The Hardest Change Of All

Today’s guest poster is Martin Fenwick, Director of Altris Ltd and principle of theCHANGEfactor. His book, The Change Factor, is available right here and is an easy read for those leading through change.

Anyone who is familiar with John Kotters’ definition of leadership will know leaders make changes – whereas managers maintain stability. The struggle to do both is the daily balancing act of any senior executive.

But, the bigger challenge is the defining of change in the first place.

Many leaders are employed primarily to make change happen. Words like ‘improve’, ‘efficiencies’, ‘growth’ and ‘competitiveness’ litter the job descriptions of C-suite roles. Many are tested for their vision and those known to have this skill are often paid more on the REM circuit.

They’re expected to march in, ‘rally the troops’, point them towards the ‘brave new world’ and take them there. Moses, Caeser and Alexander the Great all rolled in to one.

Yet we all know that change fails when the employees:

Don’t embrace the vision
Don’t share the direction
Don’t ‘buy-in’ to our new plans.

So…

We talk about change resistance, how to engage with the vision, generate buy-in and teach leaders to go out there and do it. And when we say, “go out there and do it,” what we really mean is, “do it to them,” with “them” meaning ‘the staff’.

Persuade, convince, cajole and ultimately ‘help people off the bus’ if they don’t want to be on it. Everyone knows what’s coming, so if you want security you’d better look like this is the bus for you. After all, we’ve also learned that if you hang around long enough, the bus will change.

C-suites come and go – and the next one will want a blue bus anyway (as opposed to the green one we are jumping on now).

We employ for a vision, reward for a vision and then push that vision out there…and that’s the skill of leadership.

But is it really?

Imagine a leader who had no vision for the business. Would you employ them? No.

So, what about a leader who had no personal vision for the business, but believed the people in it did. Would you employ them? “Maybe,” I’m sure you would say. But something is still missing.

What about the leader who believed the organisation could be smarter, faster, more creative and agile – and that the people within in knew how to unlock such potential if he worked with them?

A leader whose tools were not visioning, but engagement?

A leader who stayed open to approaches that were not his – and whose only vision was one which everyone shared in?

A leader who listened not in judgement, but in interest?

The hardest change of all is where we let go of the certainty of our own vision and instead, engage with others to create a vision that is more sophisticated…because it is owned by many.

Today’s guest poster is Martin Fenwick, Director of Altris Ltd and principle of theCHANGEfactor. His book, The Change Factor, is available right here and is an easy read for those leading through change.