lloydmasters, Red Arrows and change management

Thursday's lloydmasters winter networking event was a great success; attended by over 30 clients and friends, there was plenty of wine and plenty of canapes but fortunately no songs. The event focused on organisational agility in change and was headlined by Justin Hughes, a former Red Arrows Team Leader and MD of organisational performance consultancy Mission Excellence. From his three years in the Red Arrows and six years flying the Tornado F3 in combat missions, Justin has plenty of experience in managing change and understands the need for agility to the exploit the oppportunity of change. Using examples drawn from the military, including the United States Air Force and the 'Six-day war' (1967 Arab-Israeli War) Justin explained how organisational agility depends on great leadership, clear communication and being reactive.

Below are just a few key points. If you would like to attend our next networking event and get the whole picture or if you would like to know more about our approach to change, get in touch.

• Good leaders gain authority by giving it away. They delegate the what, where, when (making sure their team understands why) but give ownership of the how. Leadership is a two-way relationship that requires trust and support so if you tell people what you want and not how you want them to achieve it, they will surprise you with the results
• What must be established is clarity in purpose. Does every member of your team understand precisely what you are trying to achieve throught the change? The stated mission of the USAF is to 'fly, fight, and win in air, space, and cyberspace.' You cannot be effective at responding to change unless you have absolute clarity. If you’re going to react to change, you need to understand the bigger picture. Having this clear in everyone’s mind should lead to absolute precision
• Colonel John Boyd, a United States Air Force fighter pilot and military strategist (as consultant to the Pentagon), developed a concept referred to as the OODA loop, the process by which an entity (either an individual or an organisation) reacts to an event: observe, orient, decide, act. According to this idea, the key to victory is to be able to create situations wherein one can make appropriate decisions more quickly than one's opponent – the side that goes round the loop faster will win – they might make mistakes, but they can correct them because of the speed at which they are ‘revolving’. Time is a powerful weapon
• Once people are empowered, they should constantly be assessing their situation in order to best respond to it. 'To be' shows only external success; 'To do' really adds value