Leaders Worth Following Understand the Difference between Change and Progress

The most common cliche today is “The only constant is Change”. As with everything else, not all change is created equal. In my experience, not all change leads to progress.

Leaders worth following know this and are always intentional about any change that they are advocating for. They are always looking at and talking about the progress that the change will lead us toward.

If there is a re-org being initiated, it should actually lead to a change in behavior for everyone who is impacted by the change. If the behavior of people affected by the initiative doesn’t change, then the entire initiative is not driving any progress, just change for the sake of change, which in a few more months, will most likely lead to another re-org.

If there is a change in strategy and it doesn’t lead to a change in behavior of people on the ground, moving the organization towards the goal, and the customer or partner do not feel the change in their interaction with the business, the change in strategy doesn’t lead to any progress and you will see another change in strategy sometime soon (if the business still exists).

So, we go on and on with any change initiative. The question then is Why do so many change initiatives don’t impact anything on the ground and how can we avoid such change which don’t lead to progress.

Why so many change initiatives don’t lead to progress:

1. Some change initiatives are rolled out so that the leader can feel a sense of control over the organization. They initiate re-orgs by moving teams and leaders for better alignment and removing silos. These usually don’t create much impact as these re-orgs don’t necessarily change the experience that their customers or partners or vendors (internal or external) have with the organization.
2. Some change initiatives do not lead to progress as they are managed poorly. It can be due to the way they rolled out the change or how it was supported. The right stakeholders are not involved in the process which leads to resistance to the change.
3. Sometimes, it could also be that the organization has become change averse or numbed to any change initiative due to the organizational memory of the past initiatives, where nothing changed except for who reports to whom.

If we want to become Leaders worth following, we need to understand the key difference between change and progress.

I define progress as any change that increases the velocity of progress towards our organizational goals or improve the probability of us achieving them.

We need to be look at every change initiative and find out what progress will that lead to and communicate and focus on that (as most of the times, we dont have an option not to change).