The solutions in the system

The solutions to the challenges an organisation faces lie within the system and with the people who work there; the system needs unblocking for those solutions to surface. You can only unblock these by engaging them in dialogue about what their lived experiences are. Very often these sort of dialogues don’t take place, either because it is not safe to do so or that there are no effective mechanisms in place for it to happen. The solution many organisations seem to be adopting recently are to put in place more and more data surveys and although this can provide a certain amount of anonymity (and therefore candidness) the perception is that this is unlikely to result in change and that their individual voices will be lost in the data. However good a survey is, however much you combat ‘survey fatigue’, the data you receive is only an indicator of what’s going on, not the details.

Buy closing the gap between leadership and those who carry out the work, you are more likely to find out what the feasibility of delivering a strategy will be, the challenges you will face and who will be your most likely advocates for change.