Implementing Strategy

"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things."

-Machiavelli

Through our experience we have learned the following lessons. For change to succeed, it is insufficient for there to be two hundred committed consultants on the programme. (In fact, it doesn’t matter how many they are or how committed they are.) There must be a critical mass of change resources inside the organisation. These individuals need to have the change management skills, the positional authority (power), the charisma, and the leadership ability to drive the change. (No matter how good the consultants are, they can’t “do change” to an organisation – they have to do it with.) The change programme above was operating with about 1% of what was required.

We can’t implement change for you, but our ‘Must Win Battle’ process creates internal teams accountable for the change, and then delivers to them the skills and capability to do so.

Our approach to change implementation has the following elements:

1. "Mind the gap“. When organisational strategy and vision come from ‘on-high’, it takes considerable work to operationalise them. Getting this cascade process right so that the gap between the vision and operational reality is closed is essential.
2. "Engage!“. John Kotter (Harvard) said that most visions are under-communicated by a factor of 1000. Successful implementation requires emotional engagement with the vision, and a very personal relationship with “what this means for me”.
3. "Managing the change is everyone’s job“. If the change is not important enough to involve everyone, then we recommend not doing it. If it is, then everyone will need the skills. We typically run an organisation-wide development programme that quickly brings hundreds of ‘change mangers’ up to speed. They learn change tools, facilitation and coaching skills, and some change models. Then they get into action.
4. "Know how, not know about“. Classrooms do not, by themselves, achieve much. What people learn has to be instantly applied, revised and implemented back where it counts: on the job. They need support to do this, which comes in the form of action-learning sets and individual coaching.
5. "Feet to the fire“. Every programme team must be accountable for delivering a ‘chunk of change’ during the programme. Applied learning and results are what we care about. ‘Ideas about change don’t change much’ is our mantra.
6. "Talk does not cook rice" A necessity of any successful programme is deep work with the senior leadership of the organisation, preferably before the programme is launched, to ensure they can play their vital role. This work includes alignment, personal resolve, education in change communication, vision elaboration, change planning and role definition.