Leadership for large-scale change: distinctive challenges, emerging responses: some reflections. Last week, I got the opportunity to join a learning community of 70 people from across the globe - leading social innovators, business leaders, thought leaders and philanthropists - to consider leadership for large scale change. I was the guest of @AspenInstitute and the Higher Ambition Leadership Alliance. In this final piece about the event, I have identified five areas where we might need to take action for leadership for large scale change: 1)Flip our thinking about alignment/shared purpose being a prerequisite for leading large scale change Often, our approach to leadership in large scale change is to bring a diverse group of leaders together and seek to build alignment around shared goals as a starting point for change. It forces leaders into “shared” positions before they are ready and creates high co-ordination costs. If we spent less energy trying to align people to the change, and instead supported leaders to build their capacity to lead within it through a collective learning process: •alignment would become an outcome, not a starting condition •the change would be more impactful and sustainable. 2)Build better methods for leadership collaboration for large scale change When we talk about supporting individual leaders to advance their own agenda more effectively, that doesn’t mean leaving each leader to do their own thing. Rather, there is a discipline and method to building a cohort that nurtures individual leaders and builds collective knowledge and alignment. There is a need for more intentional design in partnership models and methods in leading large scale change. 3)Develop effective governance for large scale change We need to move beyond alignment and think about governance for leading large scale change: •Structure, trust, and process have to be deliberately built, particularly in collaborations where power, resources and influence are unevenly distributed •Leaders may need to embrace risk as we transition into new ways of work, e.g., from a high authority situation where there is strong management “grip” to a scenario where authority is shared; we need governance processes for managing this 4)Balance short and long term goals There is a tension at the heart of leadership for large scale change between delivering results in the short term and building capacity for the longer term. If there is too much emphasis, over a sustained period, on delivering short term results, the capacity will be overstretched and fail. If results aren’t delivered, decision makers and funders may lose faith. The team visualised the balance as the “45-degree zone”. 5)Be deliberate about leadership energy for large scale change Most large scale change initiatives fail because they run out of energy; the changes loses momentum, fizzles out and leaders move on to other agendas. Leadership energy for change isn’t just about leaders maintaining their own energy. It is about deliberate design of an intervention so that coordination costs are low, leaders have a sense of agency, the change feels do-able and the lifeblood of the change isn’t sapped out by the wider context. For more info on the “45 degree zone”: static1.squarespace.com/stat… Thank you to the Aspen Institute and the Higher Ambition Leadership Alliance for an outstanding learning opportunity.