We welcomed members to the lovely Lygon Arms in Broadway for a Leaders Workshop on The Power of Change with Campbell Macpherson, international business advisor, change expert, key note speaker and award winning author. Thank you to Christina McKenzie for partnering with us to bring such an inspiring event to members in the beautiful surroundings of the Lygon Arm.
The Lygon Arms Hotel | Luxury Coaching Inn in The Cotswolds
88% of change iniatives, business strategies, mergers & Acquisitions fail. How do we become the 1:8 that succeed? Campbell took us on a journey to look at what we have in the business and in ourselves that would help us to enable change and make our people ‘change champions’.
‘Change is inevitable; change is constant’ said Benjamin Disaraeli. So not much has changed since the 1800’s then? Maybe not in terms of having to cope with change except in one important area and that is the pace of change has accelerated and its complexity. Individuals and leaders need to be prepared.
Campbell took us through his five key truths about the subject:
- Change is inevitable. Once we truly accept that change does not have a start date or end date, that it is constant, we can begin to accept it, perhaps begrudgingly at first. But accepting change is the first step to embracing it.
- All change is personal. Even the largest of organisational changes is actually the culmination of a myriad of small personal changes. Broadcast-style communications are insufficient when it comes to change. Leaders need to understand the implications of the change on every single one of their people. Leaders need to get personal.
- We all erect our own personal barriers to change. We all have our own default change barriers and they will be different depending upon the change in question. Some barriers last for only a few seconds. Others can last a lifetime.
- All change is emotional. Emotion is four times more powerful that logic when it comes to change. They can get in our way or get us on our way. As leaders, there is no substitute for genuine empathy. We must understand the emotions that our people are experiencing. We also need to help them with, and appeal to, their emotions of we wish them to change.
- We only change if we want to. No-one changes simply because they are told to. We only change if, and when, we want to. Therefore, the role of a leader is to help our people to want to change.
Lots of great conversations round the tables and opportunities to take time out to think about what we have been through in 2020 and 2021 and what do we want to keep hold of and what do we want to let go of and what do we want 2022 to look like. If 2020 and 2021 were years of enforced change then 2022 has to be the year of intention change and Campbell gave a shot in the arm to look positively at what we want to change and how we might do that.
All guests received a copy of Campbell’s Book: The Power To Change – How to Harness Change To Make It Work For You and his other books are: The Change Catalyst (The Business Book of the Year 2018) and his latest book is: You: Part Two
Campbell Macpherson The Change Catalyst (changeandstrategy.com)
Check out the Photo Gallery from this event: Photo Gallery – Circle 2 Success
Watch out for Campbells article in the next C2S Magazine – out at the end of November 2021 Register your interest here: C2S Digital Business Magazine – Circle 2 Success
