We are delighted to share our new "deeper dive" paper! This is called the Essentials of Leading Change which you can read here. As with any of our resources, you are very welcome to share this with other people. It has also been broken down into three shorter Ripple Papers called the Essentials of Strategy, Essentials of Structure and Essentials of Organisational Culture.
What’s the context? Day to day, we face challenges and opportunities to bring about change. Sometimes these are big with important implications; other times small with minor consequences. Like the metamorphosis of a caterpillar to a butterfly, sometimes change is transformational. Whatever the case, we deal with it as best we can, ideally strengthening our resilience as we move through life.
Who is our audience? If you are an experienced leader, then we hope that you will find some new learning. If you are relatively new to the world of leadership and change, we hope you will find it a useful resource. If you are considering working with us, or about to start, then it will give you some insights about our approach.
How to make best use of it? Practical insights and guidance are given. These are based on lessons we’ve learnt plus perspectives from many relevant sources. Following a summary, chapter 2 explains our 12 core principles for leading change. We believe structure, strategy and organisational culture are the priorities in any change process and we describe 12 essential components of each of these topics in chapters 3, 4 and 5. These chapters can be read on their own. However, in each case we also recommend reading chapter 2 for the core principles.
Strengthening resilience: perhaps the most significant thing we have observed about leading change is the importance of individuals, teams and organisations taking steps to strengthen resilience. This is an ongoing activity, both in advance of changes, during the transitions involved and afterwards – especially taking care to look after health and wellbeing when things are tough.
Leading by example: we would also wish to highlight that whoever is responsible for leading change (whether an individual or several people), leads by example in a consistent way – e.g., modelling behaviours agreed by all. This will encourage colleagues across the organisation.
Process. It will not surprise anyone that knows about our work that we also emphasise about ‘the process being as important as the result.’ We give illustrations of this in the paper.
We hope that this deeper dive provides some useful insights about leading change, including understanding that change itself is a process, and reminding ourselves that things tend to dip before they improve.
If you, your team or your organisation would like further support and/or facilitation to lead change more effectively, read our flyer here to learn more about what we can offer you, or get in touch with us here.
Change maker of the month
Quote: ‘Change can’t be put on people. The best way to instil change is to do it together. Create it together.’ Lisa Bodell
Best wishes
Ian, Lorna, Kemal and Rosie