Last month, we touched on the book Reinventing Organizations to help us think about the challenge of knowing how to do the right thing in a challenging situation. Initially, I thought a deep dive into the book would be handy. However, in reflecting on the premise, which holds a lot of merit, I realized that it’s not the reinventing of organizations that’s powerful; it’s the journey that the people experience that drives change.
All too often, leaders grab an idea or a framework, concept, or thesis and want to foist it upon the organization or the team. This can often feel like a flavor-of-the-month approach to change management. But change for change’s sake leaves people feeling beleaguered, confused, or frustrated.
Here is a simple truth: what creates transformation is meaningful action.
Recently, one of our strategy clients completed their 10-year vision. Unlike many strategic plans, this one didn’t languish on the shelf. The board and staff worked collaboratively (a hallmark of organizations that reinvent themselves) to craft a vivid description of what they wanted the organization to become. They leaned into the hard and often challenging work of values clarification, stripping the mission down to its essence, setting a big-hairy-audacious goal, and painting a picture of what they might be like 10 years into the future.
Through the process, there were bumps in the road, blind corners, and a few wrong turns. But the group was committed to crafting something meaningful and important to guide them into the future. Their esprit de corps deepened trust, created clarity, and inspired everyone to invest in planning for a brighter future not because the future was bleak, but because they believed in the importance of their mission and impact.
I distinctly remember one of the board members (a seasoned leader in their own right, having led several companies and teams) saying, “I never really considered the important role that values play in strategy formation.” It was a lightbulb moment for me, validating what I was seeing over and over again: culture is key to organizational health. And culture is born out of values because they not only define what we believe but how we behave.
With their plan ratified, these folks took the extra step of creating a poster of their envisioned future to guide daily operations. The leadership consistently referred to this plan, building the team’s capacity and comfort in navigating change. In 2020, the group pivoted by finding creative ways to serve their clients in ways that were true to their mission and by providing soulful programs that helped people navigate the uncertainty of the pandemic. They thrived through the tumult not because they’d been through a change management program or read a book and adopted a philosophy, but because they’d done the foundational work of creating clarity and then invited and encouraged everyone on the team (board and staff) to contribute to their success.
As leaders, it’s helpful to recognize that change is ever-present. It’s not an episode. Though our work with these folks ended once the plan was approved , I’ve been watching from afar and have identified a few practices this organization seems to have adopted that could be helpful for others to emulate:
- Get comfortable challenging assumptions and make room to question long-held beliefs through critical thinking.
- Rediscover forgotten knowledge. Sometimes, it’s easy to forget what we do really well. That’s often a great place to double down.
- Embrace distributed intelligence allowing for greater flexibility and collaboration. This is possible even within a more traditional hierarchical structure when the group is committed to moving into the future rather than maintaining the status quo.
- Overcome disillusionment by nurturing a team culture that is as focused on well-being as it is on results.
- Engage in future-oriented thinking.
To paraphrase one of my favorite OG futurists, Buckminster Fuller: You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new thing that makes the existing thing obsolete.
