Envisioning change

Karl Weick once said that "the appropriate role for the manager may be evangelist rather than accountant."

Organizations embarking on major change need evangelists, to describe their desired future for the organization, and convert employees to the new religion.

In the class I'm teaching on the management of change in complex organizations, we keep cycling back around to the questions of vision:

• what does it take for a vision to be inspiring?
• where does the vision come from -- the leader, or the group?
• how is the vision best communicated to others?
• do visions change during implementation? how? is that good or bad?

In Todd Jick's classic article, he gives the example of how Liza Foley, the CEO of Canton Industrial, sought to inspire her employees, by saying "I can see a little sign as you enter the town: Welcome to Canton, the Mailbox Capital of the World." ("The Vision Thing", available in Managing Change.)

It's important for a vision to create a tension between where we are now, and where we want to be, says Jick. A good vision draws people into the future, raises employees' emotional stake in the company, and provides guidance about how employees and customers should relate.

Bottom-up visioning, the most radically participative approach to developing organizational vision, invites employees to work together in defining the organization's future. While the challenges of valuing all contributions even though only some can be retained are significant, and reaching consensus can be difficult, bottom-up visioning can be powerful.

The biggest benefit of a vision developed from the bottom up is that once employees adopt a shared vision, every one of them becomes an evangelist. The leader's role is no longer to push past the status quo -- it is to rein in and gently guide the energy that employees can unleash!

Fortunately, if you're still not sure how to envision change, there are millions of resources on this topic, including scholarly articles and books. If you have favorites, please recommend them by leaving a comment here.