E48: Embracing the Change with Rich Batchelor of Toronto Change Days

Richard Batchelor the Founder of Toronto Change Days and President of Capillary Consulting has been delivering successful change for over 25 years. Always an early adopter, change thinker and someone who relishes the challenge of embracing the new, he is a strong believer in following the mantra of his university - their motto is "Do Different" and that's what he's been doing ever since.

Episode Overview:

 

Richard is a very highly respected international change management professional with extensive experience delivering successful outcomes to engagements in business transformation, enterprise technology solutions and organizational restructures (including M&A) supported by extensive positive achievement in strategic human resources, executive leadership coaching, organizational development and operational excellence delivery. He has a global presence, working with businesses across Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas to develop, plan, implement and sustain the changes needed to grow and prosper.

In 2018 Rich founded Toronto Change Days conference, an experience very different to any other conference that may happen in north america. With performance art, yoga, mindfulness, trust games and more funky workshops making up a weekend experience of learning through immersive experience, change makers, agents, innovators and more will be welcome to a learning journey of brain expanding proportions this November 16, 2018.

 

CanInnovate listeners can get $75 off by using CP75 when you register for the conference. Click here to get your tickets.   About Toronto Change Days Conference:

 

Rich had been working on Toronto Change Days for over 25 years and he has seen a lot of things and ideas that goes around and tell people what change actually means to them and how they are going to take things forward. - one of the things that inspired him was Berlin Change Days.

If it wasn’t for change, we never create to invent anything He has been looking at how he can be innovative in that learning space for people to understand change. The main idea of Toronto Change Days Conference coming this year is for Rich to get the idea on how we can looking at how we can get people to have a truly experienced learning and activity over the weekend. The conference is not about corporate entity and not about depth of a PowerPoint or experiences. He want people to have an experience where they can took often is not about asking that question “why am I here?” but instead it is a conference that would make them  say “Oh My God, I’m glad to be here”

 

The conference will be about people learning from each other either about: Going to that experience or having lots of different things They have people with analogies, stories, experiences and techniques that the audience may not know before. They could have people spread out to the floor doing yoga poses as they learn about the agility of their body as a direct link to the agility of organization. People will learn the art of leadership because it is not about action but rather a mindset of learning how you approach things You will learn about trust. You are going to be doing trust exercises and learn how to trust boundaries and understand how sometimes, boundaries are correct and sometimes not correct. And so much more!

 

This would be the perfect place for you to try and experiment a new types of activities to help you get unstuck or get you out of your curiosity. 

 

This year’s theme is about Agility, Boundaries and Curiosity which also means:

Agility - we are talking about flexibility, nimbleness and almost that agile mindset and getting people to explore these areas. Boundaries - we will talk to people how to understand boundaries; “should we have boundaries or should we not have boundaries?”. Boundaries are there for a reason and sometimes we have to respect those boundaries. Curiosity - we love the fact that curiosity brings so many new things to the world yet it is something that gets driven out of us.

 

Rich shares why curiosity is very important to be brought back to us on our workplace and and age and how it can improve the way we think, the way we work and the way we express ourselves innovatively.

 

Rich explains why as adults; because of compliance, we are forces to hold back the way we think innovatively which brings us down to two sections.

Fear Factor

We have mindset that people afraid of failure and the only way of being confident of not failing is to keep doing the same-old same-old Failure is good and failure is not a problem because if you fail a couple of times, you come up with the best answers.

Metrics

People are focused on short-term steps. They are focused on getting the money back into the business as fast as possible today without knowing what the potential is when going forward.

 

What makes this a Canadian Innovation or Innovative thinking?

Capillary delivers consulting, learning and coaching services focused on individual, organizational and societal change. They are far from traditional in their approach and together with their sister company, Curiosity Culture they use innovative approaches including Lego, Music, performance art, storytelling and coloring in, to explore the impact and navigation of change as it approaches.

Rich explains the deeper meaning of change and provided us with tips and lessons learned based on his experiences.

  Tips: The way people can really look at their curiosity is to focus on questions not answers. Stop looking at things and try to find solutions all the time. Don’t just jump on the answer but question that question. Don’t beat yourself up when things fail or you don’t know the answers to the questions. It is more important to have a dynamic important questions to enable curiosity to move forward When you have a deeper curiosity, you are able to challenge yourself in any situation. Don’t be afraid to fail. If you don’t know, it’s okay. Questions keep your brain exercised not the answers. Take a risk and go forward to develop things and the ideas Lessons Learn: Remember to reflect on every change Organizations don’t change; People change. Stop focusing on the organization. Stop trying to drive change in the organization. When people embrace the change, the organization  through with no problem. When you are trying to jump in the organization to change, the people will push back at you. Do it with them not to them.

 

Resources Mentioned:

 

Productivity Tool:

Trello

Book Recommendation:

Directing The Agile Organization by Evan Label

Personal Habit:

Mindfulness and meditation Reflecting on his own personal target Become a little bit more realistic Drink coffee :-)

Hot spot Recommendation:

Port Perry in Scugog, Ontario The Jester’s Court

 

About Company:

Capillary Consulting offers a broad range of consultation services delivering effective, influential and sustainable change through a new kind of collaborative consultation that puts the client at the centre of the engagement and optimizes organizational functioning.

Our collaborative approach values ‘partnering to discover solutions’ over ‘one-size-fits-all methodologies’.  We take clients on a journey of self-discovery and, through developing a thorough understanding of their organisation and situation, apply the right elements of proven successful change models to capitalize on opportunities and find innovative possibilities even in difficult situations.

Our approach is a tailor made engagement for each and every client, through which we are able to reflect on what has happened, learn from what’s currently happening, to flourish into the future.

 

Connect with Rich:

Twitter:

@TOChangeDays @CapillaryTweets

LinkedIn: Rich Batchelor

Website:

Capillary Consulting Toronto Change Days

 

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