What does it take to overwhelm the enormous bureaucratic inertia of an organization and move rapidly towards the new vision or strategy?
To win in the New Normal, you must decide what you want your tomorrow to be, and then make the necessary change happen faster than the rate of change in your environment.
Why is ‘faster’ critical? Laggards lose. As Jack Welch, former chairman of GE, once observed, “If the rate of change inside an organization is less than the rate of change outside, the end is in sight.”
One major obstacle to the speed of change is organizational inertia and the danger for leaders is falling victim to the Sisyphus Syndrome.
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king condemned by the Greek gods to push a boulder up a hill: as soon as he reached the top and thought he had succeeded, the boulder rolled back down the hill, forcing him to repeat his effort—through all eternity.
The Sisyphus Syndrome is what happens with most attempts to change the status quo. Even when a change strategy appears to succeed, the change is often temporary. Things simply snap back to the status quo when the external pressure stops.
What if change is not an option, but essential for survival? What do you do if there is an entrenched bureaucracy and you need to accelerate change?
When we studied the approach used by a small group of mid-level officers to introduce a new vision that fundamentally transformed the organizational structure of the U.S. Air Force, we found three leadership lessons for faster change that avoids The Sisyphus Syndrome.
• First, when rapid change is required spreading ownership of an idea is more than a platitude. It’s an essential, proven change acceleration principle. It works because, when people have a vested interest and feel ownership, they’ll partner to make things happen. While everyone may have different motivations for espousing and promoting the new idea, ranging from commitment to an ideal to a desire for new opportunities, they are willing to join together. And the larger a team of proponents, the easier it is to embed the new idea and accelerate change.
• Second, information flow is the lifeblood of rapid change. A new idea has to be communicated broadly as it evolves, so its originators should actively facilitate the speed of information flow. Offering continuous progress reports, visibly welcoming suggestions from others in the flow and rapidly adapting to constructive feedback helps build shared ownership and maintain momentum.
• Third, fast, broad circulation of a compelling idea can overwhelm bureaucratic inertia. So don’t be intimidated by high-level obstructionists who temporarily impede progress. If it is an idea whose time has come, obstructionists can be overcome or they can be circumvented. Bureaucratic inertia yields to an aggressive parallel approach— quick, precise and simultaneous action. The faster and more simultaneous the circulation of an idea, and the more precisely advocates target the key decision makers and influencers, the less likely that an idea will be swallowed by bureaucratic inertia.
The excitement of visionary change can spark a chain reaction of new thinking and transformation by unleashing daunting brainpower and ingenuity of action. Think about the cataclysmic events in Egypt. There was a new idea and its time had come. Words and images were circulated rapidly in the form of emails, texts, Tweets and television images. It triggered a meltdown in a well-entrenched bureaucracy and a spiraling of events the moved our world forward toward the future. More likely than not, Sisyphus will not need to roll the rock back up the hill.
