I’m still amazed how many times I have a conversation with a potential client that includes some or all of the following phrases:

  • “But doesn’t the change manager convince everyone to change?”
  • “So I am bringing in a resource to do all the change work so there’s no pressure on my staff”
  • “So the project manager has everything under control, I just want you to come in to help get the people on board with this”
  • “So if you can just prepare the check lists for our project manager, that’s all we really need from you”

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How are you Developing Change Agents in your organization? You know those people placed to support a change, but continue doing the day job as well! Possibly you are one of those people or if not, you know someone who is.

I’ve been involved in strategic, organizational and business change confused guyfor almost 20 years. Time and time again I have seen organizations appoint (or is it anoint?) change agents across the business, with a remit that requires them to be local supporter, advocate and eyes, ears and mouthpiece for change, whilst of course continuing to excel at their usual role.

These people are expected to take on the role of change agent and masterfully negotiate the role – off the side of their desk, or beyond. These people are provided with minimal training, coaching or mentoring to prepare themselves for the role – a change in itself for the individual.

In a past role, I worked hard to build up a network of such change agents across an organization. The diversity of operations, size and structural responsibility meant that as the change management person, I needed to rely on people to be the localised presence for my role. Now some of these people I was able to choose, others were chosen for me but the common factor was that these administrators, managers and specialists were all asked to this work as well as their existing role.

To successfully develop these people into change agents I started with Change Management 101 sessions, developing their understanding of peoples reactions to change, how we manage the people side of change and how this interacts with projects and other business activities. Using this knowledge and engaging them in great conversations, I shared my experiences of change and helped them to prepare for the role with shared knowledge and experience.

We also created some cool ways of getting people to share their thoughts, without spending hours in meetings and completing surveys. I got the Change Agents to think and work smart when it came to being the touch points for change in their areas and then worked to develop them into a  successful change agent network through clearly understanding their role, with clear expectations and direction, but also access to a great tool kit of readily available information to support them in their endeavours.

We were able to cascade consistent and influential messages to the right people at the right time through these effective practices and of course create an enterprise wide planning approach using the feedback from all the change agents to inform strategic alignment and operational benefits.

Having been through this pathway and developed this successful network of change agents, I have now developed a workshop for others being thrown into this role. Using some of the work I did on my Challenge of Change workshop and of course my own experience, I’m now launching the Developing Change Agents Workshop as a 2 way interactive workshop, bringing together those that are new to change management and/or being asked to take on the role of change agent in their organization. I take the opportunity to discuss the impact of change, the role of change agent and cover things like the difference between project management and change management. It includes lots of activity and real life examples to help attendees get themselves in the mindset needed to be successful in the role of change agent.

More information on the Developing Change Agents workshop can be found by clicking here. 

I was recently fortunate enough to visit Stratford Ontario for a couple of performances in their Shakespeare Festival. This got me thinking that for stories that are over 400 years old, a lot of transformation and change within the plot lines and many of the humour and emotive responses found throughout can be related to modern day change resistance, acceptance and approach!

So I thought it would be fun to reference content that resonates with myself and discuss their relevance today.

Now a disclaimer and an alert before we begin. I’m not going to attempt a blog post in rhyming couplets, that’s just a little beyond my capability index. Apologies if I don’t mention your favourite, I’m sure there are many other quotes I could use, but I have not been privy to the full canon of Shakespeare – yes its one for the bucket list – but I’m most definitely short of a few kings, some other comical interludes and probably only about fifty percent exposed. I guess I should also give a spoiler alert to those that have not seen a production of one of the mentioned plays – yes plot lines may be shared!

Where is a good place to begin? Maybe with one of my favourites – a play full of transformation and reactions to change – A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The story is summed up in “The course of true love never did run smooth” because the play is about those that do and don’t fall in love and change the focus of their affections through the interference of fairies but also the views of their parents. Now it may be anchored in personal love, but it makes me consider how totally committed to an opinion someone can become when they are convinced (even with magic!) to believe a certain viewpoint. There are lots of transformational events in the play, with key character Bottom, being given an ass’s head to reflect his foolery but as a local villager – getting to interact and have acceptance by Titania, Queen of the fairies and may be a reflection on the acceptance of change and a focus on message rather than the vehicle that brings the message. Throughout the play, the character of Puck is a devilish catalyst for the changes, often being instigator or at a least enabling supporter. Now I’m not saying he’s a good change manager as he does most things underhand and with mischief, but I do see him as a revolutionary catalyst for change that may shake things up significantly in good and bad ways but in so doing moves a group of people outside of their normal comfort zones with an end result of a better set up and greater appreciation of all players. I’m not a supporter of the activity generally, but sometime the end justifies the means – as long as there are no permanent casualties en route!

Let’s briefly move away from comedy and touch base on the gender changing roles within Shakespeare across all plays. We have the likes of Viola and Rosalind in As You Like It and Twelfth Night, Portia in the Merchant of Venice and to some degree Lady Macbeth, all assuming Male roles to assert a message and deal with a challenge faced within their world. I wouldn’t necessarily condone the lack of sexual equality – why does a woman have to be like a man to act this way – but let us not forget 400 years have passed since these stories formed. I would like to take the lesson that in order to enable, deliver or encourage a change, it is sometime necessary to take on a somewhat different role or persona to normal. I have many a time had to summon up the energy to perform a part in front of a town hall meeting to rally the assembled masses on to “the train” before they get left behind. The change is coming and I need to appeal to their needs to get buy-in and show myself as a role model that they can relate to, using their language and terminology to engage trust and respect. For me this normally exhausts me after the event but the performance is normally such that I get the groups convinced of the next steps and heading in the right direction, not unlike the character mentioned above!

The Shakespearean kings are generally much darker storylines and some of their transformations tend to me much more final. However, for most of them there is a transformation of mindset, whether it’s Lear’s slow disintegration into madness or the single minded need for revenge in Hamlet and Macbeth. It’s a reflection of how circumstance turns a mind to think or react differently and in so doing become an integral part of the way a person acts or does things. Consider how we encourage the integration, absorption or total acceptance of a new or different way of doing things within the change management world. Is it a fair reflection to say that sometime we drive folks crazy or slightly unhinged with our desire to get them on board with the new? I wonder if we should have more exit routes available to the establishment that provides a safer end result for those who struggle with doing different or accepting the new, before they sink into a Shakespearean mind storm.

My final reference comes from the star-crossed lovers of Romeo and Juliet. Now I could relate the houses of Capulet and Montague to most merger and acquisitions. Interestingly the reactions of members of each house reflect the general mix of reaction for any merger – some good, some bad, some totally sure they can sabotage the idea. But I wanted to reflect on the sad result at the end of the play, caused through lack of good communication. If only they had shared their plans there may well have been a different outcome, but its perhaps the fact that as an audience, you know the tragic irony of the outcome of the story from the prologue, and you are just watching the story unfold. How many times have you considered a change management plan, applied all elements and then realised you knew what was going to happen all along? Far too many times. However, it is wrong to assume from the outset what the result will be and great communication can challenge that expectation.

I am sure there are many more change management references within the tenets of Shakespeare – I have but scraped the surface here. I may return to this at a future time. For me the biggest take away from this is for people to realise that change has been dealt with by people for many years and is not some new thing! Perhaps we now label and categorise differently and my reflection of Shakespearean prose is not a direct historical reflection but does support the time honoured tradition of dealing with change successfully or not – “To be or not to be, that is the question”.

“Has change management hit puberty?”
An interesting comment made at the recent ACMP Global conference ‘Change Management 2014’. When I heard this statement, it prompted me to think about two elements derived from the content. First change management is not that old and secondly does this personalise change management or at least give it traits something akin to those of a human. is ivermectin a prescription drug in the uk The latter point is kind of neat when you think of it as dealing with the people side of change.

The reference to puberty did trouble me. It made me consider the human qualities of your typical adolescent. Now many people will relate to those traits of an adolescent, struggling to find identity in the world and rebelling or even pushing the boundaries of acceptance. Is this a fair reflection on change management? I started to dissect this thought some more. Check out the latest Exipure reviews.

What do you think about this reflection, is it fair? Consider the ambiguity of where change management sits in the world of organizations, where it connects and influences the success of changes and how it reaches out and gets acceptance for doing something different to the norm. For many people it has fallen out of the area of project management, yet for others it is a consequences of the Human Resources needs of an organization. Now consider what other fields have influenced the practice and we link to coaching roles for personal and group change and add in the foundation or maternal aspects of organizational development and you are starting to see the multiple personality disorder, or just lack of rightful home for change management.

Let’s reflect those thoughts back into the reaching of puberty. Now perhaps change management is well into puberty already and beginning to form its own adult identity for the future. But does this mean it has been through toddler stages, the terrible twos, kindergarten, elementary school, junior high and has now reached the point for future focus. Is this why practitioners are now self-identifying and finding their own home and sense of belonging in change management as separate and unique from all those (and many more) touch points I mentioned above.

If we flip back to the whole idea of a personality and consider if the human side of change has a human persona! tendonitis “fasting” tissue “ivermectin” So defining humanity is some great philosophical discussion that I shall not be entering into here, although perhaps that’s another touch point, with psychology. Digressions aside, I can see the profession in terms of many human characteristics. It speaks to people in the format of communications and it thinks about what it is about to say or do in the preparation and planning for change. It definitely looks and listens to gain data to understand what is happening. Maybe the feeling side is a challenge to relate to but when we undertake strong stakeholder engagement, is that akin to going out and making friends? what does ivermectin do Are change agent networks just like groups of friends? It definitely has a sense of need of others and a desire to make life better for them through influence, assistance and the greater good!

So let’s put these two elements back together. Change management has built its personality over its wonder years. The early years have been spent copying others, maybe those disciplines of project management or coaching approaches and like any child it has found a way to develop itself through repetition reward and reaction to this activity. Then it starts to interact with others and learn how to make friends, find the good guys and steer clear of the bad ones, building successful stakeholder engagement into its core value set. Then it has had the identity crisis, maybe it’s not sure which group do they belong in, should it go its separate way, and how does it become its own identity? Then its reached puberty and started to realise that it does some things really well, and other things not so well, and with a look to the future it knows it has to develop an ethical approach to dealing with others, that plays to its strengths whilst appreciating the diversity of those around. So now change management is hitting its time for focus, readiness for adulthood and establishment in society as an equal player with all the other guys already out there.

To successfully achieve future goals, and not get caught up in the wrong crowd, regular exercise, healthy living and balanced nutrition will make it succeed. Now we have to consider that those of use in the profession need to keep the discipline on the right path that exercises its content regularly and also feeds it the right knowledge using good quality content.

What is the best method of describing the organizational culture? You’ve got all the information, positive and negative comments, qualitative and quantitative data and various narratives and observations from walking the floor. Now what?

My experience is to right the beginning summary of observations after the rest of the report is completed. I tend to focus on 5 key areas for the core content of the report, namely communications, leadership, interaction with others in the organization, external influences and adherence to policy and procedure.

Communications covers the methods, style and transparency. Such elements will include appropriate audience, levels of message cascade and identify secrecy and inappropriate restrictions of information and methods for sharing information with accessibility and opportunity to respond. Within communications it would be good to identify how appraisal reporting, performance measurement and individual assessment is communicated. This can be used to neatly lead into leadership as a category.

Within leadership, a vast array of areas are usually covered, but mainly focus on management style, appropriate use of power and control, spans of responsibility both for personnel and tasks, decision making and consultation as well as independency and empowerment. granada vs real madrid

I prefer to use interaction with others in the organization as a topic in preference to team working, because current organizational structures depend so much more on matrix management, integrated and temporary teams that individuals find themselves within many teams, groups and management chains within an organization. When discussing this element of the report I focus on subordinate, level and upward interactions within own areas and other parts of the business. Discussion looks at taking responsibility, ability to work successfully with others to achieve a common goal, types of interaction and ability to fulfill dependencies across the organization.

External influences cover customers, clients and other stakeholders impact with reference to how the organization responds to feedback and changing needs of these. Also the way the business provides service and the approach of the people to these external – do they respect them or find them annoying?

Finally observing the organizations adherence to policy and procedure reflects the respect the employees may have for the organization and its purpose. تصفيات اليورو 2023 If there is a lack of adherence then it could be because practice has developed that has not been assessed and those who follow this informal procedure do so without consideration of consequences of their actions. This can indicate a lack of organizational development and a need for more regular learning needs assessments. سيرجيو بوسكيتس This is a very clear way to address the learning practice in the organization without directly addressing the facilitators or their syllabuses.

Within each of these areas the narrative defines the category scope, provides findings and impact of findings within the organization and then suggested improvements and recommendations where necessary. It is also worth compiling a summary index of any recommended next and future activities to bring about a more appropriate or desired culture within the organization.

Finally, summarise your findings with a few key positives and a few key challenges that have the biggest impact and potential for improvement. With this as the opening executive summary to the report you will have a really good organizational culture appraisal document that provides a snapshot of the time and a reference for future reviews.

Last time I talked about organizational culture and what it means. Now, so many times senior managers in an organization will ask for a description of their organization’s culture. Great ask, but how can we get that picture of the culture? 888casino عربي

In my experience there are things that you should do, things you shouldn’t and then the nice to haves. Let’s start by discussing what you should do. With no pun intended the first thing you should get active on, are investigative discussions within the organization.

These discussions must be 2-way exchanges between you and the workforce. These can be group activities, 1-2-1 or a mixture of both. I favour the mixed approach. Within these exchanges you want to be facilitating answers to some open questions. Questions like “how do you learn things here?”, “why do you think change happens in the organization?” or “how great is it to work here?”. All these questions are hopefully going to prompt several minutes of response but be prepared to follow up the initial questions with, “why do you say that?” and “how has that affected you?”; or any similar drill down probing questions. Those of you with recruitment experience will find this a bit like interviewing job prospects. When you are in the group situation be prepared to encourage comment from the quiet corner and silence the noisy neighbour – politely of course! Throughout this dialogue you will be scribbling notes furiously. I have found some people who have recorded these exchanges but I find it stifles free discussion. If it’s good comment you can write it down and reflect it back for affirmation. In the group setting I have found flipcharts do work sometimes but you have go judge the group dynamic and I have only ever successfully used them to capture summary points of the discussion toward the latter stages of the conversation. Of course, as with any such workplace activity, you need to explain yourself, confirm the confidentiality and how you and you alone will be analysing the information.

The interviewing and information gathered through the process will be one of the biggest contributors to your appraisal but there are a few other things you need to do. The second thing is to make observations. Now I like to find a corner of the office, of a side in the workshop and sit and do some paperwork, while observing what is happening. Try not to make it too obvious but make notes on how the conversation goes between people, what sort of topics are discussed, how the leaders lead and the managers manage. Try and get to a number of mixed vantage points through the experience and at different times of the working day or in the case of shift workers, across different shifts too. You want to be able to see the way things are run and people act while doing their job across as many of the activities and as much of the working times as possible.

The third key element of the appraisal is to look at what the policy and processes are that are in place. Now this is not from a right or wrong, or efficiency viewpoint – you may well have views there! It is important that you reflect the way people are expected to conduct themselves in the organization, what the hierarchal roles and decision making process is and also be aware of just how much or little structure there is to the daily activity.

As well as these 3 key areas of activity, I would also recommend a few beneficial if not essential activities to add to your base of information. Try and attend, sit in or observe a number of team meetings. I would also recommend sitting in on a board meeting or other executive level meeting. If there are projects currently active then make time for one or two project meetings too. I would also recommend sitting in on training or learning event if possible. My last preferred activity is to sit down and read through the company external document and the internal board meeting notes and the like. نظام اليورو 2022 This gives a good insight into company vision and mission with a comparison of the delivery and execution.

Before I finish up, I’d like to mention a few things to stay away from. العب واربح المال الحقيقي Some I think are obvious but worth discussing all the same. Rumour and gossip have no place in an appraisal. The amount of rumour and gossip may well be relevant for discussion, but its content is not. Don’t write anything up until you have got at least 50% of the way through and never ever provide a first draft of the report to the CEO or requestor until after all the necessary activities are completed. You don’t want to get the observations diluted by changed attitudes midway through the review. Finally don’t rush the appraisal. For a company of around 1000 employees this should take a minimum of a month and more likely 2 for an individual to undertake. If you are challenged on this then you need to challenge back about the quality and depth of the review.

That brings me to the end of this post on undertaking the cultural assessment. I’m sure there are observations that many could make from their experience. In the third and final post in this short series, I will be explaining how I go about compiling the client report, what to include and how to explain your findings in the best way.

I have had a few conversations recently where the culture question has come up. Now I am not talking diversity, ethnic representation or the arts. I am talking about the culture of an organization. But what is that?

I have had a few conversations recently where the culture question has come up. Now I am not talking diversity, ethnic representation or the arts. I am talking about the culture of an organization. But what is that?

We talk about “the way things are done around here” or “the typical employee” and they all come down to culture of an organization. In fact both those phrases are really good insights into the organizations culture.

I see organizational culture as the way you would answer these 3 questions. How do people interact here? What do they do here? Why do they do it. I’m sure there are many variants on this but to assess culture or even just frame it you have to understand the political, social and environmental influences that address these questions as well.

Now I sound like I’m about to launch into some great thesis – I promise you I will not! Let’s look at those question within this framework and you will better see what I mean.

How do people interact? This talks to communications (pun intended), learning, leadership and general managerial styles. Now to assess the culture the political element will address the powers and influencing areas, the social will address the nature of the content and the environmental considers where it happens. So identifying who and from which roles communications are agreed, where the most exchange of information takes place and the way it takes place. Think about the comparison of a formal managerial meeting with an agenda and the general banter of FaceBook friends. Both are interactions but starkly different ones.

What do they do here? A double edged sword in my experience. One reflects the conversation that goes something like “do you know John? What does he actually do here?” as the conversation holders then attempt to work out John’s position and responsibilities. The flip side is the challenge to the organization that says ABC Inc. Have 20000 employees… But what do they do? The first part reflects the need to have clearly understandable and transparent purpose. Knowing how the business purpose is reflected in every job. It can also be a reflection of old and dying organizations who have people stuck in jobs that either they can’t move from or the business cannot validate properly. The second element discusses the lack of identity, potentially brand presence, of an organization. Consider that some businesses become so large and diverse their culture is multifaceted. This can project an unclear miss-match of ideals and values and the cultural conundrum here is to see the wood for the trees.

Why do they do it? This is a natural progression from the previous question. It’s not just clarity of what is done but why it is done. This is about motive, desire and need. Very much based in emotions the why question asks the observer to determine the purpose to an activity. Is it for the achievement of business goals? Is it for the betterment of other workers? Will it make the business better? All very positive reasoning and reflectors of content and positive culture. However the motive may be to undermine others, sabotage deliverables and instill attitudes of fear, division and power through such uncertainty being leveraged. Not nice cultural development.

But when we know what a culture is or we can describe it, what does this provide? For me it is about understanding the people so you know how to work with them in making a change happen. That applies equally across all organizational levels too.

My next blog will look at some of the tools and techniques for defining culture that I use and find beneficial in trying to find a way through all this.

I was recently thinking about fairy tales, legends and other fantasy type stories. تحميل لعبة طاولة مصرية 31 It crossed my mind that not only is the rule of three very evident within their content time and again, but there are parallels from their content with change management experience – no surprises there then!

So what do the three little pigs, goats gruff or even musketeers tell you about leading change. Well let’s consider the little pigs first. I hope you know enough of the story but to recap – 3 pigs build 3 houses after their mother has sent them out into the world. One house gets made of straw, one of sticks and one of bricks. Big bad wolf huffs and puffs and blows down the first two houses but fails on the final house. The wolf then tries to climb in through the chimney but the pigs put a boiling pot over a fire and he either gets boiled or burned and depending on if your Disney or darker the wolf is scared off or killed by this. قوانين اونو

So the 3 houses made me think of the way people take change. Sometimes they build barriers to accept or even listen. But with some effort these barriers can be broken down. However I have had that experience where one group seem to be inboard only to connect with another group with harder resolve to the change. Eventually they get caught up with a group with such hardened resilience there is no changing them. You then look to a different route into the group only to find yourself heavily scorned and having to run away and either totally regroup or abandon plans. Not a good outcome! Of course they key here is perception as the big bad wolf. This happens when you go to the people as their enemy with evil grins and ulterior motives. Let yourself be seen as the big bad wolf and you won’t get very far, but to use another wolf based fairy tale, try being more red-riding hood!

So what about the Billy goats gruff? The story here is about 3 goats that need to change where they currently pasture and move to a new and better meadow. To get there they have to cross a bridge where an evil troll lives. Each one goes to cross the bridge but persuades him that the next goat is bigger and better and he should wait for them. When the third and largest goat arrives on the bridge, he is so big that he tosses the troll over the bridge and is never seen again.

Where does this connect to change management you may ask? I see this as demonstrating the power of clever communications. As you go to make each change, if you can get adoption and acceptance on a smaller scale, then increasing it with each new communications works well. The audience is keen to hear more information and are often open to being convinced that letting this change happen is worth it and to save any challenges for the next one. Eventually, the size and value of the change communications is so great it can have energy of its own to achieve acceptance. Many stakeholder communication plans have this principle at their heart. If you engage little by little with the stakeholder, when you need to make the big move, they are already sufficiently on board with the smaller changes that it’s not such a big leap to the final large change needed. So perhaps the change manager is more of a goat here, and the troll is the evil organization resisting change. The goats carry a message that convinces the troll to accept each movement because the next one will reward their motives better. When he gets to the third goat, it’s too big for him to deal with and he gets pushed aside. سواريز ليفربول Now I don’t recommend pushing aside the audience, but the audience for your change communications will have to run with the change if you build up to it in the right way. I also think there is something in this tale that relates to organizational culture, but that is probably a conversation for another blog post.

AS for the 3 musketeers, well the motto of one for all and all for one, with the combination of multiple skill sets overlaps with team building, leadership and all elements of organizational development. Am sure there is more to this, perhaps you have some thoughts?

I recently worked on an engagement in China. The core activity was an analysis of the companies HR and organization to recommend changes. كيف اعمل ايميل كونكر It was an enlightening opportunity for me. I experienced a totally different work ethic and learned so much about the way national identity informs cultural identity.

Here I offer my insight from the experience in the form of a set of recommendations for anyone who may be considering an assignment in China.

I begin with my favourite topic of communications. bqout Of course one of the communication challenges was the language. I didn’t know any Chinese on arrival. I can’t say I knew much on leaving. However I was fortunate to be working with someone who did. I did find that the younger Chinese were more capable in English and almost relished the opportunity to speak English with a native speaker. However, when you are taking time to interview a number of employees about the process and their feelings around their workplace you need to be able to use sometimes complex and irregular language. Recommendation 1: make sure you have someone to work with who can translate good business English.

Reflecting on the content of the communications there are two areas to mention. Chinese folks do no want to say something bad about a colleague or someone in their group. Chinese also like to tell you the story of what happened with scene setting and surrounding information as added extras to the facts. This means that you have to allow for both of these situations. Recommendation 2: allow more time for interviews with employees.

Talking about poor performance is nigh on impossible. Or should I say having a Chinese manager to address it is almost impossible. You have to consider alternate methods to express lack of achievement. This means you have to say the person “did as expected” or “still has areas to achieve” rather than didn’t or failed to do something. I found a strong reluctance to measure performance with KPIs or the like as this would mean indicating failure. Much more was made of the relationship in the group. Recommendation 3: find a way to say failure without being negative in the choice of words.

When you have western expatriates or foreigners in a business they often gravitate towards the English speaking Chinese. Understandable I guess; but they really need to lose the halo effect with the English speakers. Recommendation 4: don’t get confused between English language capability and working competence.

Money is often said to make the world go round and it certainly does in China. Challenging any preconceptions you may have China is a thriving market economy fast charging toward capitalist ideals. For the average worker this means they want to have a family, buy a house, a car and live well. To do this they need money. To get the money they work and work and work. Now I will cover a little more on this in the next paragraph but the core need to maximize income means the Chinese will work as many hours as you give them. Recommendation 5: forget work life balance.

Even though the Chinese worker is willing to work all those hours it doesn’t mean it’s right. However they will strongly push back if you try to cut them because they see that as a cut in income. There are Labour laws in China regarding hours of work. These state that the maximum working hours are 44 per week with up to 36 additional overtime hours in a month. Now if the worker wants to work more and you have them available they will take them. Be aware that they soon start living within the means of the higher wage and won’t like any attempt to take it away. Recommendation 6: if you try to reduce working hours have an alternative way of making the money.

The assignment I was working on reflected a recent organizational structure change. Effectively a new management layer had been added in because of an expanding workforce. Now this is where Chinese and western ways align. Both like to work in silos and use management structures vertically rather than horizontally. However to get more lateral and horizontal interactions you need to play to the group mentality. Recommendation 7: to get people to work across silos create laterally connected groups e.g. Team leaders and middle managers.

I was working with a foreign company based in China. Their senior management were all expatriates. Now long term plans must surely be to integrate Chinese into the management team but in the meantime there has to be an appreciation that there are a significant number of individuals from outside the culture running the show. This means they are stressed living and working many miles from home and challenged to adapt to an alien way of life (to them of course). Recommendation 8: remember to consider the western workers who need the organization to support them too.

In China relationship and saving face are paramount to the workplace. However there is also a strong element of grade, seniority or superiority complex. By this I mean that only someone who is in a senior position to the person can tell them what to do. This means that any thoughts of empowerment culture or similarly peer working relationships will hit a stumbling block. But if you are able to differentiate roles then you have a chance of getting buy-in for this. Recommendation 9: clearly define roles within the team to express responsibilities and working expectations but be prepared to have push back on taking on any peer responsibilities.

My final comment relates to privacy, confidentiality and restricted communications. It is often necessary for discussions and communications to be kept within a number of people and not shared, or for employee information to be kept private. The required poster minimums are observed, which guarantees that you are covered under your state and federal compliance laws. However, in China there are no secrets, or any attempt to keep things such as wages, management discussions or any work related activity private. This leads me to my final comment. Recommendation 10: until you have established a solid and trusting relationship, never discuss anything with an employee and expect it to stay secret, even if you ask for it to do so.

I perhaps should have another recommendation about working in China, but I think this applies to work in any new and different place. Enjoy it! For many people working in Change, they are more open to differences and are therefore more positive about the new and finding out about what can be done differently. تصفيات اليورو 2024 Working abroad in a completely different country to normal is an ideal opportunity to test this and I can only speak from personal experience, but I would confirm that this is most definitely the case for me. So for anyone else out there, I recommend that you take any opportunity to work abroad and in so doing enjoy it for what it is and if it is China that you choose to go to, then I am sure these 10 tips will help you through the experience.

It is that time of year when most of us will soon be going through the ritual of the Bi-annual Clock Change!

Thinking about the clock changes at this time of year makes me realise that this is really a global change event! Is there a bigger change event that happens?

For those in the know this is a perfect time to observe genuine human reaction to change. In the next few weeks you will see a number of people taking time out to make themselves a little more aware of their surroundings. You will hear grumbles about lost sleep or time taken to reset clocks. People will maybe have a few expletives as they start to drive to or from work in different light. Depending on your location, there will be comments about dark mornings or lighter mornings and evenings. Its that period of transition while people adjust to the new body clock.

The clock changes have been happening at various times for decades. The purpose of maximising daylight hours for external workers is lost on so many office based people. Isn’t it interesting how well we do cope with this change – yes some better than others, but within a short period of time everyone has got back to normality. So settled are we that when 6 months or so later the opposing change takes place we all go through the same grumble mode again!

What is the point I am getting at with this discussion? The changing of the standard time in so many places, is a huge change event effecting millions if not billions of people the world over and yet, we prepare for it, make it happen and then integrate it into our life so easily that several months down the line we have forgotten all about it – it is now an integral part of life. This is a successful change delivery – there is readiness, those effected know about it, the change takes place at a time with minimal impact (Saturday/Sunday) and it becomes so embedded after the event that its effects are long forgotten by the time the next change comes along.

So the next time someone says they don’t do change, ask them if they put their clocks back and forward? Then you can gently remind them of their role in this enormous global change event twice a year!