Historically, organisational leaders defined their role as determining the destination of their change and then delegating the ”driving“ to someone else. That was all well and good when their destinations were clear and the roads were open and well marked. Eventually, when executives began to feel the sting of not being able to get their organisations to reach their predetermined targets, they began to recognise that success required attention to things they previously had not seen, understood or valued as important: the human and process challenges of change. These new insights broadened their view of what was necessary to lead change and gave rise to the field of change management. This is progress in the right direction. However, leaders and consultants have not gone far enough. There are still too many blinkers impairing leaders’ views of how to navigate change. It is time to take the blinkers off and become fully awake at the wheel. Leaders and consultants both need to understand and embrace the next evolution in the field – change leadership. UNDERSTANDING THE REQUIREMENTS OF TRANSFORMATION The first task of change leadership is to understand the terrain of change and how it has evolved. There are three types of change occurring in organisations, each requiring different leadership strategies. Traditional change management supports two of these types, developmental and transitional change. However, it does not suffice for today’s breed of complex change transformation. DEVELOPMENTAL CHANGE Improvement of what is; new state is a prescibed enhancement of the old state. TRANSITIONAL CHANGE OLD TRANSITION STATE STATE NEW STATE Design and implementation of a desired new state that solves an old-state problem; requires management of the transition process to dismantle the old state while putting in place the new state; managed timeable. TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE RE-EMERGENCE SUCCESS PLATEAU WAKE-UP CALLS GROWTH BIRTH CHAOS DEATHMINDSET SHIFTS Market requirements force fundamental change in strategy, operations and worldview; (1) new state is unknown – it emerges from visioning, trial and error discovery, and learnings; (2) new state requires fundamental shift in mindset, organising principles, behaviour, and/or culture, as well as organisational changes, all designed to support new business directions. Critical mass of organisation must operate from new mindset and behaviour for transformation to succeed and new business model or direction to be sustained. © Being First
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