Sourcing leaders

Anyone who is faced with the challenge of creating change and transformation knows that it is a difficult task to guide the whole system through change, without overhauling leaders in an organisation.

Visualise a handful of managers driving change in a 15,000-people organisation and the energy and effort it takes to convince everyone about the positive impacts of change. Involving the whole system and creating `sourcing’ leaders all across the organisation is the solution. A large mining company, that I know of, which is going through a total transformation and change is creating 100 sourcing leaders who will reach out to every corner of the organisation. What do I mean by sourcing? Merely being the source of a powerful new future. That particular leader knows that leadership is all about creating something that never existed before rather than managing what already exists.

When an organisation’s vision, values and priorities are sourced, it exists as a force-field independent of the creator. For this we need leaders who would operate or work out of conviction. These leaders bring the exciting future to the present and behave as if the change has already happened. The responsibility of the `sourcing’ leaders is to create the escape velocity needed for an organisation to move forward to an imaginable future.

We all know that any dream or defining purpose that is set in your mind space, with the determination to realise it, creates a focus so strong that your subconscious mind affects your physical actions and you start moving towards achieving that desire. This holds true for a collective dream or desire that ‘sourcing’ leaders project to the environment of their organisation. This shift to being a ‘sourcing’ leader affects you at three levels: how you are, how you think and how you act. The ‘sourcing’ leaders need to create a positive energy and atmosphere in the workspace. Many a time. I have been brought to speak to a company to infuse employees with positive energy and usually after my talk, an employee will come up to me and say, “This all makes so much sense but the leaders who need to hear this are not here and that is the problem.” They are right. To build a company fuelled by positive energy you will need to first get the executive team expressing this energy. So the role of the `sourcing’ leaders will be to show this positive energy and get everyone into the force field of positive energy and possibility. Carefully look at your organisation’s leadership development initiatives. Are you creating `sourcing’ leaders who create something that never existed? Are you creating leaders who fuel positive energy in every corner of the organisation?   

Written by Santhosh Babu Published in The Financial Express: Saturday, May 12, 2007.