Capitalizing on Storms – Leading through Change Part Four

I feel like I need to start every post off in this series with the disclaimer that I’m no leadership guru.   This is simply how I process things and work through stuff in times of organizational change.

Already we’ve talked about having a values centered/sketch vision- here and here.

Then I laid out the Storming-Norming-Performing-Storming-Norming-Performing cycle of organizational life – here.

The key to leading an organization through change is recognizing storms and using them to reinforce the values in the organization you want to see.

Storms come when expectations are upset.  They come in mini versions that happen in a small corner of an organization (like a Sunday School class becoming upset about a curriculum change) to monster size that encompass the whole organization (like a staff member leaving or a massive change in strategy or a budget crisis).   Some leadership authors use the phrase “lighting  fire”.  That is what a storm is like.  If your organization is like a movie theater full of people, a storm happens when someone lights a fire.  If it is a small fire then only a few rows are going to get upset before stuff calms down.  If it is a huge fire than everyone is going to start moving.

As storms settle and things start to norm, new expectations and habits are created.  These expectations and behaviors might be improvements to the organization or they could be steps backward.  The key as a leader is to step into the storm and try and influence things to norm in a positive way.  That is why it is so important to understand your values.  When storms hit you don’t have time to figure them out on the fly.  

There is a phrase the leadership at my kids’ school uses that I like – “Meaningful Work.”  The use the term to describe the kind of discussion they want leadership committees to be about.  Committees should be doing meaningful work.  Unfortunately, often when storms come my natural response is to behave like my dog used to in storming times: I want to hide under the bed until all the thunder and lightening is over.  We have to fight this urge.  Storms are when meaningful work is most possible.

When storms come try to facilitate meaningful conversations among your leadership that will guide your organization closer toward living out your values.  Here are a few characteristics I think meaningful conversations have:

1. They are passionate – conflict and debate are good and energizing.
2. They are empowering – meaningful conversations ask team members to innovate solutions…they don’t provide already decided upon answers.
3. They are ownership giving – The more leaders who feel like they have had a hand in the decisions the easier implementation will be.
4.  They are inspiring -people want to give their time to debates that matter.  No one wants to sit and fight about stuff that has no impact on the organization.  People need to know the outcomes and what they are going to battle for.
5. They are strategic – People need to know how this debate, this discussion is part of the bigger picture.
6. They are complete – the conversations have a clear ending and action steps.

Am I missing anything?

I’ll do one more post in this series.  It will be on phrase I repeat to myself that help me stay focused.

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