Successful Approaches to Leading Organizational Change

Management of long-term, complex, large-scale change has a reputation of not delivering the anticipated benefits. A primary reason for this is that leaders generally fail to consider how to approach change in a way that matches their intent.

Consider Ling Yen*, a client of ours and finance director at an industrial manufacturing company. She sat with her leadership team, aware that the board’s decision to set up a global organization for the company’s specialist functions would not sit well with them. They had been through two global restructures in the last four years — with mixed success. Those changes had required endless governance-reporting back to HQ, as well as tool kits and implementations that change-weary local businesses were finding only partially relevant. Ling Yen decided that she couldn’t ask her people to go through that type of change again. How could she approach this change in a way that was different, sustainable, and less effortful?

When we ask leaders what they think about when deciding how to go about any major organizational change, they often struggle to answer. Too often, their attention is focused on the?what?of change — such as a new organization strategy, operating model or acquisition integration — not the?how?— the particular way they will approach such changes. Such inattention to the how comes with the major risk that old routines will be used to get to new places.

Any unquestioned, “default” approach to change may lead to a lot of busy action, but not?genuine system transformation. Through our practice and?research, we’ve identified the optimal ways to conceive, design, and implement successful organizational change.

Four change approaches

Our change-approaches framework, comprised of four distinct approaches to change, steers leaders through their choices, helping them assess what model they currently use and make decisions about the optimal approach to take. This often requires a shift in?leadership attitude?and skill.

• Directive change:?A tightly controlled series of steps and recipes are prescribed by top management, who alone decide on the direction of the change (the what) and the way to get there (the how). There is close control over what needs to be done, change is led through marshaled programs, and buy-in is demanded. There is minimal capability building, and communications are in one-way “transmit” mode. The predominant leader mindset is “I can manage change.” To Ling Yen, this sounded familiar.
• Self-assembly change:?While top management has a clear definition of the change direction, implementation (including adaptation) is largely delegated to local management. In this approach, you see a proliferation of tools, templates, and workshops to launch change, and while these activities are closely tracked, their impact is overlooked. There might be some minimal capability building led by the tool/initiative providers (e.g., a central program management office). The predominant leader mindset is “launch enough and something will stick.” Ling Yen really felt her anxiety rising when she read this.
• Masterful change:?Change direction is led through top management and held in a consistent manner across the organization, and leaders spend extensive time and energy on high-quality engagement and dialogue with multiple stakeholders to refine it. Within this clearly defined frame, top management gives people freedom to implement as they see fit and supports them with significant change-capability building. Formal and coordinated networks are set up to spread learning. The predominant leader mindset is “I trust my people to solve things with me.” Ling Yen felt relief when considering this option (“If only!” she said).
• Emergent change:?Leaders have a guiding intention and a loose direction, but within this?expansive frame, only a few “hard rules” govern the actions of those involved in the change. Rather than having a fixed, grand plan, leaders focus their action on a few hot spots and leave room for experimentation and learning from rapid feedback loops. Change moves in a step-by-step fashion, and leaders stay alert and responsive to dynamic changes in the environment. The predominant leader mindset is “I can only create the conditions for change.” Ling Yen felt that the technical complexity of her tax function could be compromised if this approach were followed, at least for now.

In four rounds of?research?across two decades, we’ve found that the two change approaches most present in successful, high-magnitude change are masterful and emergent. Masterful was particularly present in successful long-term change, emergent in change at pace. Conversely, directive and self-assembly change are most present in stories of low success in complex change, with self-assembly being negatively related to change outcomes in all circumstances. Such simplistic approaches, while the most dominant across our research, won’t cut it in today’s dynamic, interconnected world.

Here’s how business leaders can use the change-approaches framework to move toward the two modes of implementation most correlated with success.

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