1. LIGHT TOUCH CHANGE
REFRAMING LEADERSHIP
A highly interactive program designed for senior executives
and business leaders who want to learn the crucial
21st century leadership skills that are critical for all leaders.
2. LIGHT TOUCH CHANGE
REFRAMING LEADERSHIP
This is a highly interactive program designed for senior executives
and business leaders who want to learn the crucial
21st century leadership skills that are critical for all leaders.
So many leaders are facing situations and challenges they have
never faced before, the old ways of doing things are being
fundamentally challenged, the established rules no longer apply.
They know if they don’t find a way forward, it could severely
jeopardise their organization. We can see this in politics,
business and our universities — they are all facing threats not
seen before.
All this in a society of rapidly evolving change that is threatening
to leave anyone behind who can’t adapt fast enough.
Reframing Leadership teaches you the core skills in how to
adapt, change and think differently to compliment and enhance
your existing quality leadership skills.
1
Daniel Kahneman Thinking, Fast and Slow
What you will learn is:
l To think and look at things differently
i.e. be able to truly innovate and see new
opportunities
l To think; and I mean really think hard,
new and challenging ideas — what
Daniel Kahneman1
calls ‘Slow Thinking’
l To be able to solve problems and address
issues not encountered before without falling
back on what has been done in the past
— and do it fast.
l To actually deliver appropriate change quickly,
that delivers the desired outcomes without
wrecking the organisation.
This program is highly intense and practical,
participants will be actively working on core
business issues throughout the program and
should leave the program with clear next steps
that need to be taken to achieve their goals.
The aim of this program is to give you the skills
of designing small, highly significant change
interventions that will allow your strategies to be
implemented quickly, smoothly and faster than
you were expecting. You will be learning these
skills by simultaneously working to design highly
targeted yet small change interventions to your
current strategies you can implement quickly and
safely back in the workplace.
3. Reframing Leadership 3
Specifically you will learn how to:
l See the world differently: By learning
a methodology and mindset to challenge
assumptions, open your blinkers and see
new opportunities that you have previously
not seen.
l Innovative and elegant thinking: This can be
described as a Kahneman Slow Thinking
Session on steroids — we call it ‘Hasten Slowly’.
l Take your strategy apart and re-build it:
Reframe it and turn it into something doable
and useful.
l Challenge and remove assumptions:
To find elegant solutions that were previously
ignored or overlooked.
l Design small nudge changes to big issues:
Learn how to change behavioural patterns that
allow a whole host of new opportunities to
become available.
l Design small, fast, elegant solutions: Learn
how to find the small, elegant, clever tactics
to large long standing strategies or issues that
deliver results quicker safer and easier than
previously thought.
l Design out resistance: The more you get rid
of resistance the more effective you’re going
to be.
l Use a new ‘lens’: To look critically at situations
that challenges and flushes out assumptions.
This can be easily and simply used with
individuals through to whole leadership teams.
l Identify and build on strengths: Find strengths
(usually not seen or available before) within an
organization to minimize disruption and speed
up change.
Innovative
and
elegant
thinking
4. Expectations of the Program
You are expected to have the core mainstream
leadership and management expertise under your
belt already. This program does not cover this
material — it is assumed knowledge.
Be prepared to have some of your assumptions
challenged and be open to new ideas. Some of this
you will have heard of before, the full combination
you won’t have.
You will receive a phone call from the session
leader before the program to answer any questions
and to get clarity about the issue you are bringing
to the program — most of the time the issue you
want to work on is not big enough.
The key criteria is:
l You have to be responsible for achieving the
strategy or resolving the issue
l You have to have enough detailed knowledge
of the situation so we can work on it
After the program you will receive an individual
two-hour follow up session with one of the
facilitators to ensure you are comfortable with the
material covered as well as the implementation of
your strategy.
This program is designed not to be a cost. You are
expected to get a significant Return on Investment,
not purely from the skills and knowledge gained
but from the strategy/issue you resolve.
“The best training program I have ever been on”
Bill TOYOTA
“The material and skills were highly effective and way beyond
what I thought possible—I walked away with
a way forward to a million dollar plus issue that I really did
not think was possible”
Margarite HEAD OF A LARGE FAMILY BUSINESS IN CANADA
DAY
AM
What is change and how can it be most
accurately defined?
Psychological blinkers — how to view the
world differently.
Linguistics: including how language constructs
our world and how to use video descriptive
techniques.
Psychological frame and frame analysis.
l Behaviour = control
l How to identify what people
are controlling for
Introduction to benevolent scepticism,
Challenging Assumptions: Techniques to
provoke thinking
Not letting that be the problem:
Problem Solving Mountain: Negotiating the
problem and defining ‘What Really Needs
to be Different?’
PM
Working in pairs
Participants working on their strategy with
each taking turns to define in as much detail
what needs to be different in order to achieve
the strategy.
Coaching will be provided throughout the
process. At the end, they will have developed
version one of what they want to be different.
Reframing Change,
Thinking Differently
1
5. Reframing Leadership 5
I’m still extraordinarily thankful for the work you did as
a facilitator with myself and my team three years ago.
It wasa great experience. One of the most beneficial and
professionally delivered courses I have experienced.
Couple a great presenter with relevant worthwhile content
and you have an extremely high standard of course.
Kelly IBM
Phil is my secret weapon. David TOYOTA
His great strength is that he helps you find your own answers
by asking the hard questions. His greatest skill is that without
prescribing ‘the solution’ he enables you to identify the
flaws in your initial formulations of how to handle complex
situations.
John UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY
DAY DAY
AM
Review of where each person is up to with
the implementation design of their strategy.
Pattern theory, including:
l Pattern = culture
l Constraints
l Exceptions
l Contexts and context markers
l Identifying contexts of competence
l ‘Always’ and ‘never’ triggers
l Predicting and disassembling patterns
l Crow bar techniques to shifting
the viewing
l The ‘surprise list’
Negative Description Design techniques
and practice session.
AM
Review of where each person is up to with the
implementation design of their strategy.
Introduction to Shimmering and Contrario
Planning.
Contrario = Constraints + Scenario Planning.
This includes:
l How to design resistance out
l Catherine the Great principle
l Identify and risk checking tactics
l Bench testing for unrealised constraints
and unintended consequences
PM
Working in pairs:
Using the new knowledge and techniques
to keep defining and redefining “what really
needs to be different” and what that looks like
in video descriptive detail.
It is assumed that participants will develop
version two and three of the desired outcome
which will become more and more specific.
PM
Working in pairs:
Contrario Planning Session
Shimmering back and forth from the desired
state to the current situation, participants
carefully explore different scenarios by
inserting and/or removing constraints to
bench test possible solutions.
‘Buttering’: This is the active solicitation of ‘yes
buts’ to assess the viability and effectiveness
of possible solutions.
Shifting Patterns
and Contexts
2 3Elegant Solutions
6. How can major change can be brought about
by taking small actions?
When it comes to change, it is the quality of change
that is critical, not the quantity.
Light Touch Change works on the assumption that
any problem or issue, no matter how long standing
or challenging can be resolved with small, highly
targeted tactics. There is over 50 years of research and
practice to back this up. The core philosophical work
underpinning Influential Leadership challenge many of
the long held, but incorrect, assumptions about change.
By challenging these assumptions, new options and
possibilities are opened up that previously have not
and in fact could not, be considered.
With successful change what you don’t see is the
‘Big Bang’ or the ‘Big Launch’. Profound lasting change
happens quietly and effectively. Only afterwards do
people realise that things are now different and working
so much better. Resistance and fight back become a
thing of the past.
In Jim Collins’ book Good to Great, at the point when
their target companies began their meteoric rise, none
of the leaders instituted any ‘big-bang’ type of change
program. There was no blinding flash or turning point.
There was just a constant series of highly effective
tactics that achieved extraordinary long-term results.
Those leaders were good thinkers and analysts.
They were purely interested in achieving their goals
as effectively and efficiently as possible.
Why are you so pedantic about words and language?
Everyone thinks they are being practical and focusing
on reality. In fact reality can be described in a myriad
of different ways depending on the assumptions and
language used. You will hear people use phrases like,
“teaming”, “re-engineer”, “processes”, “value add”,
“effective communication”, “increase profits”, “customer
focus”, “work/life balance”, etc. The problem is that
while we think we understand what it means, the reality
is that they are mid to high level abstractions and can
mean a multitude of different things.
They are all high-level abstractions with many ways of
interpreting them. The challenge is to be able to get
down to a factual description of the situation, to identify
what can be known to be true and what is just an
interpretation. The risk of not doing this is assumptions
never get identified and inadvertent misunderstandings
prevail. There is a skill and a discipline in being able
to focus on this level of detail and facts because
most people spend so much time living in a world of
abstractions and misunderstandings.
Why is Benevolent Scepticism so important?
Benevolent Scepticism is a critical part of being this
work. In order to get through the assumptions and
abstractions that are influencing us all, good leaders
actively do not believe the situation until it can be
indisputably demonstrated to be the way it is described
— invariably of course it isn’t. Benevolent Scepticism
is an active stance and is probably one of the most
difficult things to do — it takes much practice. Active
scepticism is not saying the other person is stupid or
incompetent; it is saying that assumptions need to
be checked and that there are other ways to view the
situation. It is one of the most effective ways
of identifying assumptions and finding new solutions
to a situation.
The importance of this cannot be under estimated.
What is meant by releasing change?
The reason that things are as they currently are,
is that there are a whole lot of tangible and intangible
constraints operating. Things like, the local repeating
patterns, the unconscious assumptions that people are
working on guiding their behaviour, issues that people
assume are important, the local cultural rules, etc.
In many ways this can be summarised as the informal
rules of how we behave in a particular context. All these
are operating to maintain the status quo; whether this
is good or bad, it is just the status quo.
By not addressing these local rules very little useful
change actually happens. Many traditional change
strategies only address the formal ‘rules’ or ‘structures’
rather than “what really goes on around here” and
therefore make little real impact.
However if we do address the constraints holding the
local rules in place then change is released; think of
moving the log in a logjam that allows the rest to move.
Influential Leaders spend a great deal of time focusing
on what the local constraints are and then identifying
how to move them to ensure that the desired change is
released with minimal downside.
What is Primary Change and what is Secondary
Change?
According to Watzlawick et al, Primary Change is all the
things that we do, large and small, cheap and expensive,
complex or simple that at the end of the day fail to
achieve our desired outcome.
By contrast, Secondary Change is all the things that we
do, large and small, cheap and expensive, complex or
simple that deliver the outcome.
Primary change usually occurs when people have not
done their analysis well enough and have not worked
out in enough detail what part of the repeating pattern
needs to be changed — hence despite lots of energy
and time being put in — nothing really changes!
Light Touch Change FAQ
7. Reframing Leadership 7
How much executive time is spent unintentionally
achieving Primary Change?
In reality, effective change is always dependent upon a
person’s perception. What this means in practice is that
change interventions are designed so that those who
need to see a change do so and are happy with it. At the
same time, in order to reduce resistance, there will be
people who must not see a change or must interpret it in
a very different way. Interventions are then simultaneously
designed to that this happens and therefore resistance
is reduced to virtually nothing — this is at the heart of
Tactical Analysis work
Why is there such an emphasis on patterns?
Personal and organisational behaviour is very patterned
— in many ways we are very predictable, however change
the context and the patterns change. You know you’re in
a pattern when you get that sense of ‘here we go again’,
the ‘same old same old’… If the ‘same old same old’ is fine,
and often it is, then don’t fix it. However, when we do need
things to be different, ie, that vicious cycle creating havoc,
the correct ‘key’ to the pattern needs to be found to
change it in such a way that it cannot be the same again.
It is important to not only focus on identifying the negative
patterns, but how to intervene in them simply and quickly
so they lose their power.
The challenge with patterns is that all parties involved
believe, with conviction, they have done “everything they
can”. When you actually count these, the number of things
tried usually numbers less than 10! And all 10 provoke the
same type of reaction in the other party (primary change
at work) and of course the pattern carries on.
The secret to pattern intervention is identifying a small,
seemingly insignificant, behaviour that is different from
the original ones and which provokes a different and more
desirable behaviour in the other party (secondary change).
Identifying the secondary change tactic can only be done
by looking at the situation very differently and in a highly
detailed manner — this is where benevolent scepticism is
critical.
Why not use models of leadership or organisations?
No leadership or organisational model can ever provide
information with the required level of specificity or
relevance to the current situation. Leadership frameworks
may provide an indication of the ‘type’ of action that may
be required, for example, coaching, being a role model,
focusing on the bottom line, driving change, but there
are many, many different ways of ‘coaching’ and ‘driving
change’. Getting this detail right is crucial to success.
Equally, getting it wrong can and often does lead to not
much being different.
This is the difference between having a broad strategy and
knowing the specific tactics to effectively implement it.
The shift that needs to be made is to stop following sets
of rules. Stop with the recipes, forget the ‘in this type of
situation you do X’ or ‘in this type of situation you do Y’
type thinking. All this does is lead to very automated,
clumsy and ineffective change.
What is being suggested is that good leaders remove
their blinkers, challenge the prevailing assumptions and
develop skills in being able to analyse each situation with
its unique patterns, contexts, constraints and personalities
as it is. From this they are then able to identify what is the
best way to intervene to achieve the desired outcome with
minimal fuss and downside.
Basically, trade-in the models of what organisations
should do, the latest fads and ideas, trade them in for
good thinking and analysis. People should be thinking
about what will really make a difference to the situation
in a way that helps people do their job and achieves the
organisation’s goals.
All the information is at hand in our heads and also in the
heads of people who work for us — if we are but prepared
to tap into it.
Alexander the Great, possibly the most successful military
commander in history, demonstrates this well. When
he was being educated, by Aristotle no less, as well as
learning military tactics and leadership, his key learning
was how to think, debate and analyse well. It was clear
that he and his future commanders were going to be in
situations that were completely unpredictable and that
no previous knowledge, models or experience was going
to be much help. Therefore his ability to think about
what was required for each specific situation, using and
analysing the information at hand to the maximum, was
the premium skill required.
He went on to conquer the known world by the time he
was 33.
Surely desperate times call for desperate measures,
large restructures, transformational leadership etc?
This is fine as long as the leader is prepared to see the
company go to the wall when one of the ‘desperate
measures’ backfires because it was a stupid thing to do.
So often, leaders limit themselves to a few, often crude,
methods that don’t deliver and in fact do more damage.
At the end of the day much of this is common sense
isn’t it?
Yes — but not common practice!
