Total Football could be described as ‘organized chaos.’ Any player can move into another’s position. A player who moves out of position is replaced by another team member. In this fluid and flexible system, no outfield player is fixed in a predetermined role. Anyone can successively play as an attacker, a midfielder or a defender. The only player that stays in position is the goalkeeper.

I believe there are parallels with the concept of Total Football and the resilient workforce we need today when change is constant, complex and unrelenting.

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Active employee involvement increases productivity and profitability.

A flat organisational structure empowers employees. When employees take on a greater role within the organisation, they become more personally motivated to succeed and more active in the organisation.

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Employee engagement means that employees have choices and work towards the success of the organisation. They are actively involved and enthusiastic about their work and the workplace.

A hierarchical structure can disempower employees. A flatter structure provides more opportunities for employees to be involved in decision-making processes and therefore they are increasingly motivated and engaged. Employees have more autonomy.

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People like me have been banging on for eons about the need to focus on the people side of change.

But that drum is now getting louder.

The reason is that the landscape has changed.

Read more in my article over at IT Chronicles

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Earlier this week I delivered a Masterclass at Convergence 2018. Convergence Australia is Asia-Pacific’s only dedicated change management conference. 

I highly recommend it. It was a well spent 2 days.

My Masterclass was entitled ‘Game On!’ I explored the world of organisational change that we now live in which is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA). 

We looked at why the traditional linear approaches to organisational change management (OCM) no longer work in that world and how we have to make a fundamental change in those approaches and in our mindset.

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In the world of organisational change management, practitioners have a ream of tools at their disposal.

They have served us well. They were hammers for nails.

Today, however, is a different story.

I am observing, across many organisations, practitioners struggling to use those tools in a landscape that is fundamentally changing.

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Never has the need for innovation been more important than it is today.

Organisations with a flatter structure tend to be much more innovative. If innovation is strategically important to you, you need to be flat(ter).

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Talking with Dr. Jen Frahm about whether organisational change management is broken, how we need to adapt OCM to be more agile, how do we 'agile-ise' our practices, the Agile Leadership Program,  and Jen's book 'Conversations of Change.

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Talking with Lena Ross from #changehacks about 'Language and Learning for Agile Change'

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The flat organisational model promotes employee involvement through decentralised decision-making. It elevates the level of responsibility of front-line employees and eliminates unnecessary layers of management, resulting in comments and feedback reaching all of the personnel involved in decision-making more quickly.

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Albeit the title could infer that this is for people working on 'agile' projects, it is far from that. This book is for anyone that recognises that change is now constant and in everything that we do we must do with increased agility.

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In February 21018, I hosted a breakfast seminar called 'Change is Broken'.

atch the 40 minute video of the breakfast seminar.

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At the start of 2018, ITSM.tools asked its readers to vote for the IT service management (ITSM) topics that they felt would be the most important for the website to cover in 2018.

I didn’t see any major surprises in the results but was disappointed that there was no mention about increasing our understanding of how we are going to support our people in a world in which change is constant. With “people” topics taking a backseat to the process and technology.

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In a hierarchy decisions can take a long time due to the layers through which information has to flow before a decision is made. When organisations need to respond quickly to changing priorities, opportunities, competition, threats etc. the ability to make decisions quickly will be essential for success. Therefore the hierarchy has to be flattened so that there are less decision-making hoops through which to jump.

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Download my latest white paper - Change Management is Broken!

I will ask you to subscribe to my posts, but then it is yours to keep.

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In this post I discuss the need to kill the hierarchy.

The only way to enable a ‘faster’ organisation that can respond to constant change is to flatten the structure. It needs to move away from a structure of hierarchical control to a flatter structure that removes the bureaucracy that slows organisations down.

It not about having no structure at all and having no hierarchy – I think there will always be an element of hierarchy.

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At my recent breakfast seminar, I was pleased to welcome an eclectic mix of interesting people including Change Leaders, Practitioners and Consultants, Human Resources professionals and Program Managers from many different types of industry backgrounds.

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In this post I explore support – the relationship between the Coaches and the Players.

Coaches need to provide unrelenting support for the Players.

Players are operating in times of instability and uncertainty, which is not going to change anytime soon. They need the ability to remain highly effective under intense pressure.

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In this post I explore sustainment – the relationship between the Managers and the Coaches.

ustainment consists of three key activities - educate, support, and coach and mentor.

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Proud and in great company!

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