How do you bring about change when you have no hierarchical power?
Constructing Excellence in the North East asked me to give a talk on ‘Leadership’ to young professionals in their Generation for Change (G4C) group.
Rather than turn up and talk I identified fifteen questions they could explore and then on the day asked them to vote for the five they were most interested in. We then had an open forum conversation for about twenty minutes on each of the five question. At the end of the evening I offered to coach a small group for one year with a view to producing something that might lead to tangible change for young professionals in the construction industry. That was back in February.
Since then applications to join the Programme have been processed and I am now working with a group of eleven young professionals who will present what they come up with at the G4C Awards ceremony in April 2017.
Of the fifteen questions posed the one that got the most votes by a significant margin was “How do you bring about change when you have no hierarchical power?” Answering that and coming up with something incredibly useful that will help young professionals influence change is now the Group’s goal. To do this they are going to have to research the topic, agree best format for the output (book, app, website, other) source funding, produce it, test it, market it, launch it and maybe even support it somehow and in doing all that my hope is we learn how to bring about change without hierarchical power.
A month or so into the Project they have just released a simple survey as part of the research phase.
It would be great if you took 5 minutes to complete the survey, here is the link https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/9H8DH2M
After forty years in construction this is me putting something back in though I also know I am going to learn loads from these guys and will share more in future blog posts.
If you would like to know about this Programme or their progress in the meantime just drop me a note to dave@dsabuilding.co.uk and I will happily oblige.