What are the signals that your organisation needs to change? Part 1 of 4 - Leadership

We partner with our clients to design better policies, programs, products, services, experiences and systems. However, for clients to deliver the impact they seek, they need to change to change the organisation in some way. And almost every time, that organisational change is more challenging than the project. How do we know this? Through the signals we see and hear from the people we work with and the culture that surrounds them.

It’s hard out there

Firstly some caveats:

• Many organisations are adept at continually adapting to change. Memorable examples include Netflix, Amazon and Patagonia
• Every organisation is unique and is already delivering value, with change playing a greater or lesser role as they strive to survive
• There are many signals and the list isn’t exhaustive as operating environments are constantly evolving. We’re sharing some of the most common ones we experience and are asked to help our clients with.

Secondly, let’s set some perspective:

• You’re not alone! Every organisation of every type and size issues signals that change can be disruptive or a threat. Resistance is everywhere, and quite natural - ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’. In human terms, it’s conservatism - the need to preserve the now because it’s familiar, repeatable and has worked in the past
• Transformation is a big word with a big industry attached to it. It’s become commoditised. Yet it shouldn’t trigger people or cost fears - it might mean subtle or isolated changes that enable future ambitions to be implemented.

Whatever your current situation, you might be missing (or unconsciously skirting around) key signals from within your organisation that indicate change might be needed. When organisations choose to listen and respond to signals, the results can be transformative.

So what are these key signals? We’ve categorised them into leadership, operations, and culture & complexity. They have no particular priority, but they often overlap to create an undercurrent of issues.

Leadership signals

No one is actively designing the transition, and change happens in pockets.

Leadership empowers, lights the way and models standards and behaviour. Things start to go awry when staff express that their leaders are holding organisations back compared to competitors or former experiences, or when they start feeling unsupported with their own vision and ambitions.

Key signals that leadership could be your need to change:

1. Frequent captain's calls from the top. Decisions lie exclusively with management and most others in the organisation feel disempowered. There’s a lack of buy-in for evidence that doesn’t support the leader’s own agenda, and behaviours demonstrate what leaders really care (or not) about staff and customers
2. Communication isn’t aligned. There’s a notable lack of vision and why there’s a need to change. Oftentimes the wrong metaphors or framing are used about transformation, and progress or new learnings are rarely played back
3. There’s little if any orchestration coming from the leadership. No one is actively designing the transition, and change happens in pockets. People aren’t given dedicated time to work on transformative change - it’s set up as a side hustle or ‘non-core’ activity - or there’s little end-to-end oversight of the change
4. Accountability is avoided. In fact, there’s more reporting than accountability. Information is slow coming into the organisation, slow to get focus from leaders, and decisions show up even more slowly in terms of new value created outside it.

Change happens everywhere within organisations, but it takes responsive and empowering leaders to instigate positive change. When staff seek permission from leaders and it isn’t granted because of today’s busywork or other leadership agendas, that’s a significant signal there’s no space for evidence driven change. This can become a downward spiral which can ultimately lead to a Kodak moment.

Signals all around

In a power driven organisation, leaders are often looked to for permission to change, but it must be noted that they’re usually insulated by layers of complexity, noise, contradictions and alarms which stretches their attention and puts significant pressure on them to prioritise activities and decisions. Work already in flight and the structures required to deliver are costly to change, so often a natural ‘resistance’ or conservatism gets built into organisational systems and ways of working, especially at middle management level ‘the frozen middle’.

The more concerning signals are the psychological aspects of captain’s calls, communication, orchestration and accountability on the workforce.? When leaders frequently exercise overt control at the expense of clear opportunity based on evidence, they begin to lose the initiative and trust - and therefore the ongoing commitment - of the workforce.

In the second part of this series we’ll look at operational signals - the daily to-do of ‘business as usual’ and projects in flight. Without change an organisation can’t possibly adapt to and operate in the ever changing world around it.

Perhaps you’re experiencing some of these signals yourself, or your team is trying to tell you that they’re feeling them and are eager for positive action.

How might we help?

Meld Studios

Designing better futures, together.