To transform failure into success, we need to try a different approach. To do that, we must begin by changing ourselves.
It’s easy to feel like you are powerless when you’re in a change agency role – one person against the rest of the organisation. What does it take to make a real sustained transformation happen when the organisation is busy doing business as usual operations?
Early in my career, I landed what felt like a dream job at an international financial investment organisation as an internal change agent and organisational development manager. I was relatively inexperienced but full of determination and bright ideas with a freshly minted Masters when my new manager took a risk and hired me to join her team working with them on making a really big change happen. “Help make our investments more sustainable” they asked. “Who me?” I thought, “wow”!
Initially, I proposed to make the change with an education led by best-in-class experts, but I completely failed to win support for the approach I suggested we should adopt. I was about to resign and add to the 70% of failed change initiatives when the Strategy Director, who had done many line roles in the past, suggested I change tack. In accepting his advice, I had to accept too that it was my way of approaching my role that was the problem, not the organisations’ ability to accept my ideas! I had to change me first. Five years later I left the organisation, my assignment over, with a modicum of success and a massive amount of learning.
Looking back, I can see that initially I was seeking to replace the old ways of working with a better idea. But, in an organization filled with powerful, experienced specialists, my better idea did not gain traction. It didn’t matter that I’d found world class experts to advocate it.
I’d fallen into the “who’s got the best idea” trap. And to make it worse, I proposed a top-down approach to change because I was convinced that in a hierarchical organisation, where power mattered, I was sure we had to start at the top.
With a different approach and new allies, I worked in a completely different way; building relationships with the people we were seeking to change. We came alongside investment teams, looking together at current and recent deals and what the factors were that made them fly or fail from an ESG perspective. Working with these team teams, we built enough trust to bring them into a workshop process alongside their clients and other stakeholders to explore different ways of working. Instead of imposing new ways of working, we created conversations. In dialogue, they found several business-based reasons for making the client companies more sustainable. It became a win-win.
What does this mean for you if you’re in a change maker role, feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of trying to make a change happen? These are the steps I recommend you focus on to make sure yours is one of the 30% that succeed:
When we make this personal shift, we show up differently in our relationship to the thing we’re trying to change. This in turn enables an evolution in our own approach to how we can change that thing.
