A Note From The President

Avil Beckford, President

Whenever I read a book, I often do not do so in a vacuum, but see how it can relate to my life. While reading Enterprise-Wide Change: Superior Results Through Systems Thinking, I kept on thinking, what if the change was about an individual changing, and not only about an organization.

One of the basic premises in the book is to start with the end in mind. Another is to look at change in a holistic rather than a piecemeal manner. How can you relate this to your life? Let's take success, because each of us wants to be successful. Let's not define success as having a lot of money and the white picket fence, but instead use a more holistic approach and look for balance in the different areas of our life - relationally, physically, spiritually, emotionally, and financially.

To achieve success in each area of your life, first, what would success look like to you in those areas? Let's say that for Janice Doe, success is to earn $120,000 per year, stop working on evenings and spend more time with family and friends, take three trips per year, participate in spiritual practice such as meditating each day and achieve a weight of 150 pounds. How does Janice achieve success? Using Systems Thinking, Janice would look at where she wants to be in all areas of her life, that is her future state, look at where she is right now, which is her current state, and create action steps to narrow/eliminate the gap between current and future state. Having a holistic approach sets Janice up for success.

How can you use the holistic approach to make longer-lasting changes in your life and set yourself up for success?

Book Review

Review of Enterprise-Wide Change: Superior Results Through Systems Thinking by Stephen G. Haines, Gail Aller-Stead & James McKinlay

Enterprise-Wide Change by Stephen G. Haines, Gail Aller-Stead & James McKinlay is the first book that I have reviewed where I have met the authors. According to the authors, the purpose of Enterprise-Wide Change is to "provide a comprehensive overview and practical details of the science, research, and practice of a Systems Thinking Approach to Enterprise-Wide Change to achieve superior human and business results."

The book is organized into three sections - Part A provides an introduction to Systems Thinking, Part B provides practical applications to Enterprise-Wide Change and part C focuses on how to begin your Enterprise-Wide Change. The book is laid out very well and is easy to read. The authors tell you what they are going to tell you, they tell you and then they tell you what they just told you. The book is packed with a lot of very useful information, which shows their levels of skills and knowledge on the subject. One criticism is that I felt that the book could be a bit tighter, at least 50 pages shorter. The introductory section was nearly 100 pages long. Another criticism is that there are Think Differently sections interspersed throughout the book, which is a novel idea, but there are too many of them and the stories are so short that you cannot sink your teeth into them, so the intended impact is watered down.

What is Enterprise-Wide Change (EWC)? As defined by the authors, Enterprise-Wide Change is the altering of an organization, and is usually strategic, complex, large-scale, systemic and a laborious undertaking. Enterprise-Wide Change requires that each person, each team, in every department, in every relationship, in every project and process undergo some type of behavioural change - each at its own pace. "Organizations can change only when people change." And, the winning formula for EWC is preparation, discipline, talent and persistence.

This book is packed with tools and models that you can use to help you achieve success in your change initiative. For example, Haines, Aller-Stead and McKinlay walk you through the Twelve Absolutes for Success in your EWC. You'll understand the phases of The Systems Thinking Approach and what to do for each phase. Included is their Six Stages of the Rollercoaster of Change, which is their version of the change cycle. There are clear instructions on what to do at each stage of the change cycle. You see why pre-planning, clarity of purpose, strategic change annual review and so on are important for the success of the initiative.

They clearly explain why you should use systems thinking versus analytic thinking. In life, how you think, impacts how you act, which influences the results that you achieve. Using analytic thinking, you approach change piecemeal and look at the parts separately, which gives you a narrow focus on certain parts, which results in missed opportunities and you end up dealing with symptoms rather than root causes. If you apply the systems thinking approach, you approach change in a holistic manner, where all the parts are related and connected, which allows you to find broader, different and more creative answers, as well as the root causes, and you end up with better, longer-lasting solutions with fewer side effects.

Five Great Ideas

1. Thinking differently can lead to acting differently and achieving better results
2. When dealing with complexity, for the best results, abandon analytic thinking and opt for the helicopter view or the 5,000 feet above the ground view to get a broader perspective. Analytic, piecemeal, and reductionist thinking resists considering multiple issues and their relationships at the same time or taking a larger view of entire systems
3. Start with the end in mind - design the organization based on its ideal desired future vision
4. Organizations are high-level living systems and change only when their subsystems (people, units, departments and groups) change their behaviours. People change at different rates and depths. When a large number of people within an organization change their behaviour in the same direction, organization change occurs
5. What you focus on gets done. What you ignore sends a message to others that it isn't important

I recommend Enterprise-Wide Change by Stephen G. Haines, Gail Aller-Stead & James McKinlay for senior level managers and change management consultants, but I suggest that you start reading from the second section.

March's Book List

Enterprise-Wide Change by Stephen G. Haines, Gail Aller-Stead & James McKinlay

Survey Results

What's Your Adversity Quotient?

Adversity Quotient (AQ), developed by Dr. Paul Stoltz, is a measurement of how people respond to adversity. Dr. Stoltz evaluated over 100,000 people.

In 1999, the AQ was 23
In 1994, the AQ was 13
In 1989, the AQ was 5

Characteristics of people with high AQ

• They do not blame others for the adversities or setbacks they confront
• They do not blame themselves either, and do not see setbacks that occur as reflecting poorly on themselves
• They believe that the problems they face are limited in size and duration, and can be dealt with

Source: The New Psycho-Cybernetics, Maxwell Maltz, p 151 - 152

How Did They Do That?

Carolyn Burke, MA, CISSP, CISM, CEO Integrity Incorporated http://www.integrityincorporated.com

Challenge: I would like to speak about a common challenge that I faced recently, more a management challenge. We landed a project that was a little bit outside of our main areas of expertise, and an exciting opportunity to design and build an online legal entity formation application, and so we formed a new division to do the work. I brought a new technology director, with strong experience leading this type of project. He helped to hire and manage a decentralized distributed team of programmers from all over, some of whom I already knew and had worked with, and others fresh and new to the table.

We posted the job openings on the Internet, around the world, and through a skills-based hiring process, we hired a team, which nevertheless included people from the Greater Toronto Area. Given that it was an open call for applications, it was interesting that those involved felt geographically local was better.

The challenge all along was to ensure team members were coordinated, using a number of different online tools. Project management was interesting-it was the first time I worked with such a large distributed team. We faced a modern, yet growing workplace challenge that many businesses are facing everyday.

Not only didn't we share office space, as it turned out everyone had different schedules. We had night owls on board. The project involved programming and design, and the night owls were in bed until 2:00 p.m. And the morning people like me were available during business hours to work with the client. There was an interesting back and forth using our digital project management and software management tools that helped stop the gap in time between what became the morning and evening shifts. So we were distributed technology-based workers, and we worked in shifts.

Resolution: It turned out that while a lot of good work was completed, there were weaknesses in the strategy. Some members weren't working as fully part of the team; work wasn't fully integrated with others'. Our resolution was to hold an office day where everyone showed up with their computers and worked in our office at the same time for the day, to coordinate and cooperate. A different sort of problem solving arose, productive in different ways from what had been happening earlier on.

Lessons Learned

1. Listen and facilitate: There are communications in a project, on a team, conversations to be had that do not occur when you're using email and online project management tools, and even the telephone and Skype. Once we met face-to-face and all the social interpersonal stuff happened, and people relaxed with each other and got into the work, there emerged little conversations popping out of the office environment that actually helped make working more productive. It was fascinating to see so we organized a series of office days over the rest of the project's life.
2. Hire for skill: We hired people who were the best in their area, something that we intended and succeeded at. Skills meritocracy is invaluable.
3. Knowledge sharing: When specialists work together, they seem eager to learn from each other. There is a lot to learn from each other's different expertise in an open knowledge environment that facilitates sharing.

What Can Ambeck Do For You:

Ambeck Enterprise provides diverse business research and analysis services to senior executives, through the relevant distillation of diverse facts and data.

Just The Important Stuff Please

A client asked Ambeck Enterprise to summarize a 40-page white paper to be used in a training course. It was essential to the client that key information wasn't lost. Ambeck Enterprise was able to provide a useful summary based on years of filtering and synthesizing information.

Formula For Success

Carolyn Burke, MA, CISSP, CISM, CEO Integrity Incorporated

There's an equation. Know what you're doing, that it challenges you, that it is well organized. For me, the equation amounts to knowing I am able to contribute effectively, to coordinate with others effectively. I look at what I can contribute and where my challenges will be, and then align that with the work. I make sure that it coordinates reasonably for me. Over time I want a clear schedule of what I need to do and a plan of action, integrated with others' plans. Whether I am managing, or working on the team, it's important for me to know that the overall result will be a coordinated effort, and a positive result, and that each contribution leads to success. Success is putting one foot after the other, while ensuring that each step is a productive step.

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