Discovery and Deciding "Triple-C" - Part 2

One of the most significant challenges business professionals face in today’s economy is complex, continuous change. It is also a difficulty that professionals are least prepared—traditional business education and management techniques emphasize command-and-control. Systems were highly efficient and required strict compliance to operate. It is an approach that breaks down in the global economy. This explanation reveals why Bill Pasmore’s Leading Continuous Change attracts business leaders. To lead better during complex, continuous change, business people are looking for a different set of tools to be more effective. Today, I will dig deeper into Pasmore’s work.

Complex, continuous change, or Triple-c for short, is transforming an organization, its culture, and its people into something more responsive to customers and the business environment. Triple-c must also balance safety and regulatory concerns with profitability. It is not easy, which explains why many businesspeople would rather delay the necessary work than get their hands dirty. It also explains why so many organizations struggle once they reach a certain level.

The Wheel of Triple-c -

The ability to address triple-c is a dynamic process. In Leading Continuous Change, Pasmore draws a circle with numerous lines going back and forth between the elements. It is a rhizome in its behavior. I have a nickname for this illustration: the wheel of Triple-c, and it contains four quadrants of activities to concentrate on. The list of these activities also includes values that each leader must apply when focusing on that quadrant. The sections of the wheel of triple-c are:

• Discovering
• Deciding
• Doing
• Discerning

Today, I will concentrate on the first half of the wheel, and next week I will address the remainder.

Discovering -

The first step in the wheel of Triple-c is discovering. When a leader sees a unit of business struggling with change, they must step back and pause to understand what needs to change. Byung-Chal Han, in his book The Burnout Society, uses a German word to describe this state of stepping back and mindfully looking at what must change: Innehalten, or finding your pause. Instead of reacting to a situation, a leader must step back, pause, and assess it.

Discovering is built around a central value. According to Pasmore, that value is thinking fewer. In other words, you may see plenty of changes that need to happen, but if you attempt to do all of them, you are guaranteed to fail. When thinking about Triple-c, you must focus on a few items you can change rather than all of them. The value of thinking fewer is to focus on the change efforts and make them more manageable for the organization to absorb.

For instance, suppose you work at a candy manufacturing plant. Fluctuations in the price of sugar, flour, and corn syrup make it challenging to maintain a consistent unit cost. If you are thinking fewer, you concentrate on addressing one commodity at a time rather than attempting to fix the raw materials fluctuations all at once.

In summary, discovery is about looking around us, pausing, and taking stock of what must change. Instead of working on everything that must change all at once, a leader thinks more carefully and finds one or two areas where they can make meaningful, lasting change.

Deciding –

The first phase of the Triple-C wheel involves examining the organization and pinpointing specific changes to implement. During this phase, you establish priorities and pledge your commitment to the transformation. Here is where a leader must set clear priorities and take ruthless action. In the case of our fictional candy plant, we understand we face commodity price challenges. Still, in the discovery phase, we limited the major players to sugar, flour, and corn syrup. In the deciding phase, everyone commits to addressing sugar prices.

In the deciding phase, Pasmore tells us to think scarcer. What he is saying is that there is only so much time and money people have in a day, so we must treat them as a scarce resource. In doing so, we create focus and discipline regarding the change.

At our mythical candy factory, focusing on sugar prices may mean looking at different vendors or using a prepaid contract to address price fluctuations. At this point, we want to narrow down options because our time and money are limited. In short, deciding is about setting priorities for accomplishing change, because our time, money, and energy are limited.

The wheel of Triple-c is a helpful template for leading change in an organization. Next time, we will discuss the last two quadrants: doing and discerning.

Until next time.