5 steps towards human centred transformation

The value and importance of being authentic and purpose driven has really been highlighted this week – especially for those of us who are UK based.

This is a big part of humanising transformation; it’s as much about how we ourselves can demonstrate modern leadership and be role models of the future, as it is about being able to “meet people where they are at”, to encourage and support change adoption.

When projects and programs go off track or slow down – the answer usually lies with a human if we dig deep enough. When projects and programs accelerate in momentum and achieve great success – it’s also usually down to a human if we dig deep enough!

If you are at the start of a transformation program or delivering one that’s challenging right now, here are 5 human orientated ways you could take action and get your projects back on track or off to a great start!

The first three are directly related to humans within the system undergoing transformation. The final two are more strategic but powerful all the same.

1)???The level of community that exists.

We talk a lot about culture – however, as you will know from one of my earlier blogs, we tend to focus on community in our work. For a human to feel part of a community, they need to ‘feel good’ and believe they are ‘connected’.

Our Community Index Assessment allow teams and organisations to explore these two lenses at an individual and system level. Knowing what sense of community we have can provide rich data for how to communicate and how to design effective and ethical transformation.

2)???Leadership profiling

Yes! We do need to understand who the leaders are as humans, and leaders need to understand who they as individuals against the backdrop of modernity. This is less about psychometrics (which I am not dissing, there are amazing tools out there) and more about how we can help leaders identify with who they are today within the system, and where their strengths lie within the promise of a transformation vision.

3)???Transformation accelerators

Regardless of how big, small, simple, or complex your transformation program is – you should be thinking about human accelerators.

Who are the role models others follow and look up to? You know, the person who says “Team building Saturday afternoon!?” and everyone’s there with bells on!?

Who are the outliers? People willing to stand out in the crowd for good?

Who are the champions? Willing to have a go, help, support, learn and commit to things?

These people provide you as a practitioner with support towards transformation success.

I mentioned 5 steps…here are another 2 that are also recommendations we encourage customers to action on:

4)???Look beyond the obvious

This is about who we are as transformation practitioners and leaders. First and foremost it’s about the health of our frame of reference. How we feed and evolve our own knowledge and understanding of the inevitability of the future, alongside understanding and being aware of the breadth of change happening around us and beyond our silos (society, community, world, economics, etc.).

Closely linked to this is cross sectoral collaboration

There is more than one right answer for any problem today. And the answers can come from literally anywhere! So, it’s important for us to engage with humans’ way outside our organisational, geographical, and sectoral boundaries before we settle on our strategies that turn into projects and programs. This concept is taken from the work of Mariana Mazzucato at the University College London and central to her book The Mission Economy.

In summary, it’s about building connections and relationships across industries and geographies to socialise your vision and learn about other visions to?uncover potential opportunities and overlaps. The driver of course is the moonshot purpose that unites everyone. It could be something as generic as climate change, yet manifest as completely different visions across public, private and third sector organisations.

If you think about how many innovations were sparked from conversations in places like Parisian coffee houses in the 1700s and 1800s between naturalists, chemists, poets, and physicists etc you can easily see how diversity contributes to progress!

Finally, my favourite – Experimentation.

5)???Experimental practice and thinking.

I mentioned earlier there is more than one right answer to most problems and opportunities we face in work and business. Yet we still carry the baggage and rules of those who went before us striving to find the one right path as quickly as possible.

To truly be agile we must first master our ability to be experimental in action and mind. To identify different possibilities and to try them out inside our mind, in conversations, on whiteboards or through tiny actions. This is the hop that can make Agile skip and our transformations jump forward!

Happy Friday ??????????

As always, please share, like or comment on this article and snippet from our humanising transformation framework: The Dilyn WayTM!

If you would like to know more about who you can build your own humanising transformation capability as a certified practitioner or would simply like to explore how some of these strategies could make a difference to transformation you are leading or working on, why not schedule a 121 session with me directly - totally confidential ??

Schedule your session?HERE.