Part of our Series on Leading & Adopting Change
If you’re a leader desiring to modernize your agency or transform your organization in some other way, you already feel a strong sense of urgency.
Perhaps the first stage of a transformation effort – establish a sense of urgency – is not only something you understand but are actively doing. Whether you have just started this process or are far along, it’s important to consider what will happen when this urgency has spread through your organization.
Generally, there are three methods for guiding a transformation effort:
As soon as an organization begins to build a sense of urgency, it’s important as a leader to know how that new energy is going to be wielded. According to John Kotter in his book Leading Change, the most effective wielder of this energy, the one most likely to succeed in a transformation effort, is a guiding coalition. To understand why, let’s compare these three methods.
Three Different Methods to Guide Transformation Efforts
I. A Single Influential Leader
Famous transformation efforts are often associated with one highly charismatic person (just google “leaders who turned companies around” to find many well-known examples). The conclusion that most organizations make is common: for transformation to happen, a unique, highly influential person must emerge and take the reins.
A single leader can be effective at changing an organization if the following four (4) characteristics describe that leader and their marketplace:
An individual leading a transformation effort alone comes with significant drawbacks:
Ultimately, powerful force is required to sustain a transformation effort. The speed and size of change that companies face today, especially Government agencies, ensures that no one person can succeed in guiding their organization through significant transformations. The process is too slow and too weak.
II. A Small Taskforce / Special Committee
When an organization lacks an influential leader, or the executive team is “too busy” to get involved, organizations commonly decide to delegate the guidance of the change effort to a special team. A taskforce is formed of a few people in different departments, and perhaps an up and coming leader motivated to see change is given the go ahead to try to make the project happen.
Like an influential leader, change committees can succeed, but only under certain conditions:
There are several problems with this kind of committee:
Just as reliance on a single, influential leader to guide a transformation fails, so does handing the responsibility to a committee lacking credibility, trust, and power. Kotter concludes that in today’s world, where organizations must be able to keep pace with fast changes, only a guiding coalition can succeed.
III. A Guiding Coalition
Leading Change defines a guiding coalition as a team that has the power, information, and credibility needed to lead their organization in a significant transformation effort.
Six (6) key characteristics of the coalition are members that:
Besides successfully completing change efforts, here are three specific benefits of a guiding coalition. They:
If coalitions are this beneficial and powerful, why don’t organizations always use them to guide change?
Here are a few reasons:
Even though building a guiding coalition is difficult, it is an essential piece of a transformation effort. Without one, big transformation efforts struggle to succeed.
There are three keys for a Guiding Coalition to be able to succeed in leading a transformation effort: its composition, level of trust, and common goals. Let’s look at each of these.
Three Keys for Successful Guiding Coalitions
I. Composition of a Guiding Coalition
As urgency for change is growing across an organization, leaders should be looking to recruit members into a coalition to manage and lead the effort. These members need specific characteristics to ensure success of the group, including:
When recruiting members of the coalition, it’s important that leaders pay attention to individuals with specific, negative qualities, that can derail the entire process.
Here are some key qualities to avoid:
Finally, leaders should be wary of “central” employees who are reluctant about the transformation effort. Perhaps it’s someone with tenure at the company suspicious of change. It’s vital to not work around these people, as their lack of support can undermine your efforts. It’s important to come alongside them to grow their sense of urgency and willingness to join as members of the coalition.
II. Level of Trust
Trust is the key component that an organization needs to rise above “team talk” and create real teamwork. Many agencies operate with strong intradepartmental loyalties (“silos”), creating mistrust, a lack of communication, and nothing resembling teamwork at the organizational level. The reason for this is because trust is hard to build and takes a lot of time (time that motivated leaders often feel should be spent “moving forward” with real action, instead).
There are several ways a leader can help members of the Guiding Coalition grow in mutual understanding, communication, and trust. Some of these strategies are covered more in-depth in Leading Change, but the strategy that is most effective is carefully planned, offsite events. In between such events, leaders must follow up with members to ensure understanding, communication, and trust continue to be built.
III. Common Goals
As a coalition is formed, one of the underlying questions in each member’s mind will be, “Why? I feel urgency to see big changes happen, but what is the goal of this group, and why am I part of it?”
It’s vital that leaders help the coalition form goals that drive their efforts forward. More of this will be talked about in the next article, Stage 3, but for now, here are the important qualities of the group sharing a goal:
Here is a simple formula to represent how effective coalitions come together:
Trust + Common goal = Powerful Team
Making Change Happen
Guiding Coalitions are needed because on its own, an organization is full of inertia and complacency.
When people believe that transformation is necessary, and that a strong team is needed to make it happen, they will actually operate as a team, rise to the challenges, and make the sacrifices needed to succeed.