Leading Organisational Change in Practice; Some Ideas

In this article, Vowles summarized and briefly described ten lessons learned from his experience leading a change programme in the Department for International Development (DFID) over the past three years. They are:

1. Have a strong narrative and theory of change that binds everything you do;
2. Build coalitions of change by appealing to people's self-interest;
3. Engage everyone to co-produce change;
4. Open the space for challenge and critique;
5. Be honest with the insights;
6. Deliver value early and often;
7. Be prepared to "pivot" to adapt to changing contexts;
8. Leading change in partnership;
9. Find different ways to sustain attention;
10. If you do have to do things "top-down" with limited time to genuinely engage, be relentlessly honest in explaining why.