Earlier this year, Daryl Conner of Conner Partners asked a question of change practitioners in his blog post, A Serious Question for Serious Practitioners:Â Is there something beyond the obvious you are hoping to achieve through your work? or in other words, What are you really up to? Besides personal ambition and helping clients achieve results, what underlying motives do we have for doing the work we do?
While I invite you to answer the question for yourself, I thought I would take this opportunity to let you know what I’m really up to here at Enclaria.
The Enclaria tagline says, “Equipping individuals to lead organizational change.” However, when I introduce myself, I’m a little more specific with, “I help equip individuals and teams to lead organizational change from the middle.”
With the multitude of leadership books, training, coaches and consultants, I figure the people at the top are covered. Four years ago I decided I wanted to help those who were responsible for implementing change within their organizations but who didn’t really have the authority to get it done.
I had a defining moment at my last job that lead me to the focus at Enclaria. I was managing what we called an executive working group program, which was a 2-year training program on how to execute strategy. The funny thing was, most participants were not executives at all. They held positions at lower levels in their organizations but were still responsible for executing strategy. At one of the final workshops of the program, one of the participants lamented to me, “All this stuff you are teaching is great. But I still have to go back to my organization and figure out how I am personally going to implement it.”
It dawned on me then that there was a gap that needed to be filled:Â the gap between what the books and experts say you should do to implement change and what you actually do day-to-day to get it done in your personal situation, especially when you don’t have direct authority. I set out to close that gap when I started Enclaria.
I hope my goal to be extremely practical is reflected in everything you’ll find here. If I stray away from being down-to-earth, please call me on it.
Still, that’s what I’m up to on the surface. There are some underlying motives to what I do at Enclaria.
I love to help people make a positive difference at work. There are two dimensions to “positive difference.” They are trying to achieve a positive outcome for the company or organization – profits, efficiency, effectiveness, or whatever – AND they want to make the organization better for the people around them.
I want people to know that they can do it themselves. Sure, they’ll need to influence other people along the way, and they may need a little help, but I believe with all my heart that anyone can be the catalyst that changes an entire company. YOU matter. And YOU can be the one to make a difference.
And I love helping people get unstuck from their change challenges. Some of my best moments are when clients become aware of the possible paths they can take to move change forward, realize they are capable of it, and find the courage to take action. It makes me smile just thinking about it.
So that’s a little bit about what I’m up to at Enclaria. What are you up to?