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Let’s start with Business Improvements – or doing the work vs. ticking the box!

So, hand to heart, how are you doing with your improvement strategy?

Are you improving much?

What baseline did you set to measure the success of your improvement initiatives?

What did you agree upon when setting out to improve your strategy?

Are you willing to do what it takes to actually improve aka investing time, money and energy for lasting, repeatable and scalable capabilities?

Or are you simply ticking the box on L&D by scratching the surface with 3-day team workshops, 1-day leadership seminars and 90-minute motivational keynotes?

And how tired are you of growing operating costs that are not showing up in your results and in turn create even more friction in your business workflow?

When you look at your market and your competition – are they doing it differently and are they more successful?

“The most serious mistakes are not being made as a result of wrong answers.
The true dangerous thing is asking the wrong question.” - Peter Drucker

Yes, it does take a lot of questions to understand what the challenge is and even more questions to identify the root cause(s) of an issues.

And yes, an analysis must be hard and unemotional to get to the bottom of it all when you are serious about improvements, no matter small or audacious ones.

Let’s set some boundaries right from the beginning, looking for the silver bullet, the magic wand, the next big management book to instantly alleviate all business sorrows and pains is out of the question.

Otherwise please join the search for the holy grail - it is apocryphal, it is the stuff of fairy tales and urban myths and the birthplace of way too many management fads already plaguing small to medium to large companies around the globe.

"It's not that they can't see the solution. They can't see the problem." - G.K. Chesterton

Guilty of reading an overwhelming amount of management improvement books (probably making up only 5% of what is out there in the world), I came up with the following analogy of what the actual outcome and impact of these books are: you buy the latest and greatest book about how to train your dog to follow your every command…and you cannot for the life of you figure out why your cat isn’t changing her behavior…you are puzzled because a pet is a pet, right, and at least something should dramatically change just by absorbing the written words by osmosis.

Well, not so much! And 9 months later, the invested budget is gone, probably some key employees as well (that is if they haven’t been drained off all their energy turning into the working dead) and still no improvements in sight with the next performance review around the corner.

Please don’t get me wrong, there are brilliant books out there that when implementing the essence of their messages can truly make a difference.

However, jumping on these and hastily implementing, almost force feeding, them to employees, actually shows that a company has not taken the time to identify problems and their causes, to listen and understand their current environment, resources and people in their business and to align the current state of the business to future aspirations.

Let me ask you this, would you buy a house without having an inspection done first to make an informed decision on what your next actions are?

What we see happening in businesses though is

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The Bull, The China Shop, and Change

Don’t rock the boat

Don’t burn bridges

Tread carefully, tread lightly

Anyone recognize this type of advice?

Who has been given that type of advice?

And more importantly, how do you feel about this type of “advice”?

For me this type of advice is a trigger point.

A trigger point to ask why and what is happening here.

Hello everyone!

I am Isabella Zaczek and I am an instigator at heart.

And what I want to do today is

Explore the uncomfortable topics and actions around change and the steps we must take to enable change, accept, and implement it.

Expel the myths about change

Extract the essence of change and its success

Without any further ado, let’s see whether the talk holds what the title promises.

The Bull, the China Shop and change.

What is a better way than to start with some historic instigators:

So, I picked the following 3 instigators – anyone recognize them?

MLK – fighting for basic equality and civil rights

Galileo – going against the Catholic church and thus the world with science

The Women Suffragette Movement – standing up for female empowerment and rights

Challenging the status quo - Change processes that have still not been fully implemented centuries and decades later

And are more relevant than ever

So, what do they all have in common…they rocked the boat, they burnt bridges, they did not tread lightly

Going against deeply rooted beliefs, facing mockery, resentment, even death

Here is the very interesting fact about change, I believe, you do want to change for betterment, equality, advancement, and at the same time you must bear with – rejection, resentment and potentially every negative reaction there is – but what if you don’t start change?

Here is an article on Fortune I recently found about political reform:

Both Gehl and Thiry were able to report some recent successes in their reform efforts. But progress is slow and uncertain. Why? Because politicians from both parties, who have benefitted from the existing dysfunctional system, tend to oppose change. They argue business leaders should be champions of the reform.

Granted this is on political reform BUT it is change, nonetheless.

Extract the key message – progress is slow and uncertain and there are those who benefit from existing dysfunctional systems.

Who is your champion and who is your challenger - who has benefitted from no change.

How do we expect change to happen when we do not go where it hurts – it takes a special kind of person to be comfortable with the dark side.

But how many of us are truly and honestly comfortable with the dark, how many of us really believe that it is always darkest before the dawn.

Some years ago, I coined the following quote:

Our uncomfortable truths are the foundation of our permanent (r)evolution!

How do we expect change to be acknowledged, understood, and accepted if we are not willing to rock the boat, lift the rocks, and guide humans through the storm?

Given some personal tragedies over the past 2 years I turned to the Kübler Ross stages of grief to dive deeper into grief itself.

Some

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What is a Quereinsteiger?

Sometimes there just isn't an English equivalent. So, let's go with the lateral entrant, someone who changes into a job or industry without prior experience…or so they say.

Truthfully, it has been quite a while since I entered the application and interview pool, luckily having sat on the other side for most of my career.

Now where to begin with this journey of self-awareness, confidence, and patience…tons of patience.

There are many posts advising job seekers and candidates on how to prepare for the job search and any potential interviews. Most of the advice boils down to overpreparing, being diligent, investing time and energy, and being available for follow-ups.

All good and dandy and something I also expected from the humans I had the pleasure to interview.

But what about the other side – the interviewers and the companies looking for talent?

My mum always used to say, you give, you get.

You Give, You Get!

Exactly this way and not the other way around.

And while there isn't any contract in place (yet) I do believe in a human contract once people meet, converse, and exchange time for a mutually aligned purpose.

What do I mean by that?

I believe that any job application and interview is a two-way street, based on respect, decency, and setting clear expectations.

Should a company expect the candidate to bring their A-game? Absolutely.

Should a candidate expect the company to follow up and provide feedback? Absolutely.

Some of you might have differing opinions when it comes to feedback…especially personal feedback in the age of lawsuits.

It is tough and yet it is crucial, and it is where talent optimization starts…not necessarily for the company providing the feedback but for the overarching development of a talent pool. And who knows when paths cross again in this universe, right?

Especially, with more and more companies out there asking for 'honest' feedback on their recruiting and interviewing process.

Let's pivot to the real world …and the talent that just slips through everyone's fingers.

And nope it is not the pandemic's fault, the pandemic has only emphasized the problems that have existed for as long as companies have complained about a shortage of expertise and lack of talent. What the pandemic has done is ripping off band-aids that have been put over an ever-growing wound over and over again.

The root cause is what I like to call the 'eierlegende Wollmilchsau' phenomenon. (have fun looking it up 😉)

After "extensive research" in the USA as well as Germany it seems to come down to the following:

Automated resume screening – let's jump right into the next point because that is where the hurdles are buried deep (besides the fact that automation lacks the fine art of nuance)

Convoluted job descriptions – I mean seriously.

Having written a multitude of job descriptions over the past 20 years, I am simply baffled by what I am reading. Don't get me wrong, I am all for setting clear expectations and setting the bar high. But seriously…if all job descriptions within the company are asking for blue skies why is there any need for anyone else?

Think about that for a minute.

What makes it even harder is that many times it reads like it is a want ad for all or nothing, hanging on t