Hi Leader,
Typically, corporate executives call me when they have goals that include making a major impact on their business success by effecting transformational change in their organization.
In today's competitive environment, a senior leader's job is to ensure that his/her teams have the capacity to address challenges proactively, and to take advantage of opportunities posed by a world in which disruptive technologies, new business models, economic pressures, and shifting customer demand are the norm.
How must your organization transform in the next 18 months to meet your opportunities?
In this key you will learn how you can help accelerate change by internalizing and applying the four stages of learning and transformation.
How to Accelerate Personal Growth and Organizational Transformation
When there is an urgency to transform the organization, accelerating the personal growth and organizational evolution process is key to success. We help executives jump-start this process by compressing months of work into just a few days.
How do you facilitate transformational change?
You create a shared vision that enables your teams to take ownership of that desired future. You focus on team members' personal growth and collective capacity to learn. You coach your team to build its self-efficacy and engender a culture that's ready to embrace change. You help your team develop new learning muscles and build the excitement needed to generate and sustain forward momentum.
To achieve these ambitious objectives requires a shift from merely learning new information to internalizing, applying, and teaching it to others. Our work with senior teams, centers on accelerating this shift by designing interventions that incorporate the four stages of adult learning.
Below are brief descriptions of the four stages of adult learning. To successfully effect personal growth and transformational change requires that you choreograph your interventions so they incorporate all four stages of this process in the order indicated.
| Stage 1: | Receive I take in new information. |
| Stage 2: | Understand I internalize the information and its implications. |
| Stage 3: | Apply I "run water through the pipes" to use the learning in specific situations. |
| Stage 4: | Teach/own I model the new learning for others, thus taking responsibility for the continuation of the learning cycle. |
For example, we recently designed a leadership summit for an organization that is going through rapid transformation. To help the leaders accelerate their personal and collective evolution, we created a series of experiences that quickly guided them through the four stages of transformational change. We introduced new information and mindsets, then had participants engage in a series of challenging problem-solving exercises. These experiences helped managers see the relevance of the information, and enabled them to create the desired outcome by moving forward their individual and collective applications.
The summit allowed them to test their new knowledge and skills, and it supported them as they coached each other in the new behaviors. By the time they returned to the office, they had practiced a new set of muscles, they owned the new strategies, and were ready to teach the new behaviors and muscles to their teams.
By incorporating all four of the adult learning stages into their interventions, successful leaders exponentially increase the velocity of change.
Thoughtfully designed innovation and transformation efforts provide leadership teams with application experiences of new capabilities and know-how, thereby building commitment to, and ownership of, the desired transformational change.
What makes this type of learning process thrillingly rewarding for the participants is the personal discovery and growth they experience. The senior executive at a recent summit described his experience this way: "We've exceeded what I thought was possible, and accomplished three months' work in three days."
Now it's your turn. Turn the key. How will you apply these stages to build a sense of ownership and commitment to your organization's future?
© Aviv Shahar