How people drive transformation: Our research with Ashridge Business School
It’s cliche to say that no change is possible without people. But we can be more scientific. Certain types of people drive change. These types are present in all sorts of organisation. And they need specific conditions to succeed.
In our work transforming companies, we’ve noticed that sustainable transformation is driven by those who just can’t help but change things. Many of them have built careers in corporates whilst remaining outsiders. Many are senior enough to affect change, whilst remaining just beyond bureaucracy’s reach.
We’ve been fortunate enough to meet these people - but we wondered if it’s just us. So we asked Hult Ashridge Business School to help us research this phenomenon. We worked with them to identify and interview some veterans of transformation from a variety of industries, across public and private sectors.
We wanted to find out how prevalent this type of person is, and what help they need to be more effective.
What we learned
They’re driven by leaving a legacy — tackling big questions that don’t have obvious answers. They engage not just the people in their teams or those directly affected by change, but others too — building momentum to make it feel like change is something to get on board with, not resist. And they’re expert at turning naysayers into advocates
But their secret weapon is how they bring vast numbers of people on board with change. They do it by building an extensive network inside the organisation.
They have become expert at spotting and recruiting a small team, drawn from all over the company. They use these Influencers to extend their reach, getting people everywhere to join in with an overall movement.
In this way, they help the organisation to drive change from the inside out: not just by compliance with management’s wishes, but by leveraging people’s own motivations.
This path isn’t easy. All the leaders we spoke to had been frustrated by organisations that tried to squash their movements - or recognised they were different, but didn’t know how to leverage them.
This is why ‘intrapreneur’ programmes don’t drive change. They take the most innovative, hungry people out of their real context, inspire them with new ways of working — then return them to an organisation unable to change. They find it ten times as frustrating as before, and leave.
We realised that it isn’t these drivers of change who need help. It’s organisations. Organisations need help in finding Influencers, and creating an environment for them to do what they do best.
What we’re doing
70% of change initiatives fail. We think a big reason for that is an inability to leverage the people who can really drive change.
Alongside Ashridge, we’ve designed a programme that organisations use to identify their untapped Influencers; empower them with change-driving techniques; and build a movement which transforms the business.
This programme has already been used for a business going through a merger, an insurance company facing new competitive threats and a telecoms company in a product crisis.
If you’re interested in driving change that lasts with your own internal Influencers, get in touch with Fluxx’s Executive Partner Jenny.
Thanks to Paul Hudson, Americo Lenza, Ben Braun, Mark Allan, Peter Markey and many more who gave up their valuable time to help us understand this topic and (hopefully) help them out.
