Traveling Light Ezine

Hi!

Welcome to the twenty-sixth edition of Jennifer Selby Long's Traveling Light. Are you blessed with the talent and opportunity to lead? Traveling Light will skyrocket your impact and lighten the load in your life. It's based on the work of executive coach and management consultant Jennifer Selby Long.

Copyright 2008 Jennifer Selby Long. All rights reserved.

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Change management and organizational transformation involve, at their core, human beings -- lots of human beings, who must fully align with your vision in order to transform the business. You and your team can't do it on your own. You need everyone.

My years of experience as an organizational change consultant have taught me a great deal about what people want and need during times of change. The one thing that separates successful change leaders from the rest of the pack is that they get it, too, and they act on that understanding by providing all eight of these change essentials to the many people involved in the change and impacted by it:

1. Clear communication, always: it is far superior to communicate that which is uncertain or still changing rather than waiting until all your ducks are in a row. When you're not communicating, you're communicating, so choose to communicate actively and strategically.

2. Straight talk: people want you to tell them the truth about problems occurring with the change. They don't want you to put lipstick on a pig and tell them how beautiful it is.

3. Two-way communication: elicit input and feedback from employees, customers, and partners. Listen carefully, respond to the problems, and work with them to resolve the problems. If the only employee concerns addressed regard peripheral issues, with the core issues being reserved for "experts," people will not fully embrace the change.

4. Support: this can include training and education, FAQ's, coaching and encouragement, and is particularly important if the learning curve is steep. This applies not only to any technical or business training but also to changes in leadership style, team management skills, vendor management skills, change management skills, conflict resolution skills, and other elements needed to make the change successful.

5. Reasonably clear expectations and measures of success: contrary to popular belief, most people really can handle expectations that are not 100% clear. However, they do need to know 80% of what is expected of them during and after the change, and how their success will be measured.

6. Context: also contrary to popular belief, most people really do want to understand how they fit into the big picture of the change, and how they impact the business. This is true to the most junior levels in the organization.

7. Continuous progress toward aligning internal systems: employees often complain that existing organizational design does not support what is expected of them after implementation. For example, members of a team may own steps 1, 4, 7, and 9 of a new process, but be held responsible for the end result. Thoughtful integration of business processes, compensation systems, and organizational capabilities addresses these inconsistencies.

8. Leadership at all levels: while many employees understand the need to work with outside experts during the course of a significant change, consultants are no substitute for effective leadership inside the organization. One message coming consistently from the top and the middle means a whole lot more than any message coming from an outsider, and good consultants know how to develop, not usurp, leadership of an organization.

Best practices in organizational change management require attention to both objective and subjective human elements. Effective change leaders pay attention to the myriad details being shoved in their faces today, but also anticipate what is coming next. By employing all eight of the change essentials, successful leaders are better able to anticipate and plan for a successful business transformation.

Announcing the birth of my blog! Yes, I've joined the world of bloggers at http://jenniferselbylong.com/. The blog is a concentrated resource for all of my articles, book reviews, and news, organized by topic. It's now the fastest way to find an article from a past newsletter.

We'll continue to post past articles and newsletter at http://www.selbygroup.com/news.html as well.

Since the last issue of Traveling Light, the excitement has died down around here. No more thieving Princeton students lurking around our MBTI® administration page. No more white collar crime. It leaves quite of bit of time for me to attend to my business and prepare for my upcoming talk in Portland. Will I see you there?

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Do you live in the Portland area? If so, mark your calendar for the morning of October 11. I'll be speaking on the impact of your psychological Type and gender on your financial attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors.

I become interested in the subject after noticing different patterns between my male and female clients, even when they had achieved equal levels of financial and career success. I went in search of studies that explained why, but there weren't any, so I did one myself.

What I learned was so important that I share it whenever and wherever I can.

For more information, please visit http://www.portlandapt.org/.

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Last chance! If you are a consultant or executive coach living in the San Francisco Bay Area, and you have at least an intermediate knowledge of psychological type, go straight to www.baapt.org and sign up for one of the few remaining seats at John Beebe's workshop in San Mateo on October 11. I mean it. He speaks in the Bay Area no more than once a year and usually less. He has few recordings. This is your chance to learn from a Jungian master.

Dr. Beebe is a psychiatrist and former president of the C.G. Jung Institute of San Francisco. He was the first American co-editor of the London-based Journal of Analytical Psychology and is the author of Integrity in Depth.

His breakthrough eight-function model assigns archetypal energy to each of the Jungian functions, which enables you and your clients to recognize and begin to develop their non-preferred functions. This is essential to understanding and supporting your clients through mid-life and it is considered by many to be the leading edge development in working with Psychological Type.

This month, I've been re-reading one of my favorite books on individual change management, Ann Salerno and Lillie Brock's The Change Cycle: How People Can Survive and Thrive in Organizational Change.

I liked the first edition so much that I wrote a back cover review for the updated edition released just last month. It reads, "Salerno and Brock combine pragmatic tips and tools with wit and levity - a rare combination in a world of bland, ego-driven management books. Equally helpful for the individual yearning to thrive in a changing workplace and the leaders who determine those very changes."

What I've always liked about Ann and Lillie's work is that they focus on quickly identifying where you are in the natural cycle of change and using specific tactics to move yourself forward.

Some critics have poo-poo'ed their circular, six-stage model of change, but frankly, I could care less. No change model is perfect. I read these models as a general framework and trust my own judgment to fill in the rest for a given situation.

Read this book not for a theoretical debate, but for specific tools to gain insights about which stage you're in and to move yourself on to the next stage, using their tools and tactics. At just under 200 pages, it's a quick read and something you can start using today.

Their tools are applicable to any change an individual experiences, not just changes at work. In light of the massive shake-ups in the financial services industry and the changes to all of our portfolios as a result, this book is of immediate use even for those whose organizations are fairly stable. We're all going through the changes wrought by the mortgage meltdown whether we want to or not.

Leaders should be aware that although organizational change is the context for this book, it's not about organizational change at the strategic level. It's about the unique, individual process of change and how to move yourself forward so you can thrive again, something that benefits us all.

Contact us for further information at: Lighten@selbygroup.com

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© 2008 Jennifer Selby. All rights reserved.

Please share the contents of this ezine with anyone at all. I ask only that you maintain the copyright and attribution.

Jennifer Selby Long
Selby Group

Email: Jennifer.selby@selbygroup.com
Web: www.selbygroup.com