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To Lead Change, You Need To Shift From A Manager Mindset To A Changemaker Mindset

Greg Satell
6 min readJan 18, 2025
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“Institutions usually remain inscrutable to those operating within them — like water to fish.” writes Joseph Henrich, Harvard’s Chair of Human Evolutionary Biology. “Because cultural evolution generally operates subtly and outside conscious awareness, people rarely understand how or why their institutions work or even that they ’do’ anything.”

Organizations are institutions of collective action. They are designed to produce specific, repeatable processes through the creation of specialized roles, norms, rituals and behaviors. This is what creates the culture shock when someone starts out in a new place, and also the social cues they use to start conforming and fitting in.

It’s also why whenever we set out to lead change, we’re sure to encounter resistance. All of those subtle forces built up over time are designed to support existing behaviors and norms. To bring genuine transformation about, we need to shift from a manager’s mindset rooted in the status quo, to a changemaker mindset that can shift it to another direction.

Shift 1: From Consensus Building to Coalition Building

Good managers build consensus. They communicate objectives clearly and make sure everyone knows their role in achieving…

Greg Satell
Greg Satell

Written by Greg Satell

Co-Founder: ChangeOS | Bestselling Author, Keynote Speaker, Wharton Lecturer, HBR Contributor, - Learn more at www.GregSatell.com

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A former department head eliminated all the "investigative" researchers to focus the department efforts on "cut & dry standard routine procedures, get out the analysis, next!" as a cost-saving initiative. Following that we had a "Change Initiative"…

What’s more, because you are working in an atmosphere of uncertainty in which there is no guaranteed payoff, there is no way to substantiate that the benefits will be worth the costs.

Once worked in a situation where we had several MVP caliber projects going on simultaneously. However, all were perceived by leadership as short term go to market opportunities, and as such were already being measured with a monthly P&L statement…