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To Lead Change, You Need To Shift From A Manager Mindset To A Changemaker Mindset
“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 them. As noted above, they create norms, rituals and expectations for behaviors that make up the formal and informal governance structures which enable complex collective action. Everyone needs to know what to expect and what’s expected of them, or coordination breaks down.
That’s why calls to eliminate hierarchies and, as management guru Gary Hamel has put it, “bust bureaucracy”, have fared so poorly. Hierarchies exist in almost every form of society because they help to coordinate collective action. To wit, Wharton Professor Ronnie Lee’s research into game software developers found that the number of levels of bureaucracy have actually increased significantly over the last 50 years to handle increased complexity.
Yet when we need to switch directions all of those governance structures, many of which we aren’t even aware of, act against us. To create lasting, pervasive change, we need to change not only the incentive structures but the…
