Leading Change
Navigating change when “the present” is shrinking.
Your people want answers, and you don’t have them.
And that’s okay, because change is now perpetual, so the answers don’t have a shelf-life any more. But you do need a concrete path for sensing and responding that moves your organization forward when the future is genuinely unknowable, otherwise your people will become tired and frustrated, things will fall through the cracks, and initiatives will veer off track. I can help.
It’s not the change that you’re managing.
There are three steps to moving forward today.
- Step 1 – See the present more clearly: Name what’s truly unknowable, what is knowable, and what’s currently unsaid, so you’re not making decisions based on a distorted picture. This is the “what is” piece. Example: an honest conversation with the board about how your 75-year old volunteer process/structure makes adapting to today’s change essentially impossible.
- Step 2 – Decide what you’ll say and do moving forward: Make explicit choices about priorities, messages, and no‑regret moves that you can start implementing right away. This is the prioritized action planning piece. Example: Add real consequences if people don’t follow your RACI model (internal decision-making roles), so “going rogue” has costs to it.
Step 3 – Have the right conversations that bridge to the future: Design and facilitate some key conversations where those choices you made become real and are evaluated continuously (with execs, managers, staff, board). Example: Your senior team meets mid-year to have the hard conversation about pulling the plug on a big initiative that’s already cost you a lot of time and money, and this time you push past the defensiveness and egos.
I can help you implement this process so you can stay ahead of the change.
How I can help.
This doesn’t show up as a single “project,” usually, but there are several ways I can help you move forward:
- Coaching: When you’re carrying the unknowable alone, executive coaching can help you manage how you show up and what you take on.
- Internal communications: If you don’t know what to tell people without over‑promising, internal communications coaching helps you build a transparency approach calibrated for this environment.
- Retreats: If your senior team is not aligned on how to move forward, facilitated retreats that are true working sessions can help you align on what matters now, what you’ll stop doing, and how you’ll talk about it.
- Internal meetings: If you feel like your internal meetings don’t generate enough clarity or leave too much unsaid, then meeting design and facilitation can ensure your critical conversations moving forward produce real decisions and clear next steps.
My Approach
What is.
Prioritized actions.
Ongoing management.
My model for leading change is based on the culture design work I’ve been doing for a decade. People said culture was “unknowable” too, but I created a clear and concrete path for seeing it and changing it. This work follows the same path—doing a better job at seeing the present more clearly, then making clear decisions about what you will do and say moving forward, and then ensuring you’re having the right conversations to manage and evaluate your actions. This is what change looks like in today’s environment.
More than anything I do, this change work integrates my background as it includes conflict resolution, facilitation, culture, and change.
Doing change right requires a new way of leading.
Schedule a call so we can scope together the change you’re facing and a path for moving forward effectively.
Why Do This Work?
Clarity
You still won’t have all the answers, but you’ll have the clarity you need to move forward and maintain momentum.
Relevance
If you can’t keep up with the change, you run the risk of becoming irrelevant to your members, customers, and employees.
Well-being
Staying ahead of the change (without trying to control it) can alleviate the anxiety, frustration, and exhaustion that you and your employees experience.
The work you did with our Senior Leadership Team represents a significant point of positive change for us, both in terms of the effectiveness of the Team and our organization as a whole. Since that time, we have enjoyed a new way of working together that is producing some pretty amazing results.”
Abigail Gorman, Chief of Staff
American Institute of Architects
Schedule a Free Consultation
Leading change when the future is unknowable is not easy, and you don’t have to go it alone.