The other day, reading about energy generation in Scotland, something clicked.

When the wind blows and the sun shines, Scotland produces extraordinary amounts of renewable energy.  Enough energy to power homes far beyond its borders. But there’s a catch.  That energy can’t always get to where it’s needed most. The national grid isn’t equipped to handle the energy surge experienced on these ‘perfect condition’ days. So, wind farm owners are paid to slow the turbines. At the same time, the rest of the UK fire up gas and lean on nuclear plants elsewhere to meet demand.

It’s a systemic failure — not a lack of energy, but a network that can’t carry it.  And it got us thinking about the organisations and change initiatives that we support.

In our work, we’ve seen time and again that the energy is there. There’s often a huge reservoir of resilience, creativity and goodwill in the system.  People who want to contribute, collaborate and solve problems. But like those Scottish wind farms, that energy can struggle to transmit. Not due to a lack of commitment, but because the internal “grid” can’t cope.

That grid? It’s about the behaviours and relationships of leaders, managers and employees. The quality of collaboration across roles, teams, functions and hierarchy. It’s about how organisations notice, amplify and support what’s already working, by catching people doing things right and building from there. And it's about how issues and bottlenecks are surfaced and addressed, enabling progress to flow unimpeded.

When the grid is underpowered, it can’t carry the load. We see:

• High engagement but limited follow-through.

• Great ideas that get lost in the system.

• Busy leaders understandably defaulting to control, rather than connection.

But when organisations build the capacity to carry and channel the energy they already have, everything can change.  This might show up through:

• Dialogue that surfaces the real issues — and leads to concrete action.

• Leaders who go with where the energy is and amplify it.

• Systems and facilitation that connects people and collaborates across silos.

So, what can you do to get your grid ready to transmit huge amounts of energy as a basis for successful change?

A few tips from our perspective:

1. Don’t reinvent the wheel.  Pay attention to what already works in your organisation.  Look for previous change and improvement initiatives that stood head and shoulders above the rest in terms of delivery outcomes, quality, and experience.  View these initiatives through the ‘energy grid lens’ and replicate what was done to get energy flowing.

2. Catch the interface issues. Many organisations have collaboration issues at the interface, for example across internal team and function boundaries.  Get those involved around the table and examine these issues through an ‘appreciative inquiry / problem solving lens’.  You’ll typically find a few persistent root causes that, when addressed, will have a system-wide impact on the grid and on change efficacy.

3. Conduct a leader ‘honest inventory’.  Leaders often aren’t aware of the huge impact they have on grid readiness and effectiveness.  Use this article as a basis for a quality leader conversation, with prompt questions that go something like this:

• ‘What does the grid look like in our organisation?’

• ‘On a scale of 1 – 10, how healthy is it?  How do we know that?’

• ‘Reflecting on our behaviours and how we are as a leadership team, how do we help and hinder transmission?’

• 'What collective next steps can we commit to?  And how do we keep each other honest and accountable?'

We’re not sure when the grid between the North and South of the UK will be sorted.  We’re not even sure when we’ll see more sunshine north of the border – although the wind is taken for granted!  But we have seen the difference a strong organisational grid can make, and the cost incurred when it’s underpowered.

The energy may already be there in your organisation. Don’t let it go to waste.

If you want your change efforts to go further, now’s the time to check your grid. What’s working? What’s blocking? And what’s your next move? We’re always up for that kind of conversation!

Please let us know how this article lands for you, and what it prompts in terms of the change going on for you right now.  We hope it’s useful!