Effective Change Leadership: What Does It Require?

This book is about the effective leadership of complex, continuous change. We need to know what to do when we can’t slow things down to a manageable pace or pretend that one change does not affect another. Throughout this book are examples of companies that have faced enormous complex change challenges and succeeded and others that did not fare so well. The lessons of these examples form the foundation of the model presented in chapter 2, which shapes the structure of the remainder of the book.

If you are looking for a simple, one-sentence piece of advice from all that follows, it is Step away from the buffet. Our overwhelming need to respond to the threats and opportunities we face often forces us into immediate action that is not well conceived. We try to do too much at once without a coherent plan. We put so much on our plate that we cannot manage it all. We don’t think about how multiple changes work against one another. We trust our intuition to guide our actions instead of stepping back to develop a better-informed plan of attack. We should not confuse activity with progress. Instead we should get on top of things, decide what’s really important, and do those things well. If we want to succeed at complex, continuous change, we must use a rigorous approach. Although it is tempting and sometimes rewarding in the short run to jump into immediate action, that is not what successful leaders of complex, continuous change do. They use tools and methods that help them discover what’s important, assess the current situation, undertake change more effectively, and learn from their experiences.

“Stepping away from the buffet” is not as easy as it might sound, but it is certainly doable. The more rigorous thinking you do, the more you will change the way you approach challenges and opportunities. As you will see, thinking more rigorously will require the adoption of specific tools, mindsets, and even structures that enable you to achieve repeatable success in leading complex, continuous change. If the changes you are facing are simple or occur one at a time, you probably don’t need to read further. For better or worse, most of us need to improve how our organizations (and even we at a personal level) lead through complex, continuous change.

Leading complex, continuous change does not have to be like riding a roller coaster. You don’t need to fear the sudden drop or wonder if you will survive. There will be twists and turns, to be certain. If you are a successful triple-C leader, you know this and plan for the unexpected to be a part of your day. You don’t lead as if change is a single, onetime event, occurring in isolation from everything around it. Nor do you simply take the plunge and jump into change without really thinking about it.

As a successful change leader, you pause to discover what is really going on before you leap to the next change opportunity and then the next. You prepare for the work that is necessary to manage change as a complex, interpenetrating series of change processes. You pause to decide which of the many opportunities are the most important to do well. You make tough choices among attractive options because you know that trying to do everything is a recipe for failure. You pause to plan how you will go about change and who needs to be engaged for it to be done well and quickly. You push the envelope instead of playing it safe because you know that multiple changes are required, but you don’t expect your approach to work as planned. Instead you monitor its progress and pay attention to the internal and external signals that tell you how things are going. You deal with the lack of readiness for change through deeper engagement and the creation of greater change capacity. You draw in key stakeholders whose support you need. Finally, you pause to reflect on what you have learned and put in place stronger processes and structures to help you do all of these things better in the future. You pause to see things in perspective, bringing people together frequently to make certain they are aligned. You don’t divert your attention until you have either accomplished your objectives or reset your goals to address more-urgent needs. You pause to celebrate success but work even harder at capturing what you have learned because change won’t stop and it won’t get easier.

After a time you find that your organization’s capacity to manage change has increased. You leverage the competitive advantage this provides to make it harder for others to catch up or, if you are a nonprofit, to intensify the impact of your work. You win and live to ride the Comet another day.