Intro

Welcome to episode 26 of the Enterprise Excellence Podcast. It is such a pleasure to have Mr Kosta Kefalakis on the show with us. Kostas has lead excellence journeys in Shingo prize winning organisations. He is passionate about upskilling and helping others grow to create a better future for themselves and others. He shares his personal journey and knowledge with us today on driving sustainable change within organisations with positivity. 

Summary 

Kostas has developed four key elements of training others to achieve positive and sustainable change. 

1.  Understand the organisation and teams first 
2. Tailor the journey to their language and culture 
3. Make it fun and enjoyable 
4. Focus on key behaviours  

Quotes

 04:05min and somebody just said OK, can you make a report in A3? and I said Ok. So, it was literally all text. It was nothing else but text. And I was like OK. My Japanese mentor at the time said 'hmmm, make it more visual' and I was like, 'OK, then no words, just pictures?'. He looks at me and says, 'combined'. That was literally my first experience of an A3.

09:03min but in order to get, consistent I would say, excellence in your enterprise, you need to make it work for you. In other words, make it work with the language and honestly speaking, excite people. You need to make it fun, and exciting and engaging and the least resistance that you're causing, and the more excitement and the more benefits, the more you'll have chances of success.

23:06min and then, if they're not driving the right behaviours, start doing like a basic problem solving analysis to say, 'why aren't we driving these behaviours?' Is it because of our KPI systems, or our meeting structures, or is it because we are firefighting all of the time or our problem solving isn't strong enough?

 32.07min How do we unleash people's superpower? Right? That's the idea. How do we get people to get engaged? How do we create fun? And maybe you walk into a culture that's already fun.

 36:42min Getting leadership buy-in I would say would be one of the highest priorities also. Because we know that a lot of people want the change but tend to not want to change with you as leaders. We have this saying um... we say that people who want to take a shower but don't want to get wet.

 38:32min Exactly the same thing happens with leaders. They want to be heard. They want to have a say. They want to co-create. They don't want to be told in many cases, strong opinionated leaders. But if you co-create with them, it's fantastic - the results. They will defend it with you. They will go the extra mile with you. And then if you have the leadership support, you know, then it's much, much easier whereas if you don't have it, you know?

Links

Kostas’ LinkedIn Profile: linkedin.com/in/kefalakis
Phone: 0041788809012 (Mobile)
Email: [email protected]

Key Takeaways 

1. Take time to truly understand an organisation and its people. Tailor your language and improvement efforts to this understanding.
2. Make change fun and motivating

This was a great episode with Kostas Kefalakis, providing insightful practical knowledge from a person who has been through this journey with organisations many times over. Thanks for an uplifting conversation Kostas.

To learn more about what we do, visit https://enterpriseexcellencegroup.com.au/
Thanks for your time, and thanks for helping to create a better future.