Starting change with S.P.A.R.K.

The first conversations about a transformation are where the implicit contract gets set. What are we actually trying to achieve? Who is responsible for what? What happens if we disagree? What counts as success?

Most organisations avoid answering these questions directly in the beginning because they are uncomfortable. Executives do not want to commit to specific outcomes because that creates accountability. Change leaders do not want to surface disagreements because that creates conflict. So the contract stays vague, and the transformation begins with everyone having privately different expectations.

The vagueness feels like harmony. It is not. It is deferred conflict, and it tends to surface at the worst possible moment.

The first phase of S.P.A.R.K. is about achieving genuine strategic clarity before anyone commits to doing anything. This sounds obvious. In practice, it is rare.

Strategic clarity means being able to answer, with specificity: Why are we doing this transformation now? What would it look like if it succeeded? What are the two or three outcomes that would genuinely represent success, as opposed to the ten outcomes we are listing to make everyone feel included?

The Strategize conversations should also surface the 'why not': the risks, the historical attempts, the things that have been tried before and did not work. Treating the organisation as having no memory is one of the fastest ways to lose credibility with the people whose support you need most.

The second phase is about making the trade-offs visible. Every transformation asks the organisation to stop doing something in order to do something else. Time, attention, and resources are finite. The Prioritize conversations are where those limits become real.

What this requires, practically, is leaders who are willing to say: we cannot do everything, and here is what matters most. This is uncomfortable because it creates disappointment for the things that are deprioritised. But it is far less damaging than the alternative: a transformation that tries to do everything, makes no real progress on any of it, and eventually collapses under its own scope.

The prioritization is also where alignment becomes genuine or fragile. When leaders agree publicly on what matters most, and follow through by protecting those priorities, the organisation has something to orient around. When they agree in the room and then each pursue their own priorities in private, the fragmentation is visible within weeks.

The Act, Reflect, and Kickstart phases of S.P.A.R.K. depend entirely on the quality of the Strategize and Prioritize work. Teams that act without strategic clarity tend to build the right things in the wrong direction. Reflections without honest data become exercises in confirming what everyone wanted to believe. Kickstarts without prioritized focus become relaunches that repeat the original mistakes.

The work of the first two phases is not glamorous. There are no visible deliverables in the first few weeks of a well-run Strategize phase: only conversations that are harder and more honest than the ones the organisation usually has. But this is the work that determines whether the rest of the transformation has a foundation.