Intuition and Change

Happy black Friday all! :) I am spending the holiday at my best friend's family on their dairy farm in northern IL. It is one of my favorite places....crops still coming out of the field, new baby calves born daily, and just a different gentle way of life I really admire.

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I appreciated both Mark and Ruby's responses on intuition and its place in their work. While I was with a nonprofit consulting firm out of Indianapolis, I co-facilitated a couple of executive transitions. Some were 30-year execs retiring...other execs transferring to another organization. We used a three-step process from TransitionGuides funded by CompassPoint--prepare, pivot, thrive. Basically it is a process that honors the work of the past executive, works with the board and organization to set their vision for the future, and then choose a new leader best suited to work towards that vision. Essentially, especially for smaller organizations, this is a ideal opportunity to "rebrand" the organization. The organization's that I have seen move through this process and grow with the most promise are those poised to handle change.

I am reminded of the 12 Change Success Factors identified by John Adams in his article "Successful Change Paying Attention to the Intangibles." I find they boil down to the people, their trust, structure for change, and the communication among those involved. So where does intuition come into play?

In change processes, I think there has to be a little "gut instinct" or intuition at play. But there must be trust among the group towards the common vision...as well as a way to communicate when and where the "gut instinct" is informing the process. At the Foundation, we have recently shifted one of our grant programs that works in seven communities across the US...focusing on one every year. In this change, I (as the new staff member) provided support to the grant committee. We outlined our activities for each meeting but did not anticipate the flexibility we would need to exhibit while finding community partners in the focus community. The way I chose to handle this relationship was not ideal for one of our committee members. After re-reading Adam's article, I think that the bottomline was that the committee member and I had not worked much together so he did not trust my work and intentions with the community partner. Also, I did not adequately communicate the assumptions I was making for the partnership. It was a hard and very valuable lesson to learn.

I think that most changes do "stick" at some level. It might not be the ideal result or end change I envisioned or held for the organization....but it might be the "right" change for the organization. Also, the process could have been transformational for an individual, work group, etc. involved in the work. I have found that I never know exactly the impact I have made in consulting with organizations. It has led to board chairs choosing to leave the corporate world to follow their heart in leading a nonprofit, a development director pursuing Master's work, new board members for organizations, and more. I'm always surprised (and humbled) with the "ripple effect" from change processes I have been involved in.