Key Learnings in Using a RO-Based Organizational Changes Process

Speaker A When I first joined the company, I'd been working in construction, where the performance management system, as I recall it from those days, was really about sacking people. And then I joined CRA and walked into a culture that didn't do that at all. In fact, in those days, before it was delayed, the last person to be sacked was sacked an awful long time ago and everybody could remember it. And really, performance management wasn't that good. So I now had a different dilemma how to get the best out of people without sacking them. And I had some fairly interesting experience in doing that and in finding a lot of underperformers and working to get them to perform. And sometimes, in fact, in one occasion, getting very close to dismissing somebody and almost by chance, finding out that he liked to do something that we happened to need to have done, and finding that when we gave him a chance to do that, he was absolutely delightful in doing the job. So it was a lesson for me that I nearly sacked somebody without finding out what he was good at.

Speaker B And the thing that interested me was that when managers were first introduced to this material, they found it difficult to grasp, not intellectually, they could do that intellectually, but what do I do Monday with my team? So we became very focused on taking this to managers in the workplace so that they could absorb it and rapidly transfer this into their workplace in a meaningful way. And so our approaches have always been around enhancing the managerial leadership, enabling them to mobilize their leadership with their teams.

Speaker A We see in a lot of companies, we've seen it for an awful long time. My working life is 40 years long now. I guess that training in companies, no matter how it's talked about, theoretically just comes across as passive. And I think there's a fond hope that changes can be made by training in this way, and it can't be. It really needs performance management as well, which therefore means that the manager needs to be mobilized in bringing new information to his or her direct reports. The training or the bringing information to his or her direct reports. You've got to be very careful if you're going to use somebody else to do that. The manager must be involved, in our view. So the manager can set expectations. Well, first of all, the manager can say, I think there's a training gap, there's a skills gap, and agree the training and then set expectations of how the training should be applied and then follow up on that. Well, we're unapologetic about focusing our business on the work of Wolfie Brown and Elliot Jacks, albeit that some people can find maybe we're not broad enough and that's too narrow and it won't survive, but we're unapologetic about that. We're completely committed to taking this work to the workplace because we feel that it has the kind of qualities that it has to liberate human capability. Absolutely. We're heartfelt about that. And secondly, I think we're very concerned to take this work to the workplace in the quickest possible way, in a practical way, for practicing managers to use immediately. If we can't do that, and practicing managers can't see the value, then they're not going to be persuaded to use it.

Speaker B One of the most enjoyable experiences was working with a team in Malaysia, where a manager suddenly looked up and said, this is natural. I feel good about this. This is natural. I can do this with my people. And I think that's the essence of it is that it's a way of helping managers to understand some key principles, some scientific principles, and they respond so positively to what is logical and natural and trust inducing in the workplace. So our work is to help them take that and to then practically apply it with their teams. So we have some techniques and some approaches that enable them to do that. And in the process of the workshop to enhance start the process of enhancing their own leadership with their teams.