by Celine
In our course about sustainable business models we get inspired to think out of the box when challenges arise and connect it finally with the basic business model that might need a change or an innovative restructuration. Learning the basics of change management and business model essentials helps us to have a good backbone when going into organizations.
Still, it can be hard at times to really influence the strategic decisions a business is taking. Next to understanding the organization well and knowing the organizational politics it is crucial to understand the main decision maker: the CEO. He is responsible in fostering an environment that support embedding sustainability into the strategies and day-to-day decision of the organizations. The Embedding Project, a public-benefit research project, did interviews with over 100 CEO’s to gather insights into their decision-making to understand how a change-agent can be effective in influencing their CEO and how he/she can best support the CEO in his daily work. In this blog post I want to present some of the insights from this research on how to become an effective change-agent:
Effective change-agents know the business from the inside-out. The most successful change-agent really understand business and can abstract what keeps the CEO up at night, what gets the CEO excited. Questions to ask are: What is in the CEO’s inbox today? What is the language he/she uses and what kind of things short-term or long-term is the CEO thinking of. Knowing possible answers to these questions help to then tie sustainability conversations to those topics. The most important is to frame the sustainability challenge in terms of business issues that are important for the CEO and thus then become important for business.
Help the CEO create strong business cases. As this blog is doing, nothing is more compelling for a CEO then providing him with stories that signal the potential to win new business, reduce risk or develop new innovative products or services. For this is its important to frame your proposal in a language that the company is already using in its existing strategies and how your proposal defines business value, while showing up other success stories from similar projects. Being able to show how your proposal can track economic benefit will be crucial to convince the CEO about the new idea. Next to that it is helpful to frame your proposal in terms of business risks AND opportunities, like cost reduction etc.
Amplifying the potential of recognition for your CEO is something that many change-agents pointed out in the Embedding Project. When dealing with senior leaders it is important that you have the ability to be invisible. By creating opportunities for the CEO to receive recognition for his/her work you give credit to their leadership, support and vision. This will make the CEO energized as well as aligns the project personally with his success that may help implementing other projects to bring change in the way of doing business more sustainably.
What do you think are further important skills to train to become an effective change-agent? Did you have a similar experience in bringing change to an organization you worked at that you are open to share? How did you approach it and what did you learn? (Find more examples in the sources)
Resources:
http://nbs.net/knowledge/ceo-decision-making-for-sustainability/
http://nbs.net/wp-content/uploads/NBS-SA_CEO_Exec-Guide-160714.pdf
BUS446 
I found this blog-post interesting! It reminded me of and I could very much relate it to what Cilin Dahl has discussed as she was presenting AkerBioMarine and the case study of her building a sustainability team for the company. She is an truly an active change agent who has the power to influence the top management team (TMT) about more investment in sustainability and the future of it – where AkerBioMarine should be in future in terms of sustainability! The nest big thing!
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What an inspiring blog post! I definitely believe that preparing oneself to become an effective “change agent” is incredibly important. Further skills one could train to become an effective change agent I guess would be the ability to communicate in a way that is clear but also humble. This because the way one communicate ideas for change is often very important if one would like to see the ideas implement into the business.
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This is very interesting. I think that if you are working as a “change agent” one of the most important attributes, in addition to knowledge about sustainability, is the ability to influence people. Changes in any organisations are not easy for all members and for that reason, change agents must be experts on human relations. At the end of the day, it is the organisation that implement the change and it is your job to communicate suggestion in an effective and appealing way. Furthermore, change agent rarely work alone. They need to be intelligent team players. Having someone with excellent project management skills is simply not enough. They will crash due to lack of detailed understanding of the subject area. Expertise also brings the credibility and respect needed to succeed in their role.
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This was a very interesting blog post. I think that preparing oneself to become an effective “change agent” is incredibly important. With knowledge about sustainability and the ability to communicate in an effective and appealing way, the change agents have good assumptions to succeed in their role. It is up to the organization to implement the wanted change, bu it’s up to the change agents to communicate their joint message.
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Becoming an efficient change agent is hard. Creating opportunities for others by using theory and thinking from courses like Sustainable Business Models can be a good place to start. There is only sustainability if it catches the eye. Keeping up to date on the latest trends in how to run a sustainable business, and knowing what sustainability at it’s core is, is key to success.
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The topic is very new and interesting.It seems to be a new concept to help CEO get trained to develop a sustainable business in the company. CEO‘s understanding and support is crucial for a company to develop a sustainable business.
It’s very interesting that it mentions the training from change-agency. As far as I understand, it’s quite a logic in talking about how change-agent influence for CEO from defining sustainability challenges, solving those challenging by finding relevant projects, and support CEO in projects in a way CEOs are easier to accept.
The theory seems a little abstract. I have a wonder that if there is successful examples related to that. It will be more convincible if there will be an example.
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Seems like a lot of us like the idea of being a “change agent”. And we should. After all, we are young, hopeful and “the next big thing”. The barrier to change is conservatism. This barrier might seem like a drag, but I think it is necessary. It’s like a test. The old knowledge that exists in an organization or a company is there for a reason. When one is confronted with this, evoking change might seem like a daunting ordeal, which makes it hard to stay true to your own ideals and ideas. The approach that is presented in this post is very interesting way of achieving our goals in this challenging environment. After all, how much is a good idea worth if you cant bring it to life?
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A thorough understanding of the business model and how the company works is crucial to be able to identify opportunities for change. Typically, top management have been in the company for a long time and they might not be so open to change. To become an effective change agent you need to able to persuade them with logical reasoning why it is better to do something this way rather than that way. I do not think top management will just go along with some visionary thoughts of yours, you will need to back up your ideas with numbers and show how this eventually will turn into a gain for the shareholders of the company.
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Becoming a change agent in a traditional organization I imagine is very difficult, unless you hold one of the top management positions. Furthermore, changing an organization towards sustainability is probably one of the hardest things you can attempt, as very few CEOs will be convinced unless it brings in increased profits (and not just in the very long run). It also puts your own position in the company at risk.
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This blog post was something different from the others. In a good way. In order to become a change agent, I believe that you have to have courage to discuss ways the organization can be change for the better. Usually CEO´s do not like changes, and this is understandable. But we all know that organizations have to be dynamic in order to be competitive. When I was a teenager I worked at a fast food kiosk in Kristiansand. The daily operation was very effective, but I saw little rooms for improvements. I spoke to my boss at that time, and something we did on a daily basis was actually changed in an efficient way. If changes are necessary, you should be humble and positive in the way you present your possible solution.
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This is a very interesting blog post. I agree with Mons when he says that to become an effective change agent you need to persuade top management with a logical reasoning. During one of my professional experience as an intern for a medium company that is producing and selling cosmetics, I had to convince my supervisor (the CEO of the company) to change the packaging of the orders and the distribution process for the orders. The way the company operated until then wasn’t good from an operationnal perspective but also from a sustainable perspective. In order to convince him, I had to backup my ideas with numbers : a cost study that shows costs reduction, but also other numbers showing benefits related to this new way to operate (reduction of the amount of material used for the packaging…).
I also agree on the fact that the change agent has really to have a clear view of the inside-out of the business and most importantly need to remain at all times up to date to the latest trends.
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Being a change agent in a traditional company is a hard job. For me the change agent thinks outside the box, understands the background of the market, is able to express a general opinion, is not governed by an own target and understands the whole value chain of the company. His argumentation is build upon a mix of market trends, the actual situation of the company and its challenges, taking into considering the needs of all stakeholders.
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