Seeds of change
This one is for all the change agents out there who, from time to time, may have felt as if their work has no meaning or value.
Here’s what we do:
- We win an engagement with a client whose management want to institute organizational change (e.g., to implement Lean and/or Agile methods and practices, or to shift the organizational culture and management style toward a 21st-century model, or some other lofty goal).
- We define “success” as “the organization has deeply, honestly, and permanently changed for the better.”
- We help the people in the organization visualize a different future and guide them on a path toward that vision.
- We encourage people as the organization makes halting, slow progress.
- We encourage people as the organization succumbs to systemic forces and reverts to the status quo ante.
- We watch sadly as the people who had learned the most in the transformation initiative leave the organization.
- We hang our heads in shame; the definition of “success” has not been achieved.
- We use tales of the engagement to convince others to try the same thing, as we go forward in our careers. “It got off to a good start. If only…”
- We return to step 1.