Strategy community and accelerators: how change picks up speed

What sets accelerators apart from steps?

The classic change model describes eight steps worked through in sequence, driven by a small core group inside the existing hierarchy.

The accelerator model changes three things. The eight elements run simultaneously and continuously instead of sequentially. They're carried by a network instead of a core group. And they operate alongside the hierarchy instead of inside it.

The difference is practical, not academic. If you work through steps, by step three you're busy restoring step one: the urgency you created at the start burned off long ago.

For practice, that means planning differently. Instead of a project plan with phases, you need a routine with fixed dates where the same eight questions come up again and again: Is the urgency still tangible? Is the coalition holding? Does the organization understand the goal?

So the same applies to all eight: they never stop. Urgency has to be created again and again, the coalition maintained again and again, the vision explained again and again.

What are the eight accelerators?

Each can be described in a single sentence, and each takes a lifetime to master in practice.

• Create urgency around a significant opportunity, not just a threat.
• Build a guiding coalition and maintain it over time.
• Formulate a strategic vision and derive change initiatives from it.
• Communicate the vision and strategy to win support and volunteers.
• Remove obstacles so that fast progress becomes possible.
• Celebrate quick, meaningful wins where everyone can see them.
• Never let up, keep learning, and don't declare victory too early.
• Anchor the change in the culture so it outlasts the people driving it.

The fifth point costs the most leadership time and is the least glamorous. Removing obstacles means, in practice: granting an approval, clarifying a responsibility, freeing up a person.

The seventh point is where most transformations tip over. A visible win gets taken as proof that the job is done, attention moves on, and six months later the old state is back.

Why do early wins matter so much?

Because the credibility of the whole effort depends on delivering visible results fast enough. Human patience is limited, especially among those who already fear they'll end up on the losing side of the change.

The longer it takes, the easier it is for skeptics and doubters to dilute what's been achieved and put up new hurdles. That's not ill will, it's the natural reaction to an effort whose benefit nobody can see.

So celebrate every milestone that pays into the target picture, and use every internal and external channel you have. Wins create excitement and bring people along emotionally, which isn't a side effect, it's the point.

For your planning, that means: deliberately look for initiatives that deliver a visible result within three months, even if they aren't the most important ones strategically. They buy the patience you need for the big ones.

What role does the story play?

It holds everything together. You've already built a strategy story out of the challenges and the promise of impact in your strategy picture. That story is the foundation for the transformation story.

The difference between the two is timing. The strategy story explains why you're changing something. The transformation story tells how far you've come and what's next.

Concrete stories from inside the company beat general statements. A team that removed a hurdle is more convincing than any message from management, because the audience knows the people involved.

Bring the target picture and the promise of impact to life, and look at them from different angles. The same story in the same words gets tuned out after the third telling.

And be loud. The book puts it as a challenge: if that's not your style, make it your style, because otherwise you won't be heard. For many owner-led companies, that's the most unfamiliar part of the whole execution.

How does the community actually work?

With two bodies and a rhythm. The transformation steering group leads, the community carries it into the organization.

Keep the two roles cleanly separated. The steering group decides, the community carries and reports back. Where the two get mixed, you create a second leadership body, and the line organization rightly starts pushing back.

The steering group meets on a fixed cadence, usually every two weeks, and every session ends with decisions. It's linked to the cascade so you don't end up with two parallel reporting worlds.

The community works more loosely. Its members sponsor goals or initiatives, carry information into their areas and report back what's actually landing there. That feedback is often worth more than any status report.

Expect turnover, too. People change roles, lose interest or get buried in day-to-day work. A network that still has the same lineup after a year is either very well led or it has fallen asleep.

Both need an infrastructure that works in more than one direction. A top-down distribution list isn't enough when the whole point is to learn early where things are stuck.

How do you know it's working?

By three signals, and all three show up within the first few months.

First: topics travel from the bottom up that never made it through before. That's the whole point of the network, and at the same time the most uncomfortable part.

Second: decisions come faster because obstacles get named while they're still small. When a meeting resolves four items in twenty minutes that had been sitting around for weeks, it's working.

Third: someone outside the leadership team explains the strategy to a colleague. When that happens, the strategy has landed in the organization, and everything after that is maintenance rather than construction.

The eighth task, anchoring the change in the culture, is the only one you can't plan. It happens once new behaviors have been practiced long enough that nobody talks about them anymore. In our experience, that takes two to three years.

A common objection: there's no time for this alongside the day-to-day business. That's true, and it misses the point. The work on change is happening anyway, just uncoordinated and in one-on-one conversations. The network bundles it and makes it cheaper.

And plan an ending. A transformation that's never declared finished eventually loses its meaning. Set a date when you determine together what has been achieved, what remains open and which parts move into normal leadership work.