How Change Happens
And the superpowers strategists have to facilitate change.
Over the past few years, I’ve benefited greatly from the Ladies Who Strategize (LWS) community, and last week I attended the Annual LWS Retreat for the second time. It’s an experience that’s difficult to describe. As my friend Susannah mused, this retreat is what emerges when you mix friendship, like-minded career paths, brilliant minds, and deep trust and respect together. And lots of sunshine, rest, and mangos.
At this year’s retreat, I led a training session on organizational change. Poolside, a group of us talked about the incredible superpowers strategists have to influence change within agency and client systems.
While I cannot bring the pool to you, my hope with this post is to impart some of the beauty and magic change in organizations holds when we shift our perspectives a bit. So kick back, grab a floatie and a paleta, and let’s talk about how change happens…
When you hear the phrase “change management”, what comes to mind?
“M&A!”
“Transition in leadership!”
“A plan with many steps!”
“A re-org!”
“Layoffs!”
These were some of the answers offered during our poolside training session. Not a pretty picture, huh? If we look across these mental images, a few assumptions emerge. When many of us think about change management, we assume that change must be…
Controlled: That change can be created, planned, and managed, typically by those with positional power
Linear: That change follows a linear progression, one step at a time
Objective: That there is one, single reality, shared by all
Organization is Centered: That we are trying to change a business entity
Here is the thing: Every organization is a *system of people*, trying to achieve something together. Said another way, organizations are environments made up of many interrelated components. They are complex, filled with many moving parts, people, and perspectives. And while they cannot be controlled by one individual, because all components in an ecosystem are interconnected, one component can disrupt or disregulate the entire system.1
When we think about how organizations change, we gotta center our energy on how systems of people change.
A perspective shift
When we center the complexity of systems alongside what humans actually need in order to change, it shifts us to a new view on change:
Controlled → Emergent: We accept that change is continuous, emergent, and cyclical over time, and that while we can encourage it, we cannot control it.
Linear → Many Containers for Change: By embracing that change is emergent, the focus becomes creating multiple “containers”, or environments where we can name the change needed, practice it, and encourage it to emerge. Workshops, coaching sessions, hard conversations, a retreat…these are all containers for change.
Objective → Multiple Truths: One person or department’s view is not the universal truth. All views, from various perspectives within the systems, can be true at once.
Organization is center → People are center: To be clear, this doesn’t mean that individuals matter more than the organization. It means we embrace the reality that organizations are made up of people, so we must center on helping people change if we are to help an organization change.
A strategist's superpowers
Shifting our perspective on change can also spur a shift in how we view our own superpowers.
I spent many years as a brand strategist before I went back to school to study organizational development. Along the way, I had an ah-ha that strategists are already equipped to intuit a human-centered approach to change, but don’t always have a deep understanding of how change happens–or have the right language, frameworks, tools, and methods at their ready. But with a shift in understanding on how to leverage their skills, I’ve come to realize that strategists are uniquely equipped to support organizations in change.
With that in mind, I’d like to share five superpowers I believe strategists can leverage to help systems move through change. These can be applied to your own workplace as well as your clients' systems.
Regardless of whether your title includes the word "strategy," I imagine that many of you will recognize your own skills here.
You are an outsider present during transformational moments.
Going back to school reminded me how unique it is to be part of an organization's change journey. Strategists are present during transformational moments, such as major shifts in leadership, mission, competition, performance, and processes. You can often see a system more clearly from the outside, and that outsider view offers us the opportunity to help people develop new mindsets, behaviors, skills, and ways of working when in these transformational moments.
You are comfortable leading with curiosity over expertise.
Strategists are adept at leveraging our curiosity to solve challenges and unlock opportunity. We know the power of beginning with the right questions rather than trying to have the right answers. When you encounter change, be it in a client system or your own workplace, lean into that curiosity about culture, people, mindsets, and behaviors. Be in discovery mode for a while longer. Turn those assumptions and worries into questions.
You are adept at creating a shared picture of a complex situation.
The strategists I know are pretty great at crafting compelling narratives. I personally spent much of my early career learning to build and share stories about culture, communities, and companies.
In change work, there is another story to tell: the real current situation inside an organization. How might you use your narrative abilities to shine a light on that story, and enable people in the organization to have a productive conversation about it? It can feel uncomfortable, but offering a realistic picture of the current situation, along with the space to process and reflect, can be an incredible gift.
You know how to create environments where experimentation is welcome.
Systems are complex with interrelated parts, and they do not change through one single move made in a perfectly timed moment. But we don’t always know what is going to work… and what will fall flat.
Strategists are incredibly familiar and comfortable in experimentation mode. Every strategy is simply a hypothesis to be tested. So lean into your ability to discover, test, and learn. Change requires placing multiple bets and creating multiple environments where people can cultivate new behaviors, mindsets, and skills.
You understand, are curious about, and *love* people!
Many of the best strategists I know stumbled into this career because they love humans and all their unique complexity. Don’t lose sight of the simple truth that organizations are systems of people. When you are uncertain, return to this important strength you have: The ability and desire to be curious about people, to understand what makes them tick, and to build ways forward that center understanding of the humans who make an organization tick.
Interested in learning more about how systems change? Check out Cats in Borneo for a simple example.