A fully empowered leadership team is aligned to a shared vision and works together to move others through the process embodied in the Transformational Map. Each knows his or her role and has enough authority to carry out his or her responsibilities. She or he must also be aligned with her or his own organization’s top management team.
The team at the top of an organization must be analyzed to determine its capacity to lead transformational change. Standing committees, ad hoc committees, and de facto leaders and groups who have “always done things the same way” can become siloed in their approach to meeting the organization’s mission and its new change agenda. In order to implement the change that is envisioned, the way in which work gets done must change to align with the new strategies. Here are examples of how the leadership team must evolve as it moves into the various stages of the Transformational Map.
The defining criterion for membership in the top leadership team is the ability to fulfill a staff member’s role in supporting the transformational change process.
Practices and Procedures
Leaders must analyze existing practices and procedures to assure alignment with the change initiative.
Definition: Practices and procedures are the way policies and strategies are carried out in the organization or system. They might develop formally or informally over time. They might be invisible — we don’t notice many of them because they are “the way we do things around here.” Some are in writing, some are not. Leaders and managers usually have the authority to change them without changing policy.
Examples: performance review, communication systems, staff development, leadership development, recognition systems, compensation systems, budgeting processes, purchasing, planning work activities with individual workers, and many others.
Exercise: Identify the key structures, practices, procedures, or organization attitudes that will hinder your organization from moving through the transformational map
You should now have an outline for the organizational shifts that must occur for you to align your leadership efforts to achieving the vision. Management should be firmly delegated to others, and the leadership team should focus on articulating the vision, gaining agreement and commitment from stakeholders, facilitating learning, and embedding change into the culture.
Learn more: Transformational Leadership: A Framework to End Poverty ~ By Scott C. Miller
To learn more about Scott Miller, please see his website here.
