You have probably figured out by now that one of my areas of interest, indeed professional expertise, is change leadership. Perhaps it’s about time I wrote something on that topic. For the next couple of weeks I will be sharing my experiences with leading and facilitating change, using John Kotter’s 8-step model as a vehicle.
This change leadership business is not new. The following quotation from Charles Darwin sticks in my mind
it is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
However, being adaptable or even willing or better still desirous is not usually sufficient. In order to effect a significant change in an organisation a process and a plan isnecessary. This is where the various change models offered by an ever increasing range of gurus comes in. You can take your pick, and most of them have something to offer. However my real life, rather than academic, experience suggests that is the eight steps offered by John Kotter are a very good place to start and to come back to to make sure that you are covering all bases. I will write about one of the steps of each of the next eight days but in the meantime, here they are listed out:
- Establish a sense of urgency.
- Form a powerful guiding coalition.
- Create a compelling vision
- Communicate to the vision
- Empower others to act on the vision
- Plan and create short-term wins.
- Consolidate and integrate improvements.
- Institutionalised new approaches.
Now this reads and feels as if change leadership is a linear process where step six follows step five. I have to say, that is not my experience. Whilst such an apparent linear model helps to understand what needs to be done and the preferred order of doing things the reality is somewhat more pragmatic. Shortly after I finished my Masters in organisational change, in parallel with which I was leading a major organisational change for my then employer, I was asked what was the most important thing I learned on the programme. My response was that effective change leaders do what they can where they can when they can. Sometimes this means joining the dots up later, indeed I have blogged earlier about how easy it is to join the dots up in retrospect, even though there was not an initial plan. Well, by all means start with a plan but do not expect reality to our line with what you have written on your paper, or even put into MS Project!
Always remember that you are much better off working with one advocate then against 10 resistors. Seek out your advocates and help them light fires at various places around the business. Some of those fires will die out, let them. Some of them will flareup, you will make much more progress than you thought possible. Some of them will just glow away slowly waiting for a puff of wind to spark an interaction-make sure you keep your eyes on these and are ready to provide the puff of wind whenever it is necessary.
Tomorrow, I will write about the importance of creating a sense of urgency.
