Corporate Explorer Fieldbook

CHAPTER 18Leadership Movement: Enrolling Others in the Work of Transformation

Kristin von Donop and Yaniv Garty

EXPLORER AS CHANGE AGENT

Corporate Explorers often start as lone advocates of change inside an organization. They see a potential area of growth and champion building the capabilities to pursue it. They cannot do this alone. Implementing innovation and change on a scale relies on others adopting new ways of working to succeed in the future. The Corporate Explorer’s task is to generate excitement and galvanize action about new opportunities. We refer to this as a leadership movement: getting others to join and to create the future today by figuring out what is needed and how to build the capabilities for long‐term success.

This chapter is a guide to building a leadership movement that cultivates a shared commitment to success. The key to this approach is starting with early adopters and then involving more people to build a movement that implements change at scale. Corporate Explorers are enrolling people in the work of changing the organization’s processes, skills, and most importantly, its behaviors.

BUILD A MOVEMENT

In Mark Twain’s classic nineteenth‐century novel, Tom Sawyer is given the chore to paint a white picket fence. It was a daunting task for a boy who would rather be playing with others. He figures out how to get his friends and other kids in the neighborhood to help him get the job done. Tom did not have a command structure to achieve his goal. He ...