In pursuit of ‘Change’
My career to date has been centred around answering one question - “How do we make lasting change that matters?”.
In addition to consulting projects, speaking engagements and working groups - I have explored this question in each role I have undertaken, leaving with a key takeaway on the conditions required for making effective change.
1. My first role focused on ‘disruption’ as a force for change – asking how representation could disrupt an industry, expand the experiences of those typically marginalised and how new ideas if housed correctly could fundamentally change human behaviour. It taught me the importance of charting your own path, taking steps courageously with no clear roadmap and that leadership is essential and can come from anywhere. To be a ‘change-maker’ is to be willing to visualise a different path and have the courage to stand out and forge forward – even if you must go alone at first.
2. Second role selected following a competitive process and out of 119 people to run and get a new localised strategy seeking change - ‘off the ground’. It taught me the importance of ensuring that all change-makers start with clarity and specificity on the desired outcome and the direction of travel.
3. Third role as an executive in an organisation - How to make an award-wining socially-focused small business, self-sustaining profit-making and fully operational. It taught me the importance of ensuring that changemakers have the autonomy, self-trust, and freedom to try, fail and succeed.
4. I have more recently advised organisations in which making ‘social change’ is their essential identity and purpose. These experiences taught me that we must consistently test whether there is a real desire for change and buy-in within our organisations and prioritise identifying barriers to this desire. This applies not only to strategic organisational level change but even to granular personal change on the individual level.
With the courage to lead and chart a course, a clear direction of travel, the autonomy, self-trust and freedom to try and a real desire for change within yourself and your organisation - the ‘possibility for change’ gradually becomes the ‘probability to change’.