It’s 4 am.
A noise has just woken you up. You're unsure what noise it is because you were asleep. You listen for the little things, focus on slowing your breath and heartbeat, and project your sense of awareness through your ears to the edge of your house.
You're listening for the small noises, like the pick of a lock, the tinkling of breaking glass, or the foot on the stairs, not the big ones. It’s the little noises you will have to do something about, not the big noises like a distant car door slamming, the rumble of a lorry, or even a faraway scream. Those types of noises are public, meaning someone else will probably sort them out. It is the noises within the perimeter of your house that you listen for.
The difference between these noises is simple. It determines where immediate action is required. There are three outcomes depending on the noise.
Immediate: It is inside the house, and you have to act.
Influence: It is outside the house, and you should probably do something about it, but you can probably get away with doing nothing with little consequence.
Impractical: It is outside and far away; you can do little, and no action is taken.
The three I’s of action
These choices are the same ones we face as change agents.
Immediate
Influence
Impractical
An example from everyday life:
An immediate action might be mowing the lawn. If you don’t, no one else will. If you don’t act, there will be undesirable consequences.
A change that requires influence might be raising money for a local children’s play park. You can’t decide directly to build on the play park; you need authority beyond your own.
The last scope might be to stop the wars around the world; this is beyond our power, and therefore, we do not try because it is impractical with the energy and influence we have available to us.
An example from work:
At work, an immediate action might be to change how the team does a retrospective, represents work in progress, or records work items on the backlog.
A change that requires influence might be restructuring how teams work together to increase the flow of value.
An impractical change might be to change the regulatory system in which your organisation works so that you are freer to make different products.
When the problems you face are immediate but are beyond your power to fix.
The scope of the problem you are trying to fix determines whether it is immediate or not.
For example, at the beginning of this article, when you listen at 4 a.m, what happens if it really is someone in the house and they are more powerful than you?
What happens in the organisation when you are employed as a change agent to enable customer flow but have no authority to change team structure?
When change agents need systemic change to succeed but don’t have the authority to change anything in the system, it creates a real problem.
These are the challenges that most change agents struggle with daily. These are the challenges that bother us the most because we must act, and we can’t.
The existing power structure dictates your authority
Both in society and in organisational change, we find that power structures are hierarchical in nature. A hierarchical power structure collects and sends information upwards, then makes decisions and sends instructions downwards.
If the change we need to make requires people who are higher in the hierarchy to use their power, but they are not willing, there is too much red tape, or they are unavailable, we are stuck.
Although power is not evenly distributed, it is often expected that the responsibility for change is. This is not a working solution.
This is the situation most change agents are in. Does this sound familiar?
Hard to solve
A key part of the change agent’s role is to change the organisation's mindset. We know that solving complex problems requires a different mindset from the one that created the problem.
The mindset has to change for the solution to be understood and implemented. This has been built into the Agile Onion for years. It is the reason why the mindset is on the outside.
The problem is that to change anything, the hierarchical power holder must shift their mindset. When that person is unwilling or unavailable, the system remains stuck.
Push or Pull?
There are two approaches to change. You can either work within the system to coach the change or use force to push the change to the system.
I will not discuss consulting versus coaching here, as probably anyone reading this substack is already familiar with my work and the benefits of a coaching approach when shifting ways of working.
We know consulting doesn’t yield the medium—or long-term gains hoped for by change program investors, yet this is the predominant approach. However, this is not the focus of this article.
Today, I want to focus on a different approach. Not coaching and not consulting. What other options do we have that are not consulting (installing some process or other), and not coaching (working with leadership to change their mindset)?
What options do we have?
The options are fairly simple to understand but have significant consequences for the change agent depending on which one is chosen.
The options are:
Don’t make any changes and stay with the status quo.
This is usually short-term because the change agent becomes ineffective, gets frustrated, or is asked to move on.Work up in the system yourself and gain power inside the hierarchy.
Then, you will be the person with power and can make whatever changes you see fit. The problem with this approach is that it usually requires an old mindset to be successful in the hierarchy, and a change agent cannot mimic this mindset long enough to rise in the ranks. It might also not be a timely option.Build relationships with the right people and coach them to make the right changes for them and, for the first time, the wider system.
This is the most common advice I give and the most likely to succeed in the short term. It requires inner growth to meet a hierarchy with a huge amount of equality and compassion, which many people do not yet have. It is the focus of part of our boot camp and Enterprise Cohort programs.Create your own power structures and take the power needed to make the change. This might take the form of politics inside an organisation or forming a new organisation entirely. This is the activist approach.
Who am I?
In my heart, I am an activist. I have never been happy with the current hierarchical command-and-control structures that benefit mainstream storytellers. They create privilege and rigidity that eat away at creativity and human potential. I see this happening to thousands of people. We bring half our life to work and leave the rest behind.
The first 2 options above, ‘Doing nothing’ and ‘Working up inside a hierarchy’, were not options I could follow. I did try, but the world of conformity and politics was too constricting for my free spirit.
Option 3 didn’t exist when I started trying to make a difference. I have had to carve out this area myself. Leaning on the shoulders of others, I have helped pioneer a coaching and people-led approach that is slowly taking hold. This is a great and, by far, the most powerful way to approach change. This approach has largely come about because of activism! See below.
Option 4, Activism, has its merits. And this is what I want to speak about now.
Prerequisites for a Good Activist
This approach is tricky; you must know when you are ready to be an activist. It is not for everyone. It requires grit, knowing exactly what you have at risk, and being okay with that.
Creating your own power structure is a dangerous endeavour if you have not first mastered yourself. There is a danger of creating the same thing you set out to change. Animal Farm. Two legs bad.
It must be about purpose and meaning, not personal power acquisition. Of course, it can be, but that is outside of my interest and this article.
Therefore, I believe that an activist who wants to be truly successful in the realms of organisational change must first master option 3, the coaching approach.
Then, attempting option 4, the activist approach, has a much better chance of success, as it is not your agenda; it is in service to the story and to having different people with a better mindset that can bring about better outcomes.
This is critical to success. It’s not about you; it is about the story.
The activist and their approach
Being an activist means relocating the centre of power to a different place. This may be you, it may be an idea, or it may be a different group of people.
The purpose is to bring about better outcomes.
Moving the centre of power will be felt by the existing power holders. This may cause conflict, retribution, or some other action you must deal with.
The activist approach is to shift power.
Power
To move power, we must first understand what power is.
There are two types of power: Human power and energetic manifestation. We are going to talk about human power first.
Human power comes from stories. Power is a story that people believe in so much that it dictates their actions, further aligning them with the story. Power is a cyclical mental and physical construct that keeps people behaving consistently—consistently with each other and with the story.
What you are doing when you shift power is shifting the story. The person who shifts the story is the person who has the power. This is what change is. It is shifting the story so that people act consistently in a different way in accordance with the story.
An activist is someone who shifts the story without permission from the current storytellers to achieve a better outcome.
Story foundations
The existing power structures that maintain the status quo often contain rules and social norms that restrict the creation of new power structures, i.e., telling new stories. This must first be overcome.
The foundation of a good story, especially in organisational change, must be a real-world problem that cannot be solved with the current power structure or the story that is holding it in place. Stories direct power back to the current power holders.
Example:
A perfect example of this is the old idea that emotions are not welcome or professional at work. Suppressing emotions and anything that challenges the current leadership behaviours keeps the leadership's energetic hold on any new entrants or anyone who wants to change the status quo.
The story that suppresses emotions does not allow people to solve the problems of today that require collaboration and innovation or allow us to use conflict to learn and grow.
The existing foundations of the old story say that anyone who promotes soft skills or theory or tries to connect us to something emotional or from our internal world is ‘woo woo’, ‘not practical’, ‘doesn’t belong’, and is not ‘real work’.
Anyone who does this is derided.
As isolation from home working amplifies the mental health decline created in the lockdown period, a new narrative is emerging that says it is okay to talk about emotions. This is a new story emerging that has power of its own.
These two competing stories have power. Aligning with one story over another creates conflict. The old narrative is stopping the new emergent problem from being addressed. To redirect power, it is possible to create a new power source that solves this problem. This is wrapped in a new story that directs communication and relationships towards the new storyholder. This new story provides leverage for a shift of power.
Every blocker that the old power structure (story) has in fixing emergent problems is an opportunity to relocate or redistribute power.
Is this underhand or creating conflict for the sake of it?
No, it is not, and here is why.
We are not looking to attack, undermine, or hurt the existing powerholders. Instead, we seek to create a new power base that is more effective at solving problems. If our story is a good one, it will motivate people to help, providing more power to the new ways of working, and as the story redirects power back to itself and the people, idea, or process that is more effective, it will render the old power base obsolete without a fight.
The assumption is that we need to act but can’t because of existing power structures. We are taking it into our own hands to act, which means circumventing the current power structure and creating a new one.
If you can make the relationship with the original power holders a good one, then they may even redirect work and power your way when it suits them to do so.
If this is happening to you, how do you counter it?
This power exploit, designed to redirect power from an existing power holder that is no longer effective at solving the problems to a more effective power holder, works because the original power holder cannot or will not adapt.
If you practice agility and continually adapt your mindset, relationships, and connection to what is happening around you, there will be no gap for the exploit to work. There will be no need to change the story or the power holder because the existing power holders are relevant, beneficial, and the best option.
How do I know this?
I have had to do this type of energetic relocation several times when starting AWA and also to bring about a people-first approach to change. It is exactly the entrepreneur's approach when creating a new product or service in an existing market.
It is the approach Steve Jobs took in creating Apple, Richard Branson with Virgin, and how the Fintech market and Crypto Currencies took on the banks.
I see this approach anywhere there is disruption in the marketplace.
It is how we shifted the agile narrative away from Scrum, and how we moved the narrative from ego-driven might over right towards people-led cultures that have meaning and purpose.
Another word for activism is Entrepreneurism.
It is powerful and works. It is useful when the current people or system are not adaptable enough to achieve the desired result and you are willing to do what it takes to make it happen.
Practical steps for activism
Identify the problem and the power structures behind it.
Engage with them and see if the problem can be solved together, collaboratively, and for the benefit of all.
Work on yourself.
Are we on balance leaving things better than when we found them, and are we operating from love or from covering up pain?
Are you thinking systemically and optimising for a larger holon?Find the growing movement that is trying to fix the problem but can’t
Amplify their narrative in a way that makes sense to everyone and establishes a new power base.
Establish a new powerbase that can solve that problem without creating a worse situation in other areas.
Inspire others to amplify the narrative that solves the problem and continues to bring power to the story and the new power base.
When not to use activism
Don’t use activism if your salary depends on the existing power structures.
Don’t use activism if the amount of resentment you create is a larger story than the one you create to meet your outcomes
Don’t use activism if it is for a self-centred reason
Don’t use activism if it breaks the law or your contractual obligations.
When to use activism
Use activism when you must make a change but you are stopped by an existing power structure.
Use activism when there is no other option, such as an intervention with a coaching approach, i.e. the Enterprise Change Pattern.
When the outcome of your actions is beneficial regardless of the result.
When you know you will win.
Learning more
If you would like to learn more, I now run Entrepreneurship and Stakeholder engagement workshops that build the skills needed to shift the narrative and create a viable new power structure based on meaning and purpose.
Get in touch if you would like to learn more.
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