The thoughts of a 21st Century Change Agent

I have been working today on a presentation I have been asked to give to a collection of business psychologists in a few weeks. As the weather here has been drab and dismal, this has been a good thing to do and I have come up with a few thoughts that I wanted to share here.

Firstly the audience is going to be quite scary and I have found my ideas changing as I go through it. Looking back I started preparing a typical business presentation, structuring it the way I would for a management meeting. It was a bit of the old "tell them what you are going to say, tell them what you want to say and then tell them what you told them". It was coming together, but I found myself moving pieces around.

I them sat back a few moments and put myself in my audience's seats, well as far as I can. They will be there in their own time for an evening so I want them to feel it was worthwhile and go away feeling good and stimulated to think about the subject. I do not have expertise in their field (apart from helping my daughter with her A-Level) so won't be instructing them and I don't have time to instruct them in mine.

What I can do is share my insights on the topic of change and the challenges we all face. I can also try and entertain them. While humour can be a difficult element, I can try and keep the delivery varied and not too serious. I can also make sure I say it in my way, from my perspective and with a few twists and unusual combinations of ideas.

I am aware that I do not have all the answers, I am not sure anyone does, but I can offer the things I am working on.

So................the synopsis is

While we are getting better at managing projects, change is getting even harder to deliver. Just doing what we have done since building the pyramids, albeit as efficiently as possible, will not be good enough going forward. In truth, it is not good enough now! 

In particular the shortening of time frames is impacting the things like trust and planning, risk appetites amongst stakeholders and investors are dwindling at a time when uncertainty is rising everywhere. This all impacts on confidence. It seems that we are concentrating on industrialising change at a time when the leaders of management thinking are saying that the "industrial" approach has had its day and needs to change. I like a phrase I heard the other day which was "Feel not formula". I am also planning to talk about "soft hands". 

The necessary changes will not be easy, but the challenge is for change professionals to lead the way in changing themselves.

I am finding some interesting graphics so here is a taster......

I am looking forward to completing and delivering this.