Secret Musings of a Change Agent - The Perfect Change Agent??

Over the last few months I’ve talked to 12 amazing change agents who have shared their “Secret Musings” to give us all some insight into what makes ordinary people great at making change happen.  

I’ve decided to have some fun this week!! I’m taking all the insights, the learning and the inspiration from my conversations to create a spec for the perfect Change Agent!!  Wouldn’t it be great if we saw more adverts or job descriptions that were more like this??!!  And note, as with any change, the places where we have the most impact are where people and organisational change align so it’s not enough to recruit or develop amazing change agents.  We have to make sure that the organisational conditions that they work in enable and empower them to bring their whole package of brilliance in a way that makes them feel safe, supported and heard. 

We’re recruiting for the perfect change agent

We’re looking for someone who can make change happen.  We’ve got big aspirations to change how we do things so we make “best for people”, rather than “best for our organisation” decisions about what we do, why and how.  

What we’re looking for:

Values:

You’ll have a strong set of personal values that you’ll live and breath in everything you do

Dissatisfaction and Passion:

A strong sense of dissatisfaction with how we do things now and big passion to change things for the better

Authenticity - we really mean it:

You’ll bring your full authentic, messy self with all of your amazing strengths and a probably a few foibles 

Humility:

You’ll be humble with a solid sense of “confidence to just be”

Genuinely like people:

You’ll like people and will spend time building relationships of trust by listening to understand what matters to people

You don’t have all the answers:

You’ll start from a place of having something to learn, not having all the answers

Challenge with compassion:

You’ll be passionate and determined to make change happen and at the same time skilled in bringing challenge with kindness and compassion

Lived Experience counts:

You’ll bring Insight gained personal and/or professional challenges you’ve experienced and learned from

Learn from Failure:

You’re not afraid to fail because you understand that with failure comes innovation and learning 

A great story teller:

You’ll be able to create lightbulb moments by telling great stories that help others to get the change your seeking to make happen

What we’ll make sure is in place so you can be your best self:

No pre-conceptions or pre-requirements in a specific field:

We don’t care what your career path to date has been.  In fact we recognise that if it’s been a bit messy or a bit squiggly, you’re probably just the person we’re looking for

Build your tribe:

We know that when you bring different, it can feel like a lonely place to be so we’ll encourage you to spend time with your tribe because we know that will help you to be your best self

Safety to bring different:

We want you to bring different views and perspectives to how we work.  We’ll create spaces where you feel safe to be able to do this and we’ll ask you to help us to create spaces where this becomes the norm for how we work so that others feel more comfortable to bring different too.

If we don’t fail, we don’t learn:

We’ll encourage a culture where we test and learn together - and when we fail, we’ll take the learning and play it into what we do next so that our chances of future success grow

We’ve got your back:

If you experience tough times personally or professionally, we’ll have your back and we’ll support you through it

Freedom to bring your best self - your way:

We won’t micro-manage you and we’ll trust you to determine when, where and how you’ll do your best work

The more serious message in this is that we absolutely need to rethink how we recruit, retain and develop change capacity in our organisations.  I’m taking a pause in this blog series for now and on the suggestion of the wonderful Claire Tomkinson, I’ve contacted all 12 change agents who I’ve featured to see if there’s an appetite to come together.  I think this’ll take a little time to arrange but imagine the potential!!  Maybe we’ll just connect for a bit, share stories and widen our tribe.  I’m secretly hoping for something more.  Imagine if in time we collaborated to co-design a development programme for future change agents!!  How amazing would that be.  And with this group of amazing people, who knows what might happen!!   I’ll keep you posted in future blogs.

In the meantime, I’m launching a new blog mini-series next week.  It’s a very definite change in direction as I shift my focus to social care recruitment and retention.  There are huge workforce challenges in the social care sector right now I’m going to be getting under the skin of what they are, why we’re experiencing them and what practical things we can do to try to address them.  The language of recruitment and retention can feel quite dry but if we unpack it, what we are actually talking about here is how we attract, recruit, nurture and develop the very best people to provide the very best social care and that’s not dry at all.  It’s crucial.