This is the working title for our upcoming book on driving positive change:
Forging Positive Chains: Navigating the Path of Positive Business Transformation
Just a few quick notes on the underlying conditions for the book:
Negative Chains
- Command and control structure
- Management instills fear
- Emphasis on productivity
- Maximize continuity
- Driven by consistency
- Fear and anxiety
- Complicated conditions
- Competition between the silos
- Hubris
- Fixed planning
- Predictability
- Shackles and handcuffs
- Obedience
- Involuntarily
- Restrained
- Blinded
- Muzzled
- Disengagement
- Causes of failure
- Eliminating problems
- Doing things right
- Division of labor
- High productivity
- Top-down oversight
- Risk-averse
- Forcing rules and regulations
Positive Chains™
- Whole system design
- Leadership inspires hope
- Emphasis on participation
- Maximize creativity
- Driven by novelty
- Excitement and joy
- Complex conditions
- Collaboration across the silos
- Humbleness
- Possible scenarios
- Change-ready
- Connected
- Participation
- Eagerness
- Strong desire
- Diversity of thought
- Speak out freely
- Highly engaged
- Causes of success
- Exploring possibilities
- Doing the right things
- Fusion of strengths
- High-performance
- Self-organizing
- Open to experimentation
- Forging relationships
Doing Left versus Doing Right
Similar to negative chains, ‘doing left’ is the opposite of doing right. Just consider these expressions:
- Too many things were left unchecked.
- Despite the data, the process was left unchanged.
- We should have dealt with it; It was left untouched for too long.
- Sorry, those were some of the things left to do.
- This was left in the balance as we could not agree on how to proceed.
Doing things left is ignoring what should be done, facing up to reality, and forsaking the opportunity to do the right things.
Negative versus Positive VUCA
VUCA is an acronym introduced by the U. S. Army War College in the early 1990s to describe the world we entered when the Cold War ended, which was volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. The term is now used to describe the contemporary context in which we live and work.
Bob Johansen, distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future and author of Leaders Make the Future: Ten New Leadership Skills for an Uncertain World, proposes embracing a VUCA of vision, understanding, clarity, and agility—the opposite of the VUCA model. These four skills and abilities are a leader’s antidote to a VUCA environment.
Again, like the negative and positive chains, we can come prepared and see things positively, with hope, joy, excitement, and fun. And yes, we know Positive Chains™ is pronounced as Positive Change.
Credits to Mike Capprotti for his fantasy image, Forging the Chains.