This Blog is all about TLA’s “Personal Change Management” (PCM)
programs. These programs were developed
because, in our experience, successful
implementation of change is always
significantly dependent on non-rational
“people-factors” i.e. personal perceptions,
attitudes and feelings that exist below the
surface of formal organisational contact,
and because unfortunately these factors are
ignored in the typical change initiative.
“People-factors” are disregarded because organizations largely
operate under a cultural cloak of
rationality, ignoring or deeply
underestimating non-rational realities such
as emotion. The result is tragic -- energy
that could be applied productively becomes a
destructive force that undercuts anticipated
performance enhancement related to the
change. Remember, the people that will
resist the change are the people relied on
to implement the change!
Organizations that are serious about successfully implementing
change must strike an adequate balance
between rationality/technical efficiency and
non-rational factors if the anticipated
benefits are to be captured. They certainly
cannot afford to do otherwise if the planned
change is highly disruptive and/or
expensive.
Although an organization may attempt to ensure a successful change
initiative by collaboratively developing an
exciting vision statement, and satisfying
employees’ various basic physiological
needs, really significant leverage for
successful change lies in upgrading each
individual’s understanding of the relevant
personal and inter-personal
“people-factors”, and of how to deal with
them. To address these needs, TLA developed
PCM - a personal performance-based approach
to the design and implementation of change
that facilitates identification,
clarification, and resolution of the key
non-rational people-factors that impact the
success or failure of the change,
independent of the type of change envisaged.
Personal Change Management is based on the notion that to ensure a
successful change effort, each individual in
the organization must have their own
evolving PCM “kitbag”; one that they
personally continuously fill and refresh
with knowledge about the organizational
change envisaged, what it means to them, and
how to bring it about at their local level.
Furthermore, managers as well as other
employees must populate their PCM kitbags
with understanding and skills related to
people-factors. This is achieved using
programmes that assist managers and staff to
change local peer-peer and
peer-subordinate interactions to enhance
authenticity, create emotional openness, and
ease the process of letting go of the past
and making sense of the new context.
The Roger Gaunt Action Learning approach is an ideal vehicle to
achieve these ends when exploited as part of
an intensive workshop and coaching programme
involving small groups. This style of action
learning was pioneered by Roger to help
participants deal with their change-related
concerns, without delving into any
deep-seated emotional issues that are better
treated via 1:1 interventions. This model is
favoured over the more familiar “project
model” advocated by Professor Reg Revans
because it encourages individuals to define
and work with their own areas of interest
and emotional concerns, thus building
increased capacity for ownership, insight
and effective implementation of identified
solutions.
Each small group is called a PCM Group (PCMG). In TLA’s programme
PCMG members undergo a process that is
enriched with counselling and group work
skills that draw on psychodynamic, Gestalt,
and client-centred theory. Group members act
as collective “counsellor” to each
“presenter” of an issue, enabling
exploration and clarification of her/his
situation, plus identification of options,
solutions, or “next steps”; at a follow-up
meeting the presenter reports to the group
her/his progress regarding subsequent
“action”.
TLA supplies highly skilled facilitation for PCMGs to ensure
participants develop the discipline to work
openly with the group process, and to set
aside their own agendas when addressing the
concerns of others. The facilitator trains
the PCMG in the Gaunt Action Learning
techniques, models the skills, and provides
a “holding environment” for the group within
which challenging and thinking can happen
without threat. The aim is to enable a PCMG
to become self-facilitating and responsible
for its own development.
To explore PCM progams and PCMGs
in more detail
please contact us – and NO we won’t
follow up with you afterwards unless agreed
with you!
