What is the difference between change agents and transformation agents?
I’m inspired, in part, by this Michigan State University article on the Qualities of Effective Change Agents: https://www.michiganstateuniversityonline.com/resources/leadership/qualities-of-effective-change-agents/
In particular:
- Change management is moving from a discipline to a quality of leadership. Interesting. Means that companies are beginning to view the management of change not as a thing one does but a quality of who one is.
- This aligns well, actually, with my concept of creativity also not being a thing one does but a fundamental aspect of who one is.
- Change management is expanding beyond the views of any institutional hierarchy. “Organizations are looking to change agents to execute new processes and help employees adjust to new ways of doing things.” (Michigan State University, 2019). So here we have a clear item for a mandate:
Change agents execute new processes
Change agents help employees adjust to new ways of doing things.
There’s also an interesting bit about internal versus external change agents in the article: “Internal change agents have the advantage of being familiar with an organization’s history, operations, and people, while external change agents can provide a fresh perspective without the influence of a firm’s traditions and culture, according to an article in the International Journal of Management, Business, and Administration” (Michigan State University, 2019).
Change agents, then, bring different organizational perspectives depending on whether or not they come from within the organization or serve from outside of the organization.
I work to keep the perspective of an external change agent, even as I am an internal one at my company.
The success of a change agent depends on “the quality and workability of the relationship between the change agent and the key decision-makers within the organization,” continuing from that article in the International Journal of Management, Business, and Administration (in MSU, 2019).
This is an area that has been somewhat difficult for me, I think. Some leaders get what I do and we have fantastic relationships. Other leaders in my company think I have a horn growing out of my head – I am so contrary to their operations-minded and linear-thinking world views, they don’t know what to make of me. In some cases, I have been able to bridge the divide and they’ve seen the value I bring, the results I can achieve. Other cases have been more difficult, perhaps because my otherness makes me a bit of a threat to their worldview or view of themselves. After all, even the COO of my company tells me, “you’re a unicorn and we don’t know what to do with you.” I’m cool with the horn growing out of my head being a unicorn horn, but I don’t want to be such a fearful mystery to other leaders in the company.
The MSU article notes that effective change agents tend to have the following qualities: flexibility, diversified knowledge, priority and results focus, ownership and responsibility, and effective listening skills. I would add that change agents seek to adopt or incorporate into the organization’s culture for cache and credibility in their work. They drink the Kool-Ade, happily and willingly.
Me? Not so much. Again, I work hard to keep my view of us as an organization as unbiased as I can, in order to do the kind of clear seeing my work requires of me. Is this a differentiator, then, between a change agent and a transformation agent? This willingness to be different, be other, to the organization in which we’ve been asked to transform?
What is it that organizations look to transformation agents to do? Be visionaries and reveal the paths forward that processes may then be built (by change agents) to support?
If a change agent is an implementer, executing processes and helping employees come along, then a transformation agent is a designer, architect, alchemist. Seeing what is, discovering with the organization what could be, designing a new form, prototyping and iterating, and evolving as it moves forward.
Perhaps this is a challenge transformation agents face: we know we’re designers, architects, alchemists, yet we are being asked to be executors. There’s a ripe partnership waiting to be had between organizational transformationists and agents of change.
It feels like I’m onto something here. Perhaps this is something I can discuss with Jim Stoner during our chat next week. (Which, can I just say: JAMES FLIPPIN’ STONER – THE GUY WHO LITERALLY WROTE THE BOOK ON MANAGEMENT – THINKS MY DISSERTATION TOPIC AND RESEARCH IS FASCINATING WHA???!!!!!)
