Services

Change Planning

RFLC Applied is specialist and experienced with partnering organisations that seek business improvement opportunities to create enduring value against a variety of strategic review frameworks. The planning of strategic change initiatives typically orientate around key efficiency drivers that include organisational consolidation, cost reduction, technology adoption and implementation, policy implementation amongst other drivers.

What differentiates RFLC Applied from many other consulting groups is in the planning of strategic change initiatives.  We work with our own proprietary frameworks which are not only grounded and validated from our own quantitative and qualitative research but also have been successfully applied and implemented in multiple past client projects.

Examples of our frameworks in planning strategic change include:

  • RFLC Applied Change Strategy Framework – Understanding the different strategic approaches to organisational change (by contrasting ‘programmatic/mechanical’ and ‘emergent/living systems’ change approaches). Learning how to apply change strategies that have a track record of being more successful.
  • RFLC Applied Change Leadership Behaviours Framework – Understanding the different leadership behaviours that surround the leadership of change activity. Learning to adopt change leadership behaviours that will enhance the chances of leading change success.
  • RFLC Applied Organisational Cultural Impact Framework – Understanding the impact of the dynamics of different organisational cultures on change activity. Learning to develop change plans to take into account this important driver of change success.

Change Implementation & Change Capability Building

Whilst planning strategic change initiatives is an important preparatory step (what to change), RFLC Applied partners with clients with the complex work of change process implementation (how to carry out the change).

RFLC Applied utilises its own highly effective change process implementation framework – the Change Navigator. 

Using graphical big-picture and cross-system engagement approaches, RFLC Applied helps clients to design and map out change journeys for the strategic initiative. The benefit of this approach is to help a wider community impacted by the change to engage with the key ‘waypoints’ of this change journey.

The ‘waypoints’ cluster into 5 specific journey areas, with each journey area populated with key change determinants, starting with

  • RFLC Applied Reality Check – To help develop a deeper understanding of why the change is required.
  • RFLC Applied Context and Options – To focus on the case for change and the strategic options around implementing the change.
  • RFLC Applied Getting Started – To identify the key action areas that will begin to make the biggest impact in the early days on the change journey. The role and work of change agents.
  • RFLC Applied Mid-Action Review – What’s working well, what’s working less well, make adjustments, capturing the learnings.
  • RFLC Applied Navigating – Adjusting our compass bearing to keep the change journey on course against a dashboard of checks and measures.

The RFLC Applied Change Navigator is often deployed in building organisational change capability across client organisations. This often takes place within a leadership development environment where cross-functional/multi-hierarchy teams are assembled to work on a single or a series of ‘real’ organisation-wide change challenges. This allows teams to learn and work with change within the organisational context.  This work often precedes major enterprise-wide re-structurings.

Leadership Team Development

RFLC Applied has exceptional experience with top team development specialising in creative ways of building shared aspirations, new ways of working, performance improvement & learning environments. Working with powerful frameworks to determine the optimal team type required against the work of operational strategies & to assist teams to think collectively, this helps to define the specific work of the team under their responsibility to enable task focus in critical areas.

Senior leadership teams are often put to the toughest test of all when it comes to leading and implementing change.  How will the dynamics of a team impact on the success of leading change?  Our work here is to help teams to understand two crucial factors:

Firstly, to help the team to gain deeper insight on each other as individual team members and how effectively they are performing currently as a team.  This can be apprised through a combination of assessment diagnostics (e.g. MBTI) and individual interviews (amongst team members and other key stakeholders).  We facilitate this part of the process by feeding back the results via mapping and interpreting the dynamics and behaviours observed.

Second, within a workshop environment for team members to determine & agree both the work required to be undertaken to support the implementation of the change along with the team type necessary to lead successful change. The methodology used here is a four choice team effectiveness framework which provides a clear graphic big picture roadmap for team workstreams and actions along with emphasis on detailed accountabilities and measures for team and change implementation success.

Facilitation & Organisational Engagement

Within both social policy & commercial contexts, RFLC Applied has outstanding experience & credentials in group facilitation & wider organisational activity often to enable deeper, trusting & inquiring conversations, the building of shared understanding around sensitive & difficult change matters & agreement on key actions for change. Experience also in both ‘Open Space’ & ‘Future Search’ large group facilitation & engagement at international levels working across wide ranging geographical cultures.

Leadership Coaching

Leaders today are operating in increasingly demanding working environments driven by unparalleled change & uncertainty. A greater emphasis, therefore, is needed to be placed on leaders at every level to be able to adapt, cope with ambiguity, work skilfully with complexity, build change capacity & capability, motivate, engage & encourage discretionary efforts despite today’s volatile climate. Leadership coaching develops skills to support these challenges.

Highly experienced & highly regarded leadership coaching with multiple past assignments of individual ‘performance improvement’ coaching of senior leaders within the private, public & 3rd sectors at UK domestic and international levels.

Coaching Approach

Our leadership coaching provides a personal mirror & space to enable coachees to reflect & think out loud how their leadership challenges & work behaviours are playing out from which to generate greater levels of self-awareness and learning about their leadership style & the relationships they have with others across the organisation. Shifts tend to occur when assumptions are challenged & questions are uncovered that possibly may not have been explored or asked by coachees.

All coaching conforms fully to the European Mentoring & Coaching Council code of ethics where areas such as contracting, boundary management, & maintenance of confidentiality are core stipulations. All coaching carries professional accreditation from The Institute of Leadership. All leadership coaching is subjected to regular professional supervisory reviews in order to monitor & maintain quality standards.

At the beginning of a coaching assignment, we start with a clarification of the role of coach along with details of the coach’s experience. During this stage, we also get an early understanding of the coachee’s background (for example, key personal milestones, personal vision) along with their expectations of leadership coaching. This initial work helps to build the foundations of confidence & trust between coach and coachee.

Upon agreement of coaching objectives & measures of effectiveness, support is given to explore & analyse the current leadership situation with coachees & to agree the areas of their leadership that require change or adjustment. Key areas of specialism in coaching are:

  • Linking leadership responsibilities to align with corporate & operational strategic objectives
  • Engagement/dialogue skills to aid developing relationships with colleagues and other stakeholders
  • Role and responsibility performance issues
  • Conflict resolution
  • Systems thinking (how parts of a system relate to the whole)
  • Personal impact (power & influence)
  • Organisational change leadership (RFLC Applied researched frameworks)
  • Leadership team effectiveness (agenda focus, climate & development)
  • Talent responsibilities.
  • Role transitioning

The support and guidance with coaching is such that our coaching will not give solutions or quick fixes to coachees’ challenges & leadership behaviours but instead help them to find sustainable solutions & shifts themselves. We believe this approach aids greater understanding and learning about situations along with an understanding of the drivers of their behaviours. This approach also allows coachees to develop their abilities to self-coach & coach others. Experimentation with new behaviours with leadership duties is encouraged along with soliciting feedback on these changes to check for effectiveness, progress & learning. A variety of learning and development frameworks is offered as a resource to help with this.

Each coaching session commences with goal setting for the session and concludes with a review of the work taken place during the session. An assignment is agreed with the coachee (normally a theme that has emerged from the session) for the coachee to work on for review at the next coaching session.