While the state of this planet and its inhabitants are improving in many key areas (e.g., poverty, life expectancy, child mortality, living in conflict zones), the Biden Administration is also inheriting existentially explosive trends in other areas. Adverse climate change impacts, global pandemic recovery, racial injustice, social disunity and polarization, extreme economic and power inequality, to name a few of the big ones.
Even in the face of such disasters, breakthroughs are possible for the thriving of the planet and people. Our 40 years of working with leaders in governments worldwide demonstrate eight critical areas of transformation that will be essential for the Biden Administration to focus on. These areas include important questions that we can ask to focus attention where it needs to be for President Biden’s new Cabinet to succeed.
The Biden Administration has not specifically asked us for these questions, but we assume its genuine curiosity and openness.
Mindset is causative. As we assume, value and believe, so we see, act, and relate. Mindset is the most upstream lever the cabinet has to up-level its effectiveness and a great place to start these questions.
Though scarcity thinking is dominant, how will you consistently assume abundance to free the emergence of next-order solutions?
Sixty to seventy percent of transformational efforts fail to sustainably deliver on stated objectives. The omission of human dynamics, culture and relationships into the transformational plan from the outset, as an integral component, is the biggest reason for such failure. The cabinet must develop great agility in acting on indicators whose significance is opaque unless they are attuned to such interior dimensions.
Transformational change as an artful science is built on a handful of fundamental principles, the ignorance of which has doomed many well-intended efforts. While administrations naturally focus on what to change, how to change significantly lags in attention and expertise. Following existing methods tend to yield insufficient, incremental results.
Overview of the 10 Key Strategies for Transformational Change
Transformation is sustainably successful when it’s understood as an inside-out process. This cabinet’s success will depend on the degree to which it walks its talk through Self-Mastery and Modeling. President Biden needs to understand that beyond having technically competent members, his Cabinet is performing on one of the most visible stages on earth. A heartfelt devotion to a breakthrough journey must shine through all actions and decisions.
How will you become more authentic, vulnerable, connected and open, and less defended, needing to be right and isolated?
Next-order solutions emerge when the net of new perspectives is cast wide and when the ability is strong to sort signals from noise among the perspectives. Amidst the confusion of so many possibilities that superficially appear viable, this cabinet must learn to deeply discern which options cut through the chaos.
The effort required by citizens to voluntarily buy into difficult change is impossible unless they deeply understand the relevance and meaning of the policy or law to their own lives.
What will be your approach to communicating early in proposed significant change so that you harness people’s engaged passion rather than use communications merely to “sell and tell” to disenfranchised communities and, after the fact, expect their compliance?
If the government is to have a meaningful role in guiding us to a thriving future, it needs to transform itself; to change the way it does business. However, institutions are famously resistive to change – immune, even. One key way to ensure change succeeds is to set up a parallel governance structure for the change effort. It should have direct access to cabinet-level sponsors, connected to operations but distinct from it. Within this parallel structure, a few other principles must be skillfully deployed.
The reason for so much silo mentality and turf wars is that it offers a sense of control. Once we reach out beyond our sandbox into others’, we risk losing some of it. But the upside is unlocking the power of creative collaboration and trust to understand bigger pictures, connect more dots, and generate transformational possibilities and hope.
When your term is over, what will your legacy be in such times that demand breakthrough thinking and execution?
In many cases, the United States government is still the global leader (certainly in the West) in setting direction and tone of action (or non-action) on these topics. While politics has been described as the art of the possible, there is too much at stake for planetary survival to merely tinker with what is readily possible. Much more clarity and boldness are required. Seeing beyond conventional approaches is necessary to deploy extraordinary transformational strategies that navigate breakdowns into breakthroughs.
At Being First, HOW to answer these questions and lead transformation is our Mission, passion, and expertise for over 40 years. If you’d like to learn the HOW of leading transformation, consider enrolling in our upcoming online course: Leading Transformational Change: 10 Strategies for Breakthrough Results.