A compelling vision that inspires others is critical to leading successful change initiatives. People need to know what they are working towards and why that’s compelling. The vision for the future is one that will compel the team through challenges and rally them behind any initiative.
Achieving aspirational visions requires consistent change leadership skills.
Beyond sharing your vision and aligning folks to it, the critical unlock is that they need to adopt this vision as their own, too. Empowering the team to take part in shaping and ultimately creating the details towards this vision can be very humbling for many leaders. It requires letting go of control of the vision and allowing others to participate.
Success is never about your vision but it’s always about their ‘why’.
How has the vision connected to who they are, how they see themselves being valued and the expertise they see themselves delivering to the organization? Once this critical connection between vision and ‘why’ has solidified, those nagging fears your team has about the change and what it means for them, can begin to quiet and be replaced with excitement for a choice they’ve made for themselves.
Giving up control of all aspects of your vision can get very messy and without careful monitoring can turn disastrous. Consistent messaging and communication needs to be in place and reinforced. So how do you effectively maintain these threads of consistent vision as well as empower the organization to engage their ‘why’?
A key strategy to guide this activity is to enroll Change Champions across the company.
Change Champions are respected experts positioned around the organization and can speak in support of the change with consistency to the vision. They are also great conduits to gain a pulse on the sentiment of the organization. So they lead both as core team members and extensions of your leadership role.
FAQ
Why is a shared vision important to a successful change leadership?
Aligning your organization around a shared vision means that you have everyone focused in the same direction. When the team knows where they’re headed they will often find ways to get there efficiently.
It seems like a lot to manage everyone’s personal why’s. How is this possible?
This isn’t about creating a spreadsheet documenting your team’s individual ‘why’s and personal aspirations. It’s about knowing them as people the same as you’d know anyone in your life.
We primarily use email as transparency for information. Is that what you mean?
Business people get a lot of email these days, however, it should never be relied on as the only means. Transformations are big initiatives, and the team needs to see and hear from you. They are also looking to see if they ‘feel’ like you are being genuine.
Is a change champion the same as the position ‘change management office’?
No. Change management practices or offices track stuff, identify redundancies and gaps. Change champions are organizationally respected people who can speak on behalf of the aspirational vision when you aren’t present. They are knowledgeable and passionate about the transformation.
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