Recognizes unproven assumptions, beliefs, and values, and challenges them when necessary.
Over the past thirty years of my career, I have NEVER seen anyone who meets all ten characteristics. And if this individual does exist, the person is probably not from this world. Do you remember the six principles to start changing your world from Chapter 2?
It is always a good time to make a change. (Another person’s delay is not an excuse to wait!)
You might ask how you can transform an idea into a tangible reality without having the necessary conditions in place. As will be explained, Enterprise Social Systems can help you achieve a great transformation using either of its two powerful change frameworks.
ELSA (Event, Language, Structures, Agency)
ELSA is a change framework that allows leaders of an initiative to amplify their message, helping the transformation become exponential. It allows people who are about to change to take ownership of new ideas to accelerate change and thereby support the transformation in becoming exponential. ELSA requires a sponsor and it also requires the leaders of the organization to support the initiative.
DeLTA (Double Loop for Transforming & Accelerating)
DeLTA is a change framework that allows anyone in the company to implement a change initiative that can become contagious. It’s designed for situations in which the leaders of the company are not yet committed to the new plan or for situations when there is no sponsor.
As you’ll see, each framework offers different possibilities. ELSA uses shortcuts in the brain to accelerate the speed of transformation, while DeLTA supports change and makes it contagious by using habits that already exist in traditional companies.
Although DeLTA does not accelerate the adoption of change as much as ELSA, it is a useful tool when key individuals are not yet involved in the initiative.
The ELSA Change Framework
Imagine your organization has decided to embark on a business transformation. The leaders are willing to do whatever is necessary, and the sponsor is eager to begin. The company is poised to make the biggest economic investment in its history. Both the leaders and the sponsor are aware that this is a big first step and that in a few months changing will be part of the day-to-day operation of the organization.
What are the first steps?
In a company that implements a change using traditional techniques, executive team members will often give a presentation informing their employees about the new plan, followed by training the employees and implementing the changes in their processes. But if you are starting an Agile transformation, you will probably start by teaching new values and principles, and then you will implement a framework that improves how everyone works and makes decisions.
Agile transformations don’t always turn out as expected. In these cases, companies often want to restart the initiative after learning from past mistakes.
In your company, though, this is the first time that something like this has been attempted. Executives will want to increase the economic benefits and position of the company in the market in the medium term. They will also want to increase and improve the shared knowledge and well-being of employees. To achieve these goals, you will use the ELSA change framework.
You won’t start by modifying processes or teaching new mindsets. ELSA believes that ways of conveying a message can alter employees’ brain activation, which means that they could use different forms of reasoning and produce different outcomes. This, in turn, will also help evolve processes and interactions for the better.
There are a few questions to consider here:
Is there a connection between language and the way we think or behave? More specifically, is there a connection between language and the company’s objectives?
Does the way you use language affect economic decisions?
Keith Chen, an associate professor of economics at UCLA, used a vast array of data and meticulous analysis to show that the grammatical structures of languages stimulate the brain differently, resulting in behaviors that support different economic decisions.
Languages that conjugate in the future tense, such as English and Spanish, distinguish between past, present, and future. But those that do not, such as Mandarin Chinese, use similar phrases to describe the events of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
According to Chen, people who use languages without a future tense are 30% more likely to save money than those who use the future tense. This would obviously mean more money for retirement, less stress, and increased opportunities for undertaking new personal projects. When a future tense is used, ideas feel more distant and the motivation to save is diminished. Our brain focuses more on the short-term reward and less on the long term.
The way you use a language also has an impact on the skills you develop. The Pormpuraaw aboriginal community in Australia do not use the words left or right to refer to the position of an object. Instead, they use absolute directions such as north, south, or southeast to express location in their Kuuk Thaayorre language.
According to a study conducted by Lera Boroditsky, a cognitive scientist at Stanford University, and Caitlin M. Fausey, a professor of cognitive development at the University of Oregon, the Pormpuraaw community is remarkably good at staying focused and knowing where they are. On a research trip to Australia, Boroditsky and Fausey discovered that members of this community seem to instinctively know their spatial location and the direction they’re facing. They can organize images of their trip, in chronological order, from east to west.
Boroditsky and Fausey also realized that there are differences in how guilt is felt in different languages. According to their research, if a person who speaks Spanish accidentally breaks something, the person will tend to say, “Se me cayó