A better plan

# Chapter 263

There must be a plan for change. - Masterminds

Continuing from yesterday, plans aren’t bad if the leader shows and does the plan. But plans that the leader has only for others, that is really poorly executed change. I remember the seemingly endless hours I sat in uncomfortable chairs, discussing and designing plans for change. The leader cheerleaded all our efforts and massive hours we were logging because this was leading us toward “change”. Nothing happened in the end, of all those top-down, you-shall-do-things-differently commands, never once were the leaders intending to do anything differently. They only planned and intended the grunts and managers to do things differently. This is not change in the growing and positive and better sense. It is change in the different sense.

The growth change that needs to occur in most every organization and team can only be led by the leaders, showing us and doing in front of us, what the plan demands in order for growth change to happen. Otherwise the inherent organizational resistance to any change will grind it all to nothing in the end, unless the leader shows and does. And the bigger the org the more natural resistance there is within. As Dr Tophoven once told me, “structure is inherently a no.” The bigger your organizational layers and structure, the more difficult it will be to say yes to change. And a master plan for change from the head office won’t cut it, trust me. I have seen this maneuver tried over and over and never once have I seen or experienced it working at all.

In one parent group we spend 10’s of thousands of dollars making sure that all the stakeholders were there for all the international meetings so that they could buy into the change that the leaders were pushing for and basically demanding we all accomplish this proposed change. The leaders had no plans of doing any of it. They neither showed us, nor did it, and it went nowhere. So much money. So much waste. Especially our stakeholder’s time. And no change. Have a better plan.