TOPICS

Change Leadership

AUTHORED BY:

RABAB HAIDER | KNOLSKAPE EDITORIAL TEAM

“Transformational leaders don’t start by denying the world around them.
Instead, they describe a future they’d like to create instead.”

– SETH GODIN

Research from Gartner found that any organization today has implemented an average of five significant organization-wide changes in the past three years — and nearly 75% expect to multiply such change management initiatives in the upcoming three years. However, half of these change initiatives fail, with only 34% finding success.

But, why?

One factor that is paramount for every successful or unsuccessful change implementation is having strong change leadership.

For example, Apple’s iPhone, Microsoft’s Office Suite, and Tesla’s electric vehicles have transformed society and user experience in the era of digital innovation. But they have something else in common, too; they were all developed under the guidance of transformational change leaders.

In this blog, we dive deeper into the concept of change leadership, its models, and how to become a successful change leader.

WHAT IS CHANGE LEADERSHIP?

Change leadership is a proactive, people-centric approach to change management, visualizing change initiatives as an opportunity for organizational growth and improvement rather than a finite project. It requires being visionary, agile, and responsive to the changing business requirements, and understanding how to overcome common barriers to change.

Change leaders are not the same as change managers or practitioners. While change managers administer change to achieve short-term goals, change leaders command, influence, and advocate for long-term transformation initiatives. If employees are the driver of change initiatives, change leaders are the ones that empower them to provide input. Leaders of change are the ones who engage with the initiative rather than imposing change.

CHANGE LEADERSHIP VS. CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Often change leadership and change management are used interchangeably. However, the question here is whether or not it’s just a matter of semantics. Both these concepts are significantly distinct.

Change management is associated with small-scale changes and is a set of tools and/or measures to keep a change effort under control and to provide solutions to any organizational resistance to a change. The goal is to minimize the change initiative’s disruption, make it cost-effective, and reduce the chances of change failure. On the other hand, change leadership is related to the vision and driving force behind large-scale transformational changes, ensuring the implementation process quicker, more innovative, and efficient.

THE 3 Cs OF CHANGE LEADERSHIP

Researchers found that 3 skills provide the necessary connection between the process part of change and the people part of change. These 3 C’s unite effective change leadership:

| COMMUNICATE

Unsuccessful leaders tended to focus on the “what” behind the change. Successful leaders communicated the “what” and the “why.” Leaders who explained the purpose of the change and connected it to the organization’s values or explained the benefits created stronger buy-in and urgency for the change.

| COLLABORATE

Bringing people together to plan and execute change is critical. Successful change leaders worked across boundaries, encouraged employees to break out of their silos, and refused to tolerate unhealthy competition. They also included employees in decision-making early on, strengthening their commitment to change. Unsuccessful change leaders failed to engage employees early and often in the change process.

| COMMIT

Successful leaders made sure their own beliefs and behaviors support change, too. Change is difficult, but leaders who negotiated it successfully were resilient and persistent, and willing to step outside their comfort zone. They also devoted more of their own time to the change effort and focused on the big picture. Unsuccessful leaders failed to adapt to challenges, expressed negativity, and were impatient with a lack of results.

6 WAYS ON HOW TO BE A SUCCESSFUL CHANGE LEADER

Change leaders can be distinguished by these six qualities that they seem to possess:

| VISIONARY

While all of us love a good success story, few are as inspirational as the one from Steve Jobs. Although Jobs was neither particularly poor nor uneducated, what struck people’s imagination is his vision of what Apple could be.

In layman’s terms, being visionary is nothing more than the ability to look at the bigger picture. Change leaders have the quality of visualizing the long-term organizational goals and aligning efforts to achieve them. Effective leaders identify new opportunities for innovation and strive to arrange the resources, competencies, and tools to drive the change process forward.

| BOLD

Leading the process of complex changes is like riding on a roller-coaster. While the ups are undoubtedly exhilarating, the downs are sudden and terrifying.

As a leader, people will obviously look upon you to lead them through a process of ongoing change. Conversely, doing things differently will face resistance from others in the company. It is a matter of convincing people to invest time, energy, and effort in a venture they are not interested in. Thus, change leaders have to have firm resolve, determination, and confidence in standing by their visions.

First, find where the resistance is coming from. This step is about understanding why there is resistance to the proposed change. After understanding where it’s coming from, it’s a matter of addressing those concerns.

This is where the second step comes into play.

Instead of just relying on employee feedback, seek to involve them directly in the change project. For a smooth change deployment, people have to feel like they were a part of the process. Also, it might help you in gathering newer perspectives that you haven’t considered.

| INTUITIVE

To lead change efforts, a change leader must be intuitive to the present conditions of the company and the workforce. The company’s culture, the state of engagement, the budget and resources- and more factors will impact the success of the change project.

Successful change leaders know “when” to appeal or introduce the concept of a new change. They dedicatedly study the workplace dynamics and recognize what kind of efforts and manpower will be required to support the change.

Being intuitive enables change leaders to recognize and avoid the problems that can significantly hamper the transformation.

| DEDICATED

Initiating a new change process is a long and tedious task. A change leader should be able to adapt to the challenges that come along the way. Change leaders don’t see change as a one-time event. They know that every minor transformation can cause major disruptions across the organization.

Thus, no real-world change process is implemented in haste or without proper planning. Any change management role requires a certain level of multitasking. There is also a need to have a detailed strategy outlining all the necessary resources, technologies, tools, schedule, and budget. There is the added responsibility of guiding people through the change once it gets deployed. Additionally, a successful change leader will continuously monitor the progress and pay attention to any triggers of what may go wrong.

| GREAT COMMUNICATOR

For any change effort, good communication plays an integral role. As discussed before, any change will be met with resistance. Successful change leaders should adequately communicate how the change strategies will impact the company’s short and long-term goals. It is also necessary to highlight “why” the change is required, i.e., the current weaknesses hampering the business’ success.

To drive change, a great deal of convincing is required. It’s not only the employees who seek reassurance but the top management as well. Thus, a change leader must cultivate good communication skills to drive the objectives of the change process and the efforts required to achieve it.

| PRIORITIZES COLLABORATION

Change cannot be achieved through individual efforts only. Team effort and collaboration are a vital part of achieving the desired results. As a change process will most likely affect multiple workplace sections, driving and managing such a process require cross-functional team collaboration.

A large part of change leadership is about unifying individuals’ efforts to ensure a smooth change deployment. A change leader should motivate, influence, and manage a team to drive better collaborative performance.

Change can be both internal and external. While internal changes can be managed through leadership practices, external factors can be highly disruptive.

BENEFITS OF CHANGE LEADERSHIP

Solve problems, not create more!

When was the last time you solved a problem without implementing any change? Never!

To solve a problem, you need to bring about a change and make your employees understand and appreciate the need for the difference. Imagine a scenario wherein you have a very new team, and the entire team has been working from home since the beginning. You have observed that efficiency is below par due to a lack of team bonding and coordination. To make the team work as a single unit, you would need to get the team to come to the office more often to bond and coordinate better.

As a change leader, the first step would be to state the reason behind this change and get everyone on the same page. Then it would help if you implemented this in stages. You would maybe call them to the office once a week for a month and then slowly graduate to twice a week and so forth.

| EMPLOYER BRANDING

You must have heard of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) plenty of times. You may have even set your OKRs and discussed them with your boss. While the concept of OKRs has existed since the 1970s, it was only in theory.

In 1999, an advisor, John Doerr, introduced OKRs to the Founders of Google. Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, received the idea very well and adopted it across the whole company (which, at the time, had only 30 employees).

“OKRs have helped lead us to 10x growth, many times over. They’ve helped make our crazily bold mission of ‘organizing the world’s information’ even more achievable. They’ve kept the rest of the company
and me on time and track when it mattered the most.”
– Larry Page, CEO of Alphabet and co-founder of Google.

With this implementation, Google became a trendsetter in people management, and other companies started adopting the concept. Over time Google has built one of the strongest employer brands. Thanks, in large, to their stellar people, change management processes, and transformational change leadership at every stage of the company’s evolution. So, when you implement a company-wide change, and the change positively impacts your growth, you complement employer branding.

| INCREASED SALES

Sales is a field associated with major attrition: sales development reps and account executives often report high-stress levels. Being an effective change leader means cultivating an atmosphere where employees have better understanding and engagement levels. Therefore, teams can better implement changes, such as a rehaul of the existing sales process.

By tying any micro-level or macro-level change to business and individual goals, a great Sales leader can:

Get collective buy-in.
Achieve business goals (i.e., increase in sales!).
Increase efficiency.

With change leadership, you can promote transparency across all levels of the organization. When you share your experiences, and the learnings are available to all the employees, they feel included in the organization’s growth roadmap.

Moreover, a company with robust change management policies and adept change leaders at the helm can innovate with newer products faster and easily enter and win new markets.

Innovation is not the single reason Apple has been able to upend incumbents in multiple categories and markets. Its change implementation practices increase efficiency across all levels of the organization.

| FOSTER A POSITIVE NETWORK

Change leadership is about communicating the ‘WHY’ alongside the ‘WHAT.’ Doing so will instill confidence in your employees and help them work as a unit. In his Golden Circle Framework, Simon Sinek, renowned leadership coach, demonstrates the power of focusing on the whys:

“People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. And what you do simply proves what you believe.”

This approach is how the world’s most successful organizations (read: Google, Apple, Amazon) manage to inspire macro-level changes at a lightning-fast pace and complete buy-in.

Do you like playing football? Or any team sport?

Imagine the team manager proposing a new game strategy without explaining how it would benefit the team. It would lead to confusion and turn many players against the leadership because they would have different opinions.

Now suppose the captain explains and justifies the need for the new strategy. Then, the team members would be equally motivated because they would have a sense of direction and purpose.

If only all companies were managed like your winning sports team!

TAKEAWAY

Embracing change requires more than a change management approach. It needs change leaders who can provide a path, lead, and diligently work to ensure the organization’s success. While change practitioners tend to react to change as it unfolds, often focusing on mitigating risks and challenges, change leadership takes a proactive stance.

Change leadership goes beyond crisis management by viewing change as an avenue for growth and development rather than a threat to be circumvented. This approach involves the integration of technology as a supportive tool to facilitate and enhance the change process.

In essence, embracing change leadership means recognizing that successful adaptation to change requires visionary leaders who not only navigate change but also harness it as a catalyst for organizational advancement. This strategic approach, bolstered by technological resources, transforms change into an opportunity for the organization to not only survive but thrive in an ever-evolving environment.