The role of a leader is to create the conditions that enable the organisation to adapt continually in a rapidly changing environment. Creating the appropriate culture involves addressing mindsets and management practices, including

• Cultivating curious mindsets
• Using a common approach to managing transformation
• Building transformation teams.

Curiosity drives us to explore and pursue new experiences. It enables us to build knowledge, develop intellect, grow relationships and creative capability. Therefore, it is essential to the success of a continuously evolving organisation as it brings significant improvements in innovation, learning, decision-making, performance,  problem-solving, teamworking,  communication and well-being. According to Professor Todd Kashdan at George Mason University, people express curiosity in different ways across five dimensions. Individuals can use our Curio-5 assessment tool to measure their preferences across these dimensions and learn how to increase curiosity bandwidth. Leaders can take practical steps to cultivate curious mindsets in the workplace, including

• Directly encouraging curiosity by asking simple questions such as “What are you curious about today?”
• Role modelling by embracing new experiences, asking questions, challenging thinking, being open, relaxed and playful! 
• Encouraging people to think deeper and differently about challenges and opportunities they face.
• Helping teams to use better brainstorming and questioning to increase curiosity.
• Encouraging lifelong learning, inside and outside of work and a self-managed approach.
• Creating psychological safety where everyone feels comfortable speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.

The reported failure rate of large-scale change programs has been around 70 per cent over many years. Research by McKinsey indicates that organisations are more likely to be successful when they address mindsets and put in place dimensions that will enable sustainable execution. This includes using a disciplined, common approach to leading and implementing transformation, as change programmes with governance structures are at least six times more likely to succeed. A disciplined approach promotes a common language with a consistent methodology that speeds up decision-making and delivery. It creates energy and boosts confidence,  providing a road map for planning and execution so that valuable time is not wasted on duplication or working out ways to plan and implement. Our 3-D Approach to Organisational Change is one such approach that integrates the discipline of project management (PMI) with the psychology of change in a structured process. Successful change is managed in three phases and is achieved by following steps for leading the change whilst managing multiple change projects and ensuring continuous communication throughout. The approach includes tools and assessments for each stage of the change process to enable planning and regular progress reviews by the transformation teams. Importantly it is a repeatable process used for continuous transformation throughout the organisation. 

Successful implementation requires the discipline of attention of senior leaders to ongoing transformation and the discipline of execution by high-performing teams. McKinsey transformation metrics found that top-performing companies had over twenty per cent of their people involved in wide-scale transformation. Commitment from the top and ownership from the bottom is key to success. High ownership levels are created when setting up high-performing implementation teams by allowing time for team members to build relationships with each other. They can use a common methodology to get on with the planning process, starting with identifying their own team purpose and goals. Maersk Global HSSE Improvement successfully deployed a team of transformation coaches using KBAs 3D Approach to build global high-performing teams, in turn, responsible for driving a “Safety First” culture worldwide.

The above summarises some of the forces pressurising organisations to change, and tools leaders have at their disposal to create a culture for continuous transformation or ongoing evolution. Arguably there is nothing inherently new in the overall approaches to change management, but there is a step-change in the need to focus on managing stakeholder relationships, creating the right mindsets and using a disciplined approach widely, in order to make perpetual transformation the norm.

However, critical to the success of any transformation is the behaviour of leaders. A 2019 McKinsey report on transformation metrics suggests that leaders have significant influence over the success (or failure) of their company’s transformations. Research shows 86% of leaders claim to role model behavioural changes, yet only 53% of the people who report to them agree. So it is the leader’s primary responsibility to routinely gain good feedback about their impact and ensure they espouse the behaviour changes they seek of others. In the words of Peter Drucker, “You cannot manage other people unless you manage yourself first.”