The Transformer’s Voice – Dave Ulrich
Dave Ulrich is interviewed by Martyn Cuff
| Name of Transformer | Dave Ulrich |
| Context of Transformer | Dave is a pioneer in the world of rethinking organizations as capabilities, redefining leadership competences and results for customers and investors, upgrading talent through meaning at work, and delivering HR value creation through improved HR outcomes, departments, practices, analytics, and competencies. |
| Why are transformations important? | Individuals and organizations have to respond to the context in which they live and operate. As this social, technological (digital), economic, political, environmental, and demographic (STEPED) world rapidly changes, so must people and organizations. Call it transformation, adaptation, disruption, renewal, agility, or change … those who respond to the external changes will thrive; those who don’t will wither. |
| How can you make transformations a success? | To keep it really simple, I would ask and answer three questions to facilitate transformation. [1] Why? Why are we doing the transformation? When people understand the “why” they accept the what and how. Why builds a case for change. [2] What? What will the transformation look like? Where do we start? Where are we headed in terms of outcome? What is the gap? [3] How? How will we go about the transformation. For individuals, this is about developing a growth mindset to learn and to grow. For organizations this is about creating discipline to become more agile at strategic, organization, leader, and individual levels. |
| What advice would you give to someone embarking upon a transformation? | In the book Leadership Sustainability, we distilled 7 insights for sustaining personal or organizational change.
1. Simplicity: keep it simple; start small 2. Time: make sure the transformation shows up in calendar as behaviour or policy and specific actions 3. Accountable: be personally and publicly accountable for change 4. Resource: get help from others to be coaches and mentors and embed transformation in policies and practices 5. Track: measure behaviour and outcome results 6. Meliorate: constantly improve, learn from successes and failures 7. Emotion: find passion and purpose in the transformation This stands for STARTME … as transformation starts with “me” |
