Innovating Organizational Change: Real-World Learnings for Change Leaders

May 14, 2024

Change is hard and company reorgs pack a gut-punch. According to McKinsey, over 80% fail to hit their targets on time, and 10% actually damage the company. Yikes. While there’s plenty of advice out there on high-level structural change strategies, it rarely addresses the day-to-day realities of folks undergoing a reorganization. As someone helping strategic innovation leaders position teams for impact, I want to share some practical leadership practices that can ease these transitions.

Last month I wrapped up a challenging consulting engagement with a networked nonprofit to integrate their innovation team with their world class research group.  The cultural clashes between these two teams threatened to derail the process from the get-go. The innovators’ mantra was "move fast and break things" while the researchers were rigorous empiricists, committed to “getting it right” no matter how long it took. Needless to say, they were not jazzed about being thrown together to figure out how to become one happy family. But after rolling up our sleeves together, they discovered the massive value they could create by combining their assets. I’m eager to share how they moved beyond their differences to tackle the organization's biggest strategic challenges as an energetic unified force.  They are now poised to tackle their organizations most strategic work to address major social change because of their unique – and complementary – skills. I’m sharing three leadership lessons I’ve learned from the organizational change trenches:

1: How to Empower

2: Why to Discern the “Why”

3: Remember to Celebrate

This series comes from the vantage point of an innovation leader handed a change mandate. But there's a "prequel" I’d also also like to explore - innovation leaders strategically deciding where their team should be organizationally located within or outside the core business.

1: How to Empower

Let's dive into one of the biggest make-or-break factors when leading change effectively: team empowerment.

What’s the biggest lesson to learn for effective leadership through change? Empower the team to actively shape their new future. Change is way scarier when it's handed down from high in an organizational mandate. But get people invested from the start in figuring out how to co-create the “what's next” together and it becomes an exciting opportunity.

As a leader, you've got to be upfront that you don't have all the answers. Signal loud and clear that everyone's brainpower will be essential to figure this out collectively. Get the whole team (not just the leadership) involved through a series of hands-on working sessions to draft the new team's purpose, cultural principles, and specific ways they can support the new organizational mission and structure. This isn’t done in a day.  This is a journey. Better yet, weave meaningful participation into performance goals to demonstrate this isn't just lip service - shaping your shared future is now a core part of everyone's job.  Ideally this is done for individuals and the combined working groups or units. Ask people to specify, in writing, what they will do to shape their shared future. How will we assure it becomes a core commitment for everyone? What compromises may be needed? What accommodations are essential?

When previously siloed groups merge, they often barely know what the others actually do day-to-day. So use creative activities to spark curiosity and overcome those knowledge gaps. Think science fair-style "show and tells" where people bring stories and artifacts from real work to share or "curbside consults" where teams tap the collective brain for crowdsourced feedback. Anything beats another snoozefest PowerPoint or drafting hollow “objectives” that are filled with lots of jargon and little meaning

Learning without powerpoing

A key is tapping into people's natural curiosity about their new colleagues' work. What are their unique skills? How might capabilities complement or harmonize? What types of collaborations might prove synergistic? This can even be random forced connections (think “combinator”) where you pair capabilities or functions.  It’s amazing what comes out!  Getting under the hood together moves the group beyond resistance to change to unlock possibilities for discovering how to cultivate new capacities.

2:  Why to Discern the “Why”

For mission-driven organizations, the next challenge is to peel back the onion to reveal the inspirational "why" layer. Why does your department or work group truly exist? How are you uniquely helping people or furthering the mission of the larger organization? Getting grounded in purpose is a powerful unifier that stimulates people to rethink ways of working rather than dwell on obstacles.

Tony Hsieh, the legendary Zappos founder, tapped into Simon Sinek's "Start with Why" insights when he set out to intentionally build their famous service culture. Purpose powered that transformation.

Zappos Call Center, Las Vegas NV

To really unlock innovation, bring in fresh "outside-in" thinking. Don't just rely on internal ideation or look only to others doing close to what you’re doing already. When I was at Kaiser Permanente, our design teams were inspired to create interdisciplinary project squads after studying Pixar's studio model. Mixing people what have seemingly disparate functions and importing best practices from unexpected places turbo-charges creativity. As Albert Einstein said, "You cannot solve a problem with the same mind that created it." You need to explore with fresh eyes. Of course, if you empower teams to shape the "why," how much specificity do you provide upfront? It's a delicate balance as a leader based on your organizational context. How much appetite is there for change? For prioritizing long-term vision over short-term wins? There are implications for the "what" that leaders may not have considered. It's also really important to honor and acknowledge the loss that comes with change. People are grieving former structures, patterns, and habits. Create cathartic venting spaces for people to share those emotions constructively in a safe but time-limited space. Let them get it out so they can then move forward energized.

I was part of a team once that was really stuck in the past. We designed an exercise called the "Museum of Lost Artifacts" where we made shrines for all the processes, tools and ways of working we needed to ritually "kill" in order to move forward. Healthy laughter through that mourning helped us truly let go.

The juicy opportunity in change is discovering all the new possibilities. But remember the first, essential step is to focus on your "why." Create conditions that pump fresh thinking into collective consciousness. And give a respectful farewell to the past. That opens the floodgates for your renaissance.

3: Remember to Celebrate

We've covered the importance of empowering teams to co-create their future in reorgs, and recognizing the juicy opportunities in change by getting anchored in your "Why." Then leaders must grapple with what comes out of the team “why” and how it impacts what they do.  Leaders must thread the needle between doing what’s right for long term success and the pressures of short-term returns.  Often, when that delicate balance is found, it's time to sprint to the next thing. But one vital piece often gets skipped - celebrating wins along the way.

Too often we're already sprinting toward the "next thing" before taking a breath to reflect on and appreciate progress made. That's a missed opportunity to reenergize people for the road ahead.

In a recent consulting engagement helping integrate two very different teams, we did a powerful two-part exercise during our 6-month journey:

Early on, we asked participants to envision what success would look like at the end of our work together. And then we pushed them one step further and had them fill in the blank: "I know I am successful when..."  This was a jedi mind trick, because if you can imagine it, it can happen!

After miles traveled, we turned those visions into a celebration ceremony. Each person's quote was projected alongside a beautiful image while they read it aloud. It created such a profound shared experience to honor the challenging yet rewarding path we'd walked together.

What the participants wrote proved to be deeply inspiring. Some examples of when people knew they were successful were: "When our work results in a hug or handwritten note," "People tell me they feel seen," "I'm able to hear feedback from those I'm hoping to serve," "My parents can explain what I do to others."

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But celebrating involves many things. Warm fuzzies are great, but be sure to capture hard data as well on successes, indicators of what landed well. And remember to enumerate what still needs work. In the organization discussed above, we did a team survey that we proudly shared with leaders where we hit the mark, and also identified areas that needed continued effort and follow-up.

There are endless creative ways to celebrate - naming accomplishments, showcasing impacts, awarding quirky prizes. The key is making people feel genuinely appreciated for their contributions to the change.

Once you empower teams to shape the future, uncover new opportunities, and bid farewell to the past, a mindful celebration cements all you've achieved and re-energizes everyone for the road ahead.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on navigating re-organizations – both the good and the ugly.   How have you creatively engaged teams to get past the unknown and unlock what’s possible? What practical tips do you have?

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Be curious, speak your truth and stay connected. - Jennifer