Large scale organizational change can be seen as a series of ascents to plateaus. The trail climbs, winds, and at times is lost and has to be retraced. People in an organization move through change at different speeds. The best leaders stay agile, thoughtfully trying things until an approach works well, and adjusting how they communicate based on who they are coaching.
It can be tempting to charge up the slopes at the pace of the fastest climber. But it can happen that a group of people are a couple of plateaus behind, building encampments and brooding on ways to block the people behind them from getting any further. We tolerate and support people being on different plateaus, while at the same time working to get everyone within one plateau of the majority. It takes resources to serve people at each level of change.
Related Article: Inviting Change with Hoshin Planning: Five Predicatable Areas of Friction
As we advance change, and apply metrics that may not have been employed before in the organization, things can look worse before they look better. And as leaders deploy a strategy across an enterprise, the degree of change required may be new to the organization. There are ways I can help you get through the challenges that attend large-scale change.
- Situation Reports: Conducting short cycles of interviews, surveys, and focus groups to get a sense of how the organization is responding to a strategic initiative.
- Leadership Communication: Drafting images and narrative to express the consensus the leadership team has arrived at regarding the vision and priorities for the organization.
- Organizational Design: Advising on the design and management of the teams that are implementing the strategy.
- Decision Support: Facilitating leaders in the use of the tools and processes for making decisions and managing the change associated with implementing strategies.
- Coaching Project Leaders: 1:1 coaching of project leaders in the particular capabilities necessary to implement a strategy, such as: defining measures of success, delegating, building out plans with more detail, forming teams, and reviewing results on a regular basis.