Getting from there to here

Helping the commissioner move from a desire for something different to committing to something different

Background

Recently I was asked to assist a multi-site, multi-national, multi-lingual division of 300 people to hold a whole group event. They had recently taken part in a larger organization staff satisfaction survey and they wanted to address some of the concerns raised by the results that were specific to their division. The Human Resources Business Partner tasked with organizing this attended a day I ran on Appreciative Inquiry and asked me if I could help them with this event.

By the time I was involved, the leadership had already shared the results with the division and had identified four/five key areas they wanted to focus on for a community day.

Objectives of this paper

I want to take this opportunity to explore the journey of moving with them from where they were in their thinking and expectations when I joined them, to where they needed to be to get behind an event informed by Appreciative Inquiry and positive psychology principles. It was a challenging and at times bruising journey, much more of a challenge than designing and delivering the actual event. The whole experience chimed with my increasing awareness that even when people know they want - organizational practice that is positive, strengths-based, affirmative and so on - they are still thrown by the realization of what working in these ways means in practice. To be able to really embrace these exciting and emerging ways of working means giving up some previously unchallenged ideas about organizations, change and leadership. I thought this might be an area to fruitfully explore further.

The start of the Journey

After some preliminary conversations, the first thing we did was to pull together, for want of a better description, a planning group. The purpose of this group, from my perspective, is two-fold: firstly to work with me to co-create the objectives and process of the event; and secondly to act as ambassadors back into the organization spreading the invitation, generating interest in, and excitement about, the event and encouraging people to come. In doing this they are putting their reputations on the line, which pretty much means they have to themselves believe in the potential of the event. In this process we are calling on the social contagion process identified by positive psychology whereby people become infected by the emotions and ideas of others. I needed to infect the planning group and they others.

I flew in to join a group of over twenty people distributed amongst the room I was in physically and two video conference screens for other locations. The group was a mix of the invited and self-selected, including the three senior managers of the division. These were busy people with a keen desire to help their division by telling those assembled the answers to the challenges and what should happen. They also expected me to come with a clear design for the event.

Instead I turned up keen to identify the questions we wanted to address on the day; and to consider the broader context of the division beyond just the staff survey results. So instead of scribbling down all their ‘answers’ to what the division should do, allowing them to feel they had done their bit of contribution, I insisted on saying things like ‘If that is the answer, what is the question?’ and then ‘Is that a question we want to consider at our event?’ And ‘That sounds like a great idea, save it for the day’ and ‘What is the overarching or organizing question of the whole event – you’re all talking about the need for a shift in work culture in order to meet a changing future – how can we both connect to this and the staff survey?’ This clash of expectations about both the process of the meeting and the point of the event took us all by surprise. It was a bad-tempered meeting with a high level of frustration expressed by many of the people in the room.

Ongoing Challenges

One of the ways to indicate difference to others is in the language we use. One of my consistent challenges in this assignment was that everyone document I wrote in positive, appreciative, vital, emotionally laden language, was reviewed and edited by others before it could be communicated to the group, and would consistently be translated back into the safe, familiar, bureaucratic language- devoid of life or emotion- of the organization. Words like ‘dreaming’ ‘playing’ and ‘poetry’ were excised as being outside the permitted lexicon. It became clear that a considerable shift was needed before the group would be in a position to do anything different. And that would take courage from the internal commissioners as well as myself. It also meant I had to be courageous in the face of considerable opposition to my approach and ideas.

Meanwhile background discussions with the divisional leader revealed that he wasn’t so much leading this process as delegating it.. However, he was behind our approach in principle. We discussed whether attendance should be voluntary or compulsory. We agreed to go for voluntary attendance. This puts the onus on the planning group to ensure the event is clearly valuable, accessible and inviting. It means people have to put their reputations on the line by saying ‘It will be good, you should come’, they can’t hide behind ‘the organization says you must’.

The continuing journey

Back in the planning group, those present are fixed on the idea that the day must be clearly based on the five key items identified from the staff survey (understanding of job role, teamwork, relationship with line managers, learning and development, how we work within our organization) as needing attention. It is also clear the group as a whole have a conventional analysis-and-recommendations event in mind. I am at a loss to understand how this approach can address the challenges. How can you plan to affect relationships with line managers? You have to create different relationships through different experiences and conversations. Facets of organizational life and culture like this need to be addressed ‘in relationship’.

While I have a clear sense of the structure they have in mind as it is common organizational currency, I am struggling to help them see the approach I am suggesting, a co-creative dialogic event based on Appreciative Inquiry and Open Space, since it is not. They persistently describe it as vague and insubstantial and demand that I make it more concrete.  There is a high level of skepticism in the room and continuing frustration that ‘no progress is being made’. I am ready to give up; I didn't sign up for a fight. I offer to run a webinar to explain the thinking and research behind my approach. This is agreed.

In the webinar  ‘Introduction to large group change methodologies’ I outline the difference between the mechanistic and ‘living human system’ view of organizations. I explain that this leads to two key different ways of approaching change: planned and emergent. I explain the factors we work with to influence emergent change. I talk about large group emergent change processes, the importance of attending to mood and factors that affect employee engagement. In other words I explain the psychology behind these approaches. Not everyone attends the webinar but some do and this proves to be a turning point.

After the webinar I send this out to help people see the difference.

Comparing Conventional Problem Solving and System-Growth Approaches to Creating Change 

This document is designed to be read following the webinar.

This table compares and contrasts the two approaches on a number of dimensions. The intention is to make the difference more evident.

By the next meeting some people are cautiously optimistic. It is agreed that for the next meeting the internal consultant and I will present two alternative plans for the event. The internal consultant creates one based on the organization’s standard operating procedure of allocated ‘splinter groups’ that work together throughout the day on the five ‘ topic streams ’ and then ‘feedout’ their findings and recommendations at the end of the event. I put forward an alternative based on an Appreciative Inquiry structure with an Open Space section for ‘design’.

At the meeting to discuss these two approaches it emerges that the standard design has been used by this group twice before. And that those who were present at these previous occasions can report that a great day was had but that afterwards ‘nothing changed’. This articulation facilitates a second significant shift in the conversation. More participants are ready to engage with the idea of doing something different. The conversation moves towards exploring this by articulating their fears about trying something different, and specifically about the approach I am suggesting.

Some of the fears expressed about my ‘system’ approach

• Staff members won’t speak up in front of managers

• People can’t be trust to follow ‘simple rule’ instruction e.g. to form groups with people they don’t know: they need to be told where to go

• People can’t be trusted to follow a process: effectively they won’t ‘play’ and will revert to deficit conversations despite invitations and instructions to have different conversations

• It’s too wooly, people won’t understand and won’t come

• People will use it as an opportunity to pursue personal vendettas

• People won’t be brave enough to name what needs to be named or to put forward topics for the Open Space session

• Our people are too sophisticated to want to ‘play’ with objects to create visual representations of possible futures, they will find such an invitation insulting to their intelligence.

In attempting to alleviate these fears people put forward ideas such as

• Managers shouldn’t be allowed to attend

• Every group needs to be facilitated to ensure it stays on track

• Everyone must be directed at all times about where they are to be and who they are to be with

My response to this conversation was based on three key principles

1) The method must match the desired outcome. So, for example, if you want to use the event to increase staff empowerment (as they did) then the process of the event must itself be empowering: people must be allowed to self-organize and make decisions around guiding principles or simple rules (new desired culture), not be micro-managed (current obsolete culture). By the same token if you seek to create greater engagement then the event needs to be engaging, which means that people need to able to talk about and work on what is engaging to them.

2) To be effective any changes discussed and agreed need to include and reflect the whole system ipso facto we really want the managers to be present as they are part of the system that we wish to affect. Incidentally if ‘the relationship with line managers’ is one of the outcomes from the staff survey they want to affect then its going to be very hard to have impact on that without the managers being present.

3) I can’t guarantee that these feared outcomes won’t happen, they might; when you give people choice (empower them) you can’t also dictate the choice they make. What we have to do is create the environment that makes it likely that the kind of conversations we want to happen will happen, that creates the conditions for a great event and great outcomes. We can only invite people to take part and to come with us. We can work hard to create the best possible chance of that happening.

And so, not without misgivings, the group decided to take a risk and go with the unfamiliar design. At which point the large group dissolved and a smaller group of five of us became the ‘logistics’ group. 

As the group got busy on issuing formal and personal invitations the numbers expected grew from under 100 to over 200 and in the event was over 250. The event was deemed to be a tremendous success with a great wave of energy generated and lots of ideas were volunteered to be carried forward by different groups of those present in different areas and projects. Many participants expressed their pleasure in an event that concentrated on the positives, and that gave them time to think or to breathe. Many commented on the pleasure of meeting so many of their colleagues. A number of members of the planning group expressed a sentiment along the lines of: ‘Well I have to admit I was rather skeptical about this but actually it’s been really good.’. Once again my faith in the power of Appreciative Inquiry to transport people and transform human relations, to draw out the best of people, had been vindicated. However, I found the journey to get there tough and was more than once on the point of withdrawing, giving up or giving in. I wanted to draw out some of my reflections on the process of getting from there to here.

1) Sometimes commissioners know they want something different but they find that difference hard to visualize and are alarmed by the reality of the difference.

2) The path for any particular group from there to here is found and forged as it unfolds. In other words while the event itself, by design, has an emergent quality so does the journey of getting to the event.

3) It is challenging to be in the position of upholding the integrity of a true co-creative dialogic event: it would be easy to succumb to a series of seemingly small concessions that would help the commissioners feel safer but would seriously harm the delicate yet robust balance of factors that cause these events to work.

4) That we need to be more like a windmill, engaging with the force of sentiment and argument by redirecting and deflecting it rather than like a brick wall, meeting it head on. A key way to do this is to ask questions that allow people to see and think differently rather than always providing answers. In this instance one of the most powerful questions was ‘And then what happened?’ after someone had described the two great previous events they’d had based on the Standard Operating Procedure. This question produced a thoughtful silence, an admission of the fact that actually ‘nothing really happened’ and nodding agreement, and then more thought and an emerging willingness to contemplate something different. I didn’t have to argue against doing the same thing a third time, some of the group themselves started to argue against it and for trying something different. While ‘What have we got to lose?’ might not be the most inspiring call to action it is definitely a place to start.

5) And finally, for myself, the realization that my sense of where the work would be was misplaced. I imagined the challenge to be around designing and delivering a great event. In the event that was the easy part. The real challenge lay in helping the group shift sufficiently that they could even engage with reality of hosting an event of this nature: of getting them from there to here.

Culture Change By Small Steps

This blog article has two accompanying articles:  one on positive culture, and another on positive deviance

The Challenge

‘How can we respond to the staff survey in away that helps to promote a culture change in this organization?’

The Need

This 800-1000 people strong engineering organization was previously part of a Government organization. Many attitudes and behaviours persisted from that time. The organization was a classic top-down command and control structure with a strong emphasis on structure and process. It was becoming apparent that to compete in the commercial world the organization needed to become much better at accessing the strengths of all its employees. It needed to become faster, more flexible and more responsive. As an organization, despite changes in ownership, little had really changed in many years. This was not a situation that could continue. While the employees were skilled workers, many of whom had been there all their working lives, the quality of leadership was variable. There was a much greater emphasis on efficient management than on effective leadership. The HR Director knew that the culture needed to change. She wanted to come at it from a complex adaptive system perspective: as she put it, lighting small fires where she could. During the couple of years she had already been with the organization she had built up good credibility with the senior leadership working on issues such as pensions and performance management and was trusted to act with some autonomy.

The parent organization was disappointed with the results of the first staff survey and wanted to see some improvements fast. The HRD spotted the opportunity to address this challenge differently. This was an opportunity to bring more participative, bottom-up development processes into the organization. It was an opportunity to help the organisation in its expressed, but not yet enacted, desire to become more flexible, responsive and innovative: in other words to move from one where change is a hierarchical, top-down, mechanistic process to one where change is more organic, bottom up and emergent. She engaged us to bring in our expertise in these modes of engagement and change and to work in partnership with her to create this shift in culture. 

In addition it was hoped that the activities and outcomes would have a positive effect on the scores on the employee survey when it was re-run in approximately 6 months. To ensure this connection, the process was to focus specifically on communication, coordination and productivity.

The Process

This idea evolved initially into 4 Appreciative Inquiry based days and 3 World Cafe based events. We would be working with groups of up to 30 people at any one time, both to avoid excessive disruption to production and also to keep the process within the permission and influence remit of the HRD. We aimed to touch 10% of the workforce in one location and 50% in the other.

From these events a number of ideas emerged that the front line staff involved were supported to develop into business case arguments. Once the business case was clear, the groups were supported to create short, impactful, presentations outlining their case to a decision-making panel. Three decision-making events were held,  they involved the project teams presenting their business cases for innovation and change to a senior management panel of three who had to hold their decision making discussions in public and give their answers there and then. These events were attended by all those involved in the project groups and were very successful, high-energy events.

We also ran one Simureal event and two celebration events over two locations over a period of a few months.

In designing this process and running these events we pulled on our understanding of: 

• Organizations as complex adaptive systems
• Organization as social systems
• Culture as patterns of interaction, relationship and communication
• Change through interactions
• Positivity, positive reinforcement, practical outcomes
• Appreciative Inquiry, Positive Psychology

The Outcome

 The employee survey was run six months later with good improvements in all the targeted areas. Other observable outcomes were:

1. 12 active improvement projects, all from the ground up and all focussed on improving work communication, coordination or productivity
2. A number of staff feeling empowered that they had been heard and had been able to put ideas into action. This experience was counter to the strong organizational story that they couldn’t influence things.
3. High quality communication between front line staff and the Managing Director and other members of the Senior Management Team, leading to positively changed perception both of managers of staff and vice versa.
4. An appreciation in the senior team of the value of working in these ways, and a commitment to doing more

By giving people in an organization a different experience of the organization one can begin to shift the perception of the organization. When perceptions shifts so behavior changes in line with the new understanding. Our interventions affected the established patterns of relationship, communication and behavior and so created change. In this way culture change can be encouraged as a system-wide experience of difference rather than as a top-down plan of change.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we can help with Engagement and Culture and how we use Appreciative Inquiry, World Cafe and Simureal.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Making Strategy Real

The Challenge

‘We want to hold a strategy conference and we want to do it in a strengths based way. Can you help us?’

The Need

Richard and his commissioning team from the local authority already knew that they wanted to involve myriad local senior decision-makers in the development of their strategy for implementing the government driven initiative ‘Family First’. A day and a venue were earmarked. Up to 200 people were invited. Key-note speakers had been arranged. An exhibition of local services was arranged to run as a trade fair alongside. The planning team knew that within these parameters they wanted to do something different. They didn’t want a conventional conference, they wanted something that was strengths based, something that would make strategy real from the start. Could we help?

The Process 

Working closely with the multi-functional planning team, Appreciating Change designed a day that would be participatory and engaging and would meet the strategic commissioner’s need to develop strategy. Calling on Appreciative Inquiry as a framework, the day was designed to identify existing strengths across the network, to create a variety of shared ideas of what the future could be like if this strategic objective was achieved, and to begin to identify ways to achieve it. The day was delivered by Appreciating Change working in partnership with the planning team.

The Outcome 

The day (attended by 150 people) delivered a number of identifiable strategic results:

•   We improved the social capital of the delivery system of Think Family, that is the quality of trust, knowledge, and information-sharing processes across the system, so increasing the system self-organization abilities and reducing time drag, saving time and energy.

•   We enhanced the relational strength of the delivery system of Think Family, increasing connectivity and the ability for good practice, knowledge and skill to flow to where it is needed to deliver the strategy. We increased the system’s responsiveness.

•   We identified the positive core of good practice that enables Think Family, so identifying the heart of the strategy and saving time and energy collecting and disseminating this information through other means.

•   We co-created a shared understanding, or vision of, and desire for, an integrated, joined up, responsive, flexible, family needs-led, strengthening, honouring, interconnected service for families in the borough, saving time and energy on ‘getting buy-in’ amongst stakeholders to the vision.

•   We helped the system understand itself much better, so enhancing the abilities of the component parts to utilise the strengths of the whole system, increasing overall effectiveness.

•   We created positive energy in the system that enhances its ability to create change reducing the need for driving and motivating as separate parts of the implementation process, saving energy.

•   We created a propensity within the system to act in a greater Think Family way, creating a united strategic intent, saving energy.

•   We created a series of resolutions for individual and joint action that will serve to move things forward, creating positive impact.

All these positive outcomes were achieved at a very difficult time of cutbacks and redundancies (and government change!).

Measured evaluation on the day showed outcomes included increased clarity about how the strategy would look in practice, increased sense that the vision was shared across all stakeholders, greater clarity about the key elements and increased energy and enthusiasm for making it happen. The modal average for all of these indicators moved 3 points on a 10 point scale in a positive direction.

In addition the planning team have now become the sustainability team and are embarking on a process of closely questioning the system to discover detailed stories about the changes in people’s practice and the impact of this on families in the borough. Once discovered, these can be amplified and broadcast to help grow the emerging awareness of system change and improvement.

The Feedback 

Many comments were made at the event about the value of the conversations being held, the stories being shared and the connections being made. One participant was moved to record her appreciation more formally:

‘May I pass on the congratulations of our Line Manager, Mary Taylor, and all members of the Transfer Team for the terrific organisation on this excellent recent conference. The Transfer Team found it to be of enormous benefit and we made some excellent colleague contacts with other teams. We wanted to thank you for the opportunity to learn about the work of other teams and to be able to discuss the work of the Transfer Team with colleagues who have greater direct contact with families who may benefit from our assistance.’

The Council Member was formally congratulated, in Chamber, on the success of the ‘innovative and creative’ event.

In addition the term ‘think family’ became part of the system lexicon, used to call people to good practice and as shorthand for the objective of the changes in practice. This is strategy come alive in hearts and minds.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on the use of Appreciative Inquiry here and on Strategy here.

 

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we can help with Engagement and Culture and how we use Appreciative Inquiry.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Support through Culture Change

Background - Planned change and resistance

The organization was going through a planned change process centred on the introduction of a new IT system and work processes. Less acknowledged was the appreciation that this was only part of a larger ‘culture change’ aspiration. After a long initial internal consultation process, the project was launch and small group of 7 managers were designated to work with the consultants and internal programme manager to drive the implementation through.

Appreciating Change was approached by the HR and OD managers who were picking up some discontent amongst staff as the project entered the implementation phase, and some uncertainty from managers about how to ‘lead’ through the transition time. They wanted to offer help and support to both these groups. We decided that the offerings needed to be ‘bite-sized’ i.e. a couple of hours, so that over-stretched people would feel they could take the time to attend them. And that attendance should be voluntary and self-selecting. It was very brave of the HR department to agree to this.

Introducing Emergent Change

It was clear that the planned change was not connecting with the wider organisation. To introduce some emergent change at this point we designed 2 two-hour workshops

1. For  managers: Supporting Teams through challenging times

This work was to offer practical guidance to leaders on:

• How to maintain a sense of pro-activity in the team by helping them focus on what they can influence rather than what they can’t.
• How to motivate and energise the team to see beyond the immediate challenges to potential future benefits
• How to continue to offer effective leadership through periods of turbulence
• How to create and maintain a positive work atmosphere in the face of difficulties and challenges
• How to access team resources to help create resilience and optimism

To do this in the workshop we thought about and explored:

1. What happens to people during change
2. The priorities of leadership during change and uncertainty
3. The group’s stories of leadership and their leadership strengths
4. How to extend the idea of working with strengths to their teams,
5. The importance of maintaining morale through encouraging positive mood states and examined the benefits of that for the change process and also how to do it.
6. We also made commitments to action to help support our teams during challenging times.

Outcome

Participants feedback comments indicated that they came away from the workshop with a greater awareness of the need to attend to creating and positive workplace climate even when things were uncertain; the need to be visible and to make allowances for people’s confusion.  They were interested in the power of asking questions and of focussing on what their team can influence rather than what they can’t. And how to turn challenges into ideas about positive outcomes. I think this referred particularly to a team that were facing closure. We had spent a short while exploring the of focussing the challenge against definitions of success and performance into those that matched the task – in other words, thinking about what a really great closing down process would look and feel like and what the team would need to be focussing on to make that happen.

       2. For staff: Making sense of the forthcoming challenges

This workshop was different in design, it was based on a world café model where the group addressed a series of questions. Initially these were framed as

• What will be different in the future state?
• How will these differences impact my work, and within this what can I influence?
• What is it that we are being asked to do differently or different exactly?

In the event the workshops developed some different questions to focus on  such as:

• What fires can I light/seeds can I plant to help this organization continue to be a great place to work?
• How can I contribute to help make the experience of change as good as possible for me and others?

Outcome

In a final round people reported that they felt, more positive, more accepting, more assertive, more pro-active, more choiceful and braver. They articulated ideas they had about how they could positively influence the current situation for the benefit of themselves and others. They really liked the flexible format that allowed it to be adapted to the particular interests, situation and concerns of those in the room. They expressed appreciation at the opportunity to spend constructive time thnking and talking about what was going on, how they were feeling about it, and what they could actively do to improve things.

Their post-event feedback suggested that the opportunity to talk in a constructive way in a safe environment was much appreciated. They suggested that the creation of a bigger picture of change and the challenges of change helped shift the ‘us and them’ mentatily that was in danger of developing. Like the managers, many came away with a recognition of the importance of focussing on the things you can change or control, not those you can’t.

Combining The Planned And Emergent Change

The series of workshops culminated with a third session called ‘Embracing Change at...’. The challenge was to link the workshop to the recently designed and issued set of organisational competences. This workshop was three hours which allowed some time to explore the two ideas about change as being both a planned and an emergent process and to relate the discussion to the current situation. We then moved on to exploring how people behave in change and what needs to happen for people to be engaged, pro-active and innovative in a change context. After this we shared understanding of what positive engagement with change looked like. 

Finally we gave groups 5 different change scenarios and asked people to compare how they might have reacted prior to the workshop, and how they might react now. These scenarios included ‘My boss has told me I have to do something different and I don’t really understand why and I’m not sure it’s a good idea.’ And ‘someone has made a change that impacts on my work without consulting me!’

These workshops were very well received.

This case study is a good example of how ad hoc emergent change approaches can be brought to a planned change process to help ameliorate some of the worse effects and to promote a positive and appreciative approach to people in change.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

 

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Culture change.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Making The Virtual World Visible: Using SimuReal To Make A New IT System Work

Introduction – new IT systems rely on people

In 2009 I ran a series of large group events at a manufacturing organization. The organization was about to introduce a new Enterprise Resource Planning IT system and needed to help everyone become aware of the changes in behavior needed to get the best of the new system, particularly the need to enter very accurate data. The investment in this new IT was symbolic of a wider shift in the culture of the organization.

SimuReal: Making the obvious obvious

One of the events we ran was a simulation of both the ‘real’ movements of goods through the manufacturing process, and the ‘virtual record’ of these movements. Each part of the process: goods inwards, production, sales, pick, customer service, pack, assembly, planning and the client, had a stand in a large circle. Each stand was the equivalent of a computer terminal. They also had the kit needed to run the simulation: cardboard boxes, labels, and a few specific bits of product. We also had some people in another room who were the central processing unit (CPU): they were wholly dependent in their decision making and planning on the data that came to them on cards about what was going on. In other words they couldn’t see what was physically happening. In this way we assembled all the disparate parts of the production process, normally spread out over a 42 acre site, in one, very long, room. Now they were in a much better position to see the normally hidden patterns of interdependence.

Introducing human nature

We ran three rounds to simulate a three month time period. Each round focused on effecting the delivery of an order from its receipt to the dispatch of the goods. However, between each round we introduced a ‘glitch’, some departure from procedure that would happen for the best possible reason. For example:

•    We arranged for someone to ‘borrow’ some product from a location to solve the problem of an urgent order that was being fast-tracked.

•    We arranged for someone to ‘solve’ the problem of a lack of the exact specified product to fulfil an order by using some other product that could act as a substitute.

These glitches and others were agreed by the planning team to be exactly the sort of immediate, local, pragmatic problem-solving activity that resulted in stock changes not being properly entered on the virtual system. If this sounds complicated, it was. One thing the planning team learnt in devising this event was how complex the links and problems were within the existing system of production. Our ‘model’ of the process for the exercise was highly simplified.

Result: I want my money back!

The exercise was a great success. Over the course of the three rounds the gap between the reality and the record grew as ‘small’ discrepancies led to further errors. By the end we had a CPU issuing production orders that production couldn’t meet because the product was either not where the CPU was insistent it was; or, if it was there, the quantity was insufficient. We had people improvising like mad to try to make up orders, and we had a customer threatening to take their business elsewhere as they got part or late deliveries. By the end of the third round very small errors in the computer information was about to result in the loss of an account worth £500,000 p.a.

Learning

The event was highly illuminating. Those present were able to really see and experience how ad hoc decisions that made good sense in their local context were highly damaging in the context of the whole. They could see how their small problem-solving decisions, if left unrecorded or un-communicated, could escalate further downstream into huge problems and frustrations. They could see how if they didn’t tell the computer exactly what they were doing, it would start to tell them to do things they couldn’t do. They saw the connection between tiny daily decision-making in their areas and £500,000 worth of business. In other words they gained a much deeper understanding of the systemic nature of the production system and its relationship to the virtual world of the computer system. Their mental model of the world changed significantly. At a deep and profound level they understood the importance of ensuring that the computer system had accurate data, and of informing other parts of the production process about what was happening in their section that could have impact elsewhere. In terms of creating learning, heightening awareness, and inspiring changed behavior, it was a brilliant success. However the proof of the pudding would be in the eating when the new system came in.

What happened next - understanding really matters

Various things happened after this that meant I didn’t have any contact with the site for the next year. When I returned to the site on other business I bumped into one of the event planning team members, who is now on the trouble-shooting team for the new system. The new IT system is now in. Other changes have taken place on the site, including the merger of some workers from another site.  He mentioned in passing that 80% of his time is spent sorting out problems with the workers who have come across from the other site, who only make up 20% of the total production team. I asked what these errors were about, had they had less training for example? He thought it was about attitude. Workers from the other site just weren’t as engaged and willing to try to sort things out. They weren’t as forgiving of the teething issues. They weren’t as willing to work with the problems to ensure the data entered was accurate; they were more willing to blame the IT system. It would seem that the collective experience of discovering the interdependencies of the virtual and real system created a culture of shared awareness, engagement and ownership amongst the group we worked with that is delivering dividends now. By working together in a way that mimicked the way they would need to work together to successfully embed the new system, the exercise helped them create a positive experience of how things could be: creating a more positive workplace for themselves.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

 

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Engagement and how we use SimuReal.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Leading Through Uncertainty - Moving From Fatalism To Hope

The following took place over two years during which I worked with a business unit of an engineering organisation. The business unit faced enormous uncertainty and probable decline as current contracts ran down. There was a danger of the business unit succumbing to fatalism and inertia. This is how we worked with in partnership with the leader to try to change this mindset.

Background - ex-MoD facility in decline

The organisation is an ex-MOD facility, a big engineering employer in the local area, with an enviable steady state history and past protection from commercial pressures, which is now experiencing accelerating change. It has already passed into commercial ownership and is beginning to adapt to commercial pressures. At the point we are asked to help they have just been acquired by a new owner, and no one is quite sure what their plans might be. A new Managing Director has been appointed with a very different focus and orientation to the previous one. There is a new leader in this particular unit. And the end is in sight for the product on which this team works – no one is quite sure what this means for them.

Stage 1 - Getting over the shock of change

The new divisional leader invites me in and reports: a dysfunctional top team, no team spirit or cohesiveness, silo working, production going into rundown mode in the foreseeable future with no clear replacement product, quality issues, blame culture, no accountability, problems pushed upwards. He asks me to run a day for the top team.

Preliminary conversations with top team members produce comments like this

• Acting down
• Not seeing any work coming in, spectre of redundancy
• People starting to look elsewhere and leave
• Lots of firefighting - good at it
• Told we are failing
• No future planning
• Rush, rush, rush
• Banter - lively, fast, fun - can be a bit bruising
• Talk over each other

• Tend to think we know everything and have seen everything
• Don't understand other people's roles
• Busy solving other people's problems
• Difficulty in pointing out errors
• Everything takes so long
• Disunity between leader and deputy
• Frustrated about production
• Everyone gives 100%, tries hard. People helpful
• Good personal relationships
• People working at a level below them

We decide to deliver a day based on creating a clear, shared vision of the future of the division. Bearing in mind the uncertain and changing nature of the future we aim to: develop a compelling vision of future possibilities; understand the strengths of the division that can be built upon to help secure that future; identify active opportunities to pursue or focus upon; and, to identify changes needed to the way the division currently works to make it more attractive to other potential customers. I also aim to enhance top team working and engender some hope and purposeful future oriented activity.

Process - getting people to connect and focus on alternatives to slow decline

Given the comments, I include a round of Time to Think based on Nancy Klein’s book of the same name. This is exceptionally successful as for the first time in a long time this group of energetic, engaged and motivated managers really listen and hear each other’s aspirations and hopes. They also genuinely connect with each other’s concerns. The question/topic we used for the round was ‘What is the most compelling vision I have for the future of this division, and what do we need to focus on to make that happen?’ Comments after this exercise included ‘I’ve learnt more in the last hour than I have in the last year of management meetings’, ‘It’s really hard to keep quiet, but you learn so much more.’ and ‘I’ve heard G...say all that many times before, but I’ve never really understood how important it is to him.’ It was probably the most powerful part of the day.

The rest of the day we followed a SOAR design – strengths, opportunities, aspirations and results. By the end of the day the team was motivated to make some changes and had a shared sense of some other things that needed attention.

What they took from the first day

• They were resolved to carry some of the lessons from the Time to Think experience into their regular meetings.
• They realised that they had to be the ones leading the division to ensure that morale and motivation and performance stayed high so they continued to be an attractive proposition.
• They realised also that they had to be constantly ‘selling’ their division’s strengths and abilities within the organization, to make it clear they could be the division of choice for new contracts.
• They had to actively support the business development unit by being available for meetings at short notice, supplying information etc.
• That their leader had to be free to do endless networking with potential client contacts while they ran the division.

All this meant that they had to get the next layer of management to start acting as managers. They needed to delegate more effectively, push decision-making and problem solving back down the hierarchy. They had to build the confidence of their reports to act as managers, make decisions and so on. They needed to actively coach and develop these staff.

Further work and outcomes - resolving short-term issues, looking for long-term solutions

Over the next 9 months the leader and I jointly ran five further days for line managers and front line staff. The emphasis always being on creating a sense of hope, optimism and proactivity that the unit as a whole could positively influence the future by how everyone acted in the present. During this time the quality issue was resolved, the middle managers ‘stepped up to the plate’, and the senior managers started focusing more on their key challenge of attracting new work to the unit. The future continued to be uncertain.

Stage 2 - Removing guilt as an obstacle to adaptation

Ten months later I was invited in again. Now, the leader was in charge of two declining divisions. Everyone was being actively encouraged to apply for other jobs (either within the organization or externally), although the current product had not yet lessened in quantity or in its need for quality work. No new work had been yet secured. These two divisions were possibly going to merge as part of the planned rundown, meaning there would be a duplication of management bodies.

Initially I was asked to work with senior team of the new division. Again I interviewed people individually to enquire into the context and need. This is was the nature of the reports. Remember I am asking positive and appreciative questions!

• Brain drain
• Motivational issues are all
• Recruitment challenges
• Loss of direction, rearguard action/firefighting
• Abandonment
• Old strategies for managing division outdated
• Internal Conflict
• Fighting over particular skills
• Ethical dilemma – should I stay or should I go?
• No ‘give’ in performance expectations
• Uncertainty
• Failing
• Emotional Turmoil
• Recent morale destroying presentation by MD and HR

Process - removing guilt

The day for this team focuses on identifying the strengths of the unit, and giving people a chance to talk about the ethical dilemmas presented to them as managers of a division that is forecast to be closing down.

The question we gave everyone to consider was ‘How can I be a good person in this difficult situation? How can we support each other?’

We had one manager declaring that he couldn’t possibly look for another job. His loyalty to both the product and his staff were such that he felt he had no alternative. Effectively he was sacrificing his chance to secure alternative employment. Those left standing at the end faced redundancy. He looked dreadful. Clearly this statement was going to make it difficult for any other manager to choose a different path. One already had: another manager had already secured another job elsewhere on site. He clearly felt terrible saying this. We were in danger of metaphors such as rats leaving sinking ships or captain going down with the ship as being the dominant, and only, metaphors for these managers’ choices. They had not been able to have these conversations with anyone and were, meanwhile, both encouraging their staff to seize opportunities as they arose, while also desperately needing them to stay to do the work.

During the conversation the leader made it clear that, much though he cared about the unit, he also cared about his family. This meant that he would have to evaluate how to be a good person almost on a day-to-day basis as the context changed. With help, the group co-created more helpful stories of choice, recognised different ways of showing loyalty, developed a concept of provisional (rather than end point) positions and considerations, and a shared recognition that there was no right answer in this situation, each person could only do their best by their lights to ‘do good’ in a very challenging situation.

Outcomes - moving from fixed to adaptive and flexible leadership during uncertainty

It was an important conversation that made it possible for the group to move from a negative downwards spiral of accusation and betrayal in a world of clear-cut choices, to a more nuanced appreciation that opened up the possibility of people making different choices that could all be seen as honourable. Most importantly, from my perspective, it became possible for the person nailed to the martyr position to free himself from that uncomfortable position, and for the person who had secured another post to receive some recognition of the achievement involved in that.

The adaptive leadership was evident in how the divisional leader refused to adjudicate and assert what was the ‘right’ managerial response in this situation, instead he was authentic and honest about his own situation, offering a more complex picture of what leadership can look like.

Stage 3 - facing uncertainty head on

Six months later I’m back again. This time it’s a day with the support function managers from the two units. The day has some interesting features. There is something of a leadership vacuum, the usual leader and the person deputised to commission this day from me, are both absent (so apart from me who owns this day?). Of the two deputy leaders in the room, one leaves at half time (he has secured another job). I am delighted to hear that the other deputy, the one determined to go down with the ship, has also applied for another job. Things are shifting and loosening up.

Process

This time we look the future right in the face and construct three scenarios – best, worst and middling. We consider how to work in a way that means we are prepared for all three. We also do a mind-map to capture what everyone in the room knows about the rapidly changing current context, and to identify the best places to focus leadership energy. We identify the causes for celebration and optimism and we conduct an Open Space session which I label, in the absent leadership context I discovered when I arrived, ‘Doing it for ourselves'. 

Outcomes - hope, not just fear, in uncertainty. A credit to adaptive leadership

This is what I wrote to the absent leader:

'There was, for the first time, some concrete progress to hang hats on, even if it was first baby steps. For me it was quite noticeable the shift from possibilities to some actualities.

I sincerely think that the level of commitment and motivation in the room at what is probably the point at which the change is accelerating for people and the structure starting to dissolve (to hopefully reform in different patterns) is quite remarkable and a real tribute to you, and your deputies.'

The division managed to maintain or exceed all its targets until the final aircraft went. They managed to relocate around 50% of the staff to other areas of the organisation with the other 50% taking voluntary redundancy. 

“Having assumed the appointment as Director of one of our Business Units I needed to swiftly create an ethos of teamwork and focus from the management team down to the shopfloor. This was achieved over a series of one day off-site sessions facilitated by Sarah. Not only did this allow me the opportunity to interact with managers to associates at all levels, but it allowed me to provide clarity and direction for the year ahead. The level of success was demonstrated by the Business unit exceeding all previous targets and setting new standards for others to follow.

Consequently I was then appointed as the Director of an additional business unit with the added aspect that there was potentially going to be the difficult task of a significant downturn in work due to the planned MoD platform out of service date. Again I used the services of Sarah to facilitate a series of one day off-site events. As a result this particular business has seen an increase in productivity as opposed to the expected drop off and improvements in quality across the piste.

Sarah provides targeted and focused facilitation to meet your business needs and I would recommend her support to any other business.
”

— The client

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Open Space For Strategic Development

The Invitation

‘We want to run a rehearsal process for our EQUIS assessment, and a strategy development day for about 180 people simultaneously. Are we being too ambitious? Can you help us?’

The Challenge

Appreciating Change had run the annual ‘team day’ for this business school community of academics and administrators for the past two years. The first year we introduced Appreciative Inquiry to help bolster their creativity and innovation, the second year was focused on the student experience. This was the most ambitious objective yet. Throughout the day teams of people would be disappearing to table discussions in a simulation of a forthcoming, very important, assessment process. At the same time the body as a whole was to engage with three strands of strategic thinking around: the student experience, the balance of teaching and learning and research, and the integration of services.

Meeting The Challenge

The challenge was to create a design for the event that would facilitate the people involved in the simulation to leave and rejoin at specified times; and that also allowed three themes of discussion. Working with the planning team, Appreciating Change designed a day based on Open Space Technology that would allow the rehearsal assessment panels to run concurrently with a strategy development conversation. In addition we worked with the technology department to create ‘video tweets’ of the different discussions, and a ‘voting’ process at the close of the day to help identify the most important ideas and suggestions from the various discussions.

The Outcome

The day was deemed a great success, working with the complexity of the system in a way that generated productive and useful conversation while supporting the primary purpose of assessment rehearsal and preparation. During the day there were 24 discussions around strategic questions identified by the group such as ‘How can we improve the cultural differences with students?’ and ‘How do we improve contact via technology?’ All discussions produced a record of strengths, opportunities, aspirations and potential results in the area under discussion.

 One participant was moved to write to the organisers to say:

 ‘A quick note to say how impressed I was by the process Sarah used last week at our away day. To get 180 people to work collaboratively across 18 parallel work groups, discussing meaty issues and feeding back results during a full day without being bossy was quite remarkable! Please thank her for me.’

 The senior team came away with a clear idea of the co-identified priorities for the school moving forward in these difficult times for academia, and with some concrete suggestions for next steps.

In addition the individuals present:

• Forged new relationships
• Discovered shared areas of aspiration
• Were energised to help the school adapt to the changing context and environment.

The assessment participants also got extensive feedback about their performance in the simulated assessment.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at Our Approach to change, or more specifically at how we use Open Space in interventions.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Breaking Down Barriers - Cutting across silos with Simureal

The Invitation

‘We are bringing in a new ERP system across the whole manufacturing process, it will affect everyone. It will be much more sensitive to accurate data than the old system. People will need to be much more disciplined in the way they record and enter data. Can you help us make everyone enter data properly?’

Background

The organisation was a manufacturer of about 250 people, mostly on a large site. The people involved in each part of the process were separated from each other by distance and physical barriers: it was a typical silo organisation. Historically the site had managed the many inadequacies of its ‘built like topsy’ legacy IT systems by workarounds, off-system excel spreadsheet accounting and so on. Good, clean accurate data could be hard to come by.

The Process

Appreciating Change helped the organisation to reframe the challenge as ‘making work work better’ suggesting that the investment and involvement being asked of the workforce could help make their working life better, and wasn’t just for ‘the management’.

Working with a cross hierarchy, cross functional planning team we decided to use the simureal process, whereby the whole manufacturing process is re-created  in a large space. After introductions we asked the system to address three questions in turn. In between each round of system activity we held a round of reflective conversation. Round one was: What happens now? Round two: How could work work better? Round three: Testing out our decisions. Throughout the day there was an action table where decisions could be made regarding the process. As these decisions were made they held for the duration of the exercise and were then reviewed. At the end of the day there was a collective discussion about what needed to happen and who would do what.

The Outcome

The energy and engagement on the day was tremendous. Learning happened in the moment as people realised the difficulties caused to others by their actions, where time and effort was wasted or duplicated; and came together to design and decide ways to improve the situation. Specific decisions were taken, and work groups were set up.  Some of the ambitions and outcomes were

1  Implementing a system for accurate counting of scrap in a particular function (individual scrap counters provided at each station).

2  Weighting individual items rather as appropriate rather than taking gross ‘guesstimates’ from weighbridge data.

3  Bringing the intranet into the plant (which was done by installing a new PC in that area almost immediately).

4  Introducing an electronic maintainence system.

5  The accurate setting and use of scales (again quickly scales were all calibrated, repaired as necessary, instructions for use laminated and secured to surface, a procedure produced).

6  The design of a new ‘easy to read, and secure’ label for the booking out system. 

This self-organized, active, follow-up relied on minimum push or drive from management. Instead it was built on the energy and enthusiasm of those whose working lives would benefit by these changes being supported by management to make them.

This event proved to be the beginning of a series of events that resulted in clean data, good and widespread understanding of the dependencies of the physical and virtual system; and facilitated the on-time implementation of the new system.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we can help your organisation change it Culture.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Pulling It Out Of The Bag! The Minor Miracle Of Positive Co-creation

The Challenge

Five strangers have two hours to prepare for a three-hour consulting session with a client they have never met.

We are a British woman, a Greek woman, two Dutch men, and a Dutch woman.  All of us have volunteered to try to help this organisation as part of our two-day experience at the 11th meeting of the Begeistring Network, a European network of people interested in Appreciative and strengths-based ways of working, at Volendam in Holland April 27-29 2011.

We will be working in English throughout. On our first evening we had about an hour to start planning how we might usefully use this opportunity.

Background

Foundation180, we are told, is an organisation that supports youth work by providing proven programmes to help young people in trouble to turn their lives around. The organisation is about 3 months old, being the product of two previous organisations, now joined together. We will meet the project leader and 8-9 of her staff. They have expressed an interest in how to do an appreciative audit of the organisations that use their programmes.

Working Together

As we discussed how to engage with this idea of appreciative auditing, we began to explore why this was an important topic for the organisation. We hypothesised that as an activity it was probably related to a core value of helping young people. This seemed a good topic to explore as part of ‘discovering what gives the system life’. It seemed likely to help create common ground in the group.

It was noticed that one of the challenges to our conversation was the lack of the voice of ‘those being audited’ in our conversation. It was also clear they wouldn’t be present at the meeting tomorrow. We had a challenge of how to bring their voices into the room in a positive way.

We learnt that the project leader was going to do an introductory talk, introducing the organisation to us. We considered how we could relate to this in a valuable and appreciative way and decided to listen for the strengths, abilities, passions, dreams, and resources present in her talk. 

Appreciative Inquiry is oriented to positive change; we knew we wanted to give our participants a chance to share some of their best dreams for the new organisation. Someone remembered some picture postcards available as a resource. We thought we might use them by asking people to select one that somehow expressed their dreams for the future of Foundation180.

In the car the next day these thoughts resolved themselves into a programme, complete with timelines and leads for each section (see below).

How was this possible?

Five people, working with minimum previous connection between themselves or the organisation they would be visiting, were able in a very short space of time, to co-create something they were highly committed to and that had real, real time impact. How was this possible?

I have been reflecting on this minor miracle, and this is my hypothesis.

1.  We had a shared understanding of organisations as social systems and a shared belief in the power of appreciation, inquiry and strengths to achieve positive change.

2.  We were all volunteers, thrown together by chance. There was no ‘leader’. There was no one of whom responsibility for success rested on more than anyone else.

3.  We all had a stake in the success of our afternoon, for our own reputations, for the reputation of the Network, and the reputation of our Dutch hosts who had negotiated these opportunities with organisations they knew personally. They were displaying extraordinary trust in people they had never met. We didn’t want to let them down.

4.  We all understood how to build on either other’s suggestions in a creative and generative way. This is a not a skill that can be taken for granted in groups. Was it because we were all consultants/facilitators? Or because of our general appreciative bent?

5.  We were able to combine our different strengths very well; for example allowing those who were interested in ideas and methods to explore those while those with a stronger inclination to plan and organise detail to do that. Expertise was respected as a resource not privileged as power.

So what happened at the client?

Fortunately the first round of expectation sharing suggested that our plan for the afternoon was a suitable way to proceed and we ran through our plans as outlined. During that, some remarkable things happened:

•   The pride conversations, conducted first as a fishbowl conversation by them and then reflected on by us produced very strong emotions and was experienced as highly affirming.

•   Optimism about the future of the organisation noticeably increased. This was clear by the comments that accompanied the postcards picked to represent the future. While one contribution was still tentatively hopeful, it was identified by the speaker as a shift from a previous position. In other words some hope was generated by our afternoon.

•   An understanding developed about possible good reasons why people might deviate from the established, tried and tested, programmes. Allowing these deviations to become connected to the central value of helping young people started to pave the way for more appreciative audits.

•   The shared values of the two organisations came more to the fore and started to create common ground. This will be a valuable resource and touch-point as the many points of difference between the two organisations will undoubtedly continue to be debated.

•   We hadn’t realised before we arrived the level of tension within the organisation, stemming from the experience of the recent merger. It became clear that our afternoon had created a shared, positive experience. It was the first time they had been able to have such conversations about success, value and pride. We know that shared positive emotions help to create social bonds. This was apparent here.

So five strangers came together with another 8 strangers and together we co-created a positive, valuable, organisation-building afternoon. I continue to find the power of Appreciative Inquiry a minor miracle.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we work with Appreciative Inquiry.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715