"The crocodiles around your watercooler are not the enemy, they are your productive employees waiting for your leadership."
- Jim Peal
Many people around the cooler
may be thirsty,
but may not have a thirst
for change
The Crocodiles at the Watercooler workshop provides attendees with “best practice” tools for designing and implementing change:
Architecting change - Understanding the types of change and the complexities of each. Developing your vision, burning platforms and creating milestones. Utilizing both top-down and bottom-up approach to optimize alignment
Align your team, Identifying your allies – the Eagles, Beavers, Monkeys and Owls and the 4 types of crocodiles – Victimis Fatalis, Antagonizing Intimidontis, Pompositus Arrogonticus and Sneering Cynicalicus. Developing strategies to energize and strengthen your allies & champions. Learning strategies to transform the crocodiles into collaborators
Communicating your vision – Ensuring consistent messaging permeates throughout your organization
Managing emerging priorities as the plan is rolled out
• In short, we’ll show you how to plan, prepare, and then roll with the punches.
As a leader you plan for change, yet despite your intentions and planning what actually happens falls short of what you expected. Why? Most leaders are extremely busy, and often miss out on the due diligence that is necessary in preparing and planning. They don’t realize the time invested on the front end is much less than lost time on the back end during implementation. Time is wasted backtracking and getting people onboard and it is more complicated once mistakes have been made.
There is a natural resistance to change in every organization. Some may try to fight the resistance as if they are in a battle at war, some may act like the resistance is not there, but those who tend to be the most successful are the ones who embrace and understand the resistance and work to transform it into a positive energy that moves the cause forward.
There are many reasons why only 30% of change efforts reach their intended goals. The lack of quality communication on many levels is the primary reason change fails to stick. The message of change fails to penetrate adequately into the organization.
On average, approximately 68% of senior leaders have a solid understanding of what the change entails; that drops to 53% of middle managers and ebbs at a dismal 40% of front-line managers who understand the need for change. With those numbers, imagine how low the percentage would be of the line in the back office and for the shop floor workers.
Leaders often will craft their plans for change without fully engaging the organization in the change process. If a person does not understand what the change is, why the change is happening or have a chance to participate in creating the change, how can that person ever fully make it personal and own the change process?
You will see the 5 common mistakes leaders make when planning and executing change in their organizations and what you can do to avoid those mistakes and increase your chance for success.
Specialty topics
Transforming Culture
Changing the culture is a complicated process. We will partner with you to architect your new culture and design the process for making your vision a reality. The Culture Change Series is a suite of linked organizational development modules that encompasses the key dimensions of work in your organization. The topics are linked to create an intentional change in your work culture. While each modules can serve as a standalone, most companies roll out a series of courses over multiple years.
Team Based Strategy & Process Development
By engaging your team early in the development of strategy and/or process, you circumvent much of the change management agony that results from a lack of engagement. This module teaches you how to harness the intellect of your team and gain their immediate buy-in in the development and formulation of strategic direction and execute process development.
Align your vision and direction
Set goals, expectations and milestones
Coach for performance
Empower and inspire action
Recognize and celebrate success
Identify areas where you can encourage growth or change, and improve team functioning
Encourage individual performance
Build a better team by identifying where work styles can be encouraged or changed
The Leadership Commitment
This is an ongoing set of workshops designed to create the burning platform for the new culture. The leadership commitment sets the bar for the rest of the organization in terms of defining the new culture, behavioral expectations and new ways of working.
Service or Sabotage - Check Your Attitude
A core course for everyone in your organization. Provides a grounding in how to shift operating from a negative place to operating from positive intention. Participants learn how to coach each other and how to self-coach to transform negative reactions into positive responses.
Co-Worker as Customer
So often we only think of those outside of our company as the customer. In this course we shift that perspective so that we can view and treat our co-workers as customers. This unique relationship is defined along with the guidelines to enhance our internal relationships as we would with our external customers.
High Performing Teams
Teams are how a business gets work done. Participants learn how to recognize and optimize the 4 stages of team development from Forming to Performing and how to leverage and work with the 4 primary work styles.
Creative Conflicts
Step out of the blame game and into collaborative conversations. Participants learn how to short-circuit the negative internal narrative stories that spur conflict and switch to creating a win-win situation. This becomes the foundation for true problem solving.
Team Based Problem Solving
Problem solving is not personal. This module helps transform the concepts and practice of accountability from a room of pointing fingers to stepping up and creating a focus to solve problems. The fundamentals are also taught, Pareto, 5-whys and other time-tested
"The crocodiles around your watercooler are not the enemy, they are your productive employees waiting for your leadership."
As a leader you plan for change, yet despite your intentions and planning what actually happens falls short of what you expected. Why? Most leaders are extremely busy, and often miss out on the due diligence that is necessary in preparing and planning. They don’t realize the time invested on the front end is much less than lost time on the back end during implementation. Time is wasted backtracking and getting people onboard and it is more complicated once mistakes have been made.
There is a natural resistance to change in every organization. Some may try to fight the resistance as if they are in a battle at war, some may act like the resistance is not there, but those who tend to be the most successful are the ones who embrace and understand the resistance and work to transform it into a positive energy that moves the cause forward.
There are many reasons why only 30% of change efforts reach their intended goals. The lack of quality communication on many levels is the primary reason change fails to stick. The message of change fails to penetrate adequately into the organization.
On average, approximately 68% of senior leaders have a solid understanding of what the change entails; that drops to 53% of middle managers and ebbs at a dismal 40% of front-line managers who understand the need for change. With those numbers, imagine how low the percentage would be of the line in the back office and for the shop floor workers.
Leaders often will craft their plans for change without fully engaging the organization in the change process. If a person does not understand what the change is, why the change is happening or have a chance to participate in creating the change, how can that person ever fully make it personal and own the change process?
You will see the 5 common mistakes leaders make when planning and executing change in their organizations and what you can do to avoid those mistakes and increase your chance for success.
Specialty topics
Transforming Culture
Changing the culture is a complicated process. We will partner with you to architect your new culture and design the process for making your vision a reality. The Culture Change Series is a suite of linked organizational development modules that encompasses the key dimensions of work in your organization. The topics are linked to create an intentional change in your work culture. While each modules can serve as a standalone, most companies roll out a series of courses over multiple years.
Team Based Strategy & Process Development
By engaging your team early in the development of strategy and/or process, you circumvent much of the change management agony that results from a lack of engagement. This module teaches you how to harness the intellect of your team and gain their immediate buy-in in the development and formulation of strategic direction and execute process development.
Align your vision and direction
The Leadership Commitment
This is an ongoing set of workshops designed to create the burning platform for the new culture. The leadership commitment sets the bar for the rest of the organization in terms of defining the new culture, behavioral expectations and new ways of working.
Service or Sabotage - Check Your Attitude
A core course for everyone in your organization. Provides a grounding in how to shift operating from a negative place to operating from positive intention. Participants learn how to coach each other and how to self-coach to transform negative reactions into positive responses.
Co-Worker as Customer
So often we only think of those outside of our company as the customer. In this course we shift that perspective so that we can view and treat our co-workers as customers. This unique relationship is defined along with the guidelines to enhance our internal relationships as we would with our external customers.
High Performing Teams
Teams are how a business gets work done. Participants learn how to recognize and optimize the 4 stages of team development from Forming to Performing and how to leverage and work with the 4 primary work styles.
Creative Conflicts
Step out of the blame game and into collaborative conversations. Participants learn how to short-circuit the negative internal narrative stories that spur conflict and switch to creating a win-win situation. This becomes the foundation for true problem solving.
Team Based Problem Solving
Problem solving is not personal. This module helps transform the concepts and practice of accountability from a room of pointing fingers to stepping up and creating a focus to solve problems. The fundamentals are also taught, Pareto, 5-whys and other time-tested