Leadership and change

Hello everybody, this is Gordy Curphy from Curphy Leadership Solutions. This talk is on leadership and change.

Countries, communities, organizations, and teams face a myriad of challenges. Everybody is going through the pandemic or has seen variations of the pandemic, but there are a number of other changes that are taking place across the globe, between social unrest, globalization, border incursions, new elections, technology disruptors, lots and lots of changes happening at organizations, and in countries and communities these days.

Think about all the changes needed to do the following. Suppose you wanted to launch or introduce a new product across all of McDonald's restaurants across the globe, what changes would be needed in order to make that happen? From a marketing perspective, a pricing perspective, would there have to be changes to the equipment in all the stores? Would there be supply-chain differences, because you'd have to order in new packaging materials? Think about all the different changes that would happen if you were going to roll out a new product across all the McDonald's located around the globe; or if you wanted to create a more just and equitable law enforcement department, or if you were a country leader and you wanted to implement an effective COVID-19 strategy.

When it comes to change, there are three approaches leaders can use. One is called the 'community change model', another is the 'rational change model', and the third is called the 'emotional change model', we'll cover each of these in turn.

The community change model. This model is very important when you're trying to drive a change across a community, or a society. It has to do with when you are working with volunteers, so there are no formal authority or reporting relationships, you've just got a group of volunteers together trying to make something happen. An example of this might be the Black Lives Matter movement, or if you wanted to get a new school built in your community, or if you wanted to stop a Walmart getting built in your community. In all of these cases, you've got a group of volunteers, you've got nobody reporting to anybody else. How do you end up trying to drive change across a society, or across a community, when you only have volunteers? We find that it takes three components to make this happen. The first component is called 'framing'. It's one thing to say, "We need to improve the education of our children", but when you frame an issue like that, people can't do much with it, it doesn't really mobilize action. But if we turn around and re-frame it to say, "We should get a new elementary school built in the local area", now people can get behind it, now people can understand what it is you're trying to do. Framing has to do with taking an idea, and defining it in such a way that people can clearly understand and take action on the idea. Social capital. Changes do not happen in a society, or in an organization by itself, you need a whole bunch of people to drive those sorts of changes. The more people you know, the more people you get connected with, the more social capital you have, and the more influence you'll be able to have. Social capital has to do with expanding the network, getting more volunteers, and getting those volunteers to work together towards a common cause. The last one is mobilization. It's one thing to assemble a group of people and get the idea clearly defined, now we have to put a plan in place. We have to have some very clear outcomes identified. We have to figure out how we get the needed resources, to drive the changes that we want. What's the plan, who's doing what? That's what mobilization is all about. This is where social media can be so helpful, in terms of both building social capital and mobilization. When you look at the protests going on, say, across the globe, and how well they're leveraging social networks, it has to do with social capital and mobilization, in making that happen. But if you want to drive change in a society using volunteers, you need all three of these components to effect change in an organization. Having one or two is not enough, you need all three to drive change, when working with volunteers.