The Q-Loop: The Art & Science of Lasting Corporate Change by Brian Klapper

Author:Brian Klapper [Klapper, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781937134532
Publisher: Bibliomotion, Inc.
Published: 2013-05-06T14:00:00+00:00

I tell them, “Solutions are worth pennies; root causes are worth millions.” It’s counterintuitive to these smart, results-oriented people. We then build pilots to demonstrate our new capabilities and thoroughly test them before implementation.

At the risk of frustrating you, dear reader, for I suspect you are also a very smart, results-oriented person, I ask you to consider this description of the afternoon of day one to be a tease for the next chapter, where I will explain these capabilities. Please keep in mind that this chapter focuses primarily on learning to see who you are now, so that you are more effectively positioned to implement the mandate you’ve selected. We’ll learn the tools outlined here soon enough.

IDEAS IN ACTION

The fastest-growing city in Canada, Barrie, is located on Lake Simcoe in northeastern Ontario. The city sought not only to improve the overall efficiency and effectiveness of the municipality’s services, but also to transform the culture of an organization in which the average employee tenure was nearly twenty years.

Barrie had spent three years working with many external experts to help with its transformation—without any real success. In each case, the story was essentially the same: the strong organizational culture deeply rooted in preserving the status quo repeatedly resisted and ultimately defeated all management-led change efforts. As employees of the municipality, workers enjoyed essentially lifetime employment and, as a result, never felt particularly compelled to embrace change.

In a conversation we had for this book, Ed Archer, general manager of corporate services and the project sponsor for the Klapper project, reflected on how projects traditionally ran at the city of Barrie. He said, “Historically, a staff team would have been put together made up of people whom the senior team thought were the right group to put that project in play. It would have been one of the things on their to-do list. There would have been issues with scheduling meetings and coordinating work among departments. They would have had the same competing priorities that have always plagued a conglomerate like a government organization.”

Working with The Klapper Institute, the city finally took a different approach. It put the executive leadership team and the fifteen heroes who were historically viewed as the leaders of the resistance through The Corporate Lab. By the end of the event, they had completely transformed NAVCorp, had optimized organizational performance, and, most importantly, had become excited about tackling these targeted issues in their municipality. The Lab got them to think differently. It prepared them for the next big step.

It’s interesting to note that, prior to working with The Klapper Institute, many city leaders were concerned that employee motivation and the sense of entrepreneurship would be too fundamentally different among city employees, compared with a corporation’s, for the project to be a success. Kathleen Short, manager of revenue for the city of Barrie and a project team member, informed me during an interview for the book, “The Klapper project was fully supported by upper management, although council was a bit skeptical.

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