Applying a Combined Polarity Management - Real Time Strategic Change Management (PM/RTSC Approach)
What might it look like to apply this integrated approach in your organization? Let’s revisit the oil company story, from page 2, this time by describing what the PM/RTSC delivers:
- Work with a representative cross-section of key stakeholders (e.g., managers, employees, senior executives and other HR professionals) to plan the changes needed to embed the new culture and implement an effective assessment process.
Diversity in team composition makes it easier to manage key polarities. This microcosm group knows what will and won’t work for the larger organization, so you’re planning with a real-time focus group throughout.
- The new diversity culture starts to become a way of doing business as the team, not only plans to create the desired diversity culture in the future, but begins to implement it in their work with each other and the larger organization – here and now.
- People developing the new system integrate it into their daily work outside of their microcosm team responsibilities. Process improvements are identified by many and channeled back to the redesign group to integrate these new ideas.
- A critical mass of key stakeholders (ranging from 20 to 2,000) think through intended and unintended consequences of proposed changes, the upsides and downsides of opposite poles. They roll up their sleeves in real or virtual large group working sessions planned by the representative microcosm team.
This broad-based employee involvement improves the definition of the diversity culture and their commitment to its successful implementation. It also builds ownership in the new assessment process while also paving the way for accelerated implementation.
- Managers recognize the new culture and the new assessment approach as their own work, shifting it from something imposed to something chosen. With this shift comes sustainable change, as people make these choices the way they do business, instead of relegating this effort to another "binder on the shelf."
Finally, as a bonus and by-product of this integrated PM/RTSC approach to change, individuals and the organization develop a growing capability and capacity to handle future change. Such a competency is arguably one of the few sources of distinctive competitive advantage as organizations head full speed into the future.
