Organizational Change and Alignment

Leaders know that change is constant, and that building flexibility into their organizations and strengthening adaptive skills at all levels are a must. In a world where the set of expectations that people hold about their relationship to work has shifted toward engagement, growth, and making an individual impact, leading change requires creativity in enlisting others to advance the work together.

Our approach to organizational change is strategic yet opportunistic, organized but flexible. It focuses on practice (what people actually do, not what they say, is what will get results), passion (engaging people’s passion creates change that sticks), and pull (“pushing” change is ineffectual—and when you stop pushing, the changes stall). We put an emphasis on engagement, action and learning by doing, across three steps: defining the change, foregrounding existing, hidden assets in creating implementation plans, and scaling and evaluating the effort.

We help you construct practical implementation plans, starting with leveraging hidden assets within the organization. We then engage a larger circle of stakeholders in considering what to build out in this step, tapping into their perspectives, to see how they see the change work unfolding and how they can serve as advocates for change.

In the final step, we work with you to determine how to scale your change—including how best to position the initiative across a broad group of stakeholders in ways that resonate and hook their interests. We also formalize measurement and evaluation in ways that help you learn from implementation both immediately and over time.

We know that change is not a static or one-off process. CFAR’s approach to change balances immediate needs with a look to the longer-term horizon, tackling specific aims within the context of the greater whole. Our work supports leaders to build capacity across their organization to shift as new demands and opportunities arise.