change – Food for thoughts

Listen to your inner voice

The quote that has accompanied me this week comes from Bettina von Armin: „Find yourself, be true to yourself, learn to understand yourself, follow your inner voice, only then can you reach the highest.“

This is certainly the path that makes us happy and content. But in all the everyday life we face, the inner voice is very quiet and often barely perceptible, if at all. At times when the hustle and bustle around us is quieter, such as after work or at the weekend, we would have time to listen to our inner voice, become aware of our values and reflect on the day or the week. But instead we distract ourselves with films, news, parties, etc. We allow ourselves to be drawn into the external and stay less in touch with our inner voice. We put off change and reassure ourselves that we can’t change it anyway. Unfortunately, this excuse is too common and too easy, so we like to use it again and again. But each of us can change more than we realise. After all, we should all have free will and use it accordingly to our values and culture in an acceptable.

One exercise is to realise what we can or cannot change. I think the following exercise based on an exercise by Kéré Sylvia Wellensiekand Kirsten Schwarz might be supportive to be more clear about your own influence in the world:

Create a 3-column table. Please change the column headings into: „changeable“ (column 2) and „unchangeable“ (column 3). The rows are labelled with „professional“ (row 2) and „private“ (row 3). Write down the topics that come to mind for each field. Concentrate on the areas that can be changed, and then think about small steps you can take to actually bring about these changes. Then check the unchangeable areas to see whether they are really outside your sphere of influence. If you are able to change parts of it, split the topic into smaller chunks. And think about the changeable pieces. Start with the first steps and plan accordingly with a time limit to reach the set aims.

Perhaps this little exercise on the subject of resilience will help you to reflect and give your inner voice more strength and volume.

Good is the better perfect

In my diary this week was the following quote from John Steinbeck: „And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.“ This quote got me thinking for a longer time. What is perfect? Who decides whether someone is perfect? As we all construct the world, which means we all interpret situations according to our experiences and memories, everyone would understand something different by perfect.

For example, an apple is perfect for one person if it is flawless and green. For another, an apple is perfect if it has red cheeks and a third finds the apple perfect if it has small spots, as it is then organic and natural.

How can there be, or is there, objective perfection at all? Is it perfection when everything is organised and straightforward? Isn’t chaos, the dynamic, what we need to bring change? Perfection cannot exist, because it is subjective and certainly not dynamic and therefore enable no changes. Being perfect means standing still. As the definition of perfect lies in the eyes oft he observer, the self must adapt and change in such a way that the observer can recognise perfection. This means the price of perfection is to mirrow the expectation of others and not to be yourself.

In my opinion, the solution lies in the second part of the quote: „You can be good.“ Since it is not possible to be perfect without losing yourself, each of us can try to be our own better self. The perfect lies hidden in the imperfect within ourselves. What we can do is to give our best every day by being mindful in the moment and always trying to activate the good that lies within each of us in the here and now. We can always dare and try to be the best and good version of ourselves. This requires a lot of courage, because the authentic self is much more vulnerable than an artificial self that changes in order to meet and fulfil the demands of the other person. So that the other person can recognise the perfect self that they have defined.

We should agree that being good is better and more dynamic than being perfect and is therefore much more promising for our self and our own growth.

What is your opinion?

Change is a challenge

My weekly calendar this week has a quote from

Percy Bysshe Shelly (*1792- Ɨ1822):

„The path of its departure still is free: Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.“

Surely everyone knows these or similar statements, such as: „Nothing is more constant than change“. We often don’t realise how much everything around us is changing. Our day is largely made up of routines and recurring experiences. For example, many of us get up at the same time every day, start our day with coffee or tea, and so on. But it is never the same. There’s always something different, even if it’s the weather. We plan day by day and then something unforeseen happens and we might just change the daily routine a bit. We are used to all these small changes and can cope with them.

But what about big changes? Every change creates a little crisis. The processes we have learnt and used successfully in the past no longer produce the desired results or are simply no longer wanted. Change is always about stress and individual coping strategies.

Each change has a different impact on each individual. Change is and never has the same effect on an individual level.

With this sudden crisis weh ave to deal on an individual stage. Adviced are often not supportive as they are successful fort he advice giver but not for our own reality and live.

The only similarity is , that to acept and overcome change, we go all through four phases:

Shock
Reaction to the shock
Processing with acceptance and finding solutions
Reorienting ourselves and our environment

The phases are not chronological, they can occur simultaneously or they can repeat themselves, forming loops until a real solution is found.

Yes, change is the only thing that will always and everywhere be there, the question is what strategies we develop to move through the four phases successfully and effectively.

Speed is certainly not the measure for overcome change, but rather to find and follow our personal path that suits us.

Overcome difficulties of change

Change is on everyone’s lips and ears. Nothing seems to be as important as this word, this activity. When reading job descriptions, one of the most important skills is to be change-affine. Change is something natural, we change all our lives without pressure. It is the normal changing development from baby to child, to teenager and to adult and finally to senior. Some people seem to change only physically. They then get stuck at certain points in, for example, childhood.

If one wants to change an organisation, this is just as natural as the environment often changes. The tricky thing about change in an organisation is that everyone is expected to change in the same direction at the same time. The top leadership decides that the organisation should change in a certain direction. These leaders themselves develop the desired changes at their own pace and to fit their thought patterns. Often, they do not consider that everyone in the organisation has their own thought patterns, beliefs, and assumptions. In this way, they are one step ahead of the rest of the organisation, having worked on these changes months or years before the others. The lower hierarchies then must adapt their beliefs, thinking patterns and thus their behaviour in a much shorter period, mostly expected to happen ad hoc. This is almost impossible because they are only told the reasons and purpose behind the change and could not figure them out themselves. They are expected to follow the implementation rather than understand it. To use the above image, it is like being a baby and having to transition from that directly to adulthood. This is not possible because the necessary developmental steps would be missing.

Change is necessary to survive in the VUCA world, that is clear. Change alone is not enough, in my opinion. Only if everyone wants to change and everyone is given the same time to change, as is currently lived more at senior level, then sustainable change takes place, because everyone in the organization could take the small development steps.

Idea for implementation: To use the entire organization and its expertise, the sustainable method would be to invite all members of the organization (participative change). This is often impossible. To still hear, take along and „use“ the various areas and departments, ambassadors could be sent from each area. These ambassadors are not sent by the executives or apply independently. They are elected by the area or department, through the colleagues. Through this critics will be more likely to entering the „development group“. One rule should be, that the „development-group“ is a judgmental-free space. Such an approach of working participatively changes the basic assumptions at the lowest level of Edgar Schein’s culture model. This takes courage and a perceived loss of power from top management, but it is worth trying as the intelligence and willingness of the entire organization will drive change and not just a „handful“ of people chosen for their hierarchical level.

#changemanagement #organization #VUCA #Idea

Thoughts about: Is knowledge power?

Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) said: „Knowledge is power.“

Does education equal power, or is knowledge enough to be powerful? That would be in my eyes too short-sighted.

Knowledge supports the expression of one’s own opinion, which is freedom and a fundamental right in Germany.

Does expressing an informed opinion actually lead to more power?

In the VUCA world, knowledge is more accessible than in the time of Francis Bacon. Anyone can acquire knowledge, so titles or positions do not necessarily mean that there is more knowledge in specific areas than in hierarchically lower positions or less status.

So knowledge is not the same as power. Knowledge enables people to change things, to innovate, but it is not identical with the ability to gain power. Therefore other abilities of character are necessary.

Here are a few thoughts about „Knowledge is power“.

Does knowledge mean knowing the truth? What is truth? We construct our own truth, knowledge is interpreted differently, which is why only an approximation to the truth is possible, if it exists at all.
What does general knowledge mean? Who has determined what we mean by general knowledge? General knowledge is taught at school, the basis comes from Humboldt in the 19th century. Is this still up to date and contemporary? Is general education sufficient to prepare for the VUCA world? Who knows which knowledge is really useful to find one’s way in life?
How does knowledge help to find one’s way in life? We all know it, we plan our life and then something comes up, and we have to change our goals. Broad-based knowledge helps us to act flexibly and to find our way in the VUCA world. One-sided knowledge can lead to a lack of flexibility, and unforeseen events can throw you off track.
Does science lead to becoming wiser? Science and knowledge are challenging to define. Philosophers suggest that despite knowledge, we do not become wiser, but only refine our view of the world until intractable situations arise that require a new world-view.

(To read more about this, please visit: Wer viel weiß, hat viel zu sagen – ist Wissen Macht? (uni.de))

Knowledge does not equal power, but it makes the knower powerful. Knowledge makes it possible to understand things and to recognize connections. It can support going new ways, developing ideas and discovering one’s own life path/passion. It can also lead to other people not being able to understand connections that are clearly recognizable to the knower, and this then leads to discomfort or can be interpreted as a threat. Knowledge can lead to power or be seen as disturbing.

Modification of the „Agile Manifesto“ as a blueprint for general change

The values of the agile Manifesto, focusing on humans and less on process. Which doesn’t mean that processes or plans are not valued, but they are, accordingly to the agile manifesto, less valued than human interactions.

Here are the four principles:

„Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation

Responding to change over following a plan“

(source: Manifesto for Agile Software Development (agilemanifesto.org))

With minor modifications, this can be used as a blueprint for all the changes we face, including organizational development.

One transfer-idea outside the software industry could be like this:

Individual expertise and interactions versus processes and tools.
Speaking and deep listening like peers across all hierarchical levels versus one-sided analysis in a select group
Collaborating across hierarchies instead of lonely guidance from a select few
Welcoming all ideas and changes instead of following a fixed and predefined plan.

In my eyes it would be good to use the „prophet in the own county“ as this person is part of the culture, knows better than anyone else, where the weaknesses are. With these four principles, we would turn those affected into involved, with the result that all changes are supported in the implementation and lived sustainably.

To summarize the above transfer-idea of the agile manifesto to the point:

The wisdom of changes lies in the organization and the people of the organization and not outside.

Therefore, listen to the people in your organization, observe the way of interactions during meetings on the corridor. Listen to the unspoken words and the signals in your organization, and focus less on documents and processes. Documents and processes are needed and important, but they are in my eyes not the holy grale, it’s more the question of balance.