Human-Centred Transformation Starts at Home
I’ve just celebrated my 5th birthday as a consultant. Being the reflector that I am, I’ve taken some time to step back and think about where I’m at. If I had been employed in a role for the last 5 years, it would only be natural that I might be wanting to take what I’d leaned to progress to a new role. I’d kind of not expected to feel the same as a consultant but I recognised I was starting to feel “twitchy”. Is this what I really want to be doing? Am I still bringing value where it’s most needed?
With reflection, what I’ve realised is that I absolutely still love being a consultant but that I’ve grown and that it’s time to take my consultancy to its next level to reflect my own development.
So, with the help of the wonderful @karen hall, I’ve been working through how I’ve grown, what I’ve learned and what this means for the work I do. I often get asked what I do and the long answer is that I help leaders and public sector organisations with the challenges they are grappling with, the most common of which are:
No time to think
Strategic aspirations aren’t translating into tangible change
Too many competing priorities now are preventing a future focus
Change has been communicated; systems and processes may have altered but people are still working the same
Lack of confidence and/or understanding, especially in middle managers, about how to enable their teams to thrive, work with change and perform at their best
People are struggling to understand what doing things differently looks like and how to do it
Leaders saying their workforce isn’t where it needs to be, managers saying they can’t release staff for training and staff saying they don’t feel equipped and supported to do their job
The way I help is as important as what I help with. I’d got to a point where I was struggling to articulate this because what I do doesn’t fit in a neat box or title. Karen has helped me to recognise that this is actually the real value that I bring because I approach transformation and change through a diverse set of lenses and can bring together what can sometimes appear to be competing or contrasting approaches to create the conditions where change sustains.
So I:
draw on learning, research and evidence and have the skills to translate it into practical actions
think and work strategically and at the front line
bring challenge and I’m compassionate and kind
help organisations deliver small incremental changes and focus on large scale transformation
work with organisational transformation and culture change and people change
Reflection is essential for our learning and accessing the right support helps us to make sense of our thinking and move forward. For me, my 5th birthday reset has been a timely reminder that this applies to me just as much as it does the people I work with.
