Change Drivers:

What is Driving your Change Effort?

Vision is important in organisational change. It is so much easier to change towards something than it is to change away from something.

 

Think about it. Where did you change towards in your last organisational change project?

 

When done well in an organisation, a clear and inspiring vision can “pull” people into the future, it can inspire them to do great things and it can make the difference between people working from a “me-frame” or from a “we-frame”, and from a state of confusion or clarity.

 

Vision is outside of us and it is in the future - by definition. However, it appeals to - or awakens - motives within us. The stronger these motives are or become, the stronger our drive to act to get to this future state as we want it to be.

 

What is it that makes us work and work together, persist, and endure in the face of hardship and (temporary) defeat? It is our drive.

 

What is the level of engagement and drive within your organisation? Would it be best summarised by passion or by apathy?

 

If vision pulls you into the future, and drive pushes you into the future, it is strategy which shows you a way into the future. You can be very enthusiastic by the vision and deeply driven to go there, but if you don’t have a clue as to how, you will simply pause and stop. Does your change strategy make you pause or does it release you to go?

 

Your organisation's resource base both enables and hinders you to take on new challenges. It consists of what you have (resources) and what you can do with what you have (capabilities). A limited resource base leads to frustration and anxiety, whereas a strong one provides the opposite: liberation and confidence.

 

You have a strong, magnetic and clear vision providing motivation to most involved. There is also a good strategy and a proper resource base. And, yet, if you could have all of the above, but have division in the organisation and in the management team it still will not amount to success.

 

Alignment is a so-called “moderator” variable for everything going on in a change effort. Ask yourself is your organisation is mostly characterised by alignment or by division?

 

Alignment could and should be central to a change effort.