Come on, be honest, this has happened to you, right? You’re all fired up after a meeting because you’ve come up with the perfect strategy to help your department – and maybe the whole organization – move forward in a big way. You write it up, deliver it to your boss, and…nothing happens. Maybe your boss doesn’t think it’s so great and is so focused on other things she won’t tell you why. Or she tells you to work it out with an underling, who shows no interest in helping “your project” succeed. Maybe she brought it up at a meeting and it got shot down by one of her peers. Maybe she switched jobs, and the new guy isn’t interested in ideas from the “old regime”.
It’s sad how many great, thoughtful ideas for change end up D.O.A. like this, but this is kind of the way of life inside many institutions isn’t it?
And it’s a big loss. My little secret as a consultant is that every good idea I’ve ever had hasn’t really come from me, it emerged from someone inside the system already. The systems we aim to change always hold the solutions to the challenges we face, and if we aren’t finding the most resilient answers, we’re not listening to enough people. So if you buy that, you’d think leaders would ask people at more levels for solutions and ideas, rather than having yet another senior management retreat or fancy consultant offering “the new plan”, which usually peters out in a few months anyway.
This problem of great ideas not being heard seems especially common with us digital folk. People in our field are paradoxically looked at for leadership on big hairy organizational and technical issues while at the same time are often not high enough on the org chart to be truly listened to.
So what happens if the web guy writes a strategy that has the keys for how the institution needs to evolve, but it never gets seen by the right people? I call it “the memo to no one”, and I’ve written a few myself, and it’s painful. I’m still learning here so hopefully you’ll leave a comment below with your own ideas, but here are some tricks I’ve picked up:
- Acknowledge that great ideas are only half the work: long term survivors in institutions know they need to spend almost half their effort (maybe more) selling a strategy and removing obstacles as they do developing and honing it. Now you don’t want to become a risk-averse bureaucrat, but we’d be wise to learn some skills from the old-timers on how they get things done
- Make an internal power map: my friend and brilliant campaign strategist Beka Economopoulos introduced me to the idea of making a “power map” of people in your own institution, just like you would for a political or advocacy campaign target. Understand the people who can implement your idea, who influences them, and then how you can get to those influencers. Don’t just work within your direct reporting line or you’ll be stalled out before you even start.
- Engage senior people, early & often: most senior managers are control freaks, and bureaucracies trade on the power of insider information. So grab time – even 5 minutes at the watercooler – with senior decision makers, understanding what their major pain points are, ensuring they know what you are up to, and asking for their advice. Is this issue important to them? Does that sound like the scent of the right solution? Keep them appraised of your progress, with regular updates before it’s “done”, so there aren’t surprises that kill months of work. And when presenting use the language of their world, not yours.
- Rope in multiple departments for win/wins: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard concerns that people responsible for digital (typically communications directors) are “empire building” when they ask for more resources for it. CEO’s always have to balance resource demands from multiple strong personalities vying for more power. So make sure your strategy explicitly addresses not just your bosses but other strong figures’ strategic priorities too. Create win/win situations with multiple champions and it’s nearly impossible for a senior manager to say no (or for another manager to kill it as a pet project).
- Let go and ride the cycles of change: the best strategy projects I’ve led had regular pattern of often wrenching change to what little early structure we thought we could hang onto along the way. But each time the strategy got burned to the ground – if you can find it in you to not take it personally while deeply listening to the feedback – there was a gem that remained in the ashes. From this would emerge an even deeper, more adaptive, and “more right” answer. The end never looked at all like what we thought it would at the start, and you really have to learn to enjoy (even encourage) that process.
- Plan for the inevitable backlash: this has been a hard one for me. I’m confident in my ability to excite and motivate a team at the start of a vision process, but I’ve been caught off-guard by the “rubber band effect” where soon after even some of my key allies take a step back into old, safe patterns and “forget” the excitement of the new mandate. It’s even harder as a consultant as our role is temporary. So we now include 3 months of unlimited coaching after the big vision drop to mitigate and work through this natural step. And I’ve shored myself up to know that once you get the alignment of a senior team towards a new change direction, that’s not the end but actually the start of the real work of transformation.
This probably seems like a lot, and it is. If it sounds daunting to you, you might not be ready to lead strategic initiatives that drive major changes in your institution’s comfortable behaviours. Or you might just be better suited to working in a smaller, flatter organization where you can get things done a lot quicker. There is absolutely no dishonour in being honest about where you best fit.
The work of transformation is fiery, it’s messy, it makes people uncomfortable – it’s maybe even dangerous – and this is why real change doesn’t happen very often.
But these times appear to be calling more and more of us to step up into positions of leadership in change. Most colleagues I talk to have a pretty good idea what needs to change in our institutions to make them more responsive and effective for these times. By following some of these steps we have the potential to go from arm-chair critics to truly valuable change strategists. And that’s a role I expect more of us to take on in the next few years.
Jason Mogus is Communicopia’s principal consultant and is the founder of Web of Change. He has been developing digital strategies for social change organizations for over 15 years. You can follow him at @mogusmoves.
