These two words have kept coming up in conversation for me in the last week. Within the realms of transformation, how do we ensure we are bringing difference to change, that we are not just repackaging improvements as innovation – because it’s showing difference from where we are right now?

Beyond obvious is a great question to ask yourself and challenge others to start to distinguish between what’s improving what you have got (by making is faster, safer, better, smarter, visible) versus innovating by designing from the future.

The phrase 'beyond obvious' is also a nice segue into todays’ missive that speaks to getting everyone on the same page in ways that might be less known when starting any business transformation.

Have you ever been in a conversation, work or personal where people are using the same words but telling a different story altogether!? This is something I come across often when working with customers on humanising transformation to accelerate success.

Observe the usage and level of common understanding across your business when it comes to keywords such as these:

I am often met with defensive leaders extolling innovative prowess, with genuine pride. However, when challenged to describe what’s beyond obvious about their ‘innovation’ silence often ensues. It’s important to note, there is no blame or fault to place upon the leader, we only know what we know and therefore our innovative capability is likely equal to the measure of our frame of reference.

This is just a small simple example of something much bigger happening across our organisation at a systems level, that originate where gaps or points of separation exist in the transformation or future story. These gaps or areas of separation fuel a human desire to fill the void. If we only know part of a story, our brain will feverishly do its utmost to scour our memories (experience and expertise) to find patterns and suddenly voila! the void becomes an assumption. We all know what happens next in that scenario!

How do we bridge these gaps? What areas of separation should we prioritise closing to succeed in transformation and accelerate success?

There are many, however out of a list of that could be quite extensive I would recommend not skipping over the following:

Gaps or separation between:

Most transformation programs we support will have gaps and separation mindset across most or all areas above.

Moreover gaps in understanding or a sense of separation directly attributed to transformation and the future will contribute a risk factor in the success of any project or program.

The question becomes what we can do about. Back to my opening statement: Look beyond the obvious. Communication and collaboration have become words so diluted and overused their true impact and power has been lost. To communicate is to transfer knowledge, understanding and wisdom with as much completeness as possible. Collaboration is more than obvious teams working together to drive success.

If we look beyond the obvious around five particular key areas when designing and preparing for transformation, we can minimise risks associated with adoption and capability thus maximising success factors associated with ownership, accountability, and sustained change over time.

Before we even begin any transformation effort, it is vital we minimise any sense of separation between change practitioners with the wider system. Any sense of ‘them’ and ‘us’ causes friction and creates space for stories to be circulated from the void – "The organisation doesn’t care or value us" (because they don’t tell us what’s going on).

A good antidote to this is agreement and practices that support change practitioners placing themselves at the centre of change as active participants.

We need visions and moonshots to share the promise of a brighter future. However, this isn’t where the leader’s role ends. Culture shifts by looking up. If we are part of a grand transformation program, we will look up to watch for evidence of change in our leaders, we will look up for evidence of permission not fault if we are to explore difference. If we look up and see nothing to support these two areas, there is no trust to anchor engagement at a workforce or systems level.

Key to minimising this is how we work with leaders to evidence role modelling: that could be thinking, behaviour or simple basic practices others can sense, see and experience. All building trust that the promise of the future is real and that trying something different or new won’t carry any negative repercussion.

Time is the currency of modern business and work. We are all so time poor, needing to find time for things beyond core practice. Time poverty also leads to a danger of short sightedness – an inability to see beyond the moment of now. All that matters is what I ‘need’ to do now – which leaves me no time to look up or do anything remotely different! This is what I believe is the viral pandemic of modern business.

This disease of our times makes it difficult for people to see or engage in difference and transformation versus improvement (mentioned earlier).

Two things can bridge this gap:

These focus points allow us to move step by step towards a united future identity, rather than perhaps taking five different single steps away from where we are now, just in different directions. I know which one I would want to choose!

As humans a significant number of decisions and actions we make are driven by the heart before the head. We might ‘think’ we are mentally in control, but more often than not our ‘feelings’ drive the chemicals that spark the mind into action. If our hearts are not engaged, we are not engaged. If it doesn’t feel right or there is a sense of unease that’s not the head talking.

When we engage with people at a sensory as well as cognitive level, we can quickly close these gaps. Capturing hearts and minds to get everyone on the same page can be hugely rewarding.

We can do this in a powerful way simply by repositioning our vision and strategic narratives towards human stories and moonshot futures. If you would like to know more about what we mean by a moonshot future check out this link that talks to some amazing work at UCL and the IIPP team.

To bring this blog full circle, this last point is about minimising the risk of transformational keywords being used for different things and more importantly being use to falsely promote difference when something is only being improved.

Right at the start of transformation it’s important to define what constitutes innovation versus improvement. I know many frustrated practitioners and CEO’s who have found themselves at stale mate with people convinced they are innovating, based on their narrow frame of reference and low understanding of true transformation and transformational keywords.

Getting everyone on the same page may not be possible 100%, however, there are some basic anchors we can and should put into place as mandatory steps at the start of any transformation to minimise gaps and separation.

If you would like to know more about any of these areas and how you can develop them and integrate them into your own practice, please reach out.

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If you would like to know more about who you can build your own humanising transformation capability as a certified practitioner or would simply like to explore how some of these strategies could make a difference to transformation you are leading or working on, why not schedule a 121 session with me directly - totally confidential 😏

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