Tag Archives for leadership

Building Social Capital (the series): Taking on Community Engagement

Are u building Social Capital? (c) 2013 Amberwood Media Group

CHARLOTTE, NC. June 2013, by

As builders start building again and we resume the race to keep up with the 21st century, I’m compelled to ask:  how long has it been since we’ve felt truly connected with our communities?  Many I know are reporting gaps .. whether it be with their church, gym, PTA, or even the local neighborhood association.  Oh sure, we may still be there physically.  But ..

To what extent are we participating?  How many of the people around us do we actually know?  Are we in the crowd going through the motions, obsessively checking our smart phones, but not engaged?

Chances are we know the answer to that one.  Here’s another key question:

If and when we DO engage in our communities, what are our motivations?

If we answered the second question:  to “survive”,  “fit in” or “claim our rightful share” I’d argue that we’ve lost touch with what’s important.  Where once we knew our neighbors well and we knew what we stood for .. ok, I may be going back a few decades .. now it seems we find ourselves more and more isolated, cut off from the deep and nurturing social connections that humans thrive on.  Our consumer and work-saturated culture seems to have trumped our core values, and the path to a better place is less than clear.  We’re in a bit of a pickle.

A Clarion Call for Leadership.  We need a new vision, to me that’s clear.  But leadership in the societal (not using “social” here on purpose) space is tricky.  For community leadership to work, the energy must come from the rank and file .. from the inside out and the bottom up.  Seth Godin in “Tribes” builds strong arguments around the need for leadership from the inside .. getting people who are used to not leading to start leading .. sometimes, by creating spaces and situations and cultures that empower.

No small task, that.  But one that holds significant possibilities.

Why?  Because it’s an approach that can scale.

But that means some of the leaders, if not the vast majority, will be folks like you and me.  Working types.  And for many of us, leadership is not something we’re  used to.  Can we play?  I say yes.

Social Possibilities.  Communities offer a broad landscape of opportunity, really.  I’d argue that we need to invest our time and energy before we find our social systems past a point of no return.  Cynics have declared that we’re too late.  But ..

I believe we are just now starting to mobilize our thinking. We’re learning to focus our energies, and .. this is important ..  connecting people in ways that literally unlock their creative potential.

It’s time for us to stop being alone with our televisions  and to start engaging in our communities again.  The applies both offline (in real life) and online (virtual).  It’s not so hard.  We learned how to do it on the playground.  If our kids are out their having fun, taking chances, building sand castles, and making new friends, why can’t we?

When we engage in a real way, we’re building social capital .. putting together the skills, resources and networks that can help us learn, in turn helping us to help others.

As that happens, we start raising the water level of what’s possible.

Ultimately, we can change the game.

Get Started Getting Social.  This post starts a new blog series on social capital.  In coming posts we’ll take the notions apart so we can rebuild them into something that we’ll find practical and useful.  And we’ll tap some of the approaches in my book, helping us to take inventory of the barriers and enablers we’ll need to master along the way ..

I’ll post links to subsequent posts here, as well as in the sidebar Editorial Calendar.

In the meantime?  No waiting around.  Connect.  Engage.  Get social. We’ve lost ground, and some precious time.  If you have to, ask your kids how they do it !!  [ .. on that note? .. cue Angela Maiers and her Sandbox Manifesto .. ]

I hope you’ll stop back in.  We’ve got work to do.

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Kotter’s 8-Steps: Leading Change in the 21st Century Organization

CHARLOTTE, NC. April 2010, by

Is there a good way to attack change in organizations? To influence (and maybe even ‘fix’) the complex org cultures that drive the collective behavior of their members?

That’s the focus of this post, the 5th in my series on culture change.

John Kotter gave us perhaps the best-circulated approach for change in his HBR paper that turned into the classic: Leading Change (1996). With the caveat that there are no silver bullets I believe Kotter provides a strong, intuitive and timeless approach to grappling with change.

Unfortunately, too many have given up along the way.

Organization change and, more specifically, changing an organization’s culture, share a common scope and scale. They are, in many ways, intertwined. That means Kotter can take us in the right direction. Let me recap his 8-point outline here, providing some 21st century insight and ‘solution language’ of my own to update his framing.

  1. Urgency. Per Kotter, one of the biggest enemies is complacency. Why change? Keeping things the way they are is easier. That may be. But the path to major improvements of any kind will be held hostage with this mindset. Low standards or segmented (silo’d) accountabilities can create a false sense that eveything is okay. Change requires everyone to get beyond that comfort zone, to “step up” for something new, different, and better.
  2. Coalition. Inspiring and sponsoring change is the work of leaders, so it’s critical that they engage. That means an oversight group that includes respected leaders is key. Without it, the organization will sense management’s lack of investment and will fail to participate.
  3. Vision. The organization needs to know where it is being asked to go. Having a strong, unambiguous statement that frames the future state is the only way for the organization to focus on it. A well-written vision is motivating, inspiring the organization to come together.
  4. Communication. Many change efforts fail because they don’t reach far enough into the organization. An effective communication program makes the work of the change initiative part of the organization’s daily affairs, embedding messages in as many artifacts and venues as possible. Think ‘saturation’ and you’ll be on the right track. But it needs to be simple and actionable, to retain people’s attention.
  5. Empowerment. Employees often don’t feel they can influence the vision. If they feel disconnected and removed from the issues, they will feel ineffective and powerless, and will not to want to waste their time. The key is to establish a link between how specific employee and departmental actions can realize the vision. Barriers must be removed. And management must start letting go of their unilateral decisions, trusting larger cross-functional teams to work things out. There is less control and predictability in this mode, but empowerment creates the conditions where new ideas can spark and flourish.
  6. Momentum. Major change takes time, and there will be detractors. Kotter notes that posting interim gains drives credibility when it is most needed – on the long road toward implementation. Focus here also puts energy to fine tuning the vision, applying lessons learned along the way.
  7. Integration. I love Kotter’s quote “resistance always waits to reassert itself,” so ‘consolidating gains’ is important. If change initiatives have structures that sit outside of daily operations, we must weave the new programs, policies, people and structures back in. If change remains outside the mainstream for too long, it can seem foreign to the rest of the organization.
  8. Anchoring. The organizations culture must reflect the new changes if they are to survive long-term. Organizations tend to have long memories, and if the leadership changes or the initiative is called into question, there will be many who offer the “old way” as an alternative solution to all the change. That is why bringing the culture forward to align with the change is critical.

Kotter says “human beings are emotional creatures, and we ignore that at our peril.” I agree. I put it like this:

It is not enough to make the case in facts and figures. People have to believe in the change, own it, and live it. Ensuring organization culture incorporates the change elements is the only way to ensure long-term viability.

Again, it would be a mistake to simply follow these steps (or others like them) and expect change to result directly. As we’ve discussed at each post in this series, the many dimensions, structures, and complexities in organizations create challenges at every turn. Leaders recognize this, and adapt their approach over the life of the change effort.

At the core of it, is a commitment. They can’t ever lose faith. To lose forward momentum is to accept defeat.

We started talking in January on barriers to ‘2.0’, with the idea that ‘social media’ integration and, more broadly, ‘innovation’ itself faced many cultural barriers. Leading coordinated change initiatives (vs. traditional ‘change management’) appears to be the only truly viable path forward. It is truly ‘no small task’. But that’s not to say it’s impossible. It’s simply hard work.

Call me old fashioned, but the sooner we start, the sooner we’ll be done. I say (again): let’s get going.