By Aaron Proietti
I am wired as a change agent, and I enjoy playing the game of negotiation and influence that is required to change the way organizational systems behave. Being appointed Chief Innovation Officer of a Fortune 500 company was my dream role and I achieved it in 2012 at a large multinational insurer. What I learned in my first six months in that role surprised me. I learned quickly that the path to driving meaningful change, even from the top of an organizational hierarchy, would not suddenly appear before me unobstructed. The obstacles were as mighty as ever.
Thankfully, I was paired with a career coach who understood that the path lay within me, as much as before me. Over the course of the next two-plus years, I endeavored to change myself as a leader and influencer in order to unlock the broader change potential of the organization.
My coach pushed me first to check my ego. While confidence and pride had gotten me the high-ranking position, they were not the traits I needed to be successful in the role. I had to learn to look at the organization as a large system, in which I played only a small part. Systems Thinking became the approach I would use to better understand both what was expected of me, and the strategies I should use to promote change. My coach then pushed me to redesign my leadership style by developing Design Standards. We went through an exercise of identifying new rules and behaviors that would enable me to learn faster and grow in my role.
After months of intentional work on reimagining the way I thought and led, the hard work began to pay off.
SYSTEMS THINKING
Popularized by MIT professor Peter Senge in his book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, systems thinking is an approach that rejects the notion that a leader must be an omniscient hero. Instead leaders should promote learning and harness collective intelligence to overcome obstacles to change in complex systems.
Among the most meaningful exercises I learned was to deliberately shift my attention away from myself. The approach we used was to shift focus next on others, then on the collective, and ultimately onto the broader system. This shift in attention from “I” to “You” to “We,” and ultimately to “It,” allowed me to ask (and answer) more profound questions than I’d been accustomed to.
For instance, when an employee trying to overcome an obstacle does not behave in the manner I hope they would, my first instinct is to assume I am right and to try to tell the employee in clearer terms what I expect of them (“I”). This is the confident pride that would not serve me well as a change agent in a complex organizational system. This approach does not change the system in any meaningful way, it only raises stress as I try to push “my way” on others.
A better approach is to shift my attention away from myself, and to have empathy for the employee (“You”). By better understanding their motivations and fears, I can develop new strategies to coach them through the situation as a peer rather than a boss. This approach, too, is limiting as it assumes that myself and the employee have more control over our team and environment than we may truly have.
The next level of attention focuses on the whole team to understand whether it is well-positioned to overcome obstacles. It is at this level (“We”) where I shift away from assuming I know what is right. This is instead a generative, inquiry-based approach, asking questions such as: What is my team dealing with today? What is the team’s potential? What can we do to improve the potential of the team? What strategies might we collectively employ? What can we do differently right now to test our assumptions?
Even this level of attention may not be sufficient to truly unlock the potential of the organization. Organizations contain interconnected networks and deeply held beliefs which create resistance to change. Attention must shift to the full system (“It”) in order to better understand the natural limits of myself, my employee, or my team in the broader system. This level of attention is even more inquiry-oriented than the We level, as the best questions to ask are not immediately apparent, varying based on the complexity of the system. The inquiry approach must be deeply reflective before it can be generative, utilizing questions such as: What happened? What continues to happen? Why is it happening? What is influencing the system?
In higher education, a similar example may play out as faculty try to change the behaviors of their students to improve educational outcomes. Their first instinct may be to direct the students’ actions by assuming that faculty (“I”) knows more than the students. Promoting to the next level of attention (“You”) a faculty member may try to understand what is standing in the way of a single student’s progress. Attention at the next level (“We”) begins to consider what behaviors could we shift inside of the classroom to improve educational outcomes. It’s only when attention shifts to the systems level (“It”) that we consider how broader system influences such as shifts in technology, shifts in human behavior, worsening mental health, changing economic conditions, and more, are contributing to the educational outcomes in this particular course at this particular point in time.
DESIGN STANDARDS
It is not enough to recognize all of the system influences and environmental changes around you. Leaders must meet organizations and people where they are. As the environment changes, so should you, as a leader, shift your beliefs and behavior to adapt to the new environment, intentionally designing your leadership style to achieve desired outcomes.
The effort to design and redesign leadership style is not a superficial one. It should be a deliberate effort to change yourself, not just your appearance or approach. By leveraging systems thinking, you can begin to understand the role you must play, and the leader you must become, to achieve the outcomes you desire. If the change outcome is sufficiently aspirational, or has proven elusive, that’s an indicator that what got you to this point is not what’s going to take you the rest of the way.
We all recognize that the pace of change in the world today is accelerating. Modern times demand more from us as leaders than traditional hierarchical notions of leadership can deliver. Assuming you know best in a world that is constantly changing around you is not a sustainable or scalable way to lead. Leaders must become learners who can shift rapidly when their approaches are ineffective or when new opportunities emerge.
Successful leaders design personal values systems that guide their growth. By identifying and nurturing qualities which will allow objectives to be achieved, leaders can affect the environment around them accordingly. This is a creative exercise applied to personal development. Consider the possibility set of how you might shift as a leader, and select a path to follow. Reflect along the way, and pivot when required.
Once you identify your aspirational qualities, or values, the next step is to define the rules, or design standards that will manifest the environment you’re trying to nurture. Quite simply, design standards are the rules—both written and unwritten—that you will follow to reinforce your values and achieve new outcomes.
The exercise of identifying design standards, sometimes called design principles, is to simply list the “must haves” and the “must not haves” associated with the environment you are trying to nurture. Do this, don’t do that. Say this, don’t say that. Etc.
In my corporate career, these design standards were often quips that set the tone for the environment we were trying to create, such as “Don’t wait for direction that will never come.” An educator might adopt standards such as “Teach students how to learn, not what to learn,” or “Take risks with technology solutions to improve collaboration and creativity.”
The power of this approach is unlocked only when you go through the entire process to identify the values and the corresponding design standards that you will employ. If there is any lack of clarity, you are likely to fall back upon a bad habit or entrenched norm to guide your behavior rather than the aspirational standards.
A NEW LEADER EMERGES
It wasn’t until 2014, nearly two years after my appointment as Chief Innovation Officer, that I truly felt I was well-positioned to lead the changes that were required in my role. I had abandoned any sense that I knew anything better than others, and inserted new skills related to asking great questions and setting others up for success.
I had gained a new humble confidence, far less brittle than the prideful confidence I’d once held. As my foundation, I had the same expert skill set which had led others to promote me into higher positions. As I grew as a leader, I gained awareness and appreciation of the complex systems around me. One of the values I embraced was “continuous improvement,” which motivated me to get better everyday. I pursued excellence in my work, I expanded my network, I embraced new ways of thinking.
Through Systems Thinking and developing Design Standards, I had transformed my leadership approach to become the leader I always had hoped I would become. I focused on what was needed and what was possible much more than what was expected or likely.
What’s required of you as a leader today to create the environment that will propel you and those around you to reach what’s possible tomorrow?
Aaron Proietti is a SUNY Geneseo graduate with a Masters from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Applied Mathematics. He left the corporate world in 2016 to apply his hard-earned leadership lessons to new domains, such as nonprofits, small businesses, and academia. In 2018, Aaron wrote a book on innovation called Today’s Innovator. Through his business, Today’s Innovator, Aaron now coaches leaders and teams to become strong agents of change, fully capable of responding to the rapid pace of change in the world around us.
