27 Feb Transformational Tips – The Launch
The team of employees involved in the City and County of Denver Fleet Analysis and Optimization Project (designed and facilitated by Team Tipton) created $16 million in savings while simultaneously increasing service quality and timeliness, as well as employee satisfaction.
by Bob Tipton
I’m thrilled to announce to you that Team Tipton is launching our new blog, Transformational Tips.
The relationships Team Tipton develops with you–our clients, our partners, our stakeholders–are central to our work and staying in touch with you is a priority for us. We’re going to use this blog to remind you that we’re here for you, to keep the tools we offer fresh in your mind, to share new thoughts and ideas as we continue to learn and grow, and to offer you a bit of energy and inspiration through examples of transformational leaders and groups all around the world doing great work.
In these uncertain times, it’s urgently important to watch for and celebrate the actions of people and agencies doing the work to make their workplaces, homes and communities more expansive, more efficient, and more effective.
In this first installment, I’m excited to introduce my new book: What’s Right, Not Who’s Right: A Simple Shift to End the World’s Madness.
In it, I talk about how the toxic divisions that are so present in our culture right now have manifested themselves, and how to move out of the toxicity. Too often we feed the anger and distrust by approaching disagreement as a competition to win rather than an opportunity for greater connection, understanding, and learning.
Let’s seek out different points of view and allow them to influence our assumptions and decisions. That is, to prioritize understanding and empathy over convincing others to see things from our point of view.
Here’s a quick excerpt:
“No question, it takes a certain kind of leader to have the patience to search for what’s right instead of pushing the who’s right button. ‘Because I said so’ didn’t work when we were children; why should we think it would work with adults? Leaders with this kind of patience don’t think less ‘of’ themselves; they just think less ‘about’ themselves.”
Committing to a Different Approach
A quick glance at your twitter or Facebook feed demonstrates that in this moment pithy, snarky, and catchy turns of phrase get a stream of likes, clicks and shares that offer a quick hit of dopamine but literally serve to disconnect us. Every preference we share narrows our world into neat little boxes of us and them defined by algorithms written in a room in Silicon Valley.
The information we see constantly narrows and gets more specifically tailored to our own preferences. So the more we express our own opinions, the more distant we get from anything that looks like meaningful interaction or relationships with “the other.”
Of course it’s not possible to emoji your way through the morning stand-up meeting or in your weekly all-hands, but as we accustom ourselves to being surrounded with ideas and opinions that generally support our worldview, it is easy to overlook the importance and pleasure of learning something new, deepening understanding, and focusing on what’s right, rather than who’s right.
I look forward to continuing this conversation with you. Until the next issue, I encourage you to keep focusing on what’s right, not who’s right.
Read my related blog “The 5 Essential Behaviors of a Transformational Change Leader.”
For more information about how to ENSURE change will fail, read my blog on the “Top 10 Ways to Ensure Epic Organizational Change Failures.”
No Comments