Ways of working and thinking working together.
I specialise in getting a company's ways of working and its people to work together. I assess, develop and act as a sparring partner for leaders. I do this in companies where the direction is clear but everyday work doesn't follow it yet.
Where change gets stuck
In most organisations the plans are in order. The strategy is written, the processes are described and the metrics are chosen. Yet everyday work carries on as before.
The reason is usually in how people interpret the plan. Everyone hears the new operating model through their own experience. If the model doesn't fit how the work is usually done, the old way wins. Quietly and politely.
Organisational scholar Karl Weick calls this sensemaking: people act according to the meaning they give to a situation. Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey have shown how hidden commitments keep the old way going even when a person wants to change (Immunity to Change, 2009).
I learned this from my own mistake. As a store manager I once built a sales tracking sheet that calculated forecasts and every number you could think of. I required the salespeople to fill it in. I didn't like filling it in myself. The careful salespeople loved the sheet, and the more free-spirited ones hated it. The same process worked for half the team and slowed down the other half.
That is why I always look at two things at once: the structures and the people who work within them.
How the work is organised, how goals are cascaded, what is measured and what rhythm leadership follows day to day. This is what I did as training director of an international consultancy in large development projects from 2005.
How people interpret things, what they believe, where resistance to change comes from and how a message gets through. When people learn to notice their own thinking, they change their habits themselves. In psychology this is called metacognition. Not everything changes through insight, though. Habits and reactions sit deeper than thoughts, so the new way is practised in everyday work until it runs without thinking.
When both are included, the new way lasts.
Three phases. You can start with an assessment and decide what comes next after that.
I interview the key people, observe everyday work and run a survey if needed. Systemic analysis shows the structures, how people act and think, and how these affect each other. You get a report and a development plan that shows what to do first.
Goals and metrics are agreed at the start. I coach the managers, build the communication and fix the practices that keep the old way going. For bigger projects I bring together a team of trusted experts.
An outside thinking partner while change is under way and decisions have to be made fast.
Most common topics
Systemic analysis
Thinking shows in language, in actions and in data. I do systemic analysis and build the systems for it. I look at the organisation as a whole: how structures, metrics, communication and people's interpretations affect each other. Often a problem shows up in one place and starts in another. Peter Senge, author of the systems-thinking classic, describes the same thing: cause and effect are rarely close to each other in time or place (The Fifth Discipline, 1990).
I read everything that can be observed. I listen to people's words and watch what they do. I notice when the tone of voice changes, when someone glances at their manager before answering, or when the room goes quiet around a certain topic. The gap between words and actions is often exactly the point where change can start.
I built my first assessment tools in my consulting years, for examining business, strategy, sales and leadership. From 2015 to 2020 I helped found an AI company where we taught a machine to read from speech and text how a person thinks. I used it in company mergers, for example, when we needed to understand how two organisations think.
What the analysis shows
The findings are brought together. You see what keeps the old way going and where it makes sense to start the change.
The old way wins quietly and politely.
Development projects often use the same training. Managers learn the skills the change requires.
In a change, managers often go through Leading Thinking; in uncertain times Cool Head; and when bringing in AI, the Thinking in the Age of AI programme.
It's not only that Ilkka is in the world's top five among experts and trainers of the mind. It's how his very broad, systemic approach gets significant results with serious business decision-makers who have already tried every possible coaching and leadership model. (Translated from Finnish.)
Guarantee
If the assessment doesn't give you a usable direction, you don't pay for it. In a development project the metrics are agreed at the start. If they don't move, I do more for the same price.