Orient for Success

Stop Orienting for Failure

Kathryn Maloney M.A. ABS

Kathryn, an appreciator of contrast and the exquisite beauty found in the spaces between, thrives at the dynamic intersection of system designing and applied behavioral science, driving outcome-focused transformation.

With over 25 years of experience, she catalyses change by weaving visionary systems initiatives into strategic priorities. As a trusted advisor, she empowers leaders and teams to build resilient businesses and create profound impact.

Drawing on deep expertise in leadership, communication, and human systems designing, Kathryn infuses presence, power, and rigor into evolutionary organisational strategies. Her approach transcends managing complexity – it’s about mastering it to unlock adaptive potential and elevate systemic value.

Kathryn guides organisations to navigate challenges with clarity and intent, transforming visions into lasting legacies of co-crafted innovation and dimensional growth.

more about Kathryn

2020-11-17

A change effort oriented to succeed is attuned and attendant to changing mindsets, engaging participation, bridging open inquiry, unlearning, and unblocking. A change effort oriented to failure is gripping to what is easy, comfortable, externally focused, performative, demanded, attached, and avoidant.

Here are a few broad strokes you can sit with to challenge yourselves on your preparedness and positioning on the effort.

How to Fail: How to Succeed
Look outward.: Look inward.
Focus exclusively on technical installs e.g. business results, boxes and lines, which people are in charge of which people.: Focus on adaptive installs e.g. new mental models, mindsets, prioritisation, outcomes, leading, and ways of being.
Focus on "classroom" type skill building hoping its comfort will translate into performance outside the "classroom.": Live leading, communicating, meeting, building, and structuring in evolutionary ways to ground strategy, priorities, and operating in real time.
Ignore recursive habits and narratives that stand in the way of new possibilities.: Interrogate repetitive operating habit, emotional narratives, wishful thinking, and energetic gamesmanship that hold you and the system in a state of inertia.
Dismiss and deny.: Inquire and question.
Don’t commit; act passively or overtly against the change effort.: Expand your capacity to lead human and organizational change by emotionally, mentally, and actively committing.
Pretend change.: Evidently integrate and model, actions not words, change.
Lead a narrative that "change is not possible" at your organisation.: Write potential-leaning narratives in real time to design new pathways about what is possible, expected, valued, and celebrated as a culture norm.
Run the too busy storyline.: Confront your internal assumptions and denials about your organization’s counterforces within its operating model.
Embrace inertia around your organization’s operating model.: Recognise how the inertia (e.g. avoidance and unwillingness) to make tough decisions pours into the lack of results you are so busy trying to achieve.

You’ve got this. x

At Theeo and Theeo Magazine, our writing and open sharing goal is to extend valuable insights and ways that emerge from years of practice and direct application of our systems designing, organisation design, leadership, strategy, and change expertise.

If our work inspires you to incorporate elements into your own writing, practice promotion, or leadership, appropriately credit Theeo Company.
Nicking our writing, languaging, diagramming, and word choices without acknowledging and appreciating your source depletes the integrity and mutual respect as members of the commons.
Consciously citing your sources shows respect for intellectual property, while supporting a culture of gratitude — crucial in an open-source community and beyond.

We hope you feel inspired.

We invite you to share.

We encourage you not to nick.

This is Elevating the Game.

Published on 2020-11-17by Kathryn Maloney M.A. ABS