Most change efforts fail to deliver results, especially when done on a large scale. Real Time Strategic Change (RTSC) gets the job done.
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The RTSC Principles are the heart of this approach. Each is defined as a polarity. Polarities describe a powerful phenomenon of interdependent pairs that seemingly are in conflict. The difference with polarities is the tension between these opposing views transforms conflict into creativity and debates into sustained success.
Critical Success Factor 1: The more you live the RTSC principles, the faster you’ll create your preferred future and the longer you’ll sustain gains you make over time.
The Six RTSC principles have been proven effective in controlling a potential tuberculosis epidemic in New York City, accelerating an apparel retailer’s growth in Europe, and aligning key stakeholders around improvement strategies amidst the million member National Health Service in the United Kingdom. There are ways both large and small everyday in organizations to put these principles into practice.
Definitions of the RTSC Principles
Get clear on your preferred future
Combine the best of your past and present AND compelling visions for your future. Build this picture and unleash the organizational energy to make it happen.
Create community
Ensure people are committed to their part of the organization AND to the larger whole. Support both interests and people collaborate to create something larger than themselves that they have created and believe in.
Build understanding
Stand up for what you believe in AND be curious about what others think. The common base of strategic information you develop will lead to aligned action.
Make reality a key driver
Look outside your organization AND focus inside it, too. Put together what you learn and you’ll make better, more informed decisions.
Engage and Include
Provide clear direction AND invite participation. Lead in both ways and you’ll create the commitment needed for fast and lasting change.
Think and act in real time
Be in your future AND plan for it at the same time. Learn to do them equally well and your desired future will happen faster.
Opportunities to apply the principles are all around.
Here’s a six-step process you can follow to road test them for yourself.
Six Step Process to Apply the Principles
Step 1: Bring together a group of interested and affected stakeholders to a situation.
Step 2: Put the situation, decision or dilemma in the center of the principles hexagon.
Step 3: Build a common picture of how the principles, one by one and as a whole, relate to the situation.
- Which principles are most congruent (the best fit) with the current situation and how?
- Which ones appear to be least congruent?
Step 4: Reflecting on this, come up with ways to more fully apply the principles.
- “How can those least connected to the situation be leveraged?”
- “How can those that fit best be built upon?“
Step 5: Identify intended and possible unintended consequences of ideas the group agrees on.
Step 6: Agree on next steps that could include:
- Communicating findings and ideas to key stakeholders
- Making action plans
- Documenting what you’ve learned for others.
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Critical Success Factor 2: Think and act as if the future were now.
Instead of holding the future in front of you as something you eventually attain, live it today. Any aspect of your future vision you can make real right now will accelerate the pace of change. The line between your present and future will blur. If you’re thinking and acting as if the future were now, it gets tough to say whether you’re in your “present” or your “future.” That’s the definition of a high-class problem. In the midst of a planning or decision-making meeting ask yourself, “If we were in our preferred future, who else would be in the room right now?” If other names come to mind, take a break. Get them in the room by conference call if needed or better yet, invite them in if they’re right down the hall. The idea is to stop talking about the future and start living it.
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Critical Success Factor 3: Work in your part of the system; focus on the whole system.
For an RTSC effort to succeed, you have to bring about effective change in whatever part of the system where you’re working….AND at the same time focus on the rest of the system and the impact of your efforts on the larger organization. If you’re working with a team, remember to focus on the department of which it is part. If you’re working with the department, don’t forget to factor its function’s realities into your decisions. Functional work needs to account for business unit needs. Business units are impacted by and impact the total corporation. Even the corporation has another level of system beyond it – its customers, suppliers, competitors and a whole host of other stakeholders.
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Critical Success Factor 4: Clear purpose and outcomes guide all work.
Too much time, money and energy are wasted on activities in search of a purpose or set of outcomes. Think about the last meeting you attended or conference call you joined. Did anyone spell out in concrete terms what success would look like, when you’d know you had done a good job and it was time to move on? If discussed, were these distilled into simple statements that had broad-based acceptance? There’s no faster way to get people on the same page than having them reach agreement on what they’re trying to achieve. I recently was coaching a client who had to make a presentation at an upcoming executive team meeting. As we reviewed his materials, I noticed he had no purpose for the presentation anywhere in his slides. Even after listening to him describe his talk for 15 minutes, it still wasn’t clear to me what he was trying to accomplish. So I asked. When there was no ready answer, the work we needed to do was clear. Twenty minutes later he had reframed his entire presentation, linked it to future work he needed to do with another division, and identified three specific requests he had of his colleagues in order to ensure the success of his project.
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Critical Success Factor 5: “The many design for the many.”
There are three reasons to follow this Critical Success Factor:
1. Get better answers to the challengers you’re facing . More perspectives lead to better-informed decisions that are smarter, more strategic, and result in increased Return on Investments — by whatever criteria you’re using. I often hear leaders who are frustrated that no one else in the organization “gets it.” More times than not, the reason people aren’t “getting it” is that the leader isn’t fully sharing his or her perspective on the issue. Trying to solve a problem with incomplete information is an exercise in futility guaranteed to leave even your most ardent supporters throwing in the towel
2. People own what they help create. In getting ready for an upcoming RTSC large group meeting, a guest speaker was bargaining with my internal colleagues and me to get more time on the agenda. She assured us she could sell the audience on the organization’s new strategic direction. The Design Team and I told her that we weren’t interested in anyone “buying” something they were being sold – especially from an outside speaker. The agenda was the organization’s, not this speaker’s. The microcosm designing the meeting had their colleagues’ interests in mind and put an end to that discussion. I don’t want to be misunderstood. I am not arguing to invite everybody into every decision in a change effort. That would be as unproductive as not involving anyone. What I am taking a stand for is when the call could go either way, lean towards letting “the many design for the many.”
3. Decrease resistance to change without losing the wisdom it contains. Resistance exists. Contrary to what most believe, resistance is a wellspring of creativity that can be tapped to improve every aspect of your organization. The problem with resistance is that by definition it slows down your organization. Resistance acts like a friction coefficient to progress. The higher that coefficient reaches, the slower change occurs. Include people in crafting their collective future whether they’re cynics, zealots or anyone in between. Those who would otherwise be seen as troublemakers become a valuable source of insight and information.
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Critical Success Factor 6: Change work is real work; real work is change work.
The kiss of death for any change work is relegating it to a Tiger Team or some other task force meeting on a Friday afternoon. Worse yet, delegate it to the “front lines” in the spirit of participation. The more you separate “change work” from “real work,” the less it becomes part of daily business. Change-ability is the single greatest advantage any organization can enjoy. To be able to change better and faster than your competitors ensures you’ll be capable of responding to new markets, integrating new technology, and institutionalizing new business practices, all while your competitors are still trying to figure out what changes to make. Change work becomes part of everyone’s job in your business….every day. There are a whole lot more people in organizations than leaders alone. The more each person assumes accountability for making effective, needed changes every day, the more successful you’ll become. The gains you make from your change work become more sustainable. “Work” has existed, in some way, since the first form of life came into being. And it will be around until the last one leaves. In short, people will always be doing “work.” Tying change work to what people consider real work embeds it in the most basic and sustainable aspect of every organization.
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Critical Success Factor 7: Move what might traditionally happen downstream back upstream in the process.
This is one of the easiest to implement and paradoxically the least applied of any of these Critical Success Factors. When you move things that typically happen downstream in a change effort back upstream in the process, change happens faster and lasts longer. Here’s an example. Hundreds of people need to get clear, connected, committed and achieving common goals. That’s a tall order for a meeting lasting two to three days. In fact, it’s too tall an order. Especially when you’re talking about lasting change, not just a “feel good” experience with a half-life of 30-60 days. A client of mine faced this exact situation. CEO’s and key staff from 38 affiliates from around the country gathered for three days. Instead of the task being to gain aligned action in three days, we started next step planning and commitments typically reserved for after the meeting weeks before the event was held. The head of Strategy talked to Affiliate CEO’s for more than a month before the large group meeting about the new strategy and its implications for their operations. The head of Organization Development facilitated a half dozen Affiliates in beginning to develop plans in line with the new strategy. At the event, we created a Change Possibilities Panel so that “early adopter” Affiliate leaders could share lessons learned and build confidence in others that the job could be done. Instead of waiting for after the meeting to start next step work, we incorporated it into all of the preplanning for the event.
There are no sure bets in the game of change played out everyday in organizations. Following these Critical Success Factors however, will stack the odds in your favor.