How to Influence Organizational Change, Today

You, as a leader — more than ever — can consider today how Internet-type communications affects business.

The following important questions can help guide your efforts:

• How much knowledge do you have of Internet-type communication?
• Do you realize that there is a certain amount of fear surrounding tenuous relationships, saying or doing something wrong while in meetings?

It is important that you expand, review, and extrapolate your values, assumptions, beliefs, and expectations if necessary.

• How can you control some of your habits that may hinder your performance as you communicate online?
• Do you have the necessary courage to present, and feel comfortable doing so? If so, what is your fear-factor and how can you overcome it?

Now, write down the answers to these questions. And find ways to encourage more social capital prowess when communicating online.

Social Capital can be defined as, influencing career success and executive compensation, helping workers find jobs, and providing a richer pool of recruits for firms, facilitating intellectual capital, and a reduction in turnover rates.

Write down how you show courage.

The following questions can also help guide your efforts:

• Do you ever find yourself feeling courageous at work or in your personal life but the fear-factor holds you back? How do you handle that? Do you give up? Do you persevere?
• How does fear feel realistic? How do you feel, for example, in the middle of a pandemic, like the coronavirus pandemic of 2019, 2020, 2021, and 2022?
• Do you or did you feel stuck in the moment during this crisis? If so, why? If so, why not?

Then, list the next steps that you will take to develop the necessary courage to embrace social capital.

Write down how you show courage. Think of how fearless or fearful you are. Do you respect your own fear? Do you attempt to master your awareness of fear? Do you act despite some level of fear being present? Think about and write down how you will address your own personal fear.

Now list how you will address the following:

1. Career success
2. Seek out mentors and recruit new people that are positive influencers
3. Build intellectual capital
4. Reduce the threat of turnover rates at work by being present and caring about others

Next, read the article published by the Harvard Business Review titled “Leaders as Decision Architects,” written by John Beshears and Francesca Gino (May 2015). After reading the article in its entirety, answer the following questions by writing your answer to the change steps:

• Step 1: How can you better understand how decisions are made at your organization?
• Step 2: Take some time to define the problem.
• Step 3: Diagnose the underlying causes and write them down.
• Step 4: Take some time to design the solution and write it down.
• Step 5: Test the solution. Write down what happened, what may happen, possible obstacles, bureaucratic roadblocks, etc.
• Step 6: Redesign the solution until you have it right and you become a Social Architect!

Also, read this article, “Build Your Resilience in the Face of Crisis,” in the Harvard Business Review by Rasmus Hougaard, Jacqueline Carter, and Moses Mohan (March, 2020). And write down your answers to the following questions:

• Are you connecting with others through compassion?
• Whom can you help to have a better day?

By finding people to bond with, we can find solace and comfort in ourselves and bring smiles to faces. Write down whom you can connect with, and when you will reach out to them.

Finally, take time for mindfulness, meditation, and relaxation.

Mostafa Sayyadi works with senior business leaders to effectively develop innovation in companies, and helps companies—from start-ups to the Fortune 100—succeed by improving the effectiveness of their leaders. He is a business book author and a long-time contributor to business publications and his work has been featured in top-flight business publications.

Michael J. Provitera is an associate professor, and an author of the book titled “Mastering Self-Motivation” published by Business Expert Press. He is quoted frequently in the national media.