There are six leadership roles to be played on a journey of change, and each role has three core strategies that define it. These strategies will always provide a sound foundation for leading journeys of change, although they will vary from journey to journey in how they are designed and implemented.
The strategies are easy to customize and cover the leadership challenges on the journey from beginning to end. They deal with the intellectual, emotional, relational and physical challenges encountered. They are also designed to attend to challenges whether they show up on the individual, group/team or systemic level.
The two roles in the beginning of a major journey of change are characterized by an intensive effort to awaken people to the need for the journey, set direction, provide leadership structure and plans for the journey and develop a core web of leaders to launch the journey with confidence and credibility.
The Visionary Role: Business case - Vision - Leadership commitment
The Architect Role: Organization design - Plan for the journey - Leadership web
The three leadership roles on the path meet the three core challenges encountered: letting go of old ways, discovering and mastering the new ways and coping with the strange land in-between. It requires engaging people in the journey leadership, effective communications, capability building, perseverance and resilience. It also requires healthy accountability to maintain direction and energy.
The Catalyst Role: Engage/prepare people - "Operationalize" the vision - Change readiness & capability
The Guide Role: Communication - Guide letting go and "inbetweenity" - Accountability
The Builder Role: Expand/maintain leadership web - Competencies required in desired state - Guide discovery & mastery
This is the role that must integrate all of the pieces that have been discovered, invented, found, reworked, recovered, or maintained on the journey. They must somehow be brought together so that they "fit" and work together and they must be preserved so that they do not slide back or dissipate. There is a period of time when the changes look like they are solid, but are in reality very vulnerable. The Integrator ensures that leadership "finishes strong."
The Integrator Role: Deal with "ripple effects" - Align the things of the organization - Attune the people
Goal #1: Achieve the envisioned objectives of the current change or performance initiative. We must be effective in the short term to be around for the long term.
Goal #2: Lead each journey of change in a way that builds the resilience and change adeptness of the organization for sustained success and health. Short term success is just that - short term.
1. Give people a sense of comfort that there is a set of core strategies that match the requirements of leading journeys of change - strategies that can easily be customized and extended to any level of specificity.
2. Walk any leadership team(s) through the process of determining how they will execute the strategies in their areas of responsibility.
3. Identify which roles and strategies are most important now - at whatever point you are on a journey of change.
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QuickStart packets are designed to guide leadership teams in applying the concepts of that chapter. Each QuickStart has a set of guiding questions as well as worksheets and templates to capture the team’s work. The QuickStart packets work whether you are in the midst of a journey or planning a journey.