While we could talk about the usual ole ways to manage and mitigate risk, at earth2mars we have a different take on risk management. Before clients begin working with us many of their internal organisational habits place a large portion of the focus on risk and end up either stifling the innovation or stalling their project.

Imagine you’re driving in a car trying to get from point A to B. Now, if you are telling yourself “I’m going to crash into that pole” over and over; your psychology and physiology would unconsciously steer you towards the pole.

Focus on the worst, 9 out of 10 times, it will manifest. We’re not telling you not to think of risk instead there are better ways to reframe or look at risk through a different set of lenses. The autonomous self-driving Tesla would be focused on the stretch of road ahead, on the destination, not every pole it passes. SpaceX is focused on taking off and landing back on the launch pad successfully.

Reframing

How do we go about reframing the ideas around risk? When working with clients we’ve seen them both succeed and fail. The clients who get this right, ask 2 questions:

1. What do we want?

2. How do we get there?

When we ask “How can I get to point B safely?” when driving, you will be focused on things like the speed limit and the distance of the car in front of you.

You have created a plan that is designed around what you want. Whereas organisations that focus on risk are working on a plan that is designed to avoid something, we see this occur the most when there is a technological transformation, and with A.I. increased the use of robotics and plans to become an interplanetary species we see these rapid changes are set to increase.

The organisations winning at this are focused on success and designing solutions towards achieving success. That doesn’t mean that they ignore risks; rather the plan is open to things going wrong and has measures in place to be agile and adaptive.

Managing Risk into Success

For meaningful and sustainable change to be implemented, we work with the 3 following things:

1. What are our measures of success?

What normally happens when a change manager comes in they focus on deliverables as we communicate to people, everyone is upskilled, they don’t make the link to behavioural change then to operating measures, like customer satisfaction surveys or reducing overtime and ultimately there is no ‘why’ for the business. It is important to define quantifiable metrics from the word “go” with clients.

2. Design how to measure the metrics of success.

It’s the difference between making the car look good vs creating are car that runs efficiently with a better experience. Metrics of success measured before, during, and after the implementation of change showing the value and linking it to money.

It is important to have these “change pulses” measured on a regular basis (e.g. once a week) as not only do these updates provide you with feedback on the change transition; it builds trust amongst the people with the technology and you.

3. Have a support structure in place.

There is an abundance of tools that are instant, live, and leverage off instant messaging and mobile. Communication via tools like Slack or in-built messaging in applications like Salesforce gives you access to information on what is happening at that transition point. This allows you to check not only on issues that arise but also how the people are feeling about the change.

We’ve seen the increase of social tools in applications will also help build a sense of community within the organisation such as Yammer or Microsoft Teams. The conversations about the change are available to everyone and they can leverage off each other’s knowledge.

The best change managers focus on what can go right and design the plan around success and the destination, this reflects back to our companies name ‘earth2mars’.

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Change the Modern Martian Way