Our research identified that those leaders who can display all four ′Changing Leadership′ practices are those most likely to produce highly successful, sustaining change. We describe how the four practices are interrelated, and all required in balance within a change process. We share the key strategies that leaders adopt in combining all four practices in order to avoid any one of them becoming either ′over′, or ′under′ done, and show with some illustrations how the practices can be linked in what we call ′multi-hit′ interventions.

Can these practices be learned? This chapter explores the underpinning orientations and beliefs that we have found leaders need to hold to be able to practice Changing Leadership with any degree of authenticity and success. We then share in some detail, for each one of the four ′Changing Leadership′ practices, the learning strategies we have found to be helpful in developing the capability to master them. This chapter will enable you to reflect on your own strengths and development needs in Changing Leadership, and provide some practical guidance on how you might go about building your capability to lead big change.

We conclude with a reflection on the insights generated in writing the book, and set out the big questions we still hold in relation to ′Changing Leadership′ that merit further inquiry. We have discovered that our inquiry is an ongoing process. Just as the word ′change′, can be moved to ′changing′, to reflect the ever present ever evolving nature of change, so should our research effort move to a ′researching′ one. In this chapter we invite you to join us in this continuing journey.

It has been said that ′we move in the direction of the questions we ask′ (Margaret Wheatley). Questions such as ′is change changing?′ do not just seek to clarify; they create movement, and movement in a new direction. That small question certainly took us on a big journey. We are grateful for the questions that have emerged along the way, since they have all served as ′tipping points′ that helped us take the next step. We are also grateful for the enormous assistance, energy, challenge and enthusiasm provided by so many of our collaborators on this journey. This book is our offering back to those leaders, and to you the reader, based on our own small steps to discover what makes great leaders of change.

We commence with a story that set one of us on a journey to learn more about change and its leadership. What story ′stands behind′ you as a leader of change?

While still a fresh faced Social Anthropology undergraduate two decades ago I received a very early lesson in change management. We were seated in a university lecture hall watching a film from the early 1900s about the story of a group of white Christian missionaries entering a native African tribal community. The purpose of the missionaries′ visit to this tribe was to make the local culture more ′civilised′. Inter-village warfare was rife and was threatening the future of the local population. The missionaries wanted to reduce this warfare and create a more peaceful, productive society.

The grainy black and white film flickered across the screen in the lecture hall. The lecturer stepped back and let it play. On the screen we saw the group of very well intended missionaries, in crisp white linen outfits, entering the African tribal villages, smiling politely, if somewhat nervously. The native Africans in contrast were wearing grass skirts, had war paint on their bodies, and after some initial curiosity and seemingly aggressive posturing, chose to ignore the missionaries. The missionaries looked intent on their purpose - to reduce inter-village warfare. They had a vision of a more peaceful society. And they had one key strategy which they felt would take the natives from where they were today to this more desirable future. The change plan was to introduce the game of cricket. What could be a more civilising influence? It was the perfect vehicle to channel aggression and warfare into a carefully controlled and safe yet still competitive activity.

We saw the missionaries spend painstaking time introducing the natives to the purpose of the game, its rules, play tactics, and equipment. The pitch was laid out in a clearing outside the village. Women and children gathered to watch the proceedings. What transpired though over the course of this ethnographic story was precisely the opposite of what the missionaries intended. Instead of reducing inter village warfare, introducing the game of cricket actually served to increase it. We saw the native villagers pick up the sharp cricket stumps and use them as javelins. The collection of cricket balls was raided to gain access to these highly dangerous weapons which when thrown at someone′s skull could kill them outright. The missionaries looked on aghast - what was happening? How could it be that their well intended efforts to change this tribe were actually, far from changing things, actually amplifying the current situation?

With hindsight this story is an apocryphal and instructive one for many of today′s so called failed change efforts. The missionaries believed that the villagers would easily ′buy in′ to their case for change and vision. Why would they want to kill each other? Isn′t peaceful living and respect for thy neighbour something everybody aspires to? The missionaries had made big assumptions about people′s alignment to the change goal. They had also shown minimal initial curiosity and inquiry into the current local patterns of behaviour and what these practices were serving in that cultural context. They had simply judged them to be in need of change. A minority of the villagers had already been trying to reduce the warfare; however they went unnoticed. The change intervention, the game of cricket, was imposed without dialogue, consultation or testing. It was one simple, blunt tool. The missionaries, while anticipating resistance, had just pushed harder when they encountered it, only serving to increase people′s defensiveness and make the current war like behaviours of the tribal villagers even more pronounced. Ultimately, the missionaries had not seen any need to change their own mindset and behaviour at all - they believed their task was merely to bring the change to others.

Perhaps your own ′stands behind me′ change story has equal resonance and similar insight. The main lesson we take today from this early ′change management case study′ is the fundamental need to appreciate the ongoing and systemic context within which change occurs. It appears that change can not simply be imposed in a one off mechanistic way, delivered through a programme, or be treated as a straightforward episode or event. Such an approach fails to work with and appreciate the current values that people hold. It ignores the insight that every human system is somehow functioning in a way that serves a particular purpose - it makes perfect sense to those who are in it. Just by trying to change how other people function, without acknowledging, inquiring into, and trying to adjust the fundamental reason why they function that way in the first place, will only produce patchy and half hearted results. It will work against the grain and fail to harness the creative energy within people to move in to a different future. And it illuminates why so many individuals, teams, and organisations stay ′stuck′ in repeating patterns of behaviour that make no sense at all, and can in fact be quite unhelpful. People can maintain an attachment to a way of being that no longer serves them. Far from trying to change the behaviour, the task becomes one of trying to change the attachment to that behaviour. Working on people to change their behaviour, as the missionaries did by introducing the game of cricket to the villagers, rather than working with people to try to understand what their behaviour is currently serving, to reconsider its usefulness, and thereby release that attachment, can only serve to keep people where they are. However it′s surprising how many change efforts fail to recognise this. And it′s the reason why organisations, teams and individuals can find it so hard to let go of the past.

This chapter is about the different approaches we have seen organisations taking when implementing change, and by change we mean efforts to fundamentally improve the performance and functioning of an entire organisation, which requires the letting go of past attachments and behaviour and moving toward a new and different way of operating. It sets the stage for the rest of the book which focuses more specifically on the behaviours that leaders can adopt in change implementation.

We begin with a brief survey of the change landscape. Is change changing? What change challenges do today′s leaders face? Are these challenges any different to those faced a century ago? Are they more complex? In addition, have our perceptions of how change occurs changed based on an increased understanding of how the world works more generally? In other words, ′is change, changing?′ Perhaps change is really not that different to what it has always been, but rather we are starting to see change through a new lens. We will then share our framework for codifying the different types of change approaches we see organisations adopting and explore the research findings that show which of these approaches seem to work most successfully in different contexts. Finally, we will illustrate through a story how a leadership team, with an increased understanding of the choices they could make in how to implement change, took certain bold steps to ′change the way they changed′ their organisation, with significantly improved outcomes.

In the meantime we thank the anthropology film all those years ago for stimulating our initial curiosity into how systems can be successfully, or less successfully, changed.