IT IS THEIR RESPONSIBILITY TO BUILD A CHANGE STRATEGY THAT: • CORRECTLY POSITIONS THE EFFORT WITHIN ALL OF THE ORGANISATION’S PRIORITIES • IDENTIFIES THE MOST CATALYTIC LEVERS FOR MOBILISING ACTION TOWARD THE FUTURE STATE • S ETS UP APPROPRIATE PARTICIPATION BY ALL STAKEHOLDERS IN THE EMERGENT DESIGN OF THE FUTURE STATE AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION • C LARIFIES COMPREHENSIVE CHANGE INFRA STRUCTURES AND LEADERSHIP ROLES • CREATES EFFECTIVE ACCELERATION STRATEGIES AND CONDITIONS • SETS A REALISTIC PACE FOR THE CHANGE A comprehensive transformational change strategy has three equally important components: content, people and process. Most leaders attend only to content, as reflected in their primary attention to business strategy. The content of change includes the new business direction and its subsequent structural, systems, product and technological changes. The second required component of transformational change strategy is people. Overcoming resistance and increasing communications and training have long been three important features of the people component. However, these three strategies keep executive attention at the surface, exterior level on peoples’ behaviours, skills and actions. Furthermore, these strategies attempt to influence people to change from the outside in. They don’t go far enough to do what is required in transformational change, which demands that people change their deep interiors – their mindsets and ways of being and relating. Such change must occur from the inside out. When people choose to change from the inside out, their changes are real and lasting, and resistance is minimal. We will discuss the changing of mindset in greater depth shortly. The third component of change strategy is process – how the change will be carried out in a way that the organisation discovers, and accomplishes its business results while meeting its people and cultural requirements. Traditionally, attention to process focuses largely on implementation. Unfortunately, when implementation is brought in as an afterthought, it is invariably fraught with serious people problems created by neglecting the earlier phases of the change process. We will delve into leading the process of transformation later. At this point, however, let us summarise with the key point that executives must create a change strategy that is fit for the people and process requirements of transformation. TRANSFORMING MINDSET The second cornerstone of change leadership – transforming leader and employee mindset – requires executives and consultants to attend more thoroughly to the human dynamics at play. As most leaders need to shift their mindsets to even perceive the complex human and process dynamics of transformation, we believe that transformational efforts should begin with the leaders and directly address their mindsets.
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