Five Ingredients of Successful Change

Five Ingredients of Successful Change:

The importance of Vision, Leadership, Technical Plan, Social Plan, and Burning Platform in managing change projects

One subject that is receiving a lot of attention is organizational change. The pace of organizational change projects is perhaps only overshadowed by the number of books on the subject of organizational change. One only has to scan the business section of any local bookstore to see that there are numerous titles on the subject of organizational change. While each book may be interesting, the books often do not build upon each other, and sometimes develops contradictory ideas and concepts. In this session, I develop the underlying key elements that are central to many of the issues being discussed in numerous organizational change books. As such, the goal is to not to introduce new ideas and concepts, but to summarize the existing literature in a way that captures the basic building blocks of many organizational change concepts.

The five components for successful change are: A vision (where do you want to go), a burning platform (why leave where you are), great leadership (who will take you there), a change plan (how will you get there), and a political plan for implementing the change plan (how will you enroll others to go where you want them to go).

In this session, I will give you the questions to ask as you plan and implement changes in your organization

Developing self-consciousness:

The end of the motivational speaker

This session starts with a basic premise: trying to motivate others is hard if not impossible. As such, we will discuss tools and techniques to develop self-awareness and self-consciousness. The basic question in this session is “why am I here?” The here could refer to your current assignment, your current organization, as well as your current condition in life. The clearer the answer is to this question, the more conscious you are about your answer, the more committed you will be to your assignment, organization, and to your life. After discussing concepts directed towards self-awareness, we will then discuss how you can help others to become more aware. Thus, no longer will you have to motivate your employees. Instead we will discuss how to make them more self-aware.

Marvin Washington, Ph.D. –Marvin is an Assistant Professor of Management at Texas Tech University. He has taught organizational behavior, principles of management, strategic management, organizational change and organizational theory to undergraduates, masters and doctoral level students. In 2004 he was awarded the Texas Tech University President’s Excellence in Teaching Award. In addition, Marvin has taught a class on Organizational Change to master’s level students at Anahuac University in Mexico (both Mexico City and Xalapa).

Marvin’s research is in the areas of institutional and organizational change and leadership and performance. His work has been published in the top academic journals, and he has presented his work at more than 20 conferences during the past six years.

Since 1996 Marvin has been involved with the Performance Center (having been on the board of directors since 2002). During his time with the Performance Center, Marvin has consulted with a variety of organizations ranging from the United States Postal Service to the Government of Botswana on the subject of leadership and change. From these engagements he has published and presented many articles on organizational change.

Marvin received his PhD from Northwestern University / Kellogg Graduate School of Management in Organizational Behavior and Sociology in 1999. Before that he was a manufacturing manager for 5 years with Proctor and Gamble, his primary responsibilities involving the manufacturing, and shipping of Zest bar soap world wide and the successful development of the Oil of Olay bar soap. Marvin received his Undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences from Northwestern University in 1989.