It's accepted dogma that successful organizational transformation requires involvement and buy-in of a critical mass of people at all levels of an organization. It's false (and foolhardy) to believe a massive outreach for all-hands participation on a transformation's "guiding coalition" can substitute for the specific work that only top leadership can do.
Transformational change requires inclusive involvement of all employees. However, casting a wide net of "participation and excitement" by broadening the guiding coalition to include all levels of an organization cannot take the place of first doing the exclusive (and difficult) work of aligning the executive team around the transformation.
People often talk about organizational change resistance as if it doesn't pertain to senior management. In fact, change resistance is a normal response in everyone, executives included. Intense work with the executive team, especially in the beginning but throughout a transformation is crucial.
Organizations don't change - people do - and it starts at the top. Initial stages of transformation may include months of work sessions with top executives not only to sort out what needs to change, why, and how but to learn about personal and organizational change and increase their own self-awareness and change leadership competency.
The most important foundational work for any major change - most certainly transformational change - is getting the executive leadership team to think, act, and feel as a unified body. Work with this team can be intense and conflict must be surfaced and worked through. Political posturing is normal and should be expected as executives try to maximize their own division's or department's gain from the change. This work is not for the faint-hearted, takes tremendous skill and finesse as a consulting team, and it cannot be skipped or avoided.
After the executive team is aligned with the strategic aspects of the change and are prepared to lead the transformation, you can broaden the executives' reach by careful selection of a change leadership team, followed by the launch of large-system change initiatives to enlist engagement of the entire organization.
Reaching down into the organization and gathering more people into the change effort before aligning the top team creates a false sense of engagement, urgency, and momentum for the change. If the executive team isn't aligned, you will encounter problems in each ensuing step of the transformation - most notably where the rubber meets the road and the planned changes (and difficult decisions) are actually implemented.
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