This is the image that I introduced earlier when we talked initially about the four core competencies for leading change. And, again, just let me remind you that these are equal emphasis equally clear, and all connected together in how they are approached and then rolled out into the organization. That's what this image is trying to depict. Unfortunately, this balanced, integrated approach is not practiced by all organizations. And that's where some of the problem lies. What I'd like to do is to give you some examples and then ask you to create an image that would simply describe what you think your organization's current approach is to leading change based on its emphasis and connection, of strategy, change, transition and communication.

Here are some of those examples. This first one talks about a very classic approach and this is often a historical Approach organizations have been conditioned to this approach. The strategy is there, it's a reasonably big green ball. But it's fuzzy on the outside, it's clearer on the inside, which means the closer you get to the center, or the closer you get to the top of the organization, the strategy is clear. But the farther away from that it's less clear. There are some major projects going along.

Some of them are connected to the strategy, but others aren't connected to the strategy and they're not connected to any other changes. There's no unified approach to the changes. And the transitions, a little red ball down here. There's some attention to that, but very little, frankly, and there is always some communication, but typically, it comes in the form of technology based communications, which are, let's call them expedient, not necessarily effective or engaging. And their focus simply on the changes. Now, this historical approach comes from the myth and literally it's the myth that the senior exactly So the only ones that need to know about the strategy, and they're the ones who are in charge of that the project teams are the change teams are the ones who are supposed to make the changes successful.

The HR department are the people who are supposed to keep everybody happy, which is what the myth is around transition. So, therefore, that is insourced to the HR chop, and communication. If the organization is large enough to have a Communication Department, it may only be one person, that communication challenge around all of the changes is in source to the Communication Department as if they were supposed to be in charge of communicating change. And they therefore use the tools that are at their disposal. This as you can appreciate, it may sound familiar, there are certainly other options. But my point in this is this is a historical approach to leading change that has gotten organizations as far as it's ever going to get them and It is about the 30 to 40% success rate, which isn't very good.

Here's another approach. And this is a organization I wandered into a couple years ago. The strategy here was, it was equally unclear as the previous one, but it was much smaller. It was really an afterthought. This was a change organization. These guys were a project organization and, and while there's lots of bubbles on the screen, in this particular case, when I asked the project management officer, who was the head of the project management office, this organization wasn't a larger organization.

It was about 45 4600 people. And it was just a regional organization. The challenge simply was, when I asked him how many changes they had going on in the organization, he said, and he thought for a moment and I can see he was adding them up in his head, and he said 963 and while I almost fell off my chair because I was thinking there was only 25 or 30 is better. As I could tell, so clearly, I had some more homework to do. And then he said that I'm aware of. And he was smart enough to know that projects of a certain scope would come through his project office.

But there were a lot of other changes that were going on. He wasn't aware of, but he knew they were going on. So here, overwhelmed by change. And this particular organization as well, their communication vehicles were emails and memos, attachments to emails or whatever it was, but it was all mostly electronic, and in some cases, internal websites and their intranet, and so on. So their real emphasis was on change. And they had, as I said, lots going on.

Some of them were connected to others, but it really was just a smorgasbord, very little attention to transition. So this was a different kind of a nightmare. But nonetheless, they finally did start to get it organized, but it took a few years. Here's another approach. Now this is a very different kind Have a feel in the organization. Here the strategy is very clear, there is no question where we're going as an organization and why we need to go there.

Everyone is fully engaged in making the strategy happen. And there would be very few big big initiatives, that big strategic priorities, three of them all very connected to the strategy and any change that was going on head to be attached to in some way or support those particular major initiatives and major strategic priorities. There was no bandwidth, there was no tolerance for initiatives that didn't align over to the strategy. All of that's good news. The downside is that this was a an organization that was a pretty hard place to work in. You had to have a pretty thick skin and you had to run really fast you had to come in in the morning, and you had to have your sneakers on because you were moving 1000 miles an hour right out of the gate.

Gait. And they found that burnout was a challenge. Over time, there was very little attention to transition. And they did some improvement in that area, which started to make a difference. And they really did improve some of the issues around the communication, where this group improved a fair amount was putting some really emphasis and attention on transition. And here's another scenario.

Now, this is a different kind of an organization all together. Here, the emphasis is all about transition, a wonderfully warm and caring, engaging organization. And yes, of course, there's a little strategy and we kind of have to do this. And this is what really all about none Sure, there are some changes going on. Yes, of course. But the real question is, how are you doing?

I mean, are you okay? Is everybody okay? lots of attention to their people. So this was an organization that was really loaded up with attention and carrying on communication and communication isn't related specifically to transition. It's not that there wasn't a time strategy in the communication around it changes. But really their emphasis was on the transition.

So I mean, it made some people have few courses. Some people get a little frustrated, we need to get some work done here. My point in all of this is what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to find worksheet number two. And I'd like you to just to take a moment and sketch out your organization's approach to leading change. So push pause now, and sketch out strategy, change, transition, and then communication. And I've given you some examples.

So look back at those and then sketch yours out. Welcome back, I would guess and I could be wrong here. But I've rarely seen someone sketch out an example it looks like this. Yours is very unique, of course, to your view of your organization. And if you had three or four other voices, or eight or 10 other people to help you create this picture it makes for a good conversation. It's probably not this bounce In this, even in this equal, it may have been something like this or it might have resembled more of this may have indeed looked like this.

And it may have had some reflection on this what whatever yours is, is just fine. I mean, that's what you've been doing. The question is, how do we get better at this. And that's really what the rest of this workshop is really all about. We're going to start to dig into this now in some depth, the flow of leading change, dealing with resistance coming at this from a much more integrated systems based approach. Here's what we need to do.

We will start with a big picture perspective, understanding the system or the context that the organization is in right now. We'll look at ways to simplify and engage the current strategic message that needs to underpin all of the changes that everybody needs to get their arms around. Let's talk about underlining and implementing the major changes so aligning the changes to each other but also aligning and connecting the changes to the strategy. Then we'll talk about implementing major change. We'll look at leading people through transition. That's the fourth piece.

The fifth piece is to crank out communication efforts so that you can engage everyone has a required and then we will draw a picture of where people are. Keep everybody moving forward. That is the flow. So if you think about those three interconnecting circles, strategy, change, transition and communication. And if you put those in a step one, step two, step three, step four, there's your steps right there, number one through number six, that's how you actualize or operationalize the integrated approach to leading change. So let's get to work.