The Impact of People on an Organization

It is through the ingenuity and energy of people that organizations see and seize new opportunities for growth. It is also through the intractability and apathy of people that organizations develop toxic work environments and crippling orthodoxies that can grind the organization to a screeching halt. In short, it is people who ultimately determine the fate of any organization because only they can make it stop or go.

Changing organizations is hard. Research shows that organizational transformation efforts fail more than 70% of the time. That is a lot of wasted time and effort that ultimately yields very little value for the organization and a huge amount of frustration for its people.

Organizations cannot change unless their people change. Research shows that people do not resist change – they resist being changed. Most transformation efforts fail because leadership over-emphasizes the tangible side of change and under-emphasizes the emotional one. Successful organizational transformation requires an empathic, people-centered approach to change that nurtures a culture of aspiration, alignment, autonomy, and accountability.

People-Centered Transformation

During my webinar, People-Centered Transformation: Overcoming the Tyranny of the Tangible to Create Lasting Organization Change, we will explore the ten key elements of People-Centered Transformation (PCT) and identify the three key leadership shifts required to activate each element. The ten PCT elements requiring activation in every organization seeking to navigate the permanent whitewater of change today are:

• Create a Compelling Change Narrative
• Act to Think Differently
• Embrace Situational Humility
• Focus Attention on What Matters
• Motivate Discretionary Effort
• Give Others Agency
• Decentralize Decision Making
• Catalyze the Network
• Lead the System
• Nudge the Culture

Leave this session with a clear understanding of the priority PCT element requiring activation within your own organization and a focused plan to make the three specific leadership shifts required to activate it.