This is the first in a series of three blog posts by Faye Goldman, exploring leadership during times of significant change.
For charities in the UK right now, the scale of uncertainty and pace of adaptation has been ramping up for years. It’s showing no signs of stopping. For leaders, it can feel like the whole ground is shifting.
Organisational and strategic change comes in so many shapes. Right now, you may well be thinking about how to transform to meet growing demand and need, adapt to downturns in funding, capitalise on emerging technologies, respond to rapidly changing political, social and environmental contexts, and more. Maybe you are exploring a merger or how you can safely close and secure a legacy for parts or all of your services.
Often all of these changes might be on the table at once.
Whatever the change, we all know in principle that leaders need to both bring deep organisational understanding and step back and see the strategic picture clearly. Leaders need to look after themselves, work collaboratively with their board, and effectively involve staff and volunteers. Whether you’re dealing with a planned opportunity to transform or a rapid response to external factors or financial challenges, this isn’t a simple task.
In a series of three blogs, I’ll be sharing some of the practical ways that voluntary sector CEOs can lead effectively through change. These are by no means all the answers. But they come from what I’ve learned when working directly with CEOs and senior leaders – supporting them and their organisations to navigate change of all different kinds.
In this first blog, I’ll explore how effective leaders can create anchors when everything feels uncertain. In future pieces I’ll cover communications and engagement that meet these moments, and practical ways to maintain momentum and make changes stick.
What can help anchor us?
At times of significant strategic or organisational change, it can feel like our constants are gradually slipping away until we can’t rely on them anymore. Other times, the rug is pulled quickly.
In those moments, it is easy for people at all levels of an organisation, CEO included, to question absolutely everything.
Charity leaders cannot predict or offer a clear picture of the future. They also can’t instantly resolve every challenge or completely shield colleagues or volunteers from uncertainty. But, however unclear the future might feel, finding and relentlessly focusing on a few important anchors can create some certainty when everything else feels uncertain.
Purpose, values and a collective story of change are just a few helpful anchor points that I’ve worked with organisations to create.
Anchor 1: finding focus in your purpose
When I’ve supported organisations through change, the conversations so often turn to the detail, the process, or the risk. We can find ourselves and our teams caught up in immediate actions and reactions. We lose sight of the purpose that drives us.
Keeping your organisation’s aimed-for impact front of mind can help to create an anchor. Even with radical change, your charitable purpose and elements of your strategic framework likely remain. Stating this purpose consistently, even when it feels obvious, keeps your collective focus on the long-term goal.
Anchor 2: finding consistency in your values
When I’ve worked with organisations going through complex change or testing and learning their way to solutions, leaders often hear a strong desire from their teams to ‘just tell them’ what everything will look like. But any precise picture we paint of the future is likely to be a mirage.
Feeling confident in how we’ll be treated and in the guiding principles for the decisions we will make, makes the uncertainty in the future picture easier to manage. You may already have a clear culture and values that everyone recognises and that remains relevant. If not, taking time with your board or team to define what this moment needs from you is worth doing.
Spelling out at every possible moment how your agreed values or principles are truly shaping your choices, and loudly role-modelling them in every interaction can help.
Anchor 3: finding understanding through a commonly shared story
I’ve often observed a disconnect in organisations that are navigating change. By the time leaders are ready to share and involve others in shaping a strategic or organisational change, they’ve already processed an ending or the reasons for adaptation. They’ve moved on to what is needed next to achieve the goals or mitigate the risk. The team that’s taking it in for the first time feel like they have been launched into the middle of a story.
Remembering that difference in vantage point and creating a shared story that starts from the beginning can overcome this disconnect. Defining and returning regularly to a short, common story of the case for change and the facts that are driving it can help everyone see the same picture and how all the parts make sense together.
Repeat and repeat and repeat
Uncertainty can be hard. Harder for some people than others.
By creating the right anchors for your organisation – the things that are staying true amidst the uncertainty – you can lead people through the trickier elements of change with a stronger sense of confidence.
Purpose, values and a clear case for change are just a few ways to do that. You may find others.
Whatever your anchors, though, it is only through repeating them over and over again that we can make those foundations feel a little less shaky. Leading with these constants in mind will build a solid base for whatever comes next.