-
Consulting
-
Red Shoe Consulting Services are designed to create a systemic approach to engaging employees in a continuous process of collaborative innovation.
Key components include:
-
Assessing your current culture
-
Earning trust through transparency
-
Identifying your REAL starting point
-
Encouraging leaders to turn their org charts upside down
-
Designing a “Value Adding” employee centricity
-
Disempowering “Zom-Bees”, “Catstrophizers” and Terrorizers
-
Creating a systemic approach to innovation through experimentation
-
Using Free Facebook style tools for channeling collaboration and exalting education.
-
Overcoming the “not by job” inertia
-
Defeating the “Yes Buts” of perpetual procrastination
All while fostering a community energized by the power of productive play
Details:
Creating a Culture of Innovation is the master key to thriving in a struggling economy
Understanding where we have gone wrong begins with looking at hard facts and asking a hard question.
1. Hard Facts:
-
70% of organizational change initiatives ultimately fail
-
The average person makes the same New Year’s resolution
10 times without success.
-
95% of those who lose weight on a diet regain it.
2. Hard Question:
If NOBODY LIKES CHANGE and we fail miserably almost 3/4th of the time why do we insist on continuing to do what seldom works?
3. We fail to solve our failures to change by failing to question the process.
If these first three steps make sense you are well on our way to understanding the key differences between change and innovation.
Advocates for Innovation follow a five step process of “renewing or improving”.
-
Creating awareness
-
Forming an attitude
-
Making a decision to adopt of reject
-
Applying the idea
-
Testing the results
Proponents of organizational change believe steps 1-3 belong in the “ivory tower”, step 4 should be applied without question by “4. Employees” and 5 should be avoided unless it confirms 1-3 or can be blamed on 4.
Individuals attempting to change themselves (or others) fare no better for exactly the same reasons. They spend little effort on 1-3 creating minimal commitment to 4 and seldom define quantifiable ways to measure 5.
Innovation is the answer but there is one more ingredient that must not be ignored, culture.
Culture is defined as the quality in a person or society that arises from a concern for what is regarded as excellent.
A culture of innovation inspires, energizes, and includes everyone.
Being Vs. Doing
Most efforts to change fail because they are initiated from the top down or outside in. Sustainable innovation, both personal and organizational, is generated from the inside out. This is one of the reasons behind our “Bee” characters. Most people follow the Do, Have, Be approach to change, believing that if they do the right things they will have what they desire and be everything they imagined. The problem with this approach is that it occasionally works (10% of the time) and therefore we keep doing more and more further cementing a habit that is not only unproductive but unhealthy.
Innovation Ignites
Innovation as the name suggests begins on the inside. Steps 1-3 form the basis of our worldview our “Bee-ing”. Once we change how we see ourselves or our organizations both the “path” to our goal and the “power” to get there are unleashed. Doing change is an effort driven process of pushing against what we don’t want. Anyone who has ever tried to lose weight by “not eating the chocolate cake” knows the result. Anything we picture pulls us in the direction of that picture.Change Drains
The need for change implies we were not only doing something wrong, but that we were wrong. The feeling of being wrong has an incredibly powerful influence. In the midst of having a great day we can make one mistake and that is all we think about on our way home. We are hard wired to notice and remember anything that feels like a threat. The feeling of being wrong is tremendously threatening.Innovation Energizes
Innovation in contrast to change implies something completely different. It sends our brains, and even more importantly our emotions, the message that we are doing well and maybe we can do even better. Read the following phrases and listen to your body. Our bodies are the greatest lie detectors in the world. When there is a conflict between what you think and how you feel. Your body is the one telling the truth.
Which would you rather do? Manage change or lead innovation?
Willpower is not enough
To create deeper and more lasting change we must create a systemic way of engaging employees in evolutionary conversations. Every business must evolve or die and effort alone is not enough. We all intend great things. Accomplishing those things requires moving behaviors from “have-to’s” to habits.
Sustainable transformations require retain-able conversations.
Transformation through Conversation
To transform a company or change a culture we must continually re-inspire meaning-full conversations. The more conversations created, the better results generated. What may be counter-intuitive is that it is not the information that is most important but the space. People need time to process ideas, make connections and question assumptions.
All learning takes time
And unlearning takes even more. One shot training from the best in the world is little more than entertainment if there is no systemic way of continuing the conversations. Lasting change does not come from the top down or outside in. It comes from the inside out.
Substantive change is not a result of profound proclamations but insightful conversations. Using private, secure and even mobile communication tools, Red Shoe Solutions™ clients enter into a collaborative community where members can share ideas, ask questions, post solutions and find resources.
A Facebook-style intranet
Creates an alliance between your team and ours. Our contributions include posting targeted articles, sharing focused video, audio and graphic resources all designed to bring out the best that is in each of us. These communities are a real time “field of play” where we can provide coaching exactly when and where coaching is needed. Community members can send private messages, form their own groups and follow only the topics and people they find most helpful. Most of all these “Change the Buzz” communities are places where people can grow. They are not about politics, positioning or prognostication but simply progress. Progressively becoming better people and better organizations.
If you are interested in creating a Change the Buzz™ community for your team, company or association, send me a note and we will send you the free white paper Creating Community: The Inside Track to Innovation and Transformation.
Follow
Share -