This week, three separate pieces of leadership thinking pointed towards the same uncomfortable truth.
Harvard Business Review argued that every organisation has two realities: the one leaders believe exists, and the one employees experience every day. The Times questioned whether as organisations go through disruption and transformation, are many boardrooms still operating with yesterday’s assumptions? Meanwhile, leadership expert Michael Watkins highlighted that enterprise leadership has become significantly harder as complexity, geopolitics and organisational change continue to accelerate.
These stories are connected by a common theme around the risk that organisational change has happened because decisions have been made. We know change has been executed correctly if it’s experienced in meetings, customer conversations, team interactions and the countless daily decisions that shape how work actually gets done.
Years of developing leaders tells us that the gap between intention and experience is often where transformation slows down. Leaders believe priorities are clear. Teams experience competing demands. Executives announce new ways of working, while managers continue to reward old behaviours. The result isn’t resistance to change, it’s inconsistency between the message and the execution.
For many industries adapting to change is continuous, so leaders need to go beyond asking if we have the right strategy to asking ‘are our people experiencing the organisational change we believe we’ve created?’ This question sits at the heart of effective leadership. Because organisations don’t change when strategies change, they change when people’s day-to-day experience changes.
The question for leaders is, if you spent a day working exactly as one of your employees did, would you experience the organisation you believe you’re leading?