The Power of Partnerships AN ORGANIZATIONAL TRANSFORMATION LEARNING APPROACH

December 2022 – By Greg Burns and Meredith Marshall

In our first blog entitled "Organizational Transformation and the 100-Foot Wave", we discussed how the depth, breadth and speed of systemic change requires new strategies, tactics and commitment levels to join the short list of the 22% of successful transformations.

What might be possible if your organization could improve its most critical culture transformation success factors by as much as 90% within 9 months?

If organizations are to adapt and thrive in this increasingly “VUCA” (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world, culture transformation is both more important and more difficult than ever.

Successful transformations are equally about shifting the culture and developing its people. In this blog we focus on the second part of this equation: the learning approach.

A sophisticated learning approach is foundational in supporting the individual and collective growth needed for a sustainable change. According to Kathleen Taylor and Catherine Marienau in their book “Facilitating Learning with the Adult Brain in Mind”, transformative learning is what’s required. It is the “awareness that emerges not from incorporating more information into a current framework of understanding but perceiving a larger context that was previously unseen . . . thus requiring a reconfigured, more comprehensive framework.” As Proust wrote, “The real journey of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

We learned this first hand when we had the opportunity - to work with a large financial institution to help address an important business challenge:

What emerged from that business challenge was a multi-year culture change and people development transformation called the “Power of Partnerships” (POP).

Our Enterprise Risk client was the “second line” within a three line model whose primary role was to oversee and ensure the safety and soundness of a highly regulated company that was significantly important to the US economy. They served a diverse stakeholder community comprised of the CEO and executive team, Board of Directors, Internal Audit, business lines, employees, customers, vendors and external regulators.

Our initial impressions of ER were of exceptionally bright, well educated, highly analytical, culturally diverse, long tenured and mission driven industry experts who operated in a very siloed system. They were struggling to adapt to a changing regulatory landscape and market conditions and serve their diverse stakeholders in an effective, efficient and value added manner.

Blueprint for Success

As the current state of ER came into sharper focus, the future state vision became clearer too.

• We created a “Blueprint for Success” that defined the core success factors and critical few supporting behaviors we could use to both communicate the future state vision and provide a baseline for measuring progress. (“The Critical Few: Components of a Truly Effective Culture”, Katzenbach, Van Post and Thomas, Strategy + Business, Spring 2014)
• We built a plan based on using those critical few behaviors to drive mindset shifts and evolve the culture to become better aligned with a more skilled and effective collaboration interaction mode

Based on all the feedback, we focused on changing the way ER interacted to create more aligned ways of working together, specifically:

• Operating as a single integrated “One Enterprise Risk” team
• Understanding what it means to provide “Independent Risk Oversight”

Four key learning topics were identified:

1. Building Trusted and Collaborative Partnerships
2. Empowering and Delegating Effectively
3. Balancing Collaboration with Independent Risk
4. Building Influencing Strategy Skills

Many companies try to design leadership development training programs as the main source of their organization transformation efforts. Professor Richard Boyatzis highlights his own comprehensive research “Leadership Development from a Complexity Perspective” in his book “Helping People Change: Coaching with Compassion for Lifetime Learning and Growth, 2019”:

“Corporate and government training programs show an improvement of 11 percent that occurs three to eighteen months after training (which we suspect would drop considerably over time.)”

We believe that it takes significantly more effort than this to be successful, so we designed a more comprehensive program to leverage new or enhanced skills which would lead to accelerated collaboration, learning and sustainable on-the-job impact:

Power of Partnerships Program Rollout

• Designed and orchestrated a blended experiential learning approach (that can often double the likelihood of skills retention) based on cutting edge research in neuroscience, human performance and change leadership.
• Assigned prework and OTJ homework for full day sessions (and adapted to 2 virtual half days when the pandemic hit) to increase the likelihood of new behavior transfer.
• Created cohorts as a way to begin breaking down silos and build a supportive Enterprise Risk community.
• Cascaded the program both vertically and horizontally across ER beginning with the most senior leaders to every level and role within the organization so that everyone was speaking the same language and moving towards a shared understanding of the future state.

Monthly Cohort Check-In and Microlearning Follow Up Sessions

Facilitated to build on the learning, identify and address skill gaps and assess cultural adoption progress through intentional feedback loops. Examples of the topics in these sessions included:

• Leading Change
• Partnering in Times of Crisis
• Recognizing Derailers and Coping with Stress
• Listening to Partners
• Humble Inquiry Powerful Question

One Big Thing Commitment

“Immunity to Change”, Kegan and Lahey, 2009

Ensured that each participant left the initial core session with a focus on how they would apply the new skills and knowledge on the job. It was a 4 step exercise directly linked to a significant business goal and reviewed and approved by their manager to enhance its impact:

1. My Commitments – What are you willing to do for your team or critical others?
2. First Steps – What will you do and by when?
3. Significant Progress – What specific behaviors would others see you doing?
4. Success – What does success towards meeting your commitments look like?

Monthly Small Peer Coaching Sessions

Facilitated to focus on progress made on the One Big Thing Commitments as well as getting feedback and ideas on what they might do better in overcoming challenges they faced.

Coaching for All Senior Leaders

Coached individuals and used Systemic Team Coaching (“Leadership Team Coaching – Developing Collective Transformational Leadership”, Hawkins, 2014) to help them be the best role models and coaches for each other and their teams that they could possibly be. It allowed them to develop their individual and team leadership capabilities to more effectively engage with their key stakeholders, drive Enterprise risk culture partnership change and jointly transform the collaboration with the wider business.

The Transforming Risk Culture Learning Approach

As a result of this “Power of Partnerships” learning approach, Enterprise Risk was able to improve their employee engagement scores and critical few supporting behaviors significantly. In our next blog, we will share the results in more detail as well as highlight some of the highest leverage activities and techniques we used to help accelerate the risk culture organization transformation.

For a confidential discussion about your transformation needs, please contact us at the address below or click the Contact Us button below.

G Burns & Associates | 40 Ingram Street | Forest Hills, NY 11375