation and medicine are, quite literally, a matter of life and death. This is all the more reason why it is a matter of some surprise, not to say embarrassment, that so many businesses still cling to the old approach of dealing with mistakes and of spreading a ‘blame culture’ from the HR department and its dealings with staff, on throughout the organisation.

This change in culture was an increase in patient safety which heralded a massive 74% reduction in the liability insurance premiums.

The approach taken by Virginia Mason produced rapid and easily recorded improvements. The labelling on drugs being dispensed throughout the hospital was altered in order to reduce the likelihood of the wrong prescriptions being delivered under high pressure situations, whilst the system of giving coloured bracelets to patients upon admittance was changed to one of text based bracelets when it was realised that colour blind nurses might confuse, for example ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ with ‘Allergic to Penicillin’. Checklists were introduced in the operating theatres (an example of the kind of improvement which seems blindingly obvious when viewed from outside the maelstrom of day to day operations), as were ergonomically designed surgical tools. The overall result of this change in culture was an increase in patient safety which heralded a massive 74% reduction in the liability insurance premiums the hospital was paying.

One company which is famous for creating an in-built system via which members of staff can report problems before they become a cemented part of the process is Toyota, which, under the auspices of the Toyota Production System, encourages even the smallest failure to be notified as soon as it occurs. Workers on the production line, upon spotting a mistake, were encouraged to pull the ‘andon cord’ suspended above them. Thus, a diagnostic process kicked off and help was summoned and, if the problem could not be solved more or less immediately, the production line was halted, under the reasoning that it was better to delay production and lose a strictly defined amount of revenue than to leave a mistake unreported and risk a much greater, less predictable loss in the future. It’s interesting to note that the overhead cords themselves, from 2014, were being phased out in favour of waist high buttons, in order to create a more comfortable, less visually cluttered and, above all, safer working environment. A genuine example of a part of a process of continuing improvement actually being improved itself and, once again, with a HR focus – the comfort, safety and working conditions of the members of staff being the driving motivation for the change.

Martin Brenig-Jones

The use of the andon cords (or wireless buttons as they will now become), the reporting of aviation incidents and the changes brought about at Virginia Mason hospital are all examples of how systems need to be put in place, but will then only work if the culture of the organisation is such that no member of staff will be fearful of metaphorically ‘pulling the cord’. Your HR department can play a vital role in ensuring that this is, indeed, the case. Not only should processes such as recruitment, training and staff reviews be subjected to the process of continual improvement – deciding whether it’s necessary to have a three stage interview process, for example, or whether just the one interview, providing it asks the right questions, will suffice – but the HR department should be seen as a focal point for staff feedback and a department within your organisation through which staff will feel able to admit to things going wrong or challenges being impossible to surmount. The problems sometimes associated with bringing about change within an organisation will be minimised somewhat if the department tasked with pushing through that change is one which is regarded as being ‘on the side’ of the individuals responsible for embedding said change.

Time and again, the lessons learned from process analysis and the changes decided upon flounder in the cold light of day, when the next bout of firefighting has to be engaged upon before genuinely new ways of thinking can be embedded. Putting your HR department at the heart of such change will help to ensure root and branch reform, driving your organisation into the future with a set of processes, and a workforce, ready and able to deliver.

Find out more

• Lean Six Sigma Training
• What is Lean Six Sigma?
• About Catalyst Consulting

The post Passing the buck to the scapegoat – Martin Brenig-Jones writes for the HRDirector appeared first on Catalyst Consulting.

ILM, 12th July 2016
Growth Business, 18th July 2016
HRM Guide, 11th August 2016
Fresh Business Thinking, 16th August 2016[/box]

The result of the recent Brexit referendum in the UK came as a complete shock for many people who had been expecting ‘Remain’ to win which of course would have meant ‘No change’, carry on as before.

Several people who voted ‘Remain’ have commented to me about their feelings of anger and despair. This triggered a reminder of the value of understanding the stages that people go through when coping with change in their lives. The Kübler-Ross model is a well-known model developed by Dr Elisabeth Kübler-Ross who pioneered methods in the support and counselling associated with death and dying. The principles behind this model also apply to situations where people are coping with the trauma brought on by change in general, for example being made redundant, or change in the workplace, or maybe by a shock Brexit result!

You may find it helpful in work environments to use a slightly adapted model to include the following stages: shock, denial, awareness, acceptance, experimentation, search and integration as illustrated.

Right now in the UK, with the referendum only a few days ago, you can sense that many people are still in the shock or maybe the denial phases. People feel numbness and despair, they may be dazed and perplexed.

Different people will be at different stages and they will transition through the phases at different speeds. They may oscillate between phases too. It is helpful when supporting people through this kind of change to recognise the signs of each phase and adjust how you help and support people depending on their phase.

For example, when people are still in the ‘shock’ phase, they will certainly need empathy ‘I can see why you feel like that’ but they are unlikely to respond well to ‘logical’ argument about the ‘pros and cons’. They may want to vent their anger. Do let them and listen, but don’t get into a ‘logical’ argument. Equally, when they are in the ‘denial’ phase, it’s best not to raise false hopes that it might not happen, but do confront the issue and get them talking.

There are other strategies that can be used as they move through the different phases, for example when they enter the ‘experimentation’ phase, support them and let them discover the ‘new world’ and start to think out of the box. Don’t knock down their ideas.

There are many change management approaches beside the Kübler-Ross model and I have found these tools and techniques as important, if not more important than the traditional quality tools and techniques needed for effective business improvement. I described several of these in Lean Six Sigma for Dummies, but I would be the first to admit that it is a lot harder to put these tools into practice than just read about them (or even write about them) but seeing the reactions to the Brexit vote reminded me of how useful these techniques can be in supporting people who are going through ‘change’.

The post Brexit: The challenge of accepting change appeared first on Catalyst Consulting.

As technological advances alter the way in which we do business on a virtually weekly basis (ask yourself how many businesses, five years ago, had a social media strategy), so the need for businesses to shift and alter becomes ever more urgent. Good businesses recognise this fact, and are constantly re-evaluating and monitoring the way in which they do things in order to introduce change at the earliest opportunity. All too often, businesses wait until a problem occurs before making the changes which need to be made, but the truly pro-active professionals are those who keep their eyes fixed firmly on the horizon and recognise the need for change when it is desirable and advantageous rather than unavoidable.

The other side of the equation is the natural human impulse to fear change. The maxim that if it isn’t broke you shouldn’t fix it is one which has become a cliché because it slots so neatly into the basic human psyche. On a simple human level, if we’re happy with the situation as it is, we tend to shy away from making any change which might end up making matters worse, and on a business level this can extend to sticking with the same old methods and processes year in and year out. Businesses, such as those which have instituted the Lean Six Sigma methodology, spotting the need for change before a crisis hits, are then charged with the often difficult task of engaging the team tasked with delivering that change, and achieving  that engagement is often the most vital component of ensuring that any change is successfully implemented.

The first, last and most important aspect of any engagement in the change process is simple involvement. The team whose job it will be to deliver the change should be involved in the process before it even begins. Talk to them about the kind of change which you think is needed and gain their input into how they think it can be delivered. Remember that any kind of change is going to operate on several different levels. On a broader level, it will affect the business as a whole and can be viewed in a fairly abstract manner as a shift in the delivery of processes or a change in emphasis when it comes to the application of certain methodology, but you should never allow yourself to forget the fact that these broader changes are going to impact upon individuals in a much more direct and intimate manner. Before changing the daily life of a member on your team – modifying their tasks, altering their working patterns or amending their duties – you should make a point of detailing clearly and precisely exactly why the change is needed.

Having established the need for change you should then involve the team itself in crafting exactly how that change is going to be delivered. This will have two distinct advantages. In the first place, a team which has been engaged on drawing up the parameters of change will be far better placed to deliver it, feeling a sense of ownership from the start of the process, and in the second place, the people who work on the front line or in the midst of a process on a day to day basis will be able to offer invaluable insight into what form of change would be best and how it could be most effectively delivered.

When the need for change and the type of change have been firmly set out, it pays to put them down in writing, drawing up an evaluation which can be used as a guide map going forward and a reference point looking back. If, at any point in the process, the change being delivered becomes muddled, over complicated or difficult to deliver, the original evaluation will act as a form of ‘reset’ button, reminding every party concerned of what is being done and why. Throughout the process of developing and delivering change, ensure that the channels of communication between you and your team are always open. Don’t assume, because they’ve been engaged from the outset, that the team is happy with the way in which things are moving. If there are any objections then it will pay to have them brought to your attention at the earliest possible date, rather than pushing on regardless and dealing with resentment and a lack of co-operation at a later date.

When the time comes for the change to be introduced it should be done so in as gradual a manner as possible, allowing the team to become fully conversant with each individual facet of the new process before the next one is brought on board. Again, communication is the key, and the fostering of an atmosphere in which members of the team will not be afraid to speak out if the change is being implemented too quickly for them to successfully handle. If the engagement process has been clear and thorough from the outset then the change process itself should proceed smoothly in a series of easily managed, incremental steps, each of which evolves to become simply the way in which things are now done. By bringing the team along with you, it should be possible to implement change in a manner which is seamless and which means the new processes come to be seen as simply the way things are done with the minimum possible disruption.

The post How to engage teams in change appeared first on Catalyst Consulting.

Let’s start by looking at ‘creating the right environment’. Essentially this is about leaders ‘walking the talk’. They must encourage the application and use of Lean Six Sigma Thinking principles, tools and techniques. And they must be seen to be using them themselves:

But it’s also about providing the right training, coaching, and support to provide the necessary infrastructure for success. To ensure the right programme infrastructure is in place, you need a management sponsor, ideally the Chief Executive, and someone to manage and co-ordinate the overall programme of activities.

Apart from anything else, you need to avoid duplication of effort by making certain that different improvement teams are not trying to improve the same thing. Steering groups or monthly team meetings can help ensure that improvement activity in one area does not cause sub-optimisation elsewhere in the process.

Improvement projects and events need to be appropriately sponsored and supported with leaders taking on the role of ‘champion’ and providing mentoring and coaching for the improvement teams. The people in the process need to feel able and be able to challenge and improve their processes and the way they work; they must feel empowered. And they should be empowered to both come up with, and implement the solutions.

The organisation’s culture needs to encourage and promote teamwork, both within improvement project teams and across the processes and value streams. The people issues and the importance of the ‘soft stuff’ are vital.

So just what do we mean by ‘soft tools’?

In simple terms, it’s about how well we work with the people involved in the processes, and the stakeholders who are touched by the projects and change initiatives. And it’s about their acceptance of what you are trying to do. You may well have developed an ideal solution or approach, but its effectiveness will be dependent on how well you have gained acceptance.

The effectiveness of an improvement project or, indeed, the deployment of Lean Six Sigma Thinking hinges on two broad factors which have been put into context by George Eckes, the Chief Executive Officer of a Colorado-based consulting group and a former psychologist. He came up with a formula to help express the importance of the ‘soft stuff’:

E = Q x A.

E = Effectiveness: This represents the effectiveness of the implementation which depends on the quality of the solution and the level of acceptance

Q = The quality of the solution: An ideal solution may have been identified, but its effectiveness will depend on how well it is accepted

A = The level of acceptance of the solution: The level of acceptance has a multiple effect on the overall success of the implementation

Clearly, communication will be vital throughout, and it will be sensible to develop a Communication Plan as part of your overall Deployment Plan that helps ensure you get the right messages to the right people at the right time, and in an appropriate medium. Try to think about the different audiences both as teams and individuals.

And remember, we all see and hear things differently, as my poem underlines:

What you heard

Is not what I said

And what I wrote

Is not what you read

We see things differently

All of the time

The view you have

May not be mine

Understanding the key elements involved in Managing Change is essential. Our ‘Elements of Change’ model, based on work by John Kotter, will help you in both the deployment of the overall approach, and in local and cross company projects.

At Catalyst, we stress the role and importance of the soft stuff incorporating this model into our Learning Solutions, generally, as well as through our three-day Managing Change programme.

The post What’s ‘soft’ about soft tools ? appeared first on Catalyst Consulting.