I was once invited to attend a massive church in Texas, USA. As custom, these churches are, in the words of a former US president: huge. 

For reference, this one had its own landing strip to allow the church leaders private jet a safe landing. All in all, I had the privilege to attend four or so church services throughout the weeks I was there. Topic of each and every sermon: money. I kid you not, we were even instructed to turn to our neighbour and say ‘money’. Another time the topic of the sermon for next week was preemptively revealed, and you’ve guessed it: it was money.

But before I go off on the woes and ways of the modern churches in America, the reason for this topic of money is that it is the common denominator for all types of organisations. You can have the best sounding corporate values, instigate a great sense of ‘family’ in your company, but if the money dries up, something’s gotta give. 

And this is not an attempt to undervalue human values and interactions, on the contrary, this is merely to underline the rules of the game we have set ourselves.

“Money makes the world go around”, while in its core an incorrect statement, it is still a great reveal of how we rank and value the concept of money. 

After all, money can make or break organisations, and how we spend it in organisations is the topic of many boardroom discussions. Every year, we try to allocate our budgets and align our investments to new goals, targets, or objectives. And every year, we sort of hit the mark or we miss badly, we do not really know as most companies have crappy data to pull insights from in the first place.

However, when it comes to changing an organisation, money becomes a key measuring stick to assess the organisation's appetite for change. Because if the organisation really sees the benefits of that change, it will commit resources and money to support that change. 

Have you ever seen the TV show Dragon’s Den? In this show inventors and start-ups pitch their idea to a set of successful (i.e. wealthy) business people to get funding for their next level of development. Basically, they are trying to convince their audience to believe that their investment will actually pay off more in the end. And this is where money becomes the expression of their level of belief.

When an organisation sets out on a journey of change, they tend to have little resistance to adapting the way their employees work and the tools they use. 

However, when the proposed changes start to affect the way the budget (i.e. money) is allocated and the forecasts on necessary budget in the future starts to waiver, that is when the management commitment to that change starts to show.

Interestingly, our current way of budgeting via yearly budgets and business cases never seems to be in question. Management teams are happy to assign million dollar budgets based on (very) slim business cases or very limited client insights. More often than not, wishful thinking covered by glamorous business words seem to be the preferred way of working.

Rather than attacking this way of working, I would ask to accept this as the symptom of the underlying issue for every CEO: “As an end responsible person in this organisation, I simply do not believe that this change will benefit us.” Simply put, you would walk out of that Dragon’s Den empty handed.

As agents of change, we should take an honest look into our proposition, and take our own medicine: be transparent about what the differences are between the former way of working and the new way of working, and show what ways there are to inspect and adapt to your initial ask. 

And if money does become the big threshold to keep change from happening, take that as real feedback to fix the gaps in your investors' pitch.