Moving from a world with complex problems to a world of complexity.
There is a view in classical greek mythology that our existence requires us to continually reinvent ourselves in order to survive the ongoing challenges time brings us.
Whilst the reality of the symbolic nature of the Phoenix rising from the ashes with a renewed youth to live through another cycle might be questionable, there is an obvious fact that we can take from classical greek mythology…
Time is everlasting and relentlessly challenges us with ongoing cycles of change. Requiring us to reinvent and transform ourselves in order to live through these cycles.
Given where we are today, and in reflection of the past, we could conclude that we have succeeded in surviving these cycles so far.
In this article, I walk you through the natural flow of the Cycle of Change and how a controlled approach of the Cycle’s rotation speed can help adopt a high performance culture and sustain ‘Operational Excellence’.
The Cycle of Change: a Natural Flow
There is a Natural flow to the Cycle of Change consisting of 8 sequential components that include 4 components situated on the past side of the cycle and the other 4 on the future side.
If there is little done to interpret and influence the components within the Cycle of Change, then changing from one component to the next will naturally occur in sequence.
However, if there is awareness and preparedness to influence the components of the Cycle, a resistance and countermeasure control can be achieved, affecting the Cycle's speed of rotation between components. The primary mechanism to influence the components is the ability to adapt, change and transform one’s performance throughout the cycle.
To test this hypothesis of the Cycle to Change in natural flow:
Think of your organisation, company, team or even yourself
Imagine or remember when you were at the top of your respective performance curve and as close to operational excellence as you recall
Then from that point, move through the sequential components of the Cycle
The Sequential Components of the Cycle of Change
1. Operational Excellence
‘Operational Excellence’ is when your entity has gained enough perspective from its past history and uses it to formulate a view of the future with enough supporting detail to inspire, motivate and guide its participants, your team to achieve its renewed goals and aspirations. It’s an achieved and controlled dimension of ‘Continuous Improvement’.
2. Burning Platforms
As your entity performs at the top end of its performance curve and as time progresses, it will in all likelihood contend with known and unknown challenges and threats aimed at destabilising, replacing, redirecting or exhausting that benchmark performance.
Depending on the amount of enduring control you have over those continuous pressures, there is a reality that 'Diminishing Returns' await any underperformance or deviation from high performance or operational excellence. From where I sit, a simple way to reflect on this is to consider one's own life performance as physical capacity and capability diminish.
3. Diminishing Returns
There is a lot about 'Diminishing Returns' that is overwhelming and uncontrollable, as it acts as a tipping point to the resistance applied to attending and contending with Burning Bridges and is a point that often accelerates the rotation speed of the Cycle.
There are great examples of performance resilience and entrepreneurial resistance applied as countermeasures to mitigate the onset of Diminishing Returns. However, on the other side of Diminishing Returns, 'Failure' awaits, and time generally delivers.
From the individual viewpoint, this could reflect moving through one of life's many phases. Or a business's product or service that is no longer relevant to the needs of society.
4. Failure
Failure is the point of the cycle where time seems to stop.
In reality, time hasn't stopped or changed speed… It's just we have narrowed completely into 'Now' and any pursuit or clarity of the original Value proposition has depleted.
It's within this 'Failure' component and working from 'Now' that new Value propositions are considered and the assessment of Why, What, How, When and Where is activated again.
As we work from the 'Now' point, looking back into the past gathering information from our entities’ history and considering what the causes of failure were, will determine what doesn’t have a place in the future, along with what worked well and needs to be carried forward into a renewed 'Value' proposition in the future.
5. Part Performance
The assessment of Past Performance will establish that any pathway towards the future will be via minimal, partial or entire transformation from previous 'Value' goals and their related practices. It will assess what practice needs to be retained and carried forward and what practices are redundant and have no place in the future.
When considering Past Performance, we start to frame the 'Story' for the Future that will contribute to providing perspective and context to current and future entity communities. Once the assessment of Past Performance is complete a 'Reason for Change' will form.
6. Reason for Change
After the experience of 'Failure' and the assessment of 'Past Performance' is established, a pathway forward into the future emerges, creating emotional energy and clarity of mind, which, when combined together, motivates groups, teams and individuals to transform and change its course of action towards a renewed value proposition.
The key elements 'Reason for Change' requires uniting its participants and progress its intentions is an alignment to purpose, a set of moral value(s), a common identity and performance boundaries to guide human effort and behaviour into the future.
7. Reason for Being
There are 2 key elements of the Reason of Being that consist of:
The belief that the Group's renewed 'Value Proposition' is worthy of one’s alignment, loyalty, and trust
The reason to commit to any change in group, team or individual
Once these elements are reunited, performance will be recognised as representing a positive contribution to the entity and society in general. The Reason for Being also ensures that the good from past performance is included and influential in pursuing future endeavours.
8. Continuous Improvement
The wheels of Continuous Improvement have already been put in motion at this point. This is supported by the notion that the cycle continuously revolves through failure and onto operational excellence, as time progresses. It's about whether or not the improvement or change is setting course as intended by our entities, or if they are endeavouring unsuccessfully to keep up with rapidly escalating social expectations.
The progression of the Cycle along the time axis(x) remains constant, however, what is highly variable is the speed of the Cycle's rotation through the components. There is no prescribed number of revolutions that occur within a lifetime of an individual, group or team.
What determines the number of revolutions of the cycle is the level of control and influence that we as individuals, team or group has over the components of the Cycle of Change. By working on the past and future elements of the Cycle in parallel from the 'Now' point, we can provide the entity with a higher degree of influence and control over the natural flow of the cycle.
The Cycle of Change: a Controlled Approach
Whilst it has been established that there is a natural flow to the Cycle of Change and its 8 components and that its flow is only natural if it is left to run its own course, what we also know about the Cycle of Change is that there are entities that have applied a degree of control or influence on some or all of the components and have consequently experienced the ability to gain control of the speed of the Cycle's rotation, enabling us to effectively transform, adapt and reinvent ourselves with the aim of sustaining excellent performance.
What this tells us is that the more knowledge and understanding we gather about the Cycle of Change, the more able we become with influencing the effects of the components within the Cycle. To the point where we can organise ourselves to influence the components simultaneously and in counterflow, where necessary to the Cycle's natural flow.
In high performance culture, the ultimate goal is to sustain 'Operational Excellence' for as long as possible. If performance is left to the natural flow of the Cycle of Change, it is likely that Operational Excellence will subside to diminishing returns and failure relatively quickly or as quickly as the unknown (burning platforms) consume the relevance of the ambitions and goals associated with current performance levels.
To pursue a controlled approach to sustaining high performance culture we need to work from the 'Now Point' in 2 simultaneous directions.
Stream 1 is to work through the categories of Reason for Change, Reason for Being and Continuous Improvement to enable Operational Excellence.
Stream 2 is to anticipate what Failure, Diminishing Returns and Burning Platforms might look like to take necessary steps to mitigate damaging effects to performance and the level of operational excellence.
There is no evidence that this approach is everlasting, however, there is evidence that this approach provides a level of control to the speed of the rotation of the Cycle of Change.
Conclusion
As an organisation, team or individual, we are in a constant Cycle of Change rotation, going through sequential stages from operational excellence to continuous improvement, passing by diminishing returns and failures.
When left to run on its own course, the Cycle of Change follows a natural flow, i.e. changing from one component to the next naturally occur in sequence, where Operational Excellence will subside to diminishing returns and failure relatively quickly.
A controlled approach of the Cycle of Change with awareness and preparedness is critical in achieving a resistance and countermeasure control, affecting the Cycle's speed of rotation between components and enabling us to effectively transform, adapt and reinvent ourselves with the aim of sustaining excellent performance.
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