So, you’ve identified a change opportunity.
You’ve created a sense of urgency.
You’ve built a guiding coalition (GC).
You’ve formed a strategic vision.
You now have a hybrid organisational structure so that you can seize opportunity from constant change, with a reliable hierarchy operating alongside (and closely linked to) an innovative creative network (CN).
Q: Who populates the CN?
A: The Volunteer Army (VA).
Change your norm from “select few” (the usual minority who “do stuff”) to “select few AND diverse many”, as a fundamental principle of leading effective and sustainable change.
Think about it.
Look around your organisation.
Leadership isn’t a matter of position or appointment. It’s everywhere around you.
There’re leaders throughout your organisation who aren’t yet recognised.
But they’re there and you can (and should) tap into their huge pool of innovation and problem-solving potential.
Your CN will be populated by these extraordinary people.
They’re the ones who’re customer facing, they’re the ones who work in the warehouse, they’re the ones who make logistics work, they’re the ones who.. well, they’re everywhere, and collectively they can bring faster, smarter, more sustainable solutions and innovations to your organisation.
The key word is “diverse”. The CN should be genuine diagonal slice of the organisation.
Instead of taking a lot of time to get new ideas from a small group of people, start to take a small amount of time from members of a large group of your people and exponentially increase the number and quality of inventive solutions and opportunities that are generated for the direct benefit of your organisation.
Allied to the GC, the VA/CN will organically form into a problem-solving, innovating network structure that is empowered to deliver the Big Opportunity and more.
The balance between the Thrive and Survive hard wiring in each of us needs to be maintained.
So, the narrative isn’t “threat” – eg “if we don’t do this, we’ll be out of business in six months” which overheats Survive, creating potentially insurmountable obstacles to change.
Instead, form “The Big Opportunity Statement” – the one you develop to create a positive vision of the future.
That triggers Thrive in your people to, critically, balance Thrive and Survive.
Your GC and VA army will bring an entrepreneurial dimension to your organisation that will not only stimulate agility and capability to succeed with change initiatives, but also handle the increasing acceleration of external change that is coming at you.
Unleashing the innovative power of the VA will be truly transformative in pivoting your change initiatives from being “chance” events to being opportunities for repeatable and extraordinary success.
Next we look at enabling your CN/VA to do its work.
#change #transformation #leadership
