Change Leadership Forum

For many of you who attended the 2008 National Boss Day luncheon at Grace Point, staying past 1:30 for the 2nd hour of Q&A was not feasible. About 12-15 people were able to stay around and have an interactive discussion around such tangents as:

What a wonderful day at Gracepoint Church and a big round of applause for the hard work of Mike Sharrow, Dave Galbraith and the many volunteers and staff that made this unique Boss' Day event possible. It was a real honor to join with Tony to address the topic of navigating change.

Look forward to unpacking all of the nuggets from this day over the next days, weeks and months through this Change Leadership Forum blog.

Hal Rosenbluth co-authored a book, The Customer Comes Second, in which he advocates the wisdom in investing in your human capital as an organization to achieve highest yields in regards to success, value chain delivery, and long-term stability. Among the many contrarian principles proposed in this book, one of Hal's emphasis points is the health of any team to engage in truth-seeking dialogue. Agreeing is an easy experience, but how well a team handles disagreement is a key indicator of either underlying dysfunction or resiliency as an organization.



Jim Collins and Susan Scott have each contributed further to the concept of establishing a cultural mindset where having "fierce conversations" and even "battles to dig in and discover the truth" about realities concerning the organization. These "fierce conversations"

Successful movement in the area of truth-seeking engagements as a cultural value is the tendency and proficiency at having "fierce conversations about the truth."

Questions:
(1) who would your employees identify as the priority for your organization/team?
(2) what would it look like to put your people first in a way that yielding customer and market excellence as a by-product?
(3) how does your team(s) handle conflict/disagreement? Is there a cultivated atmosphere that embraces "fierce conversations about the truth"?

An OODA Loop is a military tactical axiom that lends itself very well to a variety of change and leadership situations. Besides the fact that saying, "I'm trying to be intentional about the rate at which I can employ OODA Loops effectively" casually during a staff meeting will make you sound like crazy ("why's Bob talking about cereal again?") or brilliant - the axiom is extremely functional for individual or group application.