(Linkages between social and organisational change cont. 5)
Summary
Encourage more leadership from more people
(aim is to calm anxiety, fear, etc while increasing agility, flexibility, creativity, innovation, etc)
| Identify barriers to more leadership (for the organisation and yourself identify positive and negative triggers; assess your current level of activation; consider the organisation's current state) |
| Mindsets (activate opportunity and mitigate status quo) (find personal purpose, meaning, etc in opportunity; recognise when your personal triggers are happening and find ways to stop the negative cycle) |
| Mindsets (activate opportunity and modulate status quo) (drastically increase the communication and emphasis on opportunities; go where the energy is and unleash the power of engaged, passionate staff - from everyone in the organisation) |
| Reduce status quo's background noise (cut out messages, processes and systems that inadvertently trigger status quo thinking and take away from the opportunity mindset; allow anybody to say 'no'; stop non-value-adding activities) |
| Fuel the opportunity mindset and celebrate progress (acknowledge and celebrate all wins along the way; continue to foster positive emotions created by the opportunity mindset) (main source: John Kotter et al, 2021) |
NB
"...the keys are to maintain an unwavering focus on opportunity, engage as many others as possible to help with the change tasks, give them permission and air cover to take action, keep the noise level down, and celebrate successes along the way..."
John Kotter et al, 2021
In the current turbulent, uncertain, volatile, etc times and for the future, there is much pressure to stay with the status quo, ie what we know, and not be adventurous with opportunities. Yet to effectively meet the future we need to challenge the status quo and become more adventurous with opportunities.
Furthermore, the type of organisation to handle the future will need to be different from the traditional modern organisation (hierarchical, command and control, bureaucratic, reliable, safe, etc); it will need to have the entrepreneurial spirit of speed, agility, curiosity, imagination, be less risk averse, etc. A networked structure could be the answer as part of a dual operating system, ie adaptive culture.
With increasing use of teams, integration and collaboration, more and more people are taking 'informal' leadership roles, ie outside the hierarchy.
Additionally, with the increased specialisation of work skills, it's becoming harder for management to be across all fields of expertise and to have enough information and/or skills to make the best decisions. Thus the need for more people to be involved in decision-making.
There is a trend developing:
"...Operationally this means more people actively looking for meaningful changes in the marketplace, relevant technologies, the financial situation, labour markets, and more; more people helping to create a broad sense of urgency to deal with threats and opportunities; more work with others in coalitions to guide change; more helping to clarify direction and develop strategic initiatives, big and small, for moving in selected directions; more helping with the vast communication challenge in a rapidly shifting, volatile world; more stepping forward to volunteer to go beyond their jobs in a narrow sense and removing barriers so others can too; more new and better results from these efforts in a shorter period of time to create credibility and momentum; more people helping to overcome forces that lean toward declaring victory too soon; and more seeing a need for, and the methods our emerging theory of change give us, to sustain new ways of operating once achieved..."
John Kotter et al, 2021
The imperative is to engage both the head (rational) and the heart (emotional) plus operate not just through formal hierarchy and management but through more informal networks.
An increasingly important role for senior management is creating an environment which encourages leadership from anywhere, ie flattening of the hierarchy. This style of leadership has an increased focus on inclusion, diversity of thought, equity, curiosity and flexibility, and less on confidence, infallibility and imposing charisma. This has been sometimes called disbursed leadership.
The use of technology has enabled people to more actively participate.