Change

We’re always being told that change has to start from the top, so knowing  this I’ve spent much of my time in the past trying to contact the top and telling them what a bad job they’re doing, you can imagine how that generally plays out.

It’s just amazing how top leadership never gets excited about being told that they’re not doing a great job!

One day I realised that I must be the top of something.  So if change is going to start from the top, that must mean me.

It’s really easy to learn about management and leadership theory and think someday I’ll take this knowledge and be a great leader.  Remember that someday is right now, you are the top of your system, change your process, change your system and change your thinking.  As soon as you modify your system you’re going to have an effect on the larger system, the way that you manage and lead every day!

How you process the work that you’re doing.  Now is the time to start practicing what you’re doing, don’t think “oh someday I’ll get this started, someday I’ll do this”

That’s the big fallacy of people who go into leadership and management training.  They think Oh when I get back to the office I’m going to do some of this, the stuff I’ve learned in class, sometimes I’ll hear people say, “well I’m in the middle of a project right now , once that’s finished I’ll start then, I’ll try some of this stuff then”.  It’ll never happen, you’ll never start.

So here’s an idea, start now and don’t stop!

Start right now and think about how you mange things how you interact with your team, your peers, your managers, your customers to encourage the system to get a different result.

Think about the way you transform the situation, are you thinking about what you can do and how you can apply what you’ve learned and how it can be applied?  Not for the process of manipulation but so that you can form groups of people to think about what they can do different and how they can make things better.  Remember you have a huge amount of power when you change the system.

According to Deming your power comes from three sources.  1.  Your position.  2. Your knowledge. 3. Your personality.

As a team member when you walk into your boss’s office and tell them what a bad job they’re doing or that they’ve really messed up is not going to work out well for you!

Second source of power is knowledge; third source of power is personality.  You may have worked with people in the past who are extremely knowledgeable even brilliant but they have no personality.  You can’t get anything done because nobody wants to work with them or hey he’s a great person to be around fun, loveable but just has no knowledge about what we need to do or fix.  Perhaps you know someone in a formal position who has no knowledge or personality but they’ve loads of power, scary!

Think about merging these three.  If you want to manage change don’t use your formal position that’ll be the least effective.

As a more junior team member your formal position is quite low but what you do have is knowledge or the ability to get it!  You can use your personality to influence others and as a way to affect the situation that you find yourself in.  Very quickly you’ll start to see the team that you work with will start to ask questions that aid their understanding and offering solutions that support you. 

Remember helping people to understand why can be just as important as the what and the how, oh and by the way it’ll make you a great leader!