Change Leadership Is the Key to Create Future of Work

It was Abraham Lincoln who said, “the best way to predict the future is to create it” and he followed that credo in his leadership style. Lincoln like all great leaders knew that the only way to create a new future was to make some major changes.

The biggest challenge for leaders in these times of volatility and complexity is leading at the speed of change and staying ahead of the changes that need to happen in order to create a successful future of work.

Change Leadership Is the Key to Create Future of Work

One step of creating the future is creating a vision and second step is communicating the vision – often the vision part sits in the head of the CEO or the leadership team. I have heard many a CEO say, “my team doesn’t get the vision” and typically that’s because the CEO has a very vivid idea in her or his head but have not articulated it in a meaningful way. This is where the communication piece is so critical – a well communicated vision has emotion,  is visually appealing and easy to share.

A passionate vision can lose steam if there isn’t compelling visuals to support it supported by a dynamic ‘story’ that goes viral within the company.

This is where change leadership comes in – the senior leadership team can have a vision, communicate the vision and then expect everyone to go do it and to execute with success. However without a well laid out step by step change leadership plan to provide the why and how and focused on ‘what’s next’ most change initiatives struggle and fail.

In an ideal scenario the entire change process for an organization is collaborative, measurable, has clear milestones and milestone celebrations.

Creating the future is mostly about engaging everyone to want to participate in making the changes needed in order to transform the business.

Lets face it the biggest and most difficult change that needs to be made is the mindsets of leaders and teams.

In my book, “The Art of Change Leadership” I provide a change wheel as a self assessment tool that allows leaders and teams to self diagnose where she or he is on the ‘mindset’ aspect of change. If a leader or team member is on the optimistic and creative side of the wheel then its likely that the change is being ‘next mapped’ in a powerful and effective way.

If a leader is self identified as being defensive and in fear of the changes its also likely that change within the company is stalled, sabotaged or failing.

If you want to predict the future you can predict it based on the mindsets and actions in place today.

The future does not create itself without changes being made – the critical component to staying in business, thriving as a company and still being relevant is the willingness of leaders and teams to make the changes needed such as embracing technology, inspiring leadership abilities and shifting culture towards ‘people first’.