.Disclaimer: I’ve held this belief at times, but it doesn’t have to be this way.
Organizational change must be pushed down from the top to be successful, when:
❌ The cost of the proposed change is larger than divisional budgets.
❌ Executives make operational decisions (how), beyond strategic decisions (what, why).
❌ Silos exist around divisions and departments that limit effective collaboration.
❌ Problems have become big enough to gain focus and prioritization from the Executives.
❌ The organization is likely playing defense against the problem, and trying to catch up.
What if we reframed the approach?
🎯 The change starts with a small financial bet placed by a team to test a hypothesis on how to solve their biggest problem. Additional small bets are made and a solution is found.
🎯 The team aligns the solution with the overall corporate strategies set by leadership.
🎯 Teams communicate their successes with other teams to promote learning. Other teams run small bet experiments to test/improve the solution to solve their problems.
🎯 This grass-root approach addresses problems when they are still small before they grow to the size that Executives feel the impact from them.
🎯 Addressing problems earlier and at the team level or team-to-team level and then sharing the solution wider helps to stay on offense and stay ahead of the situation.
Change doesn’t have to be made in a single big-bang approach. It can be addressed at smaller levels and those solutions can grow naturally throughout the organization. Crawl, walk, run if an option and often a better option than all-at-once.
Do you believe this myth?
