What are all the change management strategy roles a change agent plays?
My answers to that question grew recently because of an experience with a client developing its future vision.
We were working with an organization on its future vision while facilitating its strategic planning process. The organization's leaders, and many of the team, have been in place for a long time, limiting the collective view of how other organization's do things in bold, innovative, and different ways.
As we worked on strategic thinking exercises to explore the company's future vision and user experience, the change management strategy vocabulary the group used was conventional, unemotional, and lacking innovative thinking. Despite the static language, strategic conversations with the team suggested they possessed a legitimate interest in pursuing innovative strategies.
Innovation Vocabulary and Change Management Strategy
Later in the strategic planning workshop, we used a collaging exercise as another way to help the team express its vision for the organization. In the exercise, the group cut words and images from magazines to express their depictions of various strategic concepts. We had selected specific magazines to use in the exercise that would stretch how the organization thought about itself and its clients. With a bolder innovation vocabulary than they possessed on their own, they did an incredibly strong job of articulating an innovative future vision.
Reflecting on the difference between the group members working from their own language and working from the innovation language in the magazines, the difference was apparent: they didn't have their own vocabulary for major change, so they struggled to express their aspirations. When we provided a bigger innovation vocabulary, they could paint a bigger, bolder vision for their future and the change management strategy involved.
That's when it became clear that another thing a change agent needs to do is make sure his or her organization has the innovation vocabulary to describe the degree of change management needed to realize a bold future. An organization trying to transform likely needs an external change agent with an outside perspective to provide a new vocabulary for innovation.
Lesson learned. We're developing new ways to immerse our client's organization in all the innovation vocabulary they need for the change management strategy task ahead.
Want to learn more about that process? Contact us, and let's talk about creating major change within your organization! - Mike Brown
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