1. Start with your values and principles
Whenever there’s a change, people might feel uncertain or unclear about where the team is headed to next. Even if you’re leading the change, you might be too. It’s always important to remember your values, what drives you to (re)energise people around a collective sense of purpose
2. Celebrate and reflect
Even when there’s a need to change, this doesn’t mean you need to throw out the baby with the bathwater. Give people an opportunity to celebrate how they’ve embodied those values, achieved and even better, celebrate what they’ve done that embodies those new principles. At the end of every “season”, we do a pecha kucha where all of the 50 people are represented through an image that tells a story about them and their work. Give people an opportunity to reflect on what’s gone well, what could be stopped and what could be improved.
3. Test, empower and stretch
Change may feel abstract to people and you’ve got a short window of opportunity to get people behind you, especially as they may have experienced change before that didn’t go well.
Start testing and learning to show visible signs of the change and to show you haven’t got a perfect solution, encourage people to be able to shape and test change too. As part of that, we’ll be creating new leadership roles, opening up projects for everyone to shape & test and developing a programme of testing & learning — ranging from empathy tours, coaching conversations, problem solving clinics, cultural cafes, team diagnostics — taking place outside of our buildings so we can immerse ourselves in different environments, whether it’s a community centre like The Winch, home to the North Camden Zone or Local Globe, one of our council offices reinvented as a co-working space.
If we’re developing creative ways for other people — be it frontline staff, residents and partners to collaborate and innovate, to deliver greater impact and to become stronger teams, why don’t we try it on…ourselves?!
How do you facilitate collaboration across teams? How do you support your team through change? How do you create opportunities for people to develop themselves?
What lessons did you learn? What did it feel like? What would you do differently?
