Change or Chance? (part 8) Generate Short Term Wins

So Far

You’ve created a sense of urgency.

You’ve built a guiding coalition (GC). 

You’ve formed a strategic vision (SV)

You’ve evolved a hybrid organisational structure with your hierarchy now running alongside a creative network (CN).  

You’ve recruited your enthusiastic and creative Volunteer Army (VA).

You’ve enabled action by removing barriers.

Your CN/VA has organically structured itself for agile innovation and has produced iterations of solutions to the shared vision and the change process is underway. 

You’re communicating for buy-in around the organisation and with stakeholders, using all effective channels, and you’re now ensuring that you’re carefully managing your people’s Survive and Thrive.  

So, they’re focussed, rapid problem solving, with collaboration, curiosity, and innovation.

Keeping Acceleration & Momentum Over Time

But your change project takes time, as it’s critical that it’s sustainable.

Therefore, whilst there must a sense of urgency, it may take months, and in some cases years, for it to become part of your organisational DNA.

The analogy is a full Airbus 380 accelerating down the runway on its way to a new destination.  You can’t lose that acceleration (otherwise the aircraft will never fly) and once it’s airborne, you need to keep the energy in the system otherwise you will never get there..(!)

How do you do that?

Generate Short Term Wins

Part of the answer is to generate (and plan) short term wins.  

Intuitively this makes sense.  

Example: The World Cup final wouldn’t be the huge event it is without the energy and excitement of the preliminary rounds.  

But it goes deeper than that.  

The recognition and celebration of “wins” (no matter how seemingly small) associated with the change process actives Thrive in people. 

It communicates a genuine sense of action, engages the diverse many, and significantly adds to the continuing momentum of the process and generates more wins.

Organisations have created natty titles that award those who have generated the best ideas, wins, or change outcomes of the week (yes week).  

This isn’t about trite symbolism.  

It’s about genuinely celebrating actual wins that the organisation and its people are clocking up along the way to final implementation and institution of the change.  

Acceleration and momentum (starting with creating a sense of urgency) means that these wins need to be celebrated throughout (and even beyond) the current change program.  

Why beyond?

The Age of Acceleration 

We’ve discussed the increased levels of change hitting organisations in this “the age of acceleration”.  

AI’s just rolling out.  

There’re big (very big) changes ahead.  

If you’ve developed the hybrid org structure (see part 4), then you’re now structured to take huge opportunity from continuous change.

And that means celebrating more wins…

In part 9 we’ll look at “sustaining acceleration”.

#change #transformation #leadership