When you do not have the luxury of a C leader responsible for the change (or you are a C leader saving your internal political capital) and you must run through the organizations specific hoops, small steps can lead to big change. This has become my latest concession to unwieldy organizational structure.
Often to get change to happen you must satisfy and appease, suggest and recommend and see the path to the end state (or sometimes even just the description of the end state) as a marathon rather than a sprint. In this case the small wins are simply additional individuals accepting the idea (without much compromise from the original intent of the change).
When does this happen?
Organic Change
This is the willingness to change that springs out of the middle of the organization because of an idea and individual. The change idea is usually not supported in any way by a leader. That first person will recruit others to the cause and potentially ask for leadership help early on, but a yes or no is really not important- the change can gain momentum on its own.
How that exchange fleshes out is always fascinating to me as an external practitioner. I have seen it on the road next to me as I was guiding some other initiative and I have been asked to guide the change when someone just high enough and with just enough budget can bring someone in.
Not only does this form require some baby steps to escalate higher into the organization, but there is usually some change management work to be done in a cultural way. Leaders often quietly encourage organic change and then stop it in its tracks (which to stakeholders feels a little like a parent suddenly saying no when they had not before).
Committees
These show stopping entities whether “steering”, “executive”, “advisory” or “exploratory” while meant to be a great way to vet and compare are usually black holes of time and resource (most for the 10 minutes of fame that each idea usually gets). But these committees do have senior leaders and change only works with senior leader sponsorship so there is a chance multiple 10 minute sessions can satisfy the small steps.
Smart leaders keeping the small step process in mind will bring in external change practitioners during the solution formation. That gives them a chance at a path past the committee and a little organic change thrown into the mix. This is also an excellent and less expensive way to front load change.
Small Budgets
The last couple of years have put pressure on budgets (hence the extra cash and hefty corporate profits, but that topic is for other bloggers). When there is budget pressure it is hard to do big change. That is also the time CM is stripped from the budget. Knowing that a leader can bring in change at an individual level, a trusted advisor, and do exploratory work. Since many change practitioners are multi-talented and come from OD backgrounds this can be in the form of training, seminars, a small initiative that can feed the bigger one, etc.
In order to get any small step approach to work though, the internal leader and the external change practitioner must formulate the perfect end state and then come up with one or two options that are not as extreme. That formulation will usually reveal some steps that work for all options. With the end in site those small options are not just easy to accomplish, but have the capacity to plant a seed in the organization for bigger and better change.
