Maybe an executive departed and left you with no sponsor. Maybe there are open roles and you’ve been told to wait until those leaders join (and rewrite the brief). Maybe there was a layoff or restructure that drastically reduced your manpower. Maybe another initiative, something shinier, just stole the organization’s attention (hello, AI). Or just maybe there’s a murky conflict
Organizations feel intense pressure to move faster; after all, speed is often not just a competitive advantage, but can be the deciding factor of market dominance. The need for speed is real and often essential. But in your attempt to speed up, beware confusing “speed” for other things:
Every large-scale transformation is born from a leader and a hunch: that things can be better, and that better is possible. Conversations ensue with other leaders, and a wave of ambition begins to crest internally. The question then becomes: where to start?
Pain can be a compass. Leaders often rush to where the dysfunction or dissatisfaction is most acute: a
Are you in the early stages of an organizational transformation, and as a leader you’re:
Change today requires more persuasion and negotiation than ever before, increasing the focus on leaders’ style and approach. And the leaders we work with are—unsurprisingly—quite adept at modifying how they lead, accommodating others’ needs to get them on board with new initiatives. But they often share a private worry: the more they adapt for others, the more they sacrifice and
When starting any change initiative, we sit down with clients and create “From-To” statements: simple descriptions of where the organization is now, and what it should look like in the future. It’s a useful tool to determine what needs to change and whether teams are moving in the right direction. The catch is that between the “From” and “To,” you
Your organization is finally making much needed changes, but you’re still seeing a few hold-outs. It doesn’t feel like people are resisting change so much as ignoring it: they’re not turning up for critical meetings, or they’ll agree to do something, only for it to end up at the very bottom of their to-do list. But when you confront them,
The best leaders believe in their people: that they’re capable and motivated to make change. So it can come as a surprise when they encounter individuals who believe the opposite: not that they don’t have the skills to work differently, but that they can’t. These individuals believe they’re not good at change, or that they’re too old to try something
Fatalism is an entirely reasonable response to any change initiative: one person can’t make a huge difference in a large organization, so it should come as no surprise when an individual ignores or is indifferent to change.
If you don’t believe change is possible—that you have little control over things—then you can’t be blamed when nothing changes.
This attitude might
Leaders of change are often frustrated by their teams’ seeming inaction: you’ve already explained why change is so important and exhorted them to start doing things differently. So why aren’t they doing it?
If there’s no clear owner or authority to appeal to, it might feel like no one has the rights to make changes, and it’s just “how things