Especially the ‘How’ questions had emerged as the most important challenges in the previous times. That is why this time we invited Anne Kloosterboer to take us into the framework that she describes in her book ‘De Notenkraker, 40 recognizable change illemas’ (which will be published in Q2 2020). It was an inspiring session with many recognizable dilemmas and many new insights!

To take you along in the change dilemmas experienced by the multinationals, here is a short report of the results of this session!

Organizational change issues

What you see is that important changes take place at the crossroads in the life cycle of an organization. We are talking about organizations in the start-up phase, growth phase, maturity phase and the termination phase. The multinationals that participated in the session are all in the maturity phase. The most important change issues that are currently relevant to these organizations are, in order of importance:

• Culture change
• Building new capabilities/change capacity
• Change of course/strategy
• Change of operating model/organizational structure
• Introduction of new processes/systems/ways of working

Based on these categories, the Change Leads talked to each other and the dilemmas encountered were discussed. It is interesting to see how much mutual recognition there is between the organisations.

Your role

Another interesting perspective to explore is: What role do you take on in the change process? Anne Kloosterboer describes in her book two roles that you can assume and both roles are very important to have invested in the change process; the Change Leader and the Change Facilitator. The Change Leader leads change with head and heart through inspiration, conversation and decision-making. The Change Facilitator orchestrates the change journey by guiding both process and content. What was striking is that most of those present placed themselves in the role of Change Supervisor, which is also very logical from their position and assignment. But that they also occasionally took on the role of Change Leader.

The pitfall is that as a process facilitator you take on the role of change leader and vice versa. This happens if one of the two roles is not properly taken up by the designated persons. This detracts from the impact you generate and the ultimate success of the change.

So it is very important to properly invest in both roles and to regularly ask yourself whether the designated persons are fulfilling their role properly. Especially if naming the job title sometimes causes confusion; “You are the change lead, so I can still delegate the change leadership to you”?