Good Ideas, Good Leaders, or Both? What Does it Take to Achieve 'Big Change'?

Bold Strategy…

I was reading, earlier this week, a new strategy just released by one of the International NGOs. It was a lot of fine words, in a policy direction I tend to support, ambitious, relatively, in its scope and also in its approach to engagement beyond the current field of players.

All good stuff and I suspect there was quite a bit of ‘work’ that went into the preparation and agreement of this new direction.

But it made me think….

What will it take to bring this to fruition?

What kind of leadership is necessary for this not simply to be worthy words on a piece of paper?

Quality of the Thinking?

The organisations and people I work with tend to place a lot of value on ‘the right strategy’, and I get that, for many years I thought my expertise was the most important thing I brought to the table. Don’t get me wrong, I still have plenty of opinions, but I realise that opinions are rarely the thing that creates the impact.

Over the years I looked more closely at how change happens and I began to see that there is a natural flow, if we allow it, a default place of trust and collaboration, and that many of the things we think are contributing are actually hindering or diverting us from creating impact. I’ve written a lot about the detail of this so I won’t say more now, because my point is wider—it’s that foundationally, I’ve come to see that the thing that moves the needle is how we see the world.

Ideas are everywhere.

They’re certainly all over my LinkedIn feed and in many of the rooms I frequent—both in person and, these days, virtually. There is no shortage of opinions and the strategy that this INGO came out with this week could have been written by many dozens of my connections and former colleagues.

It’s Leadership Then?

So that brings me back to the question of what it takes, or will take, to move from bold change to real life impact. And again, I see no shortage of ideas and opinions on that.

What I think we forget though, is that great leadership isn’t about having all the answers, it isn’t about the best training, or the best processes. It’s more like.

What does it take to hold the space for answers to come through?

Yes, I know that sounds all ‘coachey’, and what I mean is that rare quality of someone who can look at us and see who we are with all our capability, all our humanity and all our greatness. Not as individual ‘me’, but by the nature of being human. We all know this when we experience it, but we don’t tend to cultivate it in our organisations and leaders.

Chicken or Egg Then? (or Both?)

I could tell you my opinion, happily(!), but I also think there’s value in self-reflection and in looking at our own experience.

How many of those ‘big’ strategies actually get implemented in the way the authors intended? What if we could influence the operating context? Would that make ‘strategy’ redundant or would it create an appetite for boldness?

I don’t know what answers you will come up, but I think these are important questions when we live in a world of ideas, a world where knowledge and intellect are valued beyond some of the more gentle-seeming but more impactful measures of being human.

I’d be curious to know how this looks to you…

With love,

Cathy