My newsfeed recently showed me an article I first read several years ago. Rereading it reminded me that even with so much change recently, so much remains the same.
The story was about a global transformation study conducted by KPMG in 2016, which found that 96% of organisations faced transformation. Sadly, only 47% of the leaders and owners of these organisations said they expected to gain any value from these transformation programmes.
I am sad not just because of the waste or sub-optimal use of investment, but because we live in a world where 53% of businesses expect to have to live with this failure. Despite increasing optimism in 2022 and the growing realisation that all organisations need to think about doing things differently, I still see many organisations spend development resources on the symptoms, not the cause.
We’ve all heard that you can’t change a company until you change its culture, but culture change initiatives rarely deliver the expected or desired outcomes. They fail because they don’t start with people at the centre and consider how their people see things or why there is a need to change.
Today, we need to focus on developing people to “be” and think differently if we expect them to do things differently. This raises some questions every leader or business owner should be asking their development leaders:
- What has changed in our development efforts over the last two years? How are we spending money differently?
- How are we creating development experiences that serve both the organisation’s needs and the learning needs of our people now?
- How are we developing the worldview of our people so they see the need to and are motivated to adopt the new practices and develop the new capabilities we need?
I believe we need a deeper understanding of why we need to develop our people going forward, and then how. We need to understand the new outcomes we want to see in behaviour or action. Then, how they want to consume (and take on board) the development approaches that will answer the organisation’s Why.
Let’s go back to the creating change example. If we want our people to be more accountable or proactive, we need to design development that changes their thinking about these objectives. We don’t want people to collaborate for collaboration’s sake. We want them to collaborate to ensure things get done end to end, more quickly and smoothly, on time and in full.
There is no point in teaching people technical collaboration skills until we change how they see the need to work and shared goals. We need to help them see the goals, and the situation of the people they are working with or serving, differently, how they help, and how they create problems. Then we need to understand the format and environment that will transfer the learning required.
We also need to cut out the fluff because nobody has the time for two days back-to-back sitting in a class. We must accept that our people are stressed, busy and worried about their health and future. They won’t engage with the new learning to meet our new Why if it is delivered in a way they won’t devote their time and attention to.
We need to be more human-centric. Many business and learning leaders explain the Why (for the organisation and the individual). Human resources people and trainers may even tell success stories to sell the benefits. But none of the above ignites the necessary emotions to connect people with learning and changing.
How are we devoting resources to help our people challenge their perceptions and actions, and seek new ways that they can quickly put to use? When was the last time you developed any expertise in a subject you were completely indifferent to?
Finally, let them learn together. How are we helping them to make sense as a collective and share wisdom and real-world experience from testing new approaches? They will listen and believe the benefits of doing new things if they hear it from people they know and trust, rather than leaders or talking heads.
One of my most powerful and empowering learning experiences was very content-light but allowed me and my learning peers to explore and learn from our applications and stories. This level of personalisation is essential in making and helping change stick.
In my case, it transformed my mindset and approaches to other people, and I saw the changes in my people’s ways of thinking and doing. It was impactful because we evolved our learning as a community, and a safe space to get help, ask questions and practise.
Arinya Talerngsri is Chief Capability Officer and Managing Director at SEAC — Southeast Asia’s Lifelong Learning Center. She can be reached by email at arinya_t@seasiacenter.com or https://www.linkedin.com/in/arinya-talerngsri-53b81aa. Talk to us about how SEAC can help your business during times of uncertainty at https://forms.gle/wf8upGdmwprxC6Ey9
