The Making of a ‘Change Engineer’...
Feb: Persuaded Business Link Wakefield & District and Wakefield College that the
Management Development Forum agenda and resources should be incorporated within the
Business Growth Forum.
Commentary: This was the beginning of a new alliance at operational
level between the two agencies and a key factor in the development of the BGF.
Mar: The Business Growth Forum profile raised considerably by hosting joint workshop
on Kaizen with RHP Bearings (Knottingley, West Yorks).
Commentary: The first fruits
of the new alliance with the College, Kaizen concepts were a major revelation to
many Members of the BGF!
Mar: Undertook training in Spiral Dynamics – SD Practitioner 1 Module – with the
model's developers, Dr Don Beck & Christopher Cowan.
Commentary: The training with
Beck & Cowan was undoubtedly a major turning point in my life. Not only did Spiral
Dynamics bring a sense of unifying coherence to the bits and pieces of Psychology
I had studied from time to time over the years, but understanding of the model gave
me a great sense of personal release - freeing me from burdensome and unrealistic
expectations. The ways in which I view people and the world around me have never
been the same since!
April: Elected to Leeds Branch Committee, IQA.
Commentary: The local IQA meetings
always struggled for numbers and I had been only an occasional attender. I went to
their AGM with the aim of introducing Spiral Dynamics onto their agenda. Not only
did I get them to agree to have a session on SD but found myself co-opted onto the
Committee and stayed on it until other commitments led me to resign in early 2001.
I had a great deal of respect for several Committee members - especially secretary
David Wade (a freelance quality consultant) - but trying to get them to focus on
the real needs of local quality managers (the bulk of the membership), rather than
what they thought would be academically stimulating, was an uphill struggle. Sad
to say, but attendance at branch meetings did not increase significantly....
April: Business Growth Forum - now renamed the 21st Century Group - monthly meetings
now so successful they were running upto 4 hours of an evening!
Commentary: With assistant Christy Sullivan doing most of the work on the Calendar,
my time was increasingly being dominated by the 21st Century Group and what would
become a virtual raft of spin-off activities. [See 21st Century Group page.]
April-May: Arranged highly-successful Neuro-Linguistic Programming/Spiral Dynamics
Change Management workshop programme, delivered for the Business Link by Hidden Resources
Change Management Ltd.
Commentary: Hidden Resources’ John Lavan and Business Link's
Ian Lavan were brothers and both NLP Master Practitioners. Ian especially saw the
links with Spiral Dynamics and persuaded(!) Business Link to contract Hidden Resources
to bring over Beck & Cowan for the March workshops. On the back of that we arranged
for Hidden Resources to deliver an NLP/SD-based Change Management programme for smaller
businesses, drawing mostly, but not exclusively, from the 21st Century Group.
While the Hidden Resources-Business Link relationship might have looked very much
like nepotism, it had a profound effect on the development of the 21st Century Group.
During this time Ian was acting much as a mentor to me, helping me embed the changes
the Beck & Cowan workshops had wrought and nurturing my fledgling interest in NLP.
Such was my regard for his care towards me that, for a while, I openly referred to
him as ‘guru’ and myself ‘disciple’.
May: Attended Investors in People Update Workshop.
May: Completed design and development of template Ultimate Total Quality System for
nursing and residential homes, benchmarked against ISO 9000, Investors in People
and the European Foundation for Quality Management's Business Excellence Model. Trialled
the system with Radcliffe Gardens Nursing Home. Feedback extremely favourable.
Commentary:
I took the ISO 9000 template system I had designed for IBS 2 years earlier and turned
it into a quite different beast altogether. The sheer amount of material in the package
meant that a care home could be assessed against any or all of the 3 standards.
I found over the next year or so that if I could actually get the Ultimate System
in front of a home owner or manager for a demonstration, they would invariably buy
it. However, I just became so busy with other activities - mostly to do with the
Business Link - that I never marketed the product properly. Consequently I only sold
around a dozen copies. I held talks with three larger consultancies interested in
taking the Ultimate System on but they were all inconclusive. When both the Investors
in People and the ISO 9000 standards were revised significantly in 2000, I hadn't
the time or energy to give to a major upgrade. By that time the 'quality boom' in
the care homes sector was starting to fade and I decided to take the System off the
market.
However, for several years afterwards, I used some of the template materials from
the Ultimate System when helping clients set up the basics of a documented quality
system.
June: Sold second copy of Ultimate System. The home manager contracted me
for the first phase of a full scale change management programme with ongoing coaching
for her.
Commentary: Relatively new in post, the manager was determined to turn a
dreadful home into an excellent one. However, she severely underestimated the opposition
to change from the owners who drove her out shortly after we submitted the change
plan.
June: Pioneering nature and outstanding success of 21st Century Group led to
Business Link Wakefield extending my contract.
July: Two further copies of Ultimate System sold.
July: 21st Century Group received influx of new Members (from April-May Change Management
Workshops), including some from service sectors, and took on overt Change Management
agenda.
July: Used Spiral Dynamics and NLP to assist 'old-era' senior manager in a large
company to adjust to reactionary changes in organisation.
Aug: Joined Hidden Resources NLP Practice Group which I attended sporadically until
moving to Beverley in Spring 2000.
Sept: Used Spiral Dynamics and NLP to assist the manager of Woodlands to adjust to
changes being brought in by the Multiple Sclerosis Society.
Commentary: Manager Vanessa
Lindsay-Smith had done a wonderful job - under some quite difficult circumstances
- of turning Woodlands into a world-class respite care centre. However, new centralising
tendencies by the Society threatened to undo some of her hard work in establishing
an excellent volunteer management committee.. By cluing Vanessa into what motivational
systems (vMEMES) were at work, she was then able to mitigate some of the worst effects
of the Society's centralisation and keep her management committee together and motivated.
Sept: Completed competence-based INLPTA-certified NLP Diploma staged (at the instigation
of Ian Lavan) jointly by Business Link and Hidden Resources.
Commentary: Still on
an incredible buzz from Beck & Cowan's Spiral Dynamics training, I found that the
NLP models fitted almost seamlessly with those concepts and enlarged my understanding
considerably.
Sept: With my contract extension up, Business Link agreed to me carrying on facilitating
the 21st Century Group on a sub-contract basis. They also asked me to run a new part-time
Business Link office in the SESKU/Hemsworth area.
Commentary: The funding stream
Business Link had used to pay me had simply ceased to exist so there was no choice
other than to let me go. One evening after everyone else had left the building, I
entered manager Kate Dallas Wood’s office and sat in her seat, one hand resting on
her ‘urgent’ pile and the other on her PC mouse. I then asked myself what was it
like to be her, what pressures was she under and what could I do to help her. The
insight was remarkable! The next day I gave her my proposal to run the 21st Century
Group as a sub-contractor. My new relationship with Business Link then established,
Kate and lead business advisor Steven Beevers next asked me to man the SESKU/Hemsworth
office.
NLP Diploma Group, September 1998 - with, back row (l-r): Ian Lavan (Business Link
Wakefield), Andy Green (Green PR), Mike Laxton (Mike Laxton Associates), Mohammed
Nawaz and Lisa Gilroy (Wakefield TEC) and Ann Slack (Hidden Resources); front row:
Margaret Wood (ICW), Barbara Gomersall (Wakefield College), Stephen Lindley (Business
Link), Carole Hindsley, Brian Collins (USF) and Joyce Wilcox. [Diana White & Associates]
These two Business Link contracts provided steady work while also allowing me time
to develop my own consultancy work and (theoretically!) market the Ultimate System.
Sept: Approached by Hidden Resources to work with them on a project-by-project sub-contract
basis.
Commentary: I did do bits and pieces for Hidden Resources - most notably on
the HemsMESH project. For more than two years Christopher Cooke and I debated terms
for me to come into Hidden Resources on a more committed basis. However, we could
never quite agree terms. Then he and John Lavan went their separate ways!
Sept: Started Investors in People project with St Lukes Nursing Home (Leeds) as a
referral from Radcliffe Gardens.
Oct-Nov: Carried out Spiral Dynamics/NLP-based management
training for Stelram Engineering Ltd (Ossett, West Yorks) as sub-contractor to Business
Link Wakefield.
Commentary: Stelram boss Jack Holt was one of the most remarkable
man I ever met, epitomising just about every aspect of the RED vMEME - both good
and bad! A engineering genius of sorts who could make just about anything, he ran
his small-but-fast-growing company with a rod of iron. A big gruff Yorkshireman with
a real passion for life, he was opinionated and short-sighted. Yet, by sheer force
of will, he drove Stelram close to the big time.
Jack was opened up to learning and was a leading light in the 21st Century Group
- indeed a champion for it! He brought much back into his thinking on how Stelram
should develop.
My brief was to help the famly-run Company grow an organic middle
management structure, thus increasing its capacity for growth. However, Jack, typical
of Adizes' 'Founder', found it incredibly difficult to let go emotionally of 'his
baby'.
Nov: Facilitated '25 Tips for Better Bed-Filling' Workshop for Leeds Care Homes
Association – so successful, asked to submit proposal for entire Workshop programme
on this and related themes.
Dec: Undertook further training in Spiral Dynamics - SD Practitioner 2 Module - with
Beck & Cowan.
Dec: Commenced full-scale Total Quality Management project for Westward Care (Yorkshire)
Ltd at Pennington Court Nursing & Residential Home (Leeds), based on the Ultimate
System – but also using Spiral Dynamics to take a values-based approach to Staff
culture.
Commentary: Westward Care boss Peter Hodkinson - also a leading member of
the Leeds Care Homes Association - was another remarkable man avaricious for learning.
He developed so much as a leader over the following months that he realised he could
develop the capacity in-house to do much of what I was doing for him. When I became
temporarily ill, he simply took greater control of the project!
