Yesterday, I blogged about a recent student and client, Jen Todd, hitting the bell of phenomenal success. Now, here is one of my students from the 70s becoming famous in Europe. Dr. Randel Carlock was a student of mine at the University of Minnesota. He then became one of my first clients where we published utilizing Whole System Transformation (WST). We transformed his entire chain, Audio King. All six or 700 employees were involved. We staggered the two summits so that half of the people were back serving customers. One practical action that came out was simply that, each customer was to be greeted within four seconds of walking in the door. So much occurred. Randy received standing ovations. Individual, team, store and system-wide actions and commitments were established with a measurement system. All became one heart and one brain. Randy became closer to his employees than ever before. He radiated as a leader. Everybody loved Randy. Everyone was excited about executing the new vision just created by the executive team in Phase 1 of my intervention.
Managers who utilized and practiced the new values that we co-created went on to be stars at Apple or Best Buy!!!
For those of you who know me. I am all about values and valuing and letting the values of the group naturally emerge rather than impose like most HR people do. This is a beautiful article on values and the family business. Most of our organizations today are family owned businesses.
And to say the least, I’m so proud of a previous client as well as a student, Dr. Randel Carlock, who is making his mark big time in the world of change. It looks like my obsession with values sunk into Dr. Carlock’s consciousness.
Click here to view a video and article
Here in my usual stream of consciousness mindset is a link to Change Management Standard which I believe do not have the ability to harmonize work with values and culture. For example, Peter Block says that organization change must be about relationships. Relationships are value ladened. If I recall, the word relationship only appears once in the context of human dynamics in the standard for change management.
I believe that the focus on values is one of the differentiators between change management and organization change. We deal with the emotional intelligence of a system. We are not trainers. We are process people. We are not quality circles on steroids from the 80s with modern project management tools losing employee energy in problem-solving. I realized that there is less focus on problem-solving today than there was yesterday. And change management is finally starting to understand agility and not be so focused on tools.
For a link to the first of 15 videos, search YouTube “Standard for Change Managment Sullivan.”
or here is the link to the prelude:
The crucifixion of change management!
These videos were prepared as a response to an invitation for feedback from the standard planning and designing committee. My heart is totally behind them. I’m just trying to bring in the influence that I received from 50 years of working with the masters of organization development in the Kurt Lewin legacy. Values always surfaced deeply in the T-Group.
One of my recommendations was to cut out the 40 or so steps that were to be taken before anyone even started a change management effort. I counted the cost of such of the people’s time and the consultant cost. We were into the hundreds of thousands of dollars before we even started. My process has the executives by the heart within three hours of their time. Such happens from working in the field every day for 50 years.
Change management was allegedly created by engineers.
But I still love Scott Ross, who invited my feedback, just the same, he really has his heart in the right place. He and his wife are so authentic and well-meaning.
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