The challenge of... leading change & transformation
“Change” and “transformation” are an inevitable consequence of a complex world, and organisations that fail to adapt to an environment in flux will fail. The question asked by business leaders is not “should we change?”, but “how should we change?”.
But making change happen, and leading any transformation, is well known for being difficult and for high failure rates: often the change agent or change management team does not fully implement the change, resistance to the change is not overcome, and the planned value is not realised. Even worse, change initiatives can frequently destroy value.
Organisations often articulate their approach to this challenge as…
- change management approach & change management plan
- change leadership & change implementation
- leadership and change management
- implementing strategy; execution and implementation
- business transformation & digital transformation process
Definitions 
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Change leadership is “the ability to influence and enthuse others through personal advocacy, vision and drive, and to access resources to build a solid platform for change“ (Higgs and Rowland, 2000)
“Change leadership is the art and then the science of influencing people to engage in change and then navigating a journey together from their current state to a desired future state.” (Richard Hawkes)
The simplest definition of leadership is “the ability to produce change.” (Peter Senge, MIT)
- Global deployment of an enterprise planning software system
- Implementation of a post-merger integration
- Becoming a “Net Zero” organisation
- Changing to partial remote working
- Educators moving their programs to a hybrid learning format
- Implementing a new business model
Change & transformation leadership
is necessary for many reasons, including:
It’s now a cliché to state that the ability to change is essential; but managing change is necessary not only to thrive but also to survive. Organisations face potentially several existential threats: from new entrants that re-invent business models, or new technologies that are transforming some industries, or new regulations and changing trade-laws, or globalisation, pandemics, or the need to de-carbonise radically in the face of climate change, there are many reasons why organisations that don’t transform might not survive.
Not all organisations need to transform radically, but with always present competitive pressures, or any changes in market forces, not many organisations can afford to simply “do what we did last year”.
Organisations, even those are not under competitive pressures, e.g. some Government organisations, are all still aiming to maximise value for their stakeholders and so the need to change also comes from the ongoing need to be more efficient and productive.
Real world challenges
Prendo’s customers face many challenging situations when leading change & transformation:
Like most organisations we have experienced significant changes in recent years, but the speed of change is actually accelerating
Transformation, especially in a large organization like ours, is fundamentally difficult
Most people in our organization are simply not very recipient to changes, however necessary and valuable they might be
We have seen a lot of failed change efforts, and that does not make them any easier
We are faced with a digital revolution, so successful transformation is imperative; however, the unavoidable change within an organization that this implies is bound to meet employee resistance
No-one is questioning the need for a change, the need for transformation, but the change management process requires both engaging employees and customer engagement
Advanced simulations can help leaders
address these real world challenges
At Prendo, we believe that the complex skills and deep understanding that are needed for leading change & transformation are best developed with advanced simulations that provide accelerated experiential learning and the opportunity to explore the underlying cause and effect models.
Talk to us to understand if our simulations can address your specific challengesLearning to lead change & transformation
To address the challenge of leading change & transformation, leaders need a combination of skills (know-how) and understanding (know-that), in the same way that the driving test combines the practical and the theory:
leaders need to be able to…
- develop change management strategies
- overcome resistance to change
- map & leverage formal and informal influence networks
- develop effective influencing strategies
- balance financial and human value drivers
- work as en effective change team
- manage the human side of change
- maximise value from the change
leaders need to understand…
- the range of different attitudes towards change
- the range of rational and non-rational factors that cause resistance
- the role of gatekeepers
- intra-organisational communication norms and preferences
- the conditions for efficacy of change tactics
