Quantum Leadership – Workshop 2 (Challenging Status Quo)
The Appleton Greene Corporate Training Program (CTP) for Quantum Leadership is provided by Ms. Feinholz MBA CLP Certified Learning Provider (CLP). Program Specifications: Monthly cost USD$2,500.00; Monthly Workshops 6 hours; Monthly Support 4 hours; Program Duration 12 months; Program orders subject to ongoing availability.
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Learning Provider Profile
For over 35 years, Ms. Feinholz MBA CLP has consulted to the leaders and management teams of evolving businesses, helping them improve their results and execute their business more profitably and productively. Her consulting services initially focused on helping these business leaders and owners learn how to set clear vision and strategies and expanded to improving how to operate their businesses by applying sound fundamental business principles throughout their organization.
Through her management consulting, executive coaching and facilitation, Ms. Feinholz transfers the tools and skills used in Fortune 100 companies to privately held and publicly traded businesses. In addition to her work with UCLA Medical Center, Avon Products, Walt Disney Imagineering, the Los Angeles Metropolitan Transit Authority Mattel and WorldVision, she has consulted to over 250 small and mid-sized companies as they grow, change strategy and create new value. Her clients have included manufacturers, software developers, professional services Erms, start-up entrepreneurs and executives advancing their careers.
Ms. Feinholz‘s consulting activities include: working with management to clarify their vision and goals; identifying the new culture being targeted; prioritizing management decisions through planning activities; developing communication vehicles to create buy-in among management and employees, redesigning business processes, structures and organizational relationships and effectiveness, and designing and implementing leadership and performance management systems that help the organization get the greatest value from everyone’s efforts. Her work across the organization includes: leading internal teams in their participation in change efforts; facilitating implementation; and conducting training and coaching to transfer management methodologies, processes and skills to her clients.
Ms. Feinholz’s knowledge and experience in various technical, managerial and executive positions drew her to recognize that one of the key missing elements throughout her clients’ organizations was leadership adeptness.
As her client base grew, Ms. Feinholz became aware that many business leaders and owners, regardless of the industry or size or type of company, were not preparing themselves or their businesses for their eventual exit from their roles. She further determined that 3 Factors placed her clients’ organizations at risk.
First, businesses that had key technical and management functions optimized still neglected to put attention on installing the leadership bench strength required to stabilize an organization beyond the tenure of who was currently in leadership roles.
Second, whether an individual transitioned their role at the timing of their choosing or due to unexpected opportunities and events, every leader eventually progressed to more complex and strategic responsibilities. At times that meant they exited the company itself. Thus, the business needed to be prepared for succession events regardless of the circumstances.
Third, in tracking the information shared through employee exit interviews she was able to determine the effects the lack of strong leadership had on company culture, employee morale, and employee retention. She uncovered the fact that employees no longer see the C-Suite as the sole agents of leadership in the organization but expect it to be present and experienced more intimately throughout the organization.
Ms. Feinholz decided the best way to install those elements was to design and deliver a leadership development program that would effectively install the QL principles and practices at any level of title and arena of responsibility. That meant taking the best techniques of leadership theory, the insights of modern high-performance leaders, and incorporating adult learning followed by simplifying what was learned and systematizing it so that it can now be learned and installed in a broad spectrum of any organization’s business leaders.
The Quantum Leadership (QL) concept began in 2002 and has been repeatedly tested, implemented and refined for twenty years across industries and company roles.
MOST Analysis
Mission Statement
The second workshop, Challenge The Status Quo (CTSQ), is designed to launch participant’s growth in the arenas both of organizational leadership and of personal leadership capabilities and practices.
The workshop will teach the participants to research and identify the challenges their organization, team and they individually currently face in responding to the recruitment, engagement, and retention challenges they face. We will set the groundwork for guiding CTSQ activities by their team, uncover the elements of success and failure of change projects.
Many professionals do not fully understand their own leadership styles and competence when it comes to leading deliberate change efforts.
Through the exercises in the workshop, they will begin to assess own their current capabilities as a leader, so they learn to present themselves as increasingly effective and impactful.
By the end of this workshop participants will be able to use specific roadmap steps for designing and leading CTSQ projects.
The process for creating CTSQ roadmaps is identical, whether applied to individual development, team process or organizational changes.
Assess the current state: Where does the organization stand today in terms of leadership activities, infrastructure, processes and services? Are existing leadership strategies impacting strategic goals? If not, they must be modified to serve their purpose and support the organization’s objectives being planned.
Establish the target state: What so you want to achieve? How will outcomes from the transformation be measured? You don’t have to go into the details, but assign OKRs, KPIs and business metrics accordingly. Next, decide how human and financial resources will be prioritized. Finally, reach a consensus on how progress will be tracked as the transformation takes shape.
Determine the steps or initiatives of each team: A transformation affects everyone in the organization. It requires inputs and feedback from decision-makers at various levels of the organization and at the department levels. The participation and expectation from stakeholders should be clear from the beginning.
Identify issues along four tracks: people, process, organization structures and technology. The people track is about ensuring you have the right people in the right seats with the right skills both during the transformation efforts, as well as post-transformation. Ensuring you have the right people leading and supporting the teams, as well as the right team members executing on transformation initiatives are critical to the successful delivery of the vision. A roadmap item may include designing a new organizational structure and roles needed in post-transformation.
Agree upon which elements the leader participants can influence, in what span of time.
Objectives
01. Evolution & Revolution: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
02. Knowing Why: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
03. Mastering Phases: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
04. Engaging in Challenging: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
05. Company Culture: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
06. Team Culture: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
07. Personal CTSQ: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. 1 Month
08. Challenging Processes: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
09. Getting It Wrong: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
10. Change Readiness: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
11. Personality and CTSQ: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
12. Uncovering Opportunities: departmental SWOT analysis; strategy research & development. Time Allocated: 1 Month
Strategies
1. Engage and elicit expectations for the course, explore the concepts covered in each section.
2. Discuss Evolution & Revolution as Organizations Grow
3. Examine the sources of resistance to change on an organizational level
4. Examine the sources of resistance to change on a team level
5. Examine the sources of resistance to change on a personal level
6. Explain the Starting Conditions facing your organization and team
7. Discuss how you’ll increase Change Readiness with your team
8. Participate fully in the CTSQ Readiness exercises
9. Discuss historical Leadership theories and share exercise feedback amongst the group
10. Participate candidly in the leadership assessment tools to Identify your current observable practices as a foundation for upcoming explorations in adding and refining them
11. Collaborate with QLP teammates to develop actionable roadmaps and plans for the Project Study assignments to be achieved before the next workshop
12. Develop new communication practices and collaboration in order to undertake planned Project Study activities and provide and case studies that exemplify both the organizational work undertaken and the new leadership practices used for personal growth and organizational productivity.
Tasks
1. Go through the Study Guide and Distance Learning lessons first and make notes on questions to raise during the workshop.
2. Identify the key time constraints and interactions that need to be managed to ensure project success.
3. Determine needs, critical drivers, concerns, resistances, and interests for each planned Project Study activity.
4. Ensure that these relationship with team members are built and maintained on a periodic calendared basis, by soliciting ideas, comments, and assessing value.
5. Schedule weekly meetings with Accountability Partners with the same commitment as other business meetings
6. Participate fully in workshop exercises through reflection and sharing and the full group
7. Set a deadline for conducting meetings with team members for the Project Study tasks, as well as analyzing the findings and preparing the Project Study Summary for submission no later than 48-business hours before the next workshop
8. Participants to demonstrate personal presence, get feedback, and offer suggestions for further development during the workshop
9. Participants to experience the challenges of change and apply learnings to the development of new leadership practices
10. Participants are to complete each exercise throughout the workshop fully and discuss the process and results with the group
11. Participants to complete their project by identifying and implementing changes discussed throughout the workshop
12. Participants to review resources for inspiration and identify at least one new tool for adoption during the 30-days between the workshops.
Introduction
“What got us here cannot get us there” ~ Marshall Goldsmith
The objective of the Leading Change module’s three workshops is to train participants in Leading Change. As Change leaders, participants will initiate the process and steer it when needed. During the social and economic shocks of 2020-2022 that complacency was forcibly erased, replaced by nimbleness and pivoting. Today’s leaders need to codify those characteristics by declaring challenging the status quo is a corporate value and enabling it.
Change leadership can look like “if you can think of ways to improve the process, you should take it.” However, the strongest organizations are those in which changes, and improvements it will bring, are sourced throughout the organization. This means each person has to stop simply “going through the motions” when it comes to doing their job. It’s a lesson all leaders need to learn.
While ideas for improvement can be sourced throughout the organization, when leaders see an opportunity for improvement, they need a compelling case for putting the time and resources into stepping into the tension between what is and what could be.
They need the same from any employee who thinks they’ve spotted a worthwhile opportunity to do things differently.
The best leaders not only seize the initiative to change the way things are, but create a system of process steps for the rest of the organization to bring their attention and best thinking and efforts to the table.
The greatest challenge that is faced is the organization’s tolerance for challenging the status quo. Organizations, being the sum of the human beings in them, can be risk adverse or risk tolerant. The fundamental question is whether the culture and its leaders consider Change to be the path to Opportunities or to Conflicts.
It all begins with the reality that as organizations succeed and grow, and the external environment changes over time, leaders must confront the need to re-assess how their company is organized and executing on its business activities. This applies all the way through the recruitment, onboarding, performance and retention of its key team members.
Historically, in times of constancy and complacency, actively seeking to disturb the status quo and awaken others to new possibilities met with heavy resistance. The recent business upheavals have loosened the old, fixed thinking and continually presents opportunities for Quantum Leadership Program participants to use the techniques which will be explored to advance new ideas.
Participants will learn the elements that assist or impede Challenging The Status Quo, and steps to take to elicit participation from the stakeholders involved.
Executive Summary
Chapter 1: Evolution & Revolution
The objective of the Leading Change module’s three workshops is to train participants in Leading Change. As Change leaders, participants will initiate the process and steer it when needed. During the social and economic shocks of 2020-2022 that complacency was forcibly erased, replaced by nimbleness and pivoting. Today’s leaders need to codify those characteristics by declaring challenging the status quo is a corporate value and enabling it.
You will learn how to profile your using Larry Greiner’s stages of organizational evolution. You’ll walk through the steps to uncover your organization’s current stage of development and the challenges you recognize it is facing in five arenas:
1. Age of the organization.
2. Size of the organization.
3. Stages of evolution.
4. Stages of revolution.
5. Growth rate of the industry.
The answers you develop will identify the leadership required for the current stage’s success through Challenging The Status Quo (CTSQ) during the Five Phases of Growth.
Chapter 2: Knowing Why
Every organization faces a continual paradox. Stability versus Flexibility. Its leaders crave being able to establish predictable and repeatable results for their business, their teams, their employees. Ideally, they’d love their organization to function like a clear lake on a sunny day, with an unobstructed view into the distance as well as into the depths.
Success for any business depends on leadership’s capacity to handle the never-ending cycle of change due to outside influences and internal ones as well. Everybody, every business, every industry, and every day are impacted by change. Understanding the forces that drive change and learning how to lead, accept, and manage it are essential if you want to build a better future for your organization as well as your professional success.
We’ll dive into the factors creating Status Quo Bias, including preference stability, cost of change, selection difficulty, regret and blame on an organizational, team, and individual level.
Chapter 3: Mastering Phases
We looked at the question of whether your organization or you view change as ‘opportunity’ or ‘conflict.
Now we’ll consider Larry Greiner’s “Organizational Practices in the Five Phases of Growth,” which lists the exact management actions that Larry Greiner used to define each growth phase, summarizes the important points of this subject. These steps are also the ones that put an end to each previous revolutionary era.
You may either drive or be driven by the forces of change. Rather than taking a reactive stance, the leaders whose teams will thrive during these turbulent times exercise strategic leadership and thought.
It’s critical to embrace the forces of change, whether you work for a startup or an established company. The results won’t be all good or all awful, but if you prepare ahead of time with planning, research, and a strategy, you’ll be ready for either outcome.
Chapter 4: Engaging in Challenging
Encouraging your team to challenge the status quo requires insight into why some people are terrified of Change (while others love it). You need to understand the elements so that you can adapt your speech and actions to bring each of them along as full contributors to the analyses, designs and implementation of initiatives that lie ahead.
As a leader, you are the one who needs to paint that picture, to draw the resistors from their extreme position towards at least a middle ground, curious and open to possibilities attitude. They do not have to jump on “the enthusiasts’ bandwagon” but you want them in a state of openness to participating in the assignment you’re crafting for everyone.
Your task, your responsibility, is to help each member of your team step into the Learning Curve knowing they will have support through the process
Chapter 5: Company Culture
Challenging the Status Quo (CTSQ) is a deliberate act by leaders to inspire others in their organization to search for opportunities to innovate, change and grow the organization. Inevitably, this aspect of the company culture leads to allowing others to experiment and take risks in the bid to improve the way things are being done to yield extraordinary results.
A number of ongoing studies have shown that when leaders don’t challenge their status quo it can lead to a number of negative consequences. A study by the Harvard Business School found that organizations that don’t challenge their status quo are more likely to stagnate, lose market share and experience declines in profitability. Another study, by McKinsey & Company, found that companies that don’t challenge their status quo, fail to pursue innovations and are less agile in the face of change.
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