The reality of creating new realities: planning for the unpredictable
Hillary Carey, Ph.D.
Designing for transitions and just visions | Design leadership coach | Service Designer
Key takeaways:
I study how people can create compelling visions to instigate and motivate change. However, leaders and collaborators must shepherd that change carefully and thoughtfully over time to create value. To learn more about how people help organizations shift toward new future possibilities, I asked Jennifer Ruzek Liebermann and Mike Lin – two brilliant change-makers I have known for over a decade, since my days at IDEO. Mike and Jennifer both led large innovation efforts at Kaiser Permanente. Since then, they’ve worked in many healthcare and education organizations, civic/government projects, and other social sectors.
Jennifer and Mike, what does it look like to bring a vision to reality in an organization?
Jennifer: A vision paints a very tangible picture of the future that people can wrap their arms around.
You want them to understand the vision first and then ask, “Do you see yourself in this? What do YOU have agency over in this image of the future?”
Leaders must also lean into mobilizing teams and making specific requests of people to bring the vision to life.
Mike: In my experience, you have to build coalitions, create structures for collaboration, and address barriers strategically. Ultimately, we all care about outcomes, but human dynamics fuel them. The social systems for change are important.
Tell me more about the social systems.
Mike: Social systems and structures matter. You get closer to a vision when change happens socially, and people get on board.
From my experience, success happens as multiple rounds of progress, and you can’t hold too tightly to the perfection of the final outcome. A lot of it is emergent.
Jennifer: Yes, vision implementation does not happen on a set timeline, and this is why. You need both planned activity and to embrace emergent opportunities.
Mike: The dynamics are important to pay attention to. As a change agent and a leader, it is important to recognize what people need in order to be able to collaborate. Do they need permission? A source of truth about the future. A structure for working together? Leaders need an array of tools because they work at the bandwidth of their political capital. Also, middle managers need to be aligned and have their competing interests removed. And then, the people doing the work must be empowered and protected.
How do you call people to action?
Jennifer: When called to action, people often shrug and say, “This is a great vision, but I’m not sure what I can do. This is so much bigger than me.”
It is a leadership art to effectively ask departments, organizations, or individuals to take specific actions or a defined role in making the change. Action can be orchestrated.
Especially with large transformation visions, you can’t leave action to chance. Working with a client on a project to address complex, longstanding challenges for developing a diverse oncology workforce required coordination across many different sectors.
Mike: I agree. It has been very helpful to draw from social movement mindsets, which involves creating a call to action for every participant based on what each individual or group can bring to the table. Every action and contribution is a gift and is considered valuable.
Jennifer: And to build on that, when leaders call people to action, they cannot be perfectly prescriptive. They cannot know what every person is capable of doing or bringing.
Mike: And oftentimes, for me personally, this is where it gets exciting! There is so much delight when people or groups of people surprise you. The individual ideas create energy and momentum - and bring new groups of people into the fold.
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Could you give me a sense of what it feels like to lead an effort to realize a new reality inside a large organization?
Mike: From what I’ve seen, I think you have to be able to embrace the messy and the imperfect. Change happens in fits and spurts. It won’t fall neatly into timelines. There will be curve balls that you have to be able to roll with, and sometimes - things get shelved. But the essential things always come back.
Jennifer: Change work has its highs and lows. It is hard work. Prepare yourself mentally for that. Find peers with whom you trust and can share your emotions.
Mike: Sometimes I have found that people have different tolerances for messy and imperfect. For example, Jennifer and I have a similar tolerance level, and we both trust that experiments will pay off. We are emotionally prepared to wander the forest. But one thing I learned the hard way is that
if you are going to be the person leading other people through this messiness and ambiguity, you have to be attuned to how much divergence they can take before they need some structure. Too much experimenting can create too much fatigue.
As the change agent, you have to bring it back to order for people.
How can we get better at bringing visions into reality?
Mike: Being able to better walk the balance between the business of the business versus the engagement of the people in the system. People assume that intellect and knowledge are what’s needed. But those are already there. We often need emotional and social energy– the energy that moves people, even within a business. That’s why I’m excited about the power of making ideas and visions of the future tangible, specific, and material. So that people can actually see, hear, and experience the futures they want to create together.
Jennifer: I am thinking about how important it is to surface people’s needs within the system. We are dealing with people. They have to see a future for themselves. They have to acknowledge what they are afraid of and what they hope for.
When you make a place for everybody, especially in these really transformative challenges, you have a much better chance of success.
Thank you!
Wow, thank you, Mike and Jennifer. This conversation highlights how important it is to attend to the needs of people and systems if we want to foster big changes in organizations. A strong vision brings clarity and direction, but much more orchestration, imagination, and care must follow.
Do you have any favorite resources, or sources of inspiration, you’d recommend to people who want to do this kind of work?
Jennifer:
Mike:
I empower women to own their impact and negotiate the salary they deserve • Former Head of Design Research at Duo Security, a Cisco Company
2moCan't wait to read this!