TRAINING

We now conduct training for client organizations.  Beginning in 2013, we will offer online training classes that are open to the public.

Managing Organizational Change.

• It’s Time to Change the Way You Change.
• Managing Resistance to Change.

Strategic Change in the Age of Uncertainty.

Collaboration at the New Speed of Change.

Individual Resilience and Readiness for Change.

Managing Organizational Change.

Are you seeing these things happen in your organization?  Multiple change projects underway at the same time actually compete with each other.  Many change efforts never get completed:  they are abandoned “in mid air.”  Confusion, frustration, and waste result.   Massive, expensive change efforts seem to go on without end—no one has a clear picture of the outcomes; so maybe nobody knows when to stop. Customer complaints are on the rise, valued employees are jumping ship, and you are losing market share.
 
You’ve read a lot about change management and you know a lot about your organization.  Still, you are facing one big unknown:  where and how do you start?  You need an integrated framework that organizes what you know and translates it into what you are going to do going forward, one step at a time.  The Middleton-House & Company course It’s Time to Change the Way You Change will do just that.

Maybe the customers and employees aren’t the only ones complaining.  You are feeling pushback from employees and even the people who asked you to lead this change effort seem to be dragging their feet.  To tell you the truth, you sometimes find yourself resisting as well.  The Middleton-House & Company course Managing Resistance to Change will help you get resistance, including your own, to the surface and deal with it in a constructive way.

If you’d rather address the issues one at a time with plenty of time to think in between, you are likely to find what you are looking for in our Short Topics.
Why It’s Time to Change the Way You Change?   Perhaps you’ve already read a lot about organizational change. Perhaps much of it has been helpful. You know a number of issues to take into account. You have identified a number of pitfalls and planned ways to deal with them. You know the arguments for and against relying on this theory or that one. Here you are in the real world, now, responsible for a major change effort in your organization. You know a lot, all right—a lot about change management and a lot about your organization. Still, you are facing one big unknown: where and how do you start? You need an integrated framework that organizes what you know and translates it into what you are going to do going forward, one step at a time. It’s Time to Change the Way You Changewill do just that.
This course will help you scan the organization for issues that can be addressed through OD. Then develop plans to address them. The starting point is not “OK, I’ve got this process to redesign.” The starting point is “Eeeeek! This is a mess! What do I do now?”

Perhaps these things are happening in your organization. Multiple change projects underway at the same time actually compete with each other. Many change efforts never get completed: they are abandoned “in mid air.” Confusion, frustration, and waste result. Massive, expensive change efforts seem to go on without end—no one has a clear picture of the outcomes; so maybe nobody knows when to stop. Customer complaints are on the rise, valued employees are jumping ship, and you are losing market share.

• Take a look around you—at work or in life. You are likely to see:
• So much change is unfolding so quickly that people are overwhelmed and exhausted.
• The organization responds only sluggishly to changing trends in the environment.
• New initiatives are announced but there doesn’t seem to be any follow-through.
• There’s a lot of “busyness” about a new initiative. But the work doesn’t seem to be getting done.
• Change strategies compete with each other for time, resources and mindshare. Some are actually in conflict with each other: one group digs a hole, another comes behind them and fills it up.

This class will help you address these issues as a practitioner through the framework of an eight-step process that unfolds in three phases.

Why Managing Resistance to Change?  How often have you seen it happen? After a huge investment of time, energy, and money an organization is worse off than before the “improvement” began. How often have you seen the effort to heal a dysfunctional organization defeated by the very dysfunction that the effort set out to change? How often have you seen a social service effort resisted by the very people it was designed to help?
And failure is costly. For one thing, the benefit of the change goes unrealized. For another, the wasted effort is expensive. Collateral damage to the organization and the customer/client may result if the change effort draws time and resources away from the day-to-day work. Failure hurts, too: alliances destroyed, relationships broken, careers de-railed. Back on the job after this course, you can help your organization avoid the cost and the pain of failure. You can:

• Set up change efforts to minimize dysfunctional resistance.
• Spot the signals that an effort is in trouble—while there is still time to do something about it.
• Get unexpressed resistance out in the open and deal with it constructively.
• Recognize the ways that you may be actually contributing to the resistance of others and manage yourself in the change process.

We’ve all seen it happen:

• One person strongly opposes this change but is afraid to speak up. So she just withholds information that is essential to the success of the effort.
• Another intermittently explodes to express his displeasure. His outbursts are so disruptive that some other team members have just shut down.
• Team members are so resentful of their manager’s high-handed style that they would be happy to see him fail. So they stay busy with showy activities that actually produce no results.
• “The way we’ve always done it here” is a stronger driver than the call for change. The unwritten rules of the organization bring any real progress to a halt. Oh, people repeat the new slogans, alright; but no one is actually doing anything differently.

It’s tough to lead a successful change in the face of all this resistance. Tough, but possible. Successful change leaders deal with resistance differently than change leaders who fail. They surface hidden disagreement, acknowledge it, and work it through openly. They sometimes even turn the push-back into a creative force. They recognize what works and does not work in groups and set the stage for collaborative effort. They understand the culture of the organization and how to work with it and within it. Yet they also plan, step-by-step, ways to alter the culture to accommodate the needed change.
As a result of your participation in this class, you will be able to

• Anticipate the triggers of resistance in individuals, in groups, and in organizations.
• Avoid, mitigate, or manage these triggers when possible.
• Convert the energy of resistance to the energy of creativity where possible.
• Know how to be effective in the face of resistance to change—as the sponsoring change leader, as the change agent, as an advocate.

Strategic Change in the Age of Uncertainty.

Start with a “Wicked” Problem—one with no clear solution and no agreed-upon formula for arriving at any solution.  Then blend in some social complexity—interested people from different professions; from different organizations; and, perhaps, from different parts of the world.  Finally, toss in the emerging trends—those developments in technology, society, the economy and so on that are often beyond your control.

Five years ago, you could run your business in much the same way as you ran your technical projects.  No more.  Today it seems that change is something that is done to you not something you make happen.And strategic?  Aren’t strategic plans a thing of the past?  With so much happening so fast you’re beginning to think that your hoping-for-the-best-plan is as good as it gets.
WhyStrategic Change in the Age of Uncertainty?  This class will help you deal systematically with a world around you that seems out of control. As a result of your participation in this course you will be able to:

• See and take the higher road in addressing complex issues.  (Do not become a part of the fray yourself.)
• Recognize a wicked (or divergent) problem when you see one.
• Apply collaborative tools to get the best results with wicked or divergent problems.
• Recognize the risks and the opportunities of diversity.
• Manage collaboratively across culturally diverse and geographically dispersed teams.
• Anticipate the unexpected.
• Manage for high performance and resilience in the face of uncertainty.

If you’d rather address the issues one at a time with plenty of time to think in between, you are likely to find what you are looking for in our Short Topics.

Collaboration at the New Speed of Change.

It’s hard enough to build collaboration in broad daylight and with everyone concerned face-to-face in the room.  It’s always been a challenge to pull together a group with different work styles, different ways of handling conflict, different agendas.

These days your work continues to unfold in the middle of the night—somewhere.  Perhaps it’s because of the team member (maybe it’s you) who has flashes of brilliance at 2:30 am.  Or perhaps it’s because you’re in Rome, Georgia and your manager is in Rome, Italy.  Or perhaps it’s because you need people from around the globe working around the clock to meet aggressive deadlines.  Things are happening all hours of the day; they are happening all over the globe and they are happening very, very fast.

How can you even keep track of all this?  How can you possibly manage it or at least influence it?  The Middleton-House & Company course Collaboration at the New Speed of Change can help.

If you’d rather address the issues one at a time with plenty of time to think in between, you are likely to find what you are looking for in our Short Topics.
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Individual Resilience and Readiness for Change.

Change takes energy—even when it’s a change you chose.  And you didn’t choose many of the changes you are facing now.  Perhaps you didn’t see them coming; perhaps you were not the decision-maker; perhaps they were beyond both your control and the control of your organization.  You may have used every legitimate tool at your disposal to steer events in a different direction.  Just the same, the changes are here; and you are tired.

You may feel depleted, discouraged and disinterested.  You may be asking yourself “What’s the use?”  Or you may feel angry or confused or both.  You have trouble focusing at work and your family tells you that you seem distant and preoccupied at home.

The Middleton-House & Company course Individual Resilience and Readiness for Changecan help you stay centered productive and happy in the midst of turbulent change.  It can help you move forward after changes you didn’t choose and don’t like:  it can help you anticipate the changes that lie ahead; it can help you embrace change for the better.

If you’d rather address the issues one at a time with plenty of time to think in between, you are likely to find what you are looking for in our Short Topics.