Site blog: Change Management Toolbook

Workshop on Deep Democracy in Berlin

Thu, 14 Jan 2010 03:57:20 CST

by Holger Nauheimer.

Deep Democracy White & Yellow Belt
Foundation Course
Berlin/Germany: January 26 - 27, 2010
Course Instructor: Myrna Lewis

Deep Democracy is coming to Germany for the first time: Team dynamics, decision-making, conflict resolution

Please register by January 21, 2010 online at: www.regonline.com/deep_democracy

Do you find that:

The same issues or topics keep coming up-but without resolution?
The conversations in the corridors or at tea are not being held in the meetings?
The leadership and project teams try and progress but get stuck as the real issues are avoided?

Whether you are a leader, a coach, a facilitator, a consultant or simply a member of a team – Deep Democracy offers both a set of innovative tools and a world view that will enhance your effectiveness across all dimensions.

Deep Democracy is based on the work of psychologist and physicist, Arnold Mindell, whose concepts and principals have been demystified and adapted for laymen by clinical psychologists Myrna Lewis and her late husband Greg.

On a practical level Deep Democracy is an advanced form of facilitation that can be used by in a variety of ways to help both groups and individuals.

The Deep Democracy process differs from traditional problem-resolution techniques and classic (majority wins) democracy in that it doesn’t strive for compromise. Instead, it aims to build a real consensus across a group – a consensus which recognizes and takes note of the wisdom inherent in the minority’s viewpoint(s), rather than simply ignoring it or overriding it. Different too, from the main emphasis of large group intervention methodologies, in that it focuses heavily on the emotional, rather than rational level and aims to heighten awareness at an individual and group level of the secondary, or unconscious, processes occurring, as these more often than not hold the key to real progress.

Through a highly experiential approach you will gain awareness and experience of group dynamics and decision-making in groups.

Goals of the White and Yellow Belt training

The White and Yellow belt is the first level of training and provides the foundation for using this methodology.

Although each course follows its own unique path, you will learn how to:

Ø Improve group decision making and buy-in

Ø Read the dynamics affecting group interactions

Ø Inspire participation from everyone in your group

Ø Engage a group to create better quality decisions and reduce the ‘terrorist activity’ of disaffected group members, undermining the effectiveness of the group

Ø Recognise when there are underlying tensions and issues in the group that are getting in the way, and how to deal with them

Ø Gain the hidden wisdom of the minority

Ø Bring new creativity into your business, family and social circle

Ø Uncover inner resources you never knew you had

Who will benefit from attending?

This course is intended for consultants, coaches, managers, leaders and others who are interested in developing their skills in dealing with groups, making decisions and resolving conflict in order to promote change and transformation.

To book or for more information contact

Email: frauke.godat@the-hub.net

Call: 0176-50 47 88 06

Cost

Special introduction fee: 416,50€ (350€ + 19% VAT)

Includes workshop material and tea/coffee during the workshop.

Please register by January 21, 2010 online at: www.regonline.com/deep_democracy

Brief background of Deep Democracy

Deep Democracy is based on U.S. psychologist Arnold Mindell’s innovative work in Process Orientated Psychology. Myrna Lewis and her late husband, Greg, trained with Mindell in the early 1990s and as corporate consultants, they applied what they had learned to a unique situation: South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy in 1994.

The Lewises responded to these enormous challenges by adapting the complex science of Mindell’s Process Orientated Psychology and applying it to help a large national utility company make the leap into the New South Africa.

After Greg died in 2002, Myrna continued to refine the techniques they had created together to hone Deep Democracy into the straightforward, five-step methodology it is today.

In 2007 Deep Democracy was one of the 80 innovations show-cased in a United Nations publication “Africa Leads” as one of the innovations coming out of Africa.

Deep Democracy spread very quickly to other South African companies and beyond the South African borders. In 2007, Capgemini UK, one of the top 4 consulting firms consisting of over 50 000 consultants worldwide, incorporated Deep Democracy in their training technology. Today Deep Democracy is being used in 20 different countries from South Africa to Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Canada, Europe, the Middle East and India – from boardroom to classroom.

About the course instructor

Myrna Lewis has a B.A. degree in Social Work, Honours in Psychology and Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology. In 2001 Myrna received the Ashoka award from Ashoka Washington, USA. Ashoka recognises individuals who through their personal endeavours, uplift communities and facilitate social change. In 2008, Myrna was a finalist in the South African Women of the Year award and she also published her book “Inside the NO – Five Steps to Decisions that Last”.

More background information on Deep Democracy is available at http://deep-democracy.net/

Download our course flyer here.

The Myth of Unprecedented Change

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 15:25:12 CST

by Torsten Bernewitz.

According to conventional wisdom the world is changing at an ever faster rate, organizations must adapt to this change in order to survive, and management’s prime responsibility is to avoid impending doom by making these changes happen.

Just about any book on management written since the seventies (and possibly before, I didn’t check) asserts this doctrine - usually somewhere near page one - providing convenient context and suitable concern to compel the reader to digest the rest of the oeuvre (which they presumably ignore at their peril).

We hear that “the extent, type and pace of change are breathtaking as well as terrifying.” Or: “The amount of significant, often traumatic, change in organizations has grown tremendously over the past two decades”. Sometimes very specific, like: “The advertising industry is passing through one of the most disorienting periods in its history”. Or a little broader in scope: “The planet has seen unprecedented change”.

This meta-narrative of “unprecedented change” is believed by scholars, written down by their students, regurgitated in the media, and gladly picked up by executives to provide justification for specific change efforts (aka “corporate transformations”). Politicians are not immune to this affliction either, as demonstrated by the apparent addiction of the Obama administration to employing the word “unprecedented” with the fervor of a teenager’s use of “like”.

Never, however, is there any proof offered that the speed of change has increased, or that the changes we experience have more dramatic implications than in other times.

Authors claiming “unprecedented change” typically refer to something like the last 30 years and cite, depending on their particular field of interest: the internet, mobile communications, the end of the Cold War, AIDS, September 11 and the war on terror, globalization, or the series of financial busts ranging from the ‘87 crash, to the internet bubble and the current financial crisis.

Granted – that is impressive! But have anterior periods been any less fraught with change?

Let’s have a look. The period of the 50s, 60s and 70s presents us with (in no particular order): de-colonization, sexual revolution, Civil Rights and Women’s Lib, baby boom, Vietnam and Watergate, Rock & Roll and Woodstock generation, oil shocks, mass consumerism, the rush to the suburbs, Cold War, proliferation of computers, and the space race. Not exactly small feats either.

So perhaps is this transformational expediency a phenomenon that has been going on for a little longer than we first thought? Looking another thirty-odd years back we encounter the automobile, Total War and atom bomb, the Jazz age and the roaring 20s, communism and fascism, depression, moving pictures, radio, television, holocaust and mass migration, the airplane, modern art.

Ok, at this point we may concede that the whole last century has been pretty changy. But surely we must find the serenity of the olden days, when mankind was innocently wallowing in complacency, somewhere?

The late 18^th century perhaps? Not really: Enlightenment, secularization, American Revolution, French revolution, abolishment of slavery (in Europe, that is), in fact the 18^th century is frequently labeled the “age of Reason and Change [sic]”.

Way back then, for example the early 16^th century? No such luck: colonization of America (and other places), protestant reformation, Renaissance culture, the discovery that the Earth moves around the sun, first flush toilets (!)…

None of this is to deny that change occurs. Of course it does - already more than 2,500 years ago the Greek philosopher Heraclitus developed a doctrine of change being central to the universe: “Everything flows, nothing stands still. The only thing that doesn’t change and perish is change itself”.

In fact, that change is a key topic echoing throughout the ages is proof to the point that this is by no means a recent phenomenon, nor accelerating in a way that “is not even linear[1]” as some scholars like to put it.

Unprecedented change is just a myth.

But we still use it as a comforting ritual chant – something to cling to, that sounds familiar – when we do the magic that is managing people and organizations.

[1] e.g. John Kotter, in an August 2008 interview with Harvard Business Publishing editor Paul Michelman

Change Management Consultant

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:10:36 CST

by Ron Bauer.

I am a Change Management consultant. I work with individuals, teams and organizations helping to co-create dynamic teams and active leadership developoment for lasting change. www.bauer@bauerchangemanagement.com

Creating tomorrow's change history today

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 04:05:09 CDT

by Ivan Overton.

I believe that many organisations err in being too casual about their change history. I also believe that the cumulative change history of an organisation is probably one of the most reliable predictors of its success with future change, and is also a very important factor in shaping organisational culture.

The cumulative organisational experience of past change has a very significant impact on how change will be dealt with in the present - a history of “bad” change will tend to:

Make stakeholders more resistant to change
Lead to the development of counterproductive learned responses (habits)
Undermine trust and confidence in change leaders
Limit opportunities for organisational learning of good change practice
Increase the likelihood of further instances of “bad” change.

Conversely, a history of “good” change will tend to

Lower stakeholder resistance to change
Build trust and confidence in change leaders
Present opportunities for organisational learning of how it “should be done”
Increase the likelihood of further instances of “good” change.

If we accept that - with regard to organisational change management - the past is an important predictor of the future, then we have to do three things:

Assess our change history.
Find ways to learn from what happened before and apply these lessons into the future.
Realise that we are creating tomorrow's history today, and take extra care to make sure that we change well.

Assessing Change History

Change history is a combination of objective and subjective realities – one needs to understand to what extent a particular initiative reached its objectives, but also how stakeholders have experienced the change. To assess change history effectively, one therefore should combine objective and subjective sources of information – for example:

Objective:

To what extent did Initiative X meet its objectives?

Was the initiative within budget?

Did it complete within the agreed timeframe?

Were there significant negative unintended outcomes?

Subjective

How do people describe their experience of Initiative X?

What were the good things, and what were the bad things about the initiative?

How did it make you feel?

What was the overall impact of Initiative X with regard to how people feel about the company and about working here?

Learning from the past

When any initiative concludes, a formal “lessons learnt” exercise should be conducted. This information should be properly captured and made available for easy retrieval. Then, as part preparation phase for each new initiative, the lessons learnt repository should be reviewed. Change leaders should also review this information periodically, to identify trends and patterns that require attention.

Where issues or problems that impacted stakeholders are identified, these should be acknowledged and explicitly addressed – this will build trust. For example: “On reviewing our 'lessons learnt' from Initiative Y, we can see that we did not always take enough time for proper dialogue, and that this led to several misunderstandings. We intend to address this in Initiative Z by scheduling regular discussion sessions with you.”

Sieze the day

Whether your assessment of your organisational change history shows that change has been experienced positively, negatively or (most likely) a combination of the two, it is important to realise that what happens on your initiatives today will become the change history of the organisation tomorrow. You can influence what happens today – but once it becomes history, it cannot be changed.

All aboard!

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 03:53:30 CDT

by Ivan Overton.

We often use the metaphor of stakeholders “being on board”. However, how communication is managed on large projects may not always lead to this outcome.

If you want all of your stakeholders to come on board, your train must depart from where the stakeholders are. This seems so obvious, yet it is one of the most common mistakes made in change projects. We all approach life from within our own perspective – each of us have a unique set of knowledge, assumptions, beliefs, values, habits, norms, personality traits, perceptions, fears, hopes, quirks, strengths and weaknesses. Perspectives can differ so greatly that it can be extremely difficult (or even sometimes virtually impossible) for us to understand the perspectives that others have.

When a project team works together, there are strong influences at play that serve to at least partially align perspectives. Team members often spend significant amounts of time together, sometimes under rather difficult conditions. They usually come to realise that they have to depend on each other and that their destinies are linked. Because they are so intimately involved in the process, they usually “buy in” to the project very strongly and at an early stage. A project team therefore tends to develop overlapping areas of shared perspective, and also advances quite rapidly ahead of where the bulk of stakeholders are, creating a large gap in relative understanding and relative acceptance with regard to the project.

This might make it very difficult for the project team to effectively engage with stakeholders:

Project teams tend to be passionate (and therefore to communicate) about what is important to them (the business case, project phases and key milestones, the composition of the project team, the importance of buy in and support from stakeholders) instead of what is important to stakeholders (how will this affect me, when will I need to do what, how does this relate to everything else happening in the company).
Most project teams rapidly develop a specialised “language” which is different to what most stakeholders are used to. Acromyms and specialised terminology present a significant barrier to stakeholders who are not part of the project team and therefore have not learnt to the new “language”.
The attitudes of project team members toward the project are usually very different to the attitudes that most stakeholders have. Project team members may overestimate the extent to which stakeholders will support the project, and may feel resentful when stakeholders assign a low priority to the project, show poor support and commitment or even resist the project. From the stakeholder point of view, project team members might appear to be unrealistically optimistic, to act in their own self-interest or as if they have a hidden agenda, and be regarded as being manipulative.
The project world is very different to the “business as usual” world. In the project world there is greater urgency: Plans change often and with little notice, it is taken for granted that people will go to extraordinary effort to get things done in time, and it is acceptable to schedule meetings after hours and at the last minute. This same behaviour in the “business as usual” world is regarded as being inconsiderate and disruptive. This may result in a situation where project members see business resources as being lazy, uncaring and uncooperative, and business resources see project members as being arrogant, pushy, rude and self-important.
The challenge is not only that there tends to be a large gap between the point of departure of the project team and the point of departure of stakeholders who are not part of the project team – a further complication is that perspectives will change over time, and what might be an entirely appropriate strategy for stakeholder engagement at one point in time may not be appropriate two months later. As stakeholders progress with regard to their understanding of the project and its consequences, their information needs will change and they will require increasing amounts of personal interaction.

In a classic psychology experiment, Elizabeth Newton asked college students to participate in an experiment in one of two roles: “tappers” and “listeners.” Tappers received a list of 25 well-known songs and were asked to tap out the rhythm of one song. Listeners had to try to guess the song from the taps. Each tapper reported that he/she could clearly discern which song they were tapping. When they were asked to predict how many songs listeners would correctly identify, they predicted 50 percent. However, listeners had a much harder time than predicted – to them what was being tapped was not at all obvious. Of all the songs tapped out, listeners correctly guessed only 3 percent. Communicators tend to grossly overestimate the clarity of their message – because they already “got it”, it makes the task of “getting it” seem easier than it really is.

The obstacles listed here can be partially overcome by addressing them directly – for example, by reminding the project team not to use acronyms and unknown terminology when dealing with stakeholders, or by ensuring that more time is spent in understanding the perspective of the recipients of project communication. However, this is like dealing with a leaking roof by placing buckets under the leak rather than simply fixing the leak. A more effective primary approach is to ensure that there is truly effective dialogue between the project and its stakeholders, and then to assist the project team in responding appropriately to the feedback they receive. If listeners in the experiment related above were allowed to provide feedback to the tappers as they were tapping, it is likely that the number of listeners who “got it” would have been much higher, provided that the tappers were willing and able to modify how they were communicating (by also humming or whistling, for example).

Change Models (1): The 4D Cycle of Appreciative Inquiry

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 03:18:19 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

With this article, I start a series about change models (which has originally been published on the Change Management Blog).

Background:

The 4-D Model is based on Appreciative Inquiry (AI) which is a larger framework for human or organizational change. Like AI itself, it is based on a shift in paradigms on human interaction. The core can be captured in the idea that we create the world as we describe it. If many people in an organization think that this is a torture chamber, they will feel physical pain when they enter the door of this organization. If the same people think this is a great place to work, it will be.

Alana Karran writes about the difference between problem and outcome orientation approaches:
The other primary orientation is the Outcome Orientation, also known as the Collaborative-Creating Orientation. The focus of this orientation is the vision of the organization. What is focused on has a great impact on the emergent experience. Focus, or intention evokes an emotional response that drives behavior. This behavior reinforces the intention. Because systems are circular and feedback loops return to their point of orientation, this cycle continues indefinitely unless there is a change of focus. The principle of feedforward also applies, as the focus influences the future.

In the Collaborative-Creating Orientation, focusing on the vision engages passion and desire to manifest the intended outcome. When members of an organization have a shared vision and shared meaning this passion infuses the entire system because what affects a part, affects the whole. Biological systems are creative in nature and creativity happens collaboratively, most often in some form of community. Highly functioning organizations with a deep sense of community thrive from this orientation as the vision sparks passion, which creates authentic action moving the whole system closer to the vision exponentially.

Creators of the Model: Suresh Srivastva, Ron Fry, and David Cooperrider, 1990 Phases of the Change Process: (taken from new-paradigm.co.uk) Discover—people talk to one another, often via structured interviews, to discover the times when the organisation is at its best. These stories are told as richly as possible. Dream—the dream phase is often run as a large group conference where people are encouraged to envision the organisation as if the peak moments discovered in the ‘discover’ phase were the norm rather than exceptional. Design—a small team is empowered to go away and design ways of creating the organisation dreamed in the conference(s). Destiny—the final phase is to implement the changes.

Does the Model Relate to Complexity Theory? AI and the 4D-Model are deeply rooted in complexity theory. The underlying principle of simultaneity (change of mind and change of organizations happen at the same time) and the principle of poetry (the story of organizations can be recreated in conversations) relate to a basic systemic process: organizations can not be described as the sum of its parts but only as a whole. Applicability: The model has been applied to many different kind of organizations, from the profit (e.g., British Airways) and non-profit (United Nations) sectors. It is suitable for a wide range of transformation processes, including quality management, vision/mission/value creation, improvement of collaboration, etc. Strengths:

The 4D-model works with what exists already in organizations. People can easily relate to their past success stories and link them to what they want for the future.
It is highly participatory and inclusive and respects different views and values.
The results of a 4D process are directly action oriented.
It creates energy and enhances motivation of people involved.

Weaknesses:

The model is more related to the past and present than to the future.
It does not include a wake-up call. Problems and challenges, although not denied, do not receive the same attention than visions.
The quality of results varies and depends on many factors. AI requires a highly skilled facilitator to make sure that the output of the process satisfies the expectations of the process owner.

More resources: Website of Appreciative Inquiry Commons Case Study: AI at World Vision Timeline of Appreciative Inquiry Related articles by Zemanta

Appreciative Inquiry - Tools and Methods (LearnThis.ca)

Photo of David Cooperrider: Ovationnet PLEASE DISCUSS THE MODELS: WHAT ARE YOUR EXPERIENCES?

If you come across the guru on the road, pity him.

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 05:53:20 CDT

by Ivan Overton.

I am a dyed-in-the-wool change consultant. This is what I’ve chosen to do some 15 years ago, and I’ve stuck to it ever since. I have some opinions on the art and science of change management, and while I would never call myself an expert (or heavens forbid, a guru) at anything, I know I’ve paid enough dues to feel that I’m no longer a beginner at this.

The nice thing about being where I am now in my career is that I have a sense of calmness about the work I do, a quiet confidence that developed over time. Of course, that’s not to say I don’t sometimes feel stressed out by sheer volume of work or crazy timelines, or that I’ve managed to find an antidote to all of the normal frustrations that beset the lives of all change managers. I suppose that the key thing I’ve learnt with regard to the latter is that it is about winning, not about being right.

On the inevitable other side of the coin, the drawback of where I find myself now in my career is that there is a danger of an increasing sense of “been there done that” creeping in. The patterns become familiar, the work less challenging and “exciting” than it used to be on the steeper part of the learning curve.

I think the challenge is to keep on reinventing, to always strive to do the work better and better, and never to settle for “this is the best and only way to do things”. It’s almost like playing a video game all the way up to the top level, and then creating 10 more levels above that, and ten more above that, ad infinitum. You are never finished with learning and improving, and that keeps things interesting.

To be able to create those extra 10 levels, you have to open your mind to the possibility, you have to be willing to take the risk and put in the extra effort, and you have to retain a realistic sense of humility about it all. For this reason I feel some pity for those who proclaim themselves to be “experts” and believe that they know most of what there is to know in any particular discipline. For them it must be like playing the same video game over and over and over.

society

Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:16:39 CDT

by Ron Brown.

Our population is directed toward emotion rather than logic hence the chaos.

Planning for uncertainty

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 06:55:22 CDT

by Ivan Overton.

While “Change management” is still the most commonly used term to describe our field of practice, there are many practitioners and scholars who object to this, pointing out that “change cannot be managed”, and insisting on alternative terms such as “facilitation of change” or “change leadership”.

Of course, these practitioners and scholars have a valid point – the emergence of new paradigms in science (notably quantum physics and chaos theory, which actually have roots that date back to the 1800’s), have increasingly made the limitations of Newtonian cause and effect thinking apparent. Even change in relatively simple systems (such a bowl of water into which a stone is dropped) exhibits unpredictable, chaotic patterns.

In the infinitely more complex systems of human society, change always has outcomes that were not predictable and hence could not be managed in the direct sense. If one conceives of “change management” as a means by which change and change outcomes can be managed in a direct sense, it would be a fallacy with potentially disappointing consequences for those who set forth to achieve this. It is not the change that is managed in change management, but the process of change - this is a very significant distinction.

Human psychology seems to have a great affinity for predictable patterns, for the security of cause and effect. It is very hard for us to accept that, despite our most earnest efforts, in reality we are bobbing along a turbulent river of unforeseen events that flows where it will. To quote the character Dr. Claire Lewicki in the movie Days of Thunder (for me fiction often seems to illuminate real life with greater clarity than scholarly work): “Control is an illusion, you infantile ego-maniac. Nobody knows what's gonna happen next: not on a freeway, not in an airplane, not inside our own bodies and certainly not on a racetrack with 40 other infantile egomaniacs” . Indeed. We also don’t really know what will happen next on our implementation projects, corporate restructurings, mergers, or productivity improvement initiatives. Because of the unpredictability associated with any complex change initiative, we have to ensure that we manage the process of change appropriately - above all, this implies that we need to remain eminently flexible.

Yet we seem to keep on diving into the spin dryer headfirst, armed with neat change methodologies, comprehensive theories, consult-by-numbers approaches (in this case only some of us, thankfully!), clever tools, 400 line project plans and detailed budgets. Behind the reasssuring facade of predictability and certainty created by these artifacts, we change practitioners then have to face the chaos and simply must make do, with no small measure of quiet desperation. The really good change practitioners are able to create some sense of rhythm and structure amidst the chaos, and can rapidly accommodate changing circumstances by changing their approaches. Less experienced and/or talented change practitioners (or those unfortunate enough to be working within strict cookie-cutter frameworks imposed by their firms) are doomed to mechanically plod through an increasingly irrelevant change approach determined by the original proposal (which ironically was developed when the least information was available about the initiative).

If a change methodology or approach becomes fixed at the level of execution (i.e. the typical level of detail that would appear in a project plan), it will rapidly become irrelevant. We must allow for ongoing dynamic change in our approaches to change management to accommodate the inevitable turbulence. This does not mean we don’t have to plan. It just means we have to plan appropriately.

Before I explain what “planning appropriately” means for me, let’s consider Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 – widely regarded to be one of his finest works and written in 1788 (bear with me on this, it does go somewhere!). Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 has been performed again and again by different orchestras over hundreds of years with only relatively small differences in interpretation. As they start with the very first note of the first movement, each player in the orchestra already have mapped out in their minds how the entire performance will play out. This would make a very poor metaphor for change management. A far more appropriate metaphor would be a game of chess: The chess pieces do have specific ways of moving, there are rules governing the game and you can learn different strategies to employ in different situations. However, you only plan a few moves ahead (with your immediate next move being fairly certain and succeeding moves decreasing in certainty). Every time your opponent makes a move, you re-evaluate and possibly re-plan.

For me, planning appropriately therefore means

Having a clearly defined and simple overall approach (which describes at a high level what you are trying to achieve – Kotter’s 8 Steps would be a good example of this). Ideally, you should not only have one approach, but should rather be able to select from a number of proven approaches to obtain the best fit for the client. If the client already has a workable approach that is well embedded in the organisation, this should be adopted – insisting on using your own approach in such circumstances is to my mind incredibly arrogant and doubtlessly not in the client’s interests.
Translating this approach into a more specific (but still high level) plan that relates to the unique circumstances of the initiative you are planning for. This could be represented on a single PowerPoint slide where the major change management activities and outcomes are mapped to the initiative timeline.
Developing a “bare bones” project plan that will allow for progress tracking and easy updating but does not fix activities at the execution level. How much value is there in a detailed project plan that specifies that the change practitioner will spend next Thursday afternoon between 12h00 and 16h00 drafting an article for the company newsletter? If change practitioners are truly in step with what is happening on the change initiative, it is a certainty that such very detailed project plans will have to change very frequently. Project plans are usually baselined and subjected to change control that makes frequent changes quite onerous if not impossible. If you plan change management activities at a very detailed level in the formal project plan you will be wasting precious time that could have been better utilized in delivering real value to the client, but far worse, you could limit your flexibility.
Having a short-term (two to four weeks) detailed action plan that can be quickly and easily updated following at least weekly reviews. This action plan is used by the change management team and can be managed in a desktop application like Excel (not my first prize) or on an online web-based system (far more effective). It relates to the higher-level detail captured in the “bare bones” project plan and facilitates easy updating of status reports and progress statistics, assigns responsibility and due dates and tracks progress against this but allows significant flexibility in detailed change management planning.

Change Management Database Tool (web based) for a Tier 1 Automotive company

Wed, 22 Jul 2009 16:43:27 CDT

by Rahul Plavullathil.

I work as a Change Control Coordinator for a tier one automotive company. Our change management system is based on excel sheets and e-mails. It is very hard to keep track of all changes and their progression through the system we have. I was looking for any webbased database system to support this. Any one has any experience in this matter ? If you do, please share.

http://appreciativeorganization.wordpress.com/

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 01:02:48 CDT

by budi setiawan.

Blog appreciative inquiry dalam bahasa indonesia

Why Culture Is Important

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:59:20 CDT

by Jay Fedora.

I spend a great deal of my consulting time working on Lean Six Sigma deployments. I believe the Lean Six Sigma movement is primarily a large-scale transformation effort but the practitioners often view it as a training, tools and skill development effort. My personal blog, http://blog.culturescaipe.com , describes my firm's work in developing change facilitation tools to help black belts and change agents broaden their perspective and overall organizational effectiveness.

Consequently, I find this new community far more enjoyable than the Lean Six Sigma communities I usually have to navigate! Thanks for the invitation.

Participation Camp 09 - Virtual and Face-to-Face

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 12:51:40 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

Our new group, now called Radical Inclusion, is organizing the virtual aspects of Participation Camp, Change the Rules, an un-conference that is taking place on June 27/28 in New York. The focus of the event is to explore topics at the intersection of politics and technology. This includes strategies for citizen engagement, participative democracy, collaboration technologies that might support these processes, specific projects, etc. Details can be found at: http://mudball.net/pcamp09

There are two ways that you can participate virtually:

Virtual Presenter: We will be livestreaming virtual presenters into a Virtual Room at the conference. Hence, if you want to give a webinar on a particular topic of interest, present your project or company or explore a particular theme with the group that is at the conference, this is a perfect opportunity! If this might be of interest, drop us a line and we can discuss.

Please check out the site to see who has already signed up to participate virtually.

Open SkypeConversation Commencing June 22nd: Radical Inclusion is experimenting with a new way of doing things. We want to make conferences not just one/two day events, but conversations that are continuous. In order to do this we will be experimenting by opening up SkypeConversations on Monday June 22nd.

We will simply invite you to a open space chat session where you will be able to introduce yourself to others, share your ideas and questions and so forth. Many of you have already provided us with your SkypeID's. If you haven't, and are interested in participating, please forward your Skype ID.

We really don't know how this will unfold, so it's up to you to be active and participate! The opportunity exists for you to stimulate and generate conversations with others, invite your own contacts into the space etc.

This is an experiment in self organization and we are interested in seeing how it might shape the actual real world conference that starts at the end of the week on the Saturday!

Let us know what you think, and if you would like to be involved!

Please contact Suresh Fernando by email.

Airbags, hot air balloons and champagne.

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:38:25 CDT

by Ivan Overton.

I’ve been quiet for a while, and it’s not because I was absolutely so busy that I couldn’t blog. I thought about some possible blog topics, even sat down more than once to begin writing, but I just couldn’t get started.

You see, sometimes change management is like a hot air balloon. Colourful, exciting and somewhat unpredictable (and yes, also filled with a substantial amount of hot air), it takes stakeholders to places where their perspective changes, where they can see new possibilities and map out new futures that they could not have conceived of before. When change management is like a hot air balloon, it is a very, very satisfying profession. You are responsible for assisting organisations and their stakeholders on multiple journeys of discovery and growth, and in the process, you discover and grow as well.

And sometimes change management is like an airbag. You deploy milliseconds after impact, and all you can hope for is to cushion the blow, to limit the damage. If you do your job adequately (there is no doing it well here) stakeholders may be able to walk away with less damage. They won’t thank you, and of course, you shouldn’t expect them to. They may even blame you a little for some of the pain.

In helping my clients deal with the harsh reality of a global economic crisis, my work has increasingly tended to be of the airbag variety. This means it is messy, often devoid of proper closure and recognition (how many retrenchees will stop to thank you for making the process better?), painful and emotionally draining. It becomes a hugely tough job, but I know that it is damn necessary. Organisations change in times of prosperity, and they change in times of crisis. I think the latter type of change is where our process skills are most needed, for we can help avert major harm to individuals and organisations.

Airbags help limit damage, help to keep the future alive. And in the future, as in the past, in the never ending cycle, the colourful hot air balloons will rise again in greater numbers, to the sound of laughter and popping champagne corks. So, to all of you fellow airbags out there who are also taking strain, my best wishes to you in these times. Hang in there, the world needs us!

Facilitating Virtual Collaboration

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 12:16:19 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

Facilitating Virtual Collaboration
Keble College Oxford
September 18, 2009, 9.00-17.00

Virtual collaboration tools have mushroomed and matured at the same time. There are thousands of tools and platforms such as online conference systems, blogs, wikis, chat rooms, forums, social networks, social bookmarking sites, files sharing, etc., which allow small and big groups to work together for a common goal. Many profit and non-profit organizations are using such tools for communication and collaboration with their internal and external stakeholders. In the future, most workshops, seminars, conferences will have a virtual component. Other events will be entirely online. Besides real-time events, the demand for facilitation of asynchronous processes of organizational development is high.

We offer you a practice oriented seminar to upgrade your skills for navigation and communication in the virtual world.

Objectives:
The participants, upon finishing the session, will be able to

...understand the importance of social media for transformative change
...apply different social media tools in their own work
...create meaningful content on the web
...linking up to different social networks on the Web
...initiate change processes by using social media
...apply different social media tools in their own work as change facilitators

Workshop Agenda:

Web 2.0: How social media are changing the world (presentation)
Exercise: Exploring the world of social media (small groups)
The how and what of blogging (hands on learning)
Creating meaningful content: working with videos, podcasts, slideshows, mindmaps and other interactive Web media (hand on learning)
Creating social networks that move people to action (hands on learning)
Microblogging: creating a world brain (interactive exercise)
How to broaden virtual facilitation and networking skills for change processes (group discussion)

Trainers:
Holger Nauheimer and Sofia Bustamante (Radical Inclusion)

Participation Fee: £ 350
Early registration fee (ends July 15, 2009): £ 280

Register here.
Please contact holger@change-facilitation.org for more information.

Is the UK waking up?

Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:57:30 CDT

by John Fay.

Dear All,

I have the honour to work with some of our largest corporates and some of our finest small companies and I wanted to share some thinking on the entry title to my blog.

I think it is, I think people can see the light at the end of tunnel but I also feel people are afraid.

Afraid of standing up to a government that now has a weakened mandate to govern and has damaged our economy. In the UK we have great talent, great companies and a great spirit. We lack leadership though and this lack of leadership is causing us all to become reserved and over cautious in decisions.

How many times have we seen that over the years in the change programmes we all run? I would imagine quite alot.

So please have faith in the UK, we are not dead and buried, we just have a Prime Minister who is and we desperately need a General Election to provide the transparency and authenticity to government so badly needed.

I remember Jim Collins mentioning those words once!

Til next time

John

10 Tweets Seminar on The Change Journey

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 02:35:46 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

On Wednesday, June 3, at 1 pm EST / 17.00 GMT, I will hold a 10 Tweets seminar on contemporary concepts of change facilitation. The seminar will be delivered through Twitter, i.e. I will post 10 tweets in a short time. The tweets will contain main messages and links to further resources.

Content:
* Why change has changed
* Why we can't manage change
* New leadership skills
* Transformation of organizations

To follow the seminar, just follow me on Twitter, or follow the hashtag #cj01.

The seminar will take about one hour and involves some reading from your side, and a short video. You can follow the seminar in real-time or asynchronously, and we can discuss the experience here.

Jascha Rohr: Unfolding Individual & Collective Potential in Corporations

Wed, 20 May 2009 03:37:56 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

I attended a presentation of Jascha Rohr (@jaschrohr) at the Berlin Hub on Unfolding Individual & Collective Potential in Corporations. During the presentation, I twittered the main statements and ideas of Jascha's German keynote, which I document, comment and annotate here (my original tweets in bold). You can read the entire tweetstream here.

Photo: www.partizipativ-gestalten.de

@jascharohr starts with a question: are bees or ants happy?

That is a real good question to reflect about. I mean, we all know that bees' and ants' brains are probably not made to feel emotions. But if we just assume for a moment that bees and ants would have the ability to feel, what would they feel, in particular, what would the worker ants and bees feel? Would they be proud and happy to be part of a greater good?

Reading an impressive article of National Geographic on swarm theory, I am not sure whether Jascha's underlying hypothesis hold: that there are power structures in bees or ants colonies. The author of this article says:

One key to an ant colony, for example, is that no one's in charge. No generals command ant warriors. No managers boss ant workers. The queen plays no role except to lay eggs. Even with half a million ants, a colony functions just fine with no management at all—at least none that we would recognize. It relies instead upon countless interactions between individual ants, each of which is following simple rules of thumb. Scientists describe such a system as self-organizing.

When you are 1 in a million in China, there 1300 of you. @jascharohr refers to Shift Happens.

"Shift Happens" has become one of the most quoted videos on change of society and culture. It has changed the way we look at our closest future. I just learned there is an updated version:

This year there will be 4 extrabyte of new information, more than was generated in last 5000 years.

Another quote from Shift Happens which shows us how quickly what our knowledge will be outdated.

However, I wanted to know more. A Google search on "Growth of Human Knowledge" did not reveal anything satisfying. So, this was the decisive moment of testing www.wolframalpha.com, the new "intelligent" search engine which has had a lot of (rather bad than good) PR during the last days. It reveals the following interesting information:

Input interpretation:

Value:

Comparisons:

A counter scenario to continuous exponential growth: Peak Oil Theory.

Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline. The concept is based on the observed production rates of individual oil wells, and the combined production rate of a field of related oil wells. The aggregate production rate from an oil field over time usually grows exponentially until the rate peaks and then declines—sometimes rapidly—until the field is depleted. This concept is derived from the Hubbert curve, and has been shown to be applicable to the sum of a nation’s domestic production rate, and is similarly applied to the global rate of petroleum production. Peak oil is often confused with oil depletion; peak oil is the point of maximum production while depletion refers to a period of falling reserves and supply. (Text and image from Wikipedia.org)

Whatever growth theory is right: We will have to deal with accelerating change - what does that mean for organizations?

At this point, Jascha went to the core of his presentation - what organizational forms do we need in the 21st century, in times of great uncertainty and growing complexity.

Consciousness is the skill of reflexive mindfulness. Is the consciousness of an organization only the sum of individuals or more?

3 levels of organizational consciousness based on the concept of David Deida and #spiraldynamics

David Deida is acknowledged as one of the most insightful and provocative spiritual teachers of our time, best-selling author David Deida continues to revolutionize the way that men and women grow spiritually and sexually. His teachings and writings on a radically practical spirituality for our time have been hailed as among the most original and authentic contributions to personal and spiritual growth currently available. (from Deida's own short biography)

Spiral Dynamics is an evolutionary model of human development which can be applied to individuals, societies and organizations. Originally conceived by Clare Graves in the sixties, it was taken up and further developed by Chris Cowan and Don Beck (the two guys, after having collaborated and published a seminal book on the topic, parted in conflict). We have published a case study on the Lebanese history based on Spiral Dynamics.

Level 1: The level of clearly prescribed roles, clear hierarchies, clear job descriptions. These organizations are efficient.

In Spiral Dynamics, we call those entities "blue organizations". They are organizations where trust is developed by rules and hierarchies. If you stick to rules you know that you are on the right track. Level 1 organizations work well in predictable markets.

But Level 1 organizations are not able to quickly adapt to change.

We have seen the fall of typical blue organizations recently, such as GM which had failed for many years to adapt to quickly changing markets.

Level 2 organizations are looking for meaning. It is kind of a community and includes emancipation. Trust is based on equality.

Problem of Level 2 organizations: they are not as efficient as Level 1 organizations and equality blocks individual development.

In Spiral Dynamics, we call those entities "green organizations". Trust is given by the community of equals. There are no hierarchies and no leaders. Issues are discussed and either decided by group consensus or left undecided. Level 2 organizations have worked well in particular in non-profit settings.

In level 3 organizations (just emerging): Instead of roles and equality, authenticity is the base of organizational consciousness.

In Level 3 organizations, leadership is a service, helping others to unfold their authenticity. Here, people unfold their potential.

In Spiral Dynamics, we call those entities either "yellow or turquois organizations", depending on whether they have the ability to create community and serve for a larger good (turquois).

How to organize Level 3 organizations? @jascharohr suggests participatory co-construction.

In @jascharohr's concept of participation, all living/non-living actors are part of the co-construction process and have their role.

Participatory co-construction is based on generative patterns

In a participatory co-construction process, all living/non-living actors are part of a non-linear field and interact with each other.

This concept is based on several sources:

1. The work of Christopher Alexander (http://www.patternlanguage.com, a Vienna born architect. From Wikipedia comes this quote from one of his books:

The Timeless Way of Building described the perfection of use to which buildings could aspire:

“ There is one timeless way of building. It is a thousand years old, and the same today as it has ever been. The great traditional buildings of the past, the villages and tents and temples in which man feels at home, have always been made by people who were very close to the center of this way. It is not possible to make great buildings, or great towns, beautiful places, places where you feel yourself, places where you feel alive, except by following this way. And, as you will see, this way will lead anyone who looks for it to buildings which are themselves as ancient in their form, as the trees and hills, and as our faces are.

2) For me, another important source for this is the work of Arnold Mindell, further developed by Max Schupbach in his WorldWork approach.

Worldwork brings is a new way of thinking about and working within the complete spectrum of collective life and its organizational forms. At its core is a theory that links research in consciousness studies to fresh interpretations of findings in modern physics.

More about the WorldWork paradigm can be found here.

In Level 3 organizations, all actors are ready to be deeply involved, aware that they are part of a field which they cannot control.

In Level 3 organizations, everybody can and will lead and everybody can and will follow in different phases.

We don't know whether Level 3 organizations do exist but there have been early prototypes, such as Dee Hock's Visa, who said in an interview:

"We are at that very point in time when a 400-year-old age is dying and another is struggling to be born -- a shifting of culture, science, society, and institutions enormously greater than the world has ever experienced. Ahead, the possibility of the regeneration of individuality, liberty, community, and ethics such as the world has never known, and a harmony with nature, with one another, and with the divine intelligence such as the world has never dreamed."

Conclusion of @jascharohr: Let us stop being judgmental on leading and following. So bees and ants must be happy.

This blog post is just a start. There is much more to say about Jascha's theories, and - we have to put them into practice. Please contribute to the discussion.

Follow Jascha and Holger on Twitter.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

Everybody believes that this is a quote from Nelson Mandela's inauguration speech. Unfortunately, this is an urban myth, and the text comes from an author called Marianne Williamson (read the full text here). How it got attributed to Nelson Mandela remains a mystery. Marianne Williamson herself said: "Several years ago, this paragraph from A Return to Love began popping up everywhere, attributed to Nelson Mandela's 1994 inaugural address. As honored as I would be had President Mandela quoted my words, indeed he did not. I have no idea where that story came from, but I am gratified that the paragraph has come to mean so much to so many people."

SMART Coaching Events

Thu, 14 May 2009 10:34:58 CDT

by Steve Thornton.

SMART Coaching Events

SMART Coaching events are avialable from SMART Coaching practice Ltd.

Each event is unique in that its focus is what is important to you - it may be an immediate issue or concern, such as increasing sales or a longer term change or strategic goal.

The founder of SMART Coaching Practice, Steve Thornton says the aim of each event is to establish the foundations for significant performance improvements while having some fun along the way.

"I have been developing SMART Coaching practice over a number of years and that experience is now coming to fruition with the launch of SMART Coaching events.It is an exciting time for me being able to do this at a time when many are facing difficulties. I hope we can help in some way."

Facilitating Virtual Dialogues

Thu, 14 May 2009 04:58:44 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

I will host a 2 days training on "Facilitating Virtual Dialogues" in Oxford, UK, Sep. 17-18, 2009, as a preconference workshop to the IAF Europe conference.

Summary

Social media of the WWW are now widely used to facilitate team processes, organizational development and stakeholder dialogues. The choice of an appropriate tool is based on five context markers: place, time, content, relationship and language. Such processes can take place in synchronous, asynchronous or mixed mode.

In the two days workshop, participants will experiment with a multitude of social media and learn how to facilitate virtual processes of different size and duration. It will be learning-on-the job: the learning group will subsequently form an editorial team that covering the IAF conference by different media (blogs, podcasts, videos, photos, community groups, Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

Learning Objectives/Outcomes

The participants, upon finishing the session, will be able to

- ...understand the importance of social media for transformative change
- ...apply different social media tools in their own work
- ...create meaningful content on the web
- ...facilitate asynchronous and synchronous virtual events
- ...linking up to different social networks on the Web
- ...initiate change processes by using social media

Session Content Outline & Description

Before the workshop:
- Participants will connect through a social web platform

Day 1
- Web 2.0: How social media change the world (presentation)
- Focus group discussion: What are virtual facilitation skills
- Exercise: Exploring the world of social media (small groups)
- Group presentations
- The how and what of blogging (hands on learning)
- Group presentations
- Creating meaningful content: working with videos, podcasts, slideshows, mindmaps and other interactive Web media (hand on learning)
- Group presentations
- The rising importance of social networks on the Web (presentation)
- Social media as means for transformative change in teams and organizations (group discussion)

Day 2
- Creating social networks (hands on learning)
- Group presentations
- Microblogging: creating a world brain (interactive exercise)
- Virtual facilitation skills (presentation)
- Conference platforms (interactive exercises)
- Real Time Virtual Facilitation: creating multi-media events (hands on learning)
- Reflection. How to broaden virtual facilitation and networking skills for change processes (group discussion)
- Planning: creating editorial teams to cover the IAF conference; defining objectives of coverage

Bookmark the date, more info soon.
Please send me an email at holger@change-facilitation.org if you wanted to be posted on this event.

The RTVC Happened! Successful!

Tue, 12 May 2009 05:10:31 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

We did it! After a two months preparation, our international team hosted the first Real Time Virtual Facilitation workshop, applying Open Space principles and using a lot of different social media tools. Here is a complete (and outstanding) mindmap covering the event (you better click on on this link to see the entire mindmap):

After the agenda wall had been opened 48 hours prior to the event, 50 particpants from around the world met in a big (Skype) chat room for the opening session. From there, they went into "break-out rooms", using chat rooms, Skype voice conferences, Dimdim (conference platform), different Twitter applications, Etherpad (a simplified Wiki in which people can simultanously work on a document, and chat at the side), and other tools. These were the topics discussed:

* Collective Action
* Communication tools for the Manager 2.0
* Introducing social media to large organisations
* OpenMoney: connecting social entrepreneurs with new currencies
* New Change Management Approach for the 21st Century?
* Interdependencies between sensible and meaningful communication and tools/ technological development
* Global Skills
* Community Owned Communications Infrastructure
* Collaborative Intelligence in the Workplace

After two break out sessions, people reconvened in the big chat room, where we facilitated a reflection session, in which we heard words like: "thrilling", "encouraging", "roller coaster", "what's next?", "bacterial", "fallingoffthecliff", and much more.

We learned a lot as a team about technological barriers, virtual facilitation skills etc. We will be back with an even improved concept!

Large Scale Systems Change

Sat, 09 May 2009 07:13:09 CDT

by Albert Klamt.

I am increasingly interested, involved and engaged in large scale systems change. Collaboration and communication between and within cultures, cities, communities and countries.

Living and working right now in Berlin.

Thats why I am here and wanting to learn more about tools and technolgies.

You can find more about me at:

http://voyager.gaia.com

On board of regents at this first private university in Mideast in the realm of higher media education:

www.ecmas.net

Involved in supporting center for human emergence mideast:

www.che-mideast.org

having learned something already about OpenSpace Online, Theory U, Spiral Dynamics Integral, AQAL and other approaches for integrated and integral change.

This is my first RTVC workshop. Consider me as digital immigrant

Until later,

Albert

The Market Place of the RTVC Has Been Opened!

Thu, 07 May 2009 10:14:39 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

The Marketplace of the RTVC conference that will take place on Saturday, May 9 from 14.00-17.00 GMT has officially been opened. That means, we encourage you from now on until Saturday to identify topics you want to explore. You don't need to be an expert on that specific topic - we just appeal to your passion and responsibility. If you have such a topic, please go to the marketplace and follow the instructions:

http://www.change-management-toolbook.com/mod/glossary/view.php?id=616

Beside the topic, we ask you to define the virtual (or real life) meeting place: You can use any vehicle for dialogue that suits you well. Beside the few tools that we suggest, feel free to meet where ever you want - in Second Life, in a conference platform that you use regularly, etc. All you need to do is to specify that meeting place in the marketplace, where you post your topic.

Remember the Open Space Technology rule:

Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.

We also remind you that not all of you have yet either provided us with their Skype ID or have not yet confirmed our connection request on Skype. You need to do that to follow the opening and closing session in Skype chat. In case you cannot find the connection request, you can connect to us by using our Skype ID, which is rtvc.wks . If you are unable to install Skype (remember, it is not about the voice option but about chat), you can follow the main lines of the opening and closing ceremony at our Twitter account.

http://twitter.com/rtvc_wks

Looking forward to meeting you soon in cyberspace,

Holger Nauheimer and the Steering Group of RTVC

Stephan, Lucy, Hans, Sofia, Julian, Suresh and Michael

Life as story

Mon, 04 May 2009 04:08:25 CDT

by Steve Banhegyi.

Have you ever thought of your own life as a story that you might be able to change at any time? That it is never too late to have a happy childhood?

This is an exercise with ancient shamanic roots that we've updated for a variety of environments ranging from schoolkids to boards of multinational corporations...The idea is that participants need to become deliberate about taking back authority over their own story. Storytelling or the oral tradition is very much associated with Africa and many cultures here adopt the view that a human being is the creation of the story that they tell. Changing the story and retelling it to an audience has the quality of being able to change the experience of the person telling the story. Changing the story can be as simple as consciously introducing new words, metaphors, understandings and conclusions. Reminding people of their own authority is empowering. Experiment with what happens when you become deliberate about your own story. The attached exercise has been created specially for teachers from the Department of Education as part of a Life Orientation programme we have developed. Further details about this storytelling for empowerment / lifescript programme is available at http://isivivane.com/storytelling/?q=lifescript

Steve Banhegyi - steve@storytelling.co.za
Blog : www.isivivane.com/trans4mation
www.ubuhibi.com | www.storytelling.co.za | www.isivivane.com | www.thoughtformz.com

Design : Eugenie Banhegyi - eugenie@storytelling.co.za

Our 15000th register user: Maarten Boers from ICCO

Sun, 03 May 2009 10:14:32 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

Last week, we had the honor to welcome the 15000th registered user of the Change Management Toolbook. Maarten Boers is a policy advisor of the research and development department of ICCO which is the Dutch interchurch organisation for development cooperation. ICCO’s mission is to work towards a world in which people live in dignity and prosperity, a world where poverty and injustice are no longer present. They are active in 55 countries in Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe.

I had a nice telephone conversation with Maarten who told me that somebody had sent him a note about the Real Time Collaboration Workshop on May 9: He did not know our website before but he tells us that he is intrigued about the wealth of tools and information. ICCO is in a big change process themselves; the entire way of working changes. Instead of funding individual projects, the organization wants to become a knowledge broker between different programmes and organizations that are active in one of the 10 specific regions of Africa, Asia, Latin America and Eastern Europe. One of the consequences is that the organization is reducing their staff numbers in the Netherlands, ans alos some of ICCO's people move from the HQ in Utrecht to the regions.

Although there is some understandable resistance to the changes, most people in the organization see that the changes make a lot of sense. They want to be nearer to their "clients".

Maarten is particularly interested in new ways to collaborate and to communicate and he says that Web 2.0 tools, for example Wikis, have a big potential to support the works of ICCO. In collaboration with Euforic he developed a web based way of working called ComPart (COMunication with and among PARTners). He confirms that the introduction of social media into organization is a challenge, a real change project. Maarten tries to address this challenge by working with the champions, the early adopters. He also hope that people will feel the necessity of using these tools once they move to the regions. Maarten also understood that emphasizing too much on tools in the first instance is not the right approach. Instead he recommends to focus on the question "What do we want to achieve?" and only when this question is answered, move to the question "What tools do we need to achieve our goals?"

Notes on using Conflict as a Catalyst for Positive Change

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 02:01:28 CDT

by Katie Wilson.

The demands of the changing economy continue to challenge, and change the marketplace in ways without precedent, giving rise to new conflicts within many businesses' models of growth. These conflicts can, more often than not, be used to create change and should be looked at as guideposts to success rather than roadblocks.

It's all about the Benjamins

True, capital flow is crucial to any successful business, but as markets continue to stagnate, entrepreneurs are being forced to get creative in terms of growth. And in today’s markets due to the complicated, distanced nature of economic woes and hardships, classical 'cause-effect' resolution of these problems may not prove to be effective.

In fact, one could examine problems of this nature and see a business on the verge of collapse. An optimistic businessperson however, will instead see gaps that need to be bridged, and opportunity to look elsewhere for an influx of new capital. So begins an atypical search for other outlets of growth.

Maintain Current Inlets

A key element to factor in is the maintenance of solid footholds that your company may have in current mediums and inlets. This cannot be understated. Remember that other businesses, if they are wise, will be looking for new alternative and inlets as well. If you allow a relationship with a current source or client to grow cold, someone else may step in and snap up the opportunity. It’s a dog-eat-dog world, and these days the dogs are hungrier than ever.

Now you’ve covered your assets and decided it’s time to explore other options. This is a good thing. Outer exploration must be done constantly anyway in order for a business to grow, consider the slump economically to be a good kick in the pants instead of someone turning out your lights. So how do you find a psychology that will allow you to look in new places, especially when you are starting to believe you’ve already looked everywhere?

Keeping it Scientific, Yet Simple

Scientists call it the Reticular Activating System, or RAS, and it has the potential to change your whole perspective if you let it. Basically a fancy term to describe your focus, the lingo refers to the way your mind is constantly processing billions of pieces of information at any given moment. Since you are not humanly capable of taking each piece of info and contemplating it for any extended length of time, your brain acts like a constrictor valve and subconsciously chooses what it will focus on for you. By limiting the information that you focus on, your brain makes it infinitely easier for you to function—but there is a catch.

Remember when you got a new car or bicycle and suddenly there were other copies of it everywhere that you had previously overlooked? That is the RAS in action. It’s not that those bicycles or cars weren’t there before you got yours, you just didn’t choose to focus on them and thus your brain overlooked information you didn’t need. So now, in your business, you must focus your research on the seemingly newest ideas available to you, in an effort to awaken that hidden sense.

Being aware of your competition is one thing, but being aware of all that is affecting your business may take time and practice to fully realize. This, however, will mean the difference between learning how to flourish in the desert and drying up like the competition.

This post was contributed by Katie Wilson, who writes about the best distance learning. She welcomes your feedback at KatieWilson06 at gmail.com

Update (2): Invitation to Virtual Collaboration Workshop

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 07:45:35 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

May 9, 2009, 14.00-17.00 GMT (please check your local time here)

What tools and principles do we need to help change to unfold?
Social and technological development as means for
better organizations, and a better world.

The development of the World Wide Web as a tool for global connectivity has given rise to a participatory culture, opening new possibilities for communication and collaboration to effect and facilitate change.

There are plenty of examples that show the ease with which people actually link up with each other and coordinate complex projects as well as social and political change, including the wikipedia, coordination of aid efforts after natural disasters such as fires, and earthquakes through twitter or tools such as http://www.ushahidi.com/, but also recent events such as the "Moldava Twitter Revolution".

These tools, also called social media, are complementing an already existing large toolbox of methods for facilitation of whole systems change such as Open Space Technology, Appreciative Inquiry, Theory U, just to name a few. All these tools are means to an end, which is to change organizations, societies, or communities.

The conference will discuss how the different tools available can be used to foster collaboration that goes beyond mere sharing of information to create action. How can we combine social media tools with real time facilitation to address the essential questions and challenges arising in organizational and social change? Which tools support which kind of collaboration needs? What are the underlying principles that need to be observed to ensure that collaboration effects change?

The conference will make use of different social media tools. Our team will recommend a couple of those such as chat rooms, Twitter, Etherpads, Facebook etc. but you are invited to experiment with the tools you like.

We will produce an introduction video to show you the main mechanisms of the conferenc. 48 hours before the conference starts, the agenda wall will be opened. You wil be invited to post sessions on topics that you are passionate about and that want to explore with other participants. At the end of the conference, you will be asked to document the results of your session at the same place where you had posted the topic.

We will apply the principles of Open Space Technology, which are:
1) Whoever comes is the right person
2) Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
3) It starts at the right time
4) When it's over, it's over. When it's not over, it'snot over

We recommend that you install Skype, which will be the tool for the opening and the closing of the workshop. In the registration form, please include your Skype alias: we will need it to connect you to the Opening Forum. You don't need to install any other tool. We will recommend a couple of tools but feel free to use those you like most.

Register here.

Webinar: Web 2.0 for Business

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 12:45:21 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

UNFORTUNATELY, WE CAN NOT ACCEPT ANY MORE PARTICIPANTS FOR THIS SERIES. WE PLAN TO REPEAT IT SOON.

Webinar Series: How to Use Social Web Technologies for Business

You are welcome to join a four parts, interactive webinar series on Web 2.0 for Business. We have prepared a 20 minutes free video presentation which serves as the introduction to the topic. Watch the introduction here (give the video some time to start, and you can also watch it from here). Please open the video in the full screen mode:

Web 2.0 for Business – Why Change Makers
Should Care About Social Media

Target group of the Webinar Series:

Decision makers in companies and non-profit organizations, who would like to integrate social media in their communication strategies.
Consultants, trainers and other providers of services demanding special needs in communication.
Change agents and other stakeholders of change processes.

This is a beginners’ course. You can attend with any level of web literacy but you will likely be bored if you are already a web native.

These are the topics:

Webinar 1 (April 30, 2009, 15.00-16.30 GMT, please check your local time here): Blogs, wikis, podcasts, slideshows, etc. - How you and your customers can enter into dialogue
Just 10 years ago we started to comprehend that no organization could afford not to have a website. Today it is said to be: No organization can afford it not to interact with their stakeholders. This is the age of interaction. Many companies have started to use social media tools such as blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Wikis, etc.. In this webinar you will learn which tools are right for you and how to make your first steps. If you already use such tools, you will receive practical tips for optimizing your strategy. How and where should I blog? What are tags and what are their benefits? What is folksonomy? Is a wiki suitable for my internal or external communications? How can I improve the attractiveness of my blog? Does it make sense to upload videos and audio files to the internet? How do I embed them in blogs? What are mash-ups and widgets? And what about the copyright?

Webinar 2 (May 7, 2009, 15.00-16.30 GMT): Twitter - A new technology is revolutionizing the Web
Twitter is one of the latest major developments of the web. The micro blogging service allows you to build networks, discuss burning issues directly and quickly, broadcast brief information and forward them. Twitter is already used by many organizations. In this webinar you will learn how to use Twitter for yourself and your communication with partners, peers and clients. What tools are there and which one improves your Twitter performance best? Also, is Twitter really necessary?

Webinar 3 (May 14, 2009, 15.00-16.30 GMT): Networks and Netiquette
In this last webinar you will learn how to create new relationships through responsible and passionate action. The possibilities to connect with customers, like-minded people and opinion leaders and to become opinion leader oneself in a particular subject are manifold.
What are the basic rules and mechanisms to deal with it? How to use RSS feeds to efficiently meet the flood of data? What other networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Xing, etc. should I use?

Webinar 4 (May 21, 2009, 15.00-16.30 GMT): What’s new? What’s next?
While the majority of us is still digesting the new technologies which emerged yesterday, the development moves on at a ever increasing space. In this last webinar, we will talk about emerging trends – what technology will shape our future tomorrow.

Some more remarks
The series is practice-oriented and interactive. You will receive practical tips and tricks on how to use new technologies. Our team will make sure that all your questions are answered. All webinars will be thoroughly documented so all the information can be reviewed afterwards. Also, there will be an opportunity to collaborate with the other participants in discussion fora. And if you miss one of the series, you will be able to watch a video recording from the session.

Trainer
Holger Nauheimer, author of Change Management Toolbook and worldwide known for his media work and on change in organizations. Since two years, he is engaged in the area of new technologies for the monitoring of change processes in the economy and society.

Technology
If you like to participate in the webinar series, please register at The webinars will be based on a telephone conference system plus an online presentation system (Dimdim). All you need is a high speed Internet connection. There is no need to download any software to your computer.

Costs for the entire cycle of four webinars: € 198 including VAT. (convert into your currency from here)

If you are from East Asia or Australia and find the time of the events inconvenient, please send us an email at holger@change-facilitation.org. If a sufficient number of people from the region show their interest we will organize a second event that suits your time zone.

Passion is Breaking Through in Darüssafaka School in Istanbul

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 15:10:53 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

This morning, Tanja Vermeer (president of CFAN) and Funda Oral (from AAT), with the support of Serdar Yurdakul and Holger Nauheimer opened the space at Darüssafaka primary and secondary school for a group 70 students, teachers, alumni, mothers, administrators and board members. Darüssafaka means "Home of Compassion".

The Open Space Theme was:

What we can do to re-animate the Darüssafaka soul that
we will be proud of and for Sustainable Success?

Darüssafaka High School is one of the most prominent and influential schools of Turkey and is currently located in [Maslak, Istanbul. The school was founded by the Darüssafaka Association with the name "[[Islamic Education Association]" in 1873. This date is controversial, with some sources claiming it was 1872. However, there is a consensus that the school started instruction in 1873 in the Fatih section of Istanbul, with the first graduation occurring in 1881. (from Wikipedia).

Admission to Darüssafaka High School is reserved to half-orphans who lost their father. Alumni stay attached to the school all of their life.

Soon after Tanja and Funda opened the space, passion broke through. Within 30 minutes, the participants found 40 topics they are passionate about, among them:

"Not only the orphans but also poor families"
"The effects of punishment (which are being used in education on students"
"Expanding Darüssafaka to whole Turkey / Anatolia"
"Not only the academical success but also in sports and art"
"What do we lack?"

After three rounds of Open Space, we moved back into the circle to report about the dialogue that had taken place. The participants compbined the 12 topics which were actually discussed, to 3 areas to focus on and to generate action plans, revolving around the following key issues:

Responsibility
Spirit
Success

Concrete projects were developed from there. It was in particular moving that theparents present said that this was the first time they were listened to.

Creating a World to Which People Want to Belong

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 05:54:49 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

This is a reprint of an article I wrote for the April newsletter of the IAF Europe.

Robert Dilts (image by Cantabrigensis via Flickr)

"We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future." George Bernard Shaw

Many years ago I had several encounters with Robert Dilts, one of the early developers of the systemic thinking school of NLP. Robert, in his kindness has left a deep impression on me with the subtitle of his book “Visionary Leadership Skills”, which serves as the title of this little article on how facilitators can have an impact on change in organizations and societies. I hope Robert doesn’t mind.

We are living in times in which most aspects of life have become unpredictable. Will we still be in business next year? If so, what new skills will we need to serve our clients? If we are employed, will we still have a job? Will our kids be able to develop their talents and gifts? Will our organizations become better places, where the individual contribution is valued and where team work becomes a means for personal and corporate success? Will there be more or less wars, terrorist attacks, and hunger (for food and for meaning)? And these are just the big questions – just try to write a list with two columns: in one column, jot down the things that you deem certain and in the other those which you think are uncertain. What’s your personal balance? So: if uncertainty and unpredictability prevails, can we as facilitators have an impact or are we subject to the strong forces of a seemingly chaotic world?

I believe we can. As facilitators, we

help teams to develop
create room for dialogue
assist organizations to improve their collaboration practices
support individuals in their intent for personal growth
deconstruct complexity and enhance comprehension
understand and describe systemic patterns in groups and organizations
serve as role models that provide orientation
allow emotions and feelings to be expressed
identify emerging leaders and give them room to experiment
express our views on the good, the bad and the ugly of organizations and societies
act as messengers of social initiatives
suggest tools for improved collaboration
etc.

As systemic thinkers we know that every action has an effect on the system. At the end our work boils down to one simple thing that we do: Creating space for passion and responsibility to unfold. I love to start my workshops with a simple exercise: I ask the participants to get off their chairs (which of course are assembled in a circle with no tables), and spend 15 minutes to meet other people. For these 15 minutes, I encourage them to talk about two aspects of themselves: What are they passionate about? What do they want to take responsibility for during the workshop (and beyond)? This little activity sets the tone and provides fertile ground for openness, transparency, emotional involvement and collaboration.

So, here is our contribution to a better world: let’s focus on helping to increase the global quantity of passion and responsibility. If we commit to this as an objective for any of our workshops, then I am not worried about our impact.

There is more reason for optimism: the global web culture that has developed over the last years is an indicator showing that people do collaborate if they have the tools, the freedom to use them and nobody standing behind their backs. Gary Hamel has expressed this perfectly in an article for the Wall Street Journal (“The Facebook Generation vs. the Fortune 500“). He describes the following patterns of collaboration via social media:

1. All ideas compete on an equal footing.
2. Contribution counts for more than credentials.
3. Hierarchies are natural, not prescribed.
4. Leaders serve rather than preside.
5. Tasks are chosen, not assigned.
6. Groups are self-defining and -organizing.
7. Resources get attracted, not allocated.
8. Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it.
9. Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed.
10. Users can veto most policy decisions.
11. Intrinsic rewards matter most.
12. Hackers are heroes.

Quite a good description of how the real world should function, isn’t it? So, let’s start to build in real life what works in the Web already. I am ready to assume the hacker’s position, if wish so.

On Complexity, Paradigms and Language

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 03:09:31 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

Image by pipiwildhead via Flickr

I read a great post of Peggy Holman on PATTERNS OF CHANGE: Invoking Emergence in a Time of Uncertainty Peggy starts with the provoking question:

What would it mean to know how to work well with the unprecedented upheaval many of us face today?

She continues:

We live in unprecedented times. With financial systems crumbling, oil prices rising and falling, educational systems failing their students, whole industries like newspaper publishing and auto manufacturing collapsing, it is clear that dramatic change is happening whether we like it or not. The pathways of the past no longer reliably guide us to understand the needs of the present, much less the future. ... What follows is an emerging story that puts the old story of change in perspective, opens the way for something new, and provides some insight into how to put the ideas to work.

Sherri Black in her comment to that post, replies:

Peggy — it may be a bit more diplomatic talking about “old change” a bit more kindly — like change patterns that used to work but suddenly with the degree of turbulance in our lives do not seem to help any longer (or someting like that –not to offend all the other change or OD method masters).

I do not agree with Sherri. It is the role and responsibility of thought leaders to introduce a new language. The old language serves as justification for trying to reestablish the old ways of doing things. It is probably that we have not yet found the new language we need to describe patterns that are breaking through, and attitudes and tools that we need.

Image "PhotonQ-Beauty on the Horizon of Complexity" by PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE via Flickr

During my attendance of the last Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco I saw a fascinating presentation of Soren Stamer, CEO of Coremedia about Darwinism on the Web. We have to realize that it is impossible to predict anything substantial even about the near future. Soren states seven compounding reasons why: 1. Increasing Dynamics 2. Rising Complexity 3. Increased Transparancy 4. Global Synchronization 5. Huge Opportunities and Huge Risks 6. Abundance of Options 7. Exponential growth So, maybe the "old" OD and Change Practitioners have to learn we are entering an era of new paradigms. Which doesn't mean that the old methods won't work any more. But there are fewer situations in which they actually do work. When I started my professional life, we were facilitating so called Objective Oriented Project Planning Workshops in Africa, Asia and Latin America, trying to conceive detailed plans stretching over 3-5 years. What a joke! I now have to admit that what we have used over the last years, methods such as Appreciative Inquiry, Future Search Conferences etc. are not effective in isolation. Rather, they need to be complemented by new ways of facilitating change. Where do we get the new language from?

Reblogging: Citizen-Powered Election Monitoring With Vote Report India

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 07:03:05 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

This is an exciting website for anybody who wants to effect social change:

Vote Report India is a collaborative citizen-driven election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections. Users contribute direct SMS, email, Twitter and web reports on violations of the Election Commission’s Model Code of Conduct. The platform aggregates these direct reports with news reports, blog posts, photos, videos and tweets related to the elections from all relevant sources, in one place, on an interactive map.

It is also worth to watch this great video which gives tipps on digital activism:

Comic art and social memory

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:52:22 CDT

by Steve Banhegyi.

In the course of our work, we often engage a variety of creative beings to help our clients articulate certain messages in the course of a change management process. Images are exceptionally important in change management as they are able to convey meaning and the overall feeling of a space in a way that is impossible for the written word. We use a variety of visual art including comics as memory devices - artifacts that remind people of a way of seeing a particular issue or marking a significant event in an organisation’ story.

Working with a client in the public sector, we were asked to devise a change management process for users moving from MS.Windows to Ubuntu Linux. As part of the media campaign that supported the initiative, we developed an inlay for canteen trays that communicates campaign values such as sharing, ubuntu, reciprocity, community, pass it along etc.. The same image is published as a set of 8 A0 posters mounted 4 top and 4 bottom. This is a worthy campaign to be involved in - the South African Government spends around US$14 Billion in software license fees when a significant proportion of this could be saved by using FOSS.

The images, theme and ideas are derived from a facilitated process run with client and articulated in a short feedback process - the image is therefore owned by client.

Concept & Writer : Eugenie Banhegyi - eugenie@storytelling.co.za

Artist : Ian Lusted

Facilitator : Steve Banhegyi

http://wisewolfconsulting.wordpress.com/

Sat, 11 Apr 2009 08:13:38 CDT

by Wendy Mason.

Resources for people managing or going through change

"The Guest House" Poem by Rumi

Fri, 10 Apr 2009 09:34:43 CDT

by Sofia Bustamante.

This poem inspires me deeply I heard about it through people who intervene to prevent violence on the streets. They use it as a deep philosophical approach to their work. For me it is very meaningful for hosting processes of any kind. Both online and offline. If we can create this kind of space, it would be beautiful and also potentially a huge source of human inner potential. I think that this CAN be done online as much as offline. From my experiences, it is possible to connect online to someone who you have never met in RL, and have a very soulful connection. Here is the poem: The Guest House This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes As an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they're a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.

What is it that We Want to Make of the World?

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:21:12 CDT

by Stephen Joyce.

What is it?

Even Junk mail has its uses...

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 09:41:24 CDT

by Richard Cooke.

I woke up this morning and looked at my blackberry, and something seemed wrong… no flashing led, no email icon. It wasn’t that I was expecting deluges of interesting and important mail, but usually I have to start the day by deleting the few spam mails that crawl through my filters. The interesting thing was my reaction; my first thought was my blackberry must be faulty. I even resorted to sending a test mail. It was thus I realised that these annoying spams did serve one useful purpose, they do prove daily that my connections are working.

It is interesting how, if we change how we look at things, rather than just trying to change the things we look at we can find all sorts of value. Take a fresh look around you and see if you can’t find some value in apparent ‘rubbish’…. You might also enjoy this story of the Fields of Diamonds.

“Try not to become a man of success. Rather become a man of value.” Albert Einstein

Using video in change management

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 08:54:48 CDT

by Steve Banhegyi.

Here is an example of using video in a change management project. The client is a South African government agency and the objective of the project was to move users of the MS.Windows desktop to Ubuntu Linux.

The video is designed to run as part of an internal campaign around FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) that stimulates users to reflect upon their 'Sekusile Moment'. Sekusile means 'a new day has dawned' and we are asking participants to share their ideas and feelings about the time when they 'saw the light' about FOSS. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93iEaFZfpcU

writer : Eugenie Banhegyi
director : Kali van der Merwe
actor : Bongani Mundalamo
lighting director & gaffer : Terry Molloy (call-a-crew)
facilities : ZSE Television, Johannesburg
voice over : Dini Nondumo
voice over facilities : Sonovision Studios, Rivonia

Update: Invitation to Virtual Collaboration Workshop

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 09:33:59 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

What tools and principles do we need to help change to unfold?
Social and technological development as means for
better organizations, and a better world.

Join an experiment of virtual collaboration.

This is an experiment in virtual collaboration. On May 9, 2009, from 14.00-17.00 GMT (please check your local time here), we will host the world's largest Real Time Virtual Collaboration Workshop. The workshop will be based on the self-organization principles of Large Systems Change Methods like Bar Camps, World Café, Open Space Technology, etc. and will be facilitated applying different collaboration technologies such as Voice-over-IP, messaging tools, micro blogs etc. Although we have a certain structure and procedure in mind, this is work in progress, and if you have a passion for this, we encourage you to join the steering group. Just drop us a note in the forum below and we get in touch with you. During the Real Time Virtual Collaboration Workshop, this page will be the central place where the agenda will be created. Also, this is a place for documentation.We will post the instructions later on.

For the time being, please register here and join our pre-conference discussion

Here is an update on what has happened so far:

Since we had the first call for the conference, more than 50 people have registered and we have formed an organizers committee to brainstorm and set up the main facilities. Here are our latest ideas: This is the concept which is unfolding (work in progress):

a) we will have to create a very simple interface which will be the meeting place. Here, the agenda of the conference will be posted (on a wiki or a whiteboard), this is where participants can get advice from tool hosts, i.e. people who specialize to answer questions on application of certain tools. This is also the place where everybody can go to meet and join an open discussion - kind of coffee break room.

b) our team will propose a set of standard tools which everybody can refer to. This will probably consist of - wikis for the agenda and for notifications - chat rooms - Skype (for one-to-one chat, group chat and voice-over-IP conversations) - Twitter for communicating with the outside world in real time - personal journals in which participants can post the summary of their group discussions

c) we will all start building our agenda before the conference starts. At the beginning of the conference, participants have the opportunity to add topics and suggest virtual breakout rooms according to their preferences.

d) we will encourage participants to use other platforms for joint learning and exploration. For example, it could be that a group of participants decides "let us build a photo story around a certain issue of interest" and off they go to search photo databases. People search blogs or other websites for certain information, and then return to a discussion forum (this could be a chat room or Skype or whatever).

e) participants will take responsibility to document their results on a platform that we provide, or in their personal blogs. f) we promise to keep everything as simple as possible. However, some explanation will be required and we will produce a short video before hand to outline the main procedure of the conference.

Sometimes the best change managers aren't even change managers

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 08:13:51 CDT

by Ivan Overton.

If I were asked to provide one example of excellent change management, I would choose a process that I was exposed to some 8 months ago. The facilitator of this process was not a change manager in the conventional sense, but I would certainly classify what she did (and more importantly, how she did it) as top-notch change management.

Cathy is a nursing sister and registered midwife, and presented a series of ante-natal classes to my wife Yolande and I and a group of other expectant parents. She presented the classes in a uniquely quirky, personal and entertaining way, with so much passion, authenticity and real “I’ve been there and know what it is like” authority. She drew freely from both her own experience as a mother and from her formal training and experience as a health care professional.

I’ve been through the childbirth experience before when my teenage daughter was born during my first marriage, but this was Yolande’s first pregnancy. Consequently she approached the experience with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. While I increasingly shared her excitement with regard to the overall experience, I had a rather cynical been-there-before attitude to the ante-natal classes, somewhat grumpily resigning myself to spending several Monday nights hearing stuff I mostly already knew. In short, with regard to the ante-natal classes, I was the archetypal reluctant stakeholder!

But Cathy changed all of that. She loves her work, and it shows in buckets. Her enthusiasm and humour was infectious, and her classes were practical and insightful. She took the whole group on a journey, got us to ask questions and make comments. She skilfully dealt with fears and misconceptions, and had the ability to make us laugh at ourselves. We went through an alignment process, there was a proper setting of the context and lots of detailed communications. The change impacts were thoroughly clarified and made more real as she prepared participants in her class for the major life change they would soon experience. It was done so smoothly and so naturally that I didn’t become aware of the similarities between what Cathy was doing in her classes and what I do as a profession until the moment that she passed around the needles used for applying epidural anaesthetic – being able to hold these shiny, scary-looking needles in our hands, and openly sharing what we were feeling and thinking was one of the best possible ways one could prepare our group for one of the less pleasant aspects of the birth ahead. And Cathy didn’t sugar-coat any of the other more challenging aspects of becoming a new parent, sparing us none of the details regarding typical nappy smells, projectile vomiting, rashes, fevers and a host of other unpleasantries. She told it like it was. And after every session we left feeling slightly more prepared. The best for me – actually the clincher that turned me into a (hitherto only partially confessed) Cathy fan is that we could all sense that she was clearly on our side, sharing advice on diverse subjects like how to ensure the best (but more labour-intensive and therefore avoided by some doctors) stitches after a C-section, which nappy creams work well and which are rubbish, how the very best salve for preventing nappy rash is actually and surprisingly a product used by dairy farmers for the udders of their milk cows, and where to buy this at a good price.

Before I get too carried away, I must acknowledge that the circumstances of managing change in an organisational context are somewhat different – for starters our stakeholders are often not self-selected (those who attended Cathy’s classes were there of their own free will), and the case for change never quite as compelling! But I still see Cathy’s approach as an excellent example of effective change management. And there are also lessons (and encouragement) that I can take from this:

Good change management doesn’t necessarily require a lot of time (in Cathy’s case all she needed was two hours a week of focused interaction with the people in her classes and then as much time as stakeholders wanted to spend to read up on the material they got)
Simplicity is always better
A large portion of change management must happen on a human scale to allow for interaction and the processing of emotion. People don’t change when they listen , are “Powerpointed” or when they read e-mails – they change through dialogue and interaction
Practical assistance that addresses where stakeholders are actually at is priceless – and of course, misdirected effort in this regard (e.g. huge training programmes, websites, helplines, information sessions, and user guides that do not relate to actual stakeholder needs on the ground) is a waste of time and resources.
Personal attributes of the change facilitator make a major difference – things like compassion, a sense of humour, extensive knowledge of the relevant subject matter, comeptence, a passion for the work, and the ability to sometimes let go of structure and just trust the process come to mind.
Authenticity. Without this, the process becomes very shallow and true engagement unlikely. Meeting Cathy for the first time leaves you with a very clear impression that this is a no-nonsense lady and that, should you foolishly decide to cross swords with her, you do this at your own peril. No “bleeding heart” syndrome here, despite all the obvious care she feels. This “realness”, this bringing of her own true self into the situation imbues everything else she does with authenticity, and makes her so very effective at developing trust and enabling others to open up to her.

So, Cathy, it’s taken me a while to get around to saying this as completely as I have here, but you have my gratitude for investing my own road back to becoming a new father with extra warmth and humanity, for helping Yolande to deal with childbirth and early parenthood as well as she has, and also for reminding me how much difference a good change manager can make to the lives of others.

Spanish to English Change Management Translations

Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:45:16 CDT

by David McCormick.

Hello

My name is David McCormick I'm a Spanish to English Translator and Interpreter and a management consultant.

I'm interested in translating Change Management articles. My fee is very competitive One US Cent per Word. And I’m also interested in exchanging Ideas with Change Management practitioners from all over the world.

Kindest Regards

David McCormick

Some boundaries shouldn't be pushed

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 05:34:45 CDT

by Ivan Overton.

"She said it grieves me so to see you in such pain
I wish there was something I could do to make you smile again
I said I appreciate that and would you please explain
About the fifty ways" (Paul Simon - 50 Ways to leave your lover)

As a change management consultant, I earn my living by minding other people's business. I spend much more waking time with my clients than with my loved ones. To my further discredit, sometimes when I am at home and supposed to be minding my own business - the business of loving, relating, laughing, conversing, caring and just simply living - I find my mind wandering back to my clients, like an errant tongue worrying at a chipped tooth.

Let me confess further: It's not just that working as a consultant has tended to absorb much of my time and even more of my attention, for me it is also true that the demands of change management work sometimes leaves me emotionally drained - when I return home after a day's work or a week away, I'm often kinda running on empty.

I suspect that my situation is not unique. Unless you take very special care in managing the boundaries between work and life, one sure-fire way of leaving your lover (and your children, your elderly parents, your faithful dog and pretty much everyone else who matters to you) can be by working as a change management consultant on a succession of large long-term projects. Of course, the damaging implications of not ensuring a healthy work-life balance extend even further - ultimately, it might prevent you from ever becoming the person you need to be, from realising your own unique potential. Being good at your chosen career might be ( might be) part of what you need to actualise yourself, but it is an absolute certainty that it would only form part of a much larger and more complex universe of what it really means to be you in the best possible way that you can. We all have to be clear on exactly how much we want to feed the beast called "work", and what we expect to receive in return. We also have to then stand firm on this, for the beast is greedy, devious, and unscrupulous.

But it’s not just about boundaries between you and the beast – it’s also how you relate to the beast, and specifically its keepers – your clients. My clients take up so much of my life, absorb so much of my attention, that it is important for me to understand how I relate to them and how they relate to me.

Let's begin with how I typically relate to clients: For me to contemplate doing the work at all, I have to engage authentically. I would not be able to spend this much time, effort and passion on something I don't care about. So in terms of my consulting career, it is fortunate that caring came naturally. Caring about the people I work with, the project, the company, the wider and longer-term implications of what we are doing. I can't help myself, I really "get with the program". I'm proud of the achievements, I worry if we're slipping on schedule. I'm deeply ashamed when the project behaves poorly or inconsiderately. I'm far more motivated by being part of a team, keeping up my end of making the project happen than by the formal commercial agreement. Actually, I'm quite comfortable to move away from what was agreed in the commercial arrangement if this will contribute more value to the project. Of course, this is anathema to people with a more clinical, arms-length approach to consulting. I've seen change management consulting teams delivering work that they privately admit will add no value, but feel bound to do because "it's in the proposal". In a nutshell then, I tend to really commit to clients and projects. There may be other ways, but for me this is the only sustainable way to do what I do.

It’s also an emotionally dangerous thing to do, for different clients relate in remarkably different ways to consultants. Although there tends to be patterns in this regard at organisational level (some organisations consistently engaging really effectively with consultants, others appearing to have a love/hate relationship with their consultants) the relationship between clients and consultants often is imbued with its sweetest or most bitter flavours at a more personal level:

In the sweeter part of the spectrum, individual client representatives are confident of their own abilities, have a realistic view of what you as consultant can offer, and treat you much as they would treat their other, more permanent colleagues. While they expect you to deliver, they also acknowledge and relate to the person doing the work. Here you will usually find consistency, openness, respect, and acceptance. Because this relationship tends to be authentic, it is easy to find personal meaning and value here, and it is also easy to make friends: One of my best friends (and the best man at my wedding) was my consultant and I his client more than a decade ago, and as a consultant I have developed deep and lasting friendships with clients that I have worked with – some are also colleagues in our consulting business now.

At the other, more bitter extreme, individual client representatives may be resentful of the fees that their organisation has had to pay for your services (in disregard of normal market forces and irrespective of the fact that your fees might be eminently reasonable), and they then make a point of expecting you to pull rabbits out of your briefcase with regular consistency. And they don’t just want super-extraordinary work, they also want lots of it - they insist on their pound of flesh, but unlike Shakespeare’s Shylock, they want a pound every week. If it were not for the demeaning tone that is normally taken by such clients, this would be still be OK with me, for I also feel that I must justify my rates and that I need to deliver at a significantly above average level.

It can even get worse: Some clients may also see you as a threat – operating from a deep sense of insecurity, they are afraid that you might expose their limitations and weaknesses or that by delivering value to their organisation, you might steal their limelight and undermine their opportunities for advancement. They may also secretly (and very unrealistically!) be envious of the prestige and money associated with consulting. Here you will usually find inconsistency, hidden agendas, distrust and a lack of respect.

As consultants we have a major influence in how our clients relate to us – how we conduct ourselves today will determine at least part of how our clients will treat us tomorrow. But there are many things we cannot influence, that we just have to live with (or choose not to live with).

Due to the nature of our work as change management consultants, we usually have to go to where this particular fire is the hottest, and it is us, more than most other project team members, who are the most exposed to client relationships. So, as change practitioners we need even more than others to understand how to deal with the keepers of our work beast, and sometimes in exceptional cases when to choose not to deal with them at all.

Change Facilitation Associates Network Publishes New Admission Guidelines

Tue, 24 Mar 2009 12:24:56 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

Four years ago, I created the Change Facilitation Associates Network. My intend was to bring together a highly skilled group of people from all around the world who share the passion for change and the responsibility to make things happen.

I guided the association for three years. When I saw it maturing, I handed over to a Board of Associates and a President, who is now Tanja Vermeer. The Board has revised the membership guidelines. The good news is: The membership fees have been reduced significantly, allowing more people to join this group. Download the membership brochure here.

An Invitation
We invite you to join the global Change Facilitation Associates Network. So far, 30 experts and companies from all over the world have decided to combine forces and to form an international network for learning and sharing their knowledge amongst themselves and other change makers in the world.

Our Mission
CFAN aims to refine and co-create the craft of facilitating organizational and individual change and to share the knowledge with change makers around the world.

Our Vision
CFAN is a global community of people who explore and advance change facilitation to collectively create profound collaborative change in a profit and non for profit manner. This connects us deeply, both within ourselves and within this changing world.

Why do people join us? Because...

it is an opportunity to build international partnerships with other associates.
it gives them a great feeling of connectedness.
it is an opportunity to sell and distribute own tools to other associates (and change leaders).
it provides access to tools on Knowledge: articles and discussions on interesting topics.
it gives access to experience: virtual conversations with other change facilitators around the world.
it provides ample opportunities to embrace and celebrate change.
members share knowledge and experience on change facilitation in a profit and not for profit manner.

Our Identity
Our network rests on three pillars: Learning, Earning and Serving. We operationalize this basic structure, by sharing information and experiences between our associates and our clients with a view to enhancing the knowledge and skills of all, establishing quality standards for the facilitation of change processes, undertaking research and development on change facilitation approaches and processes, creating sustainable business relationships between our associates and with our international clients, and creating and supporting initiatives that strive to improve equity, justice, and sustainable development for all.

Interested? Download the membership brochure here.

simple

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:48:54 CDT

by Ron Brown.

simple is better when you want[need] the core principle - simple is worse when it requires two(2) or more factors to understand.

change

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 13:34:28 CDT

by Ron Brown.

logic - change can sometimes be explained by matter of induction when

we provide additional irrelevent information[ideology]

deduction - the simplest explenation uses the least amount of info[reality]

Walk Unafraid!

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 11:07:18 CDT

by Ada Gonzalez.

See my latest blog entry:

http://www.growth-coach.com/blogs/leadblog/walk_unafraid

Playing to Win

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 06:53:54 CDT

by Richard Merrick.

Play to win

Attending an early years education conference as a lay outsider is fascinating, and a bit humbling. Once you lay aside the normal political and bureacratic baggage,the overwhelming sense of purpose is about causing the conditions in which children grow into happier, more fulfilled adults. Some mission statement.

The role of play is much talked about - it's recognised as a key part of socialising - but it seems that the likelihood is it is far more important and far reaching than that. This recent film posted on TED gives a real insight into the role of play into adult life, and it really drove home for me the vital role of relaxation and play in innovation, renewal and overall sense of purpose.

As Coach and business developer, there are really important lessons to learn here. If play - real play - is absent from your business or executives, you have a real problem.

Watch the film - see if the Polar Bear reminds you of any CEO's you know, and listen for the part about the rats who were deprived of play. Then reflect on the recession.

The film is 18 minutes. It's worth it.

What makes a great change manager? My current list of "Top 5" Attributes

Sun, 22 Mar 2009 05:55:52 CDT

by Ivan Overton.

What makes a good change manager? This is a question that my senior colleagues and I have asked ourselves on several occasions - when trying to figure out how to improve the recruitment and development processes in our change management consulting company, when helping clients develop their own internal change capacity, when figuring out what courses to offer through our change management training company.

I suppose the answer to this question very much depends on what meaning is ascribed to “change manager” and “good” – i.e. what are the role requirements, and to what level must these requirements be met?

However, a typical set of generic attributes for middle-level change managers that work in the project context would probably include:

A passion for doing the work
An ability to work to deadlines and a commitment to deliver on time
An above-average “people ability” including communication skills, empathy, ability to establish trust and rapport, etc.
A very good understanding of change management principles and associated theory, methodology, techniques and tools, and the ability to apply these in a practical and flexible manner
Good analytic ability
A good understanding of the project process
Well-developed PC productivity skills in the major desktop software applications
At least a basic level of general business acumen
A good basic understanding of the client industry

We’ve developed somewhat more formal and complete definitions which we use for recruitment and development purposes, and have developed an extensive competency model for our training business. I think we’ve made good progress towards answering the question – in any event that we’ve reached the level where our answers yield practical, value adding direction and structure to our endeavours.

But there is another question that I find to be even more interesting: What makes a great change manager? For the moment, these are my “top five” attributes of a great change manager:

1. Ability to "make things happen".
Much of the practice of change management is intangible, and most of the meaningful results can only be achieved by working through other people who have their own priorities and who may not share the urgency that you have with regard to any particular deliverable. In the course of change management work on any project, there are always many small barriers to overcome - for example:

The most recent list of stakeholder contact details sourced from the HR system is hopelessly outdated and everyone looks to you, the external consultant, to somehow fix this
Workshop delegates accept meeting requests and then simply don't pitch on the day.
Project team members routinely wait until the eleventh hour to provide you with the information you requested well in advance
Four senior managers all insist on approving your newsletter articles, resulting in four different (and occasionally conflicting) sets of changes that have to be consolidated and then re-submitted for approval, with the happy possibility that this may result in further changes to changes...

Of course this is all just noise, the small stuff that we really shouldn’t sweat. But individually these small barriers can trip you up, and collectively they can dramatically slow your progress on a project.

There are also usually far larger challenges to “making things happen” – for example dealing with a situation where there is a lot of lip service to proper involvement of stakeholders in the project, but in reality business resources always seem to find some pressing but convenient operational crisis to deal with and the project team actually prefers to focus on technical aspects and avoid stakeholder interaction. Both groups say they want involvement, but both groups actually subtly resist this.

To deliver the required change management outcomes despite such typical challenges, a great change manager has to have an ability to make things happen that is way above the average - this includes the practical ability to do what it takes to get things done (often this requires plain “slog” and getting your hands dirty at the detail level), yet also the ability to think outside of the box, to challenge the known and the seemingly unchangeable to find very creative workarounds.

2. Grit

The going often gets somewhat tough on projects. This is not just necessarily in terms of the change management challenges – the physical environment can be uncomfortable (for example working in a temporary office constructed from a converted shipping container in the midst of a faintly toxic and occasionally explosive chemical plant in sub-zero temperatures), the project timeline can exert huge pressures requiring very long workdays with very early and/or very late meetings, you can end up sometimes working far away from home and only being able to go home on weekends (and not even necessarily every weekend), projects can extend for 18 months or more and require sustained effort and unflagging commitment, and to top it all off, you can be landed with a Mr Bean on your change team or an aspirant Attila the Hun as your project manager.

The reason life savers are able to rescue bathers who are swept away by strong currents is primarily because they are able to stay calm under pressure, and also because they are such strong swimmers that they can generate more capacity than they themselves need to stay afloat and make progress through the water. A great change manager needs to be able to hold her own, both physically and emotionally, and to generate significant surplus capacity, often despite very trying circumstances. Therefore, I believe great change managers need to have true grit, and lots of it.

3. Conceptual ability and agility

By this I mean the ability to rapidly reach deeper understanding through effective analysis and to quickly grasp new concepts – sometimes despite significant complexity - and then to apply these concepts in a flexible and creative yet practical manner. Also, the ability to develop new concepts where required.

That sounds rather theoretical. More plainly put, great change managers are able to quickly “get” what their projects are really about – to perceive the true shape of change though the thickets of available data, terminology and acronyms. This enables them to develop appropriate change management strategies and plans, to translate the “real change” into communication that all stakeholders will understand, to come to grips more rapidly with what will be required to enable and sustain the change, and also allows them to engage in a constructive manner with the project team with regard to the change management implications of the project process and technical issues.

4. Humility

A good friend and ex colleague often liked to remind us (but mostly himself too, I think) that for us as change managers, “it is more important to win than to be right”. A large ego inevitably gets in the way of the effective practice of change management, for not only will it inevitably create issues with project role players, the client and other stakeholders, it will also result in significant and probably unsustainable levels of personal distress for the egoistical change practitioner.

A fundamental aspect of change management is that we work through people to achieve results – the better the results, and the less visible our hand in the process of achieving those results, the more successful we are.

It can be very difficult to operate in the wings, for me personally not so much because I’m yearning for the limelight, but rather because of those instances when the person in the limelight makes a careless mess of your painstakingly prepared work. Another good friend (and at that stage a client of mine) used to get very frustrated in this regard, and he would often say: “We are making the very finest Cabernet, and you know what, the bastards don’t care – they just open the casks and let it all run out onto the floor.” My standard reponse was always “Yes, but at least we are making damn fine Cabernet!”, but I felt just as frustrated as he did.

However, even if you do crave the limelight, working in the wings is by far not the most severe test of the change manager’s humility – there are at least two other activities that change managers must perform that are far more challenging:

Apologising on behalf of the project and taking (even if just by association) the blame for stuff other people did or didn’t do.
Biting your tongue as you listen empathetically to a stakeholder in the throes of resistance who is very unfairly and inaccurately attacking you and is verging on making this personal.

Humility alone will not make you a great change manager, but without it, the odds are that you will never be a great change manager.

5. The ability to engage authentically

This seems like an easy one, but it is probably the hardest of all. Why did you just make eye contact and smile at that stakeholder? Is it because you just feel friendly and you like the person? Did you smile because you wanted to create the impression that you like the person but actually you loathe having to interact with him because he is creepy and furtively tries to look down your blouse at every opportunity? Why are you listening so attentively and empathetically to that poor woman who just lost her job? Are you leaning forward and responding to her because you care, or because you want to appear to her as if you care so that you can keep your job and keep up with your bond payments? Does it matter?

Of course it does!

The fact that people know (they always eventually know at some level even if they can’t quite put their finger on it) when you are faking is not even the most important point. What is far more important is that you know. And why on earth would you want to spend most of your waking hours doing a job that you have to slip on like a cold rubber mask every morning before you start work?

So, if you want to be a great change manager you can’t really get away with faking it, and even if you could, that’s a pretty dumb way to spend your life. And not faking it means that you will have to show people how you really feel. This could have major implications for your career as a change manager…

It’s is hard to separate out all the individual threads of the things that motivate us. And it becomes even harder – if not impossible – to determine to what extent we do things because of self-interest and to what extent there are other, more noble ends that drive us. We can even unravel something as fragile and seemingly selfless as romantic love to the point where the underlying motivational dynamics and self-interest becomes dismayingly unromantic and selfish.

Engaging authentically does not necessarily equate to being selfless, or that you need to carry all the cares of the world on your shoulders. However, you do need to find and maintain your own authentic position within yourself with regard to the work that you do as a change manager, and if this position does not tend strongly towards caring about what happens to others, seeing your own shared destiny in the destiny of others or some other similar position that the people you will work with can recognise and relate to, it’s time to think seriously about another career.

Authentic engagement in this context means bringing yourself – your real self - into the work that you do. It requires honesty, openness, congruence, self-insight and that you are basically OK enough with who you are to share that with the people you deal with in your work as a change manager.

So in summary, my current (it changes a little from time to time) “top 5” attributes of a great change manager are:

Ability to make things happen
Grit
Conceptual ability/agility
Humility
Ability to engage authentically

For me the particularly interesting thing about my current “top 5” is that, while most of these attributes can be honed to some extent by training and development, change practitioners will either be born with them, or develop them over fairly extensive periods of time. It is fairly straightforward (but by no means easy) to develop good change managers through training and development initiatives, but if there is some validity in my “top 5”, it would suggest that great change managers are found rather than developed.

Trash Your Power Point Presentations

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 16:46:14 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

For a long time of my life as a trainer, I refused to use Power Point presentations. In the trainers trainings I gave, I usually introduced the concept of death by PP early in the course. But then, slowly, PP creeped into my courses. Before, I used to spend the entire night before the start of a course to draw my flip charts. This was a meditative exercise and gave me the possibility to rehearse. But finally, I plead guilty - I do use PP more than I should, even if I try to design the individual slides as animating as possible. I include videos, images and all kind of staff. And I still use flip charts and often I joyfully press the blind button of the clicker. Having said that, I was more than happy to watch a taped webinar: Creating Powerful Presentations with Nancy Duarte. If you are a trainer or a presenter, you got to watch this 45 minutes and I bet, your presentations will never be the same.

Iran - the third largest blogger country on earth - or how change is gonna come

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 07:19:26 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

For the last weeks, I am spending a lot of my productive time on Twitter. This gives me less room to blog, for the time being. I plan to go back to regular blogging once my initial hunger for Twitter has faded a bit. However, what I discover on my Twitter journey is sometimes trivial but sometimes it is so overwhelming that it shakes my foundations. If I could chose one piece of information that was the most astonishing, encouraging message, it was a little video that I found yesterday. It shows that Iran is now the third largest country of bloggers: I have tried to verify this information but couldn't find any source (will keep looking at it). In any case, what this video says is that many people in Iran use blogs to create a counter culture, to meet in secluded spaces, to dream about a better life. I am speechless, again, about the power of social media that we yet have to comprehend.
Iran: A nation of bloggers from Mr.Aaron on Vimeo. I just heard in an MP3 of Deutsche Welle (in German) more about the topic. It confirms what the video says but also tells that the Iranian top bloggers often end up in jail. And I just found an article that on of them has died in prison (read here). By the way - follow me on Twitter if you want to follow my journey deep down the rabbit hole.

Introduction to Our New Website

Tue, 17 Mar 2009 05:48:47 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

Please take a little bit of your time to watch this video which will help you to use this site effectively to increase your visibility and to interact with the world's largest change management community. You can also watch it from here.

Coaching in a recession

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 07:59:16 CDT

by Richard Merrick.

I've seen a lot of posts elsewhere questioning how the recession will affect coaching. They seem to split into two camps- one looking at doom and gloom as budgets are cut, the other more resilient and optimistic with a view of this is when coaching is needed most.
I fall into the second category. Our jobs, above all else, is to help our clients think for themselves. Never is this more neccessary than now - but it raises some potential issues. I suspect there will be more dissonance in coming months between many businesses priorities (more for less, cut costs, survve) and those leaders and potential leaders who see opportunity, and want to go for it. It will be a brave (or inspirational) leader who gives them full rein - yet if they don't these people will find a conduit elsewhere - if not now, as son as things pick up. hunker down for cover, but when confidence returns, there will be opportunities for them.

Visual Culture & Branding in 3rd World Healthcare

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 03:41:07 CDT

by Steve Banhegyi.

We have worked with the Lesotho Ministry of Health for the last few years and have developed various campaigns for them that engage branding and other forms of feedback for staff and the public. While the HQ in Maseru is relatively modern, some of the bush clinics operate in extreme conditions in the mountains only accessible by Cessna 206 and Basotho Ponies. Since the MOH&SW engages in healthcare and has widely dispersed employees, we have developed a sticker campaign around washing hands, knowledge sharing, driving and general attitudes. We have also created a web 2.0 site for them which is accessible via 3G cellphone that you can see at http://www.mohsw.org

Steve Banhegyi
Steve Banhegyi & Associates

This sticker is displayed on the inside toilet door and is seen prior to exiting.

Tribes

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:42:40 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

Seth Godin is one of the emerging new thinkers on leadership in the digital age. For those who haven't read his latest book, Tribes. So, I was happy to read an interview with him from Copyblogger.

from the introduction: If not, Tribes is all about leadership in a post-geography world. The Internet allows anyone to become a leader of a tribe big or small, with members from across the planet. And people want you to lead them in all sorts of contexts. quotes from the interview: Well, everyone is a member of a tribe. A community tribe, perhaps, or a spiritual one. The time to go start your own tribe is when you realize the obligation you have to contribute your leadership and when you are passionate enough about a goal that you will make the commitment the tribe demands to get there.
In other words, do it when you care.

If you don’t care, don’t whine, don’t complain. But if there’s change you want to make happen (business change, social change, any change) then this is the way to do it.

Read the full interview here, and find the book on Amazon. This is the path to Seth Godin's blog. I really love this book because it is about my two current themes: Passion and Responsibility. I believe the world and any subset of it, like organizations could be places, if we drive on passion and sustainability. Like the Open Space Cooking we had yesterday (but this will be the topic of another blog post).

It's a Change Management Issue

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:02:14 CDT

by Ivan Overton.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, change management was the Cinderella of the corporate ball. Change practitioners really had their work cut out for them simply just to get through the organisational front door with change management. For many managers who had spent a significant part of their working lives in control-and-command organisational environments, the value proposition of change management was very hard to grasp. Surely, they reasoned, if leadership decided that something had to be done, then employees should just be told what to do, and that was that? This mindset proved to be quite persistent, even as increasing numbers of research studies underscored the critical role of change management in the success of large projects.

Then, as the influence of the new organisational paradigm spread and concepts like ownership, empowerment, involvement, and interdependence came to the fore, effective change management became widely acknowledged as a critical success factor for the implementation of any large-scale organisational change. Change management was included in business school curricula, and organisations started developing their own in-house change management competence.

As change practitioners we now have both of our glass slippers, yet I think many of us will in time find these increasingly uncomfortable: Coming from a historical working environment that varied from poor acceptance to outright hostility and rejection, we now find far greater acceptance in most of our engagements. There will of course always be the disgruntled stakeholder/manager/project team member that wonders (often out loud) as to the real value of all this “airy fairy stuff”, but they have come to occupy a minority position in most organisations. The new bane of our existence is exactly the opposite of the rejection we used to have to deal with, and it holds an even greater challenge for us.

We seem to have become the indispensable darlings of the project world - and I’m grateful for this – but it also seems to have had the undesirable spin-off that just about everything that happens on a typical project always seems to become a CHANGE MANAGEMENT ISSUE. If the project schedule changes due to poor planning, and training has to be postponed the day before it is set to start, this (as well as all of the inevitable fallout), becomes a CHANGE MANAGEMENT ISSUE. If the technical design is flawed, and users express their concerns, it is a CHANGE MANAGEMENT ISSUE. If an organisation tackles a large change project but can spare no business resources to participate in the design, or later on to attend training, you guessed it, it is a CHANGE MANAGEMENT ISSUE.

Of course all projects will have ups and downs, and change management can and should play a significant role to smooth out the bumps. But our primary role should be to help stakeholders deal effectively with the shift from As-Is to To-Be, not to act as spin doctors for poorly conceived or poorly managed projects. I believe that much of what is so frequently and conveniently labelled as CHANGE MANAGEMENT ISSUES on projects has very little to do with change management, unless one is willing to broaden the definition of change management to the point where it becomes a catch-all.

It may sound as if I’m griping, which I suppose I am, a little bit: It is a deeply satisfying experience to be part of a major organisational change where you can play a central role in helping those who will be affected by the change to gradually come to terms with it, and to adopt it in a way that creates value for them as individuals and for the organisation. In doing this work, you will inevitably have to do some crisis management and step into the odd project breach. It is the right thing to do, and that has always been fine by me. However, by the same token, if most of my time on a project is spent doing PR work to patch poor project performance and compensate for bad project hygiene, this is not my idea of a good way to spend my time. To add insult to injury, with “bad” projects, the miserable performance of the entire project then more often than not becomes labelled as – you guessed it again! – a CHANGE MANAGEMENT ISSUE.

But, having gotten that off my chest, the point I want to make is not how tough the lives of us poor change practitioners are (if the work wasn’t so difficult, we wouldn’t be needed, and let’s face it, it wouldn’t be as much fun either!). The important observation in all of this for me is that, by moving from one extreme of not ascribing much value at all to change management through to the other extreme of wanting to make everything a change management issue, we are not addressing the root causes of the problems we encounter during large change initiatives. To my mind, three of the most pressing problems that need to be addressed are:

1. Poor project hygiene is too frequently tolerated. There is absolutely no excuse for poor project hygiene – planning, resourcing, scope management, quality and timeliness of deliverables, etc. must all be top notch. Most initiatives will be challenging even when projects are flawlessly executed. Why risk compromising initiatives by tolerating poor project hygiene? The knock-on effect of a failed initiative is huge – it increases the likelihood that stakeholders will become more resistant to change, it erodes trust and confidence, and it often adds even more work pressure to already stressed employees. This means that the next initiative is less likely to succeed, and if that also fails, the negative consequences are compounded even further, making it progressively more difficult for the organisation to change.

2. People are regarded as an infinite resource. Most reasonable people would not arrange a dinner party and then leave it to the last minute before inviting the intended guests, particularly not without having checked their availability first. Yet projects often seem to be approached that way in large organisations – there may be good resource planning within the project, but despite the recurring and obvious problem of “initiative overload”, scant attention is paid to the resource loading of employees who may be at the receiving end of multiple large concurrent projects.

3. Projects are not properly initiated. I’m referring here to what happens way before the formal project kick-off: What is the quality of the process by which initiatives are prioritised, how much real alignment is there among organisational leaders before a new initiative is embarked on? It strikes me that in most instances, the overwhelming consideration remains ROI in financial terms – leadership reaches agreement on how much money to invest and what return to expect, but the time and focus that will be required from employees and leaders (both during a project and in the period after the project) to make the initiative work is often vastly underestimated.

Addressing the problem of poor project hygiene may seem simple – appoint experienced project resources with a proven track record, and implement effective performance assessment and management measures. However, project hygiene is not only determined by the quality of project resources or the project management process – if undue pressure is placed on project budgets or timelines, or unrealistic scope expectations are allowed to develop, then it becomes almost a given that project hygiene will suffer.

Effective project portfolio management should help with initiative prioritisation, while the introduction of portfolio change management will probably contribute to more realistic resource loading (and change impact loading) of employees, but neither of these will necessarily imbue the crucial mindset among organisational leaders that their organisation’s ability to change is a precious strategic resource that should be carefully nurtured.

It is this mindset, above all that we in our glass slippers should be working towards, for from this the rest will flow. So perhaps, in the light of this, when the usual chorus chimes in during a project meeting to blithely assign the issue of a lack of participation of overworked business resources in a design workshop to the weary change manager, they may be right after all – it is a change management issue. But not quite in the way they meant it.

Change Management. . . “In a recession?! Are you crazy!?"

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 09:53:10 CDT

by Holger Nauheimer.

Well, to be honest, that’s probably what a lot of our clients would be thinking right now. Or would be, if they even had the luxury of thinking about anything other than the wafer-thin order book for the coming quarter, crashing stock prices, liquidity akin to quick-dry cement, or just how many people they need to lay off this month. So what role, if any, does Change Management have to play in a business environment such as we are experiencing now? And when (before lunchtime, hopefully) we’ve answered that question, there’s a broader issue to explore: Just how does the business environment – we’re talking not only economical, but also political, social, technological and ecological – affect the practice of Change Management? This is the theme that will be explored at the 4th Annual Global Gathering of the Change Facilitation Associate Network (CFAN). The gathering will be held this year from April 21st to 23rd 2009 at the TÜB?TAK Turkish Institute for Industrial Management (TÜSSIDE), located in Gebze, 50km south east of Istanbul.

Read more about that international meeting in the attachment and join our movement. You can register at http://www.change-facilitation.org.

Avoid doing "Classical" Change Readiness Assessments

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 05:35:08 CST

by Ivan Overton.

My first exposure to the concept of Change Readiness Assessment (CRA) was in the early nineties, when I was working for a large manufacturing company, at that time as a project team member charged with change management and the HR portion of an ERP implementation. One of the large consulting companies was engaged to provide the necessary expertise.

Their view of CRA boiled down to a broad-spectrum organisational climate assessment, and was one of the first major activities in their change management process.

As a result of this assessment, I encountered my first serious change management ethical challenge: After the results were compiled, and despite his prior commitment to the process, the HR Director called an urgent meeting with the change consultant and myself, and forbade the publishing of any results unless some significant changes were made. In essence he felt that it would be counterproductive to feed any of the less positive results back to employees, as he was not in a position yet to do anything about it. He wanted us to “cook” the results. None of the other senior leadership wanted to make an issue of this, so the best outcome we could negotiate was to provide feedback only at a higher level where the overall results evened out to a more positive picture and did not reflect poorly on the HR function, but it left both the consultant (who remains to this day a very good friend) and I seething with frustration and deeply disillusioned. More importantly, it also took all of the “teeth” out of the feedback, stripping most of the potential value from the exercise.

But, dodgy HR Directors aside, how much value is there really in this “classical” approach to CRA? Many consulting companies still include this as part of their methodologies, but I’ve dropped it from my preferred approach, as I am convinced that there are significant issues with the classical CRA:

It’s too broad for specific project action: Typical dimensions often include just about everything except the kitchen sink: communication, training and development, trust in leadership, morale, work satisfaction, customer service, remuneration, quality of work processes, value of supporting technology, etc. Such assessments are in fact a type of organisational health check, and any serious effort at addressing the findings they produce will inevitably go WAY beyond a typical project scope (some might cynically point out that this is exactly why consulting companies still do this- it generates more potential work!). This means that change practitioners who follow the classical CRA approach are engaging in a fairly large activity as part of a project but that this activity will usually not result in actions or outcomes during the lifespan of the project. (Maybe in this regard the HR Director did have a point, even if his proposed solution was sadly misguided.) “Yes, but…!”, you might now interject – “even if you may not be able to do much about the problems you uncover, at least you know about them and can therefore adapt your change strategy to mitigate some of the associated risks.”. I agree that it is important to know about organisational issues and problems, but I don’t accept that a major CRA survey is necessarily the way to go about obtaining this information, which brings me to my second point…
The information almost always already exists: Most large companies run regular (typically at least annual) climate surveys, and within business units and divisions there may be further assessments and surveys that are frequently done.
There are other, often better ways to get the information you need: A few in-depth discussions with stakeholders who know the organisation well will often yield the same information that would appear in the executive summary of that 134 page CRA report. Unless there are exceptional circumstances, that executive summary would usually be enough for you to ensure that your change approach is appropriate. Do we really need to know that in the Northern Region respondents between 35 and 45 years of age are more satisfied with their training opportunities than respondents between 25 and 35, while in the Southern Region, the converse is true?

Such focus group discussions, if well positioned and facilitated, can also serve as a change intervention in their own right, as people get the opportunity to engage in dialogue with project representatives.

And my BIGGEST issue with classical CRA’s:

“Change Readiness Assessment” is a misnomer. Can we really make useful and valid deductions about how ready people and/or the organisation are for change by assessing perceptions regarding generic organisational climate issues? Of course not. We have to be more specific about the details of what will change.
Regardless of my perceptions regarding my manager, or the quality of the training I receive, or any of the other more generic issues assessed by classical CRA’s, you will only be able to assess my readiness to change to (for example) a new financial system once you have exposed me to more information regarding the change and the impact – why are we doing this, what happens if we don’t change, will I be able to work faster, will the system be easy to use, will my job content change, will my job become redundant, etc.. These are the things that will primarily influence my readiness for change, and compared to them the relative influence of how I feel with regard to the classical CRA-type items will be fairly insignificant.

A final concern with the classical CRA’s is a methodological one that extends to all surveys of this type: Most of these assessments are run as paper-based or web-based questionnaires that are distributed to a sample of the target population or sometimes to the entire target population. The questionnaires are usually completed anonymously, and there is very little control (beyond reminders by e-mail) over who completes the questionnaires and who don’t. Provided that the percentage of completed questionnaires reaches some acceptable level, the survey is deemed to have been a success and the approach is regarded as scientifically acceptable. But this thinking is flawed: Unless the percentage of completed questionnaires approaches 100, how can we be certain that the decision to participate or not to participate in the survey was unrelated to the domains that the survey was intended to assess? Were people that felt extremely dissatisfied with their jobs motivated to participate and share their views, or did they refuse to participate? Did those people who are under a lot of work pressure manage to find the time to complete the survey, or are most of them excluded from the results? Are we getting only the view of those who felt angry enough to participate, or only the view of those who love the company so much that they always participate? Is it somewhere in between, so nicely balanced that we can discount all of these questions? Of course there is no way out of this methodological quagmire – if you sample, you need to ensure that your sample participates, and that all reasons for non-participation are clearly random (for example attendance of a training course or absence due to illness).

So, clearly I am not a fan of the classical CRA approach. What I would recommend is:

First off, avoid mislabelling organisational climate assessments or “health checks” as “Change Readiness Assessments”. You cannot assess change readiness without being specific about the change.
Climate assessments and other similar exercises do have their place, but more often than not these should not be attempted as part of the change management work in support of a change initiative.
You do need to understand organisational dynamics and issues – there is usually a ready source in the HR department for climate survey results, and these should be further supplemented by interviews with carefully selected stakeholders.
While I am clearly opposed to the “classical CRA” approach, I believe that proper CRA’s are essential – these occur only later on in the project timeline after the change impact has been defined. Now you can target specific stakeholders and organisational units and determine readiness (and required actions) with regard to specific changes and the implications of these changes.
CRA’s don’t have to be survey-based. Sometimes this is unavoidable when large numbers of stakeholders are involved, but more interactive, psychologically “warmer” methods such as group discussions are far preferable. There are many simple techniques for combining questionnaire-type assessments with group discussions – while these deliver quantitative results, they also provide instant feedback and then allow dialogue around the feedback, and I’ve found them to be very effective.

Brands and Change

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 01:30:36 CST

by Richard Merrick.

Here's what I'm exercised with:
- at a time when one to one / one to many communication is easy and ubiquitous, brands have a problem. It has been easy in the past to create an attractive story, and create an image, and persuade people that if they buy the product, they become part of it. No longer. A story that doesn't match the brand makes it either faux (the polite term) or fake (my word)
- there has been a huge "stretch" as outsourcing has increased, with increasing exposure of expensive and luxury products made in sweatshop conditions.
- at the same time, many really authentic products get great airtime and exposure, based not on a preconceived or constructed brand, but rather by virtue of what they are. I have always liked Howies, and my current favourite is Saddleback. www.saddlebackleather.com
- From a commercial standpoint, I think the use of websites is changing. By their nature, even where they are trading sites, they are relatively static - they get updated in "chunks" and in the current climate of social media, are more "brochureware" than conversation. Nothing wrong with that as long as we understand. Blogs, and increasingly things like Twitter are the "conversations"

So, to the issue. All individuals and companies have a story to tell. we cannot make one up that we would like it to be - that falls into fake. So, we need to:
1. find a way of identifying and extracting the events, anecdotes, attitudes, hobbies, histories and similar that sit in a person or organisation, and bringing them together in the context of their goals and aspirations.
2. Identify how these can be constructed and translated by a "storyteller" into a form that resonates, is authentic, and most importantly is seen as true and authentic by the person or organisation concerned.
3. Can we find a way of unfolding and updating that story, via social media, in a way that attracts people / customers, and stays true to purpose and faithful to image?

It's not about making people fit a brand "live the brand" whatever - it’s much more honest - it's conveying clearly, and in an attractive way, who we are, what we value and what we are about in a way that attracts the sort of people we want to deal with.

For me , the "story" then drives everything- design, communication (website, media) and strategy.

I think we are getting back to Shakespeare - "and this above all unto thine own self be true, and it shall follow as the day the night - thou can'st not then be false to any man"

now that's a brand..............................and the complete opposite of how we have done it traditionally.

So, how can we define and create the skill set and the process to help people do it?

The Change Mountain

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 06:11:05 CST

by Ivan Overton.

So it seems the blog bug has bitten - I'm back sooner than I thought...

I've noticed (or perhaps I should say it has on occasion been brought rather forcibly to my attention) that change management is often sadly underestimated when organisations embark on major change initiatives. This results in inadequate budgeting for change, stopping too soon with change management, putting unqualified resources into impossible positions, "bad" change experiences for people in the organisation, and a slew of other undesirable outcomes. For us as change practitioners, the outcomes on a personal level could be even worse. Delivering really effective change management on a "good" project often proves quite challenging. On 'bad" projects this can become impossible - you can't really fix fundamental problems through good change management, no matter how talented you may be. For example, attempting to compensate through extra change management effort on a project that is woefully under resourced, where the technical solution is seriously flawed or very unstable, where far too little time has been allowed for stakeholder engagement, or where the training budget is totally inadequate is more likely than not to backfire - the change effort may even become the scapegoat for poor project performance, and even if you can see all of this for what it is, as a change practitioner you may also feel that you have failed somehow.

Of course, there are things one could and should do to counter this (effective early engagement of change practitioners on initiatives, ongoing education regarding change management for business leaders, better definition of what competencies are required from change practitioners, working with - sometimes arguing with! -the project manager to help avoid planning deficiencies, etc.). We must also keep in mind that change management as a discipline has come a long way from the early days when it took a lot of change management just to get leaders to accept the necessity for change management. But we still have a long way to go, and if organisations continue to "fire a cannon from a canoe" where change management is concerned, it does not help our cause.

Why is it so easy to underestimate change management?

In exploring this question a little bit, I would like you to take a metaphorical trip to Change Mountain with me. Let's helicopter in to the middle slopes...

Here we are at the middle slopes. No coincidence, starting here. That's what most people do, and many unfortunately never move far from here, quickly becoming very busy with lots of activities, yet managing to stay conveniently near the campfires. What can be found here on the middle slopes? Well let's look around a bit. Careful, you almost tripped over that PowerPoint presentation. You'll have to watch out, there are very many of them here. Look, there next to that disused project charter is a communication plan, just to the left of it a stakeholder analysis. Can you see the change impact assessment just peeking over that small hill there? Scattered near and far there are e-mail messages, posters, newsletters, brochures and other unidentified bits of mass communication. Life is pleasantly predictable here, and although we have lots and lots of terminology, tools and other "clever" stuff, the work is not really rocket science - we stick to the methodology and deliver what was agreed, everybody cheerfully busy with being busy, although of course now and then there is some tension when a deadline nears. It strikes me that this is how many people see change management, they just see the easy to reach (by helicopter!) middle slopes.

I see you looking up the peaks towering above us. Shall we mount an expedition up one of them? The one to the left there is Doing the Right Thing, the one in the middle Authentic Engagement and the very high one on the right is Change Leadership. Let's go up Doing the Right Thing. (We can explore the other two on another occasion when we have more time. Actually there are quite a few more peaks in this mountain range, but you need to hike a deeper into the mountains to see them. One day maybe we can do this if you like.) Let's go...

Sjoe, that was a tough climb! Doing the Right Thing is not so high, but can be technically very difficult. When we got stuck early on scaling that old poster campaign I thought maybe we wouldn't make it. Climbing up the Business Understanding cliff was also very hard and it took longer than I expected it would. And when we had to slacken the change methodology rope and you looked down and saw nothing but open air below you I could see it took guts to let go - well done, many others would not have been able to do that. Good thing we were roped together though - the higher slopes can be very treacherous if you work alone and without a proven approach. The nice thing is that it is never crowded up here! The air is too thin and it is too cold for most people. What do you think of the view from here? There are some very misty days where you can see even less from here than from below, but on a day like today you can actually see for miles and miles. Look, you can even see the scattered bits of communication on the middle slopes from up here too - very colourful, they almost look like flowers! But the wind is scattering them like litter. We need to clean that up, it's making a mess. It's not just that - look, the folks on the middle slopes have missed out on quite a few stakeholders that are living on the other side of that hill, and that change impact analysis is right in line with the original proposal, but from here you can see it is in the wrong place. If we can get word to the folks working down there, we can make their work much more effective. Let's go down and tell them. Perhaps we can encourage some of them to sometimes make the journey up here and to the other peaks as well.

That was worthwhile, thanks for climbing up with me! But there is another part of Change Mountain that I need to show you. I kept it for last on purpose. It is much less glamorous, the going can be painfully slow, and it can get rather tedious. Most people don't like going there, but you need to see it for my metaphor to be complete. We have to go down to the foot of the mountain, where all the small loose rocks and stubborn large dislodged boulders are - the scree of detail. We are going to trip often, and we are both likely to get rather frustrated, but we must keep our wits about us, for it is here where both excellence and the devil may be encountered. It is also by far the largest piece of Change Mountain, and if we neglect it as change practitioners, we can never hope to do a good job. Let's look around a bit: Here we can find many real conversations with stakeholders, masses of detailed understanding of how change will impact the business and people, a firm grasp of what the change really is about, timeous notifications to stakeholders regarding important meetings, relevant, accurate and concise information (as opposed to some of the meaningless hype sometimes blowing about in the wind on the middle slopes), properly planned workshops where the right people are attending because we went to the trouble of identifying them and making sure they will attend, deliverables completed with care and on deadline, issues surfaced, recorded and addressed. If you look closely, you will see that the many small rocks here are worn smoother over time by small individual acts that often require discipline, attention to detail, many late hours, unacknowledged effort, serious commitment and diligence. Change Practitioners who are willing to work down here as well as on the middle slopes weave a far finer, more valuable and durable change management fabric - from a distance it is not easily distinguished from that shoddy and flimsy stuff woven by those who never venture away from the middle slopes, but from up close, the difference is obvious.

Perhaps we should end the visit to Change Mountain before I am tempted to add even more metaphors or stretch the original one even further! The point I want to make is that two important aspects of change management - the higher-order, strategic level and the very detailed practical level are sometimes rather rashly discounted. While good tactical delivery in terms of a proven approach and with helpful tools and techniques are clearly a very important aspect and a requirement for success, you can't have truly effective change management without at least part of the change team being able and willing to make the difficult ascent to the strategic level where the work becomes exponentially more challenging (and where there may be no pre-existing methodology, tools, or well-trodden path to follow). This has significant resourcing implications - it may be fine to appoint inexperienced or less experienced resources to execute at an operational or tactical level, but they are unlikely to add value at a strategic level. This means the important strategic "peaks" - these include authentic engagement, doing the right thing (adapting the change strategy to be appropriate to organisational circumstances and unfolding events), ensuring effective change leadership, and protecting organisational change ability - will never be achieved, which usually severely compromises the effectiveness of change management. A lack of adequate focus on the detail is equally problematic, yet it is rare to see initiatives where adequate allowance has been made - in terms of money or time - for detail change management work. This often results in the detail being glossed over - an example of this would be change impact assessments that never go into the real detail and therefore are fairly worthless in assisting stakeholders and the organisation in identifying the practical actions required to prepare effectively for change.

The strategic level can be extremely difficult from a technical point of view, and there are often no easy guidelines to follow. This truly tests the mettle of change practitioners. The operational detail also has significant challenges, mostly related to the sheer volume of work. So, at one extreme we need expert resources with rather unique competencies who can operate at a strategic level, and at the other extreme we need the time and resourcing to deal adequately with the detail. But many decision makers are only really aware of the tactical bit in the middle, and often this awareness is even further limited when they equate change management to communication and stakeholder management only. Compounding this even further is the frequently held and totally incorrect assumption that, as change practitioners are people after all, working with other people should be very easy (as opposed to say working with nuclear reactors). So it is probably not really surprising that change management is underestimated, and that we often end up with too few resources trying to do too much in too little time.

To Change or not to Change - is that the question?

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 03:19:59 CST

by andy radka.

Not sure about the answer to this. Organisations constantly changing so do they just need to be flexible full stop without the need to focus on managing this?

Change Facilitators come together

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 16:29:03 CST

by Tanja Vermeer.

Tanja Vermeer, president CFAN

Change management in the corporate trenches

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:46:46 CST

by Ivan Overton.

This is my first tentative entry into the field of blogging - always wanted to, but like scuba diving or horse riding, I just never quite got to doing it. I've read many other blogs, including the writings of my friend Holger Nauheimer (http://www.change-management-blog.com/ - also featured on this site), who sets a benchmark for being able to consistently share content that is interesting, intelligent and in step with what's happening out there. Actually, as I'm writing this I'm wondering what I've let myself in for, whether my chosen topic will be of any interest to fleeting web visitors. Well, perhaps that's not the point - it would be great to reach other people with this blog, to stimulate some discussion and interesting thoughts, but rather selfishly, I guess I'm writing this mostly for myself. A kind of self-therapy.

I'm actually sitting in an office at a client site writing this. I'm tired, it's the end of a long day, and I still have some work to finish which will now have to move to later tonight. Not sure why NOW had to be the time to do this, but here I am.

I want to - need to - write about working as a change manager on large corporate projects - I sometimes call it "change management in the corporate trenches". Sometimes I call it other things, but maybe we'll get to that later. If I can express my thoughts well enough in writing this blog, it will hopefully provide a faithful reflection of one old (it's not the miles on your clock, it's the roads you've travelled) change management consultant's experience of the practice of this art and craft of change management. This means I will probably be writing about the exhiliration of sometimes doing things really well, the frustration of achieving absolutely nothing, the perfect logic of a well conceived and executed change strategy, the hopelessly tangled web that most change strategies rapidly turn into when meeting reality, the absolute insanity of some project environments, the lonely hotel rooms, the fear of having so much (even if it is not tangible) ride on what you do or don't do, the heartache and heartbreak, the hilarity and the fun, and most of all, the people.

So firstly, and by way of "checking in" more formally: I've been in these trenches for the past decade and a half, and like many of my ilk, I've had my share of working at remote sites on mega projects that extend over many months, weekends at home flashing by like cat's eyes on a highway. (Projects seem to accelerate subjective time - I suspect that's where my thirties went and why my forties arrived a bit sooner than seems fair.) I have a Masters' degree in Psychology, which hasn't really been as useful to me as I would have expected. After working as a lone ranger for the first part of my career as change manager, I founded a consulting company that grew slowly but steadily over the past nine years. It is a fairly successful, reputable boutique outfit with between 12 and 15 permanent employees at any one time, and we have no intention to grow it much bigger - we probably could, and it would be more profitable, but we know we would not be the same company then, and we kinda like our company the way it is.

So, I've started this blog. I'm going to hit the highway home now. If you've read this far and you feel like it, why don't you respond, maybe check in with a bit of detail about yourself as well? It'll be nice to know that I have some company during my therapy...

7 1/2 Leadership Habits for a Complex World

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:26:07 CST

by Marc West.

Welcome to the March 2009 Issue of Leadership 2.0

Wow! What a year 2009 has already been, what with world change, the world economics, and amidst this change a drive for greater collaboration and community in our world. I genuinely believe that the changes we are experiencing are in service of a greater good for humankind everywhere, I hope you will hold the same intention with us.

Here at Joyful Leadership we have been very busy with the new website, designing our new leadership program, "Lightside of leadership" which starts in the fall of 2009, and releasing the Leadership 2.0 newsletter. I feel like the last 2 months have already been a year!

We said back in January that this edition would contain a number of articles. Once we started writing this month’s material it just kept on growing with ideas and suggestions, and as a consequence we have decided that in this edition we would focus purely on what we believe are some of the key crucial leadership habits required in a complex world and will revisit the other articles in later editions.

I hope you enjoy this edition and look forward to hearing your feedback and comments in the coming month.

Regards Marc

Editor

Joyful Leadership

7 1/2 Leadership Habits in a Complex World

Habit 1: Staying present with your memories

Do you find yourself fearing what might happen to you, or do you get caught up with past fearful memories, believing in some way that they are going to replay themselves?

A common myth is that memories reside in the past, and yet we don’t actually travel backwards in time with each memory we experience.
If our memories do not reside in the past and we experience them in the moment, why do we experience the feeling of fear of what might happen to us?

Firstly, a memory is a like a photo except that we capture considerably more sensory information than a camera does.

Secondly, our minds attempt to make sense of the unknown. Since our frame of reference is based on past experiences we generalize these two experiences into our current state. The emotional state triggered from our previous memories is added to a state of unknown and we make it our current reality.

To quote two references:

Pat Ogden founder of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute said “Anxiety is excitement without the breath”.

Buddhist tenet: “Insanity and suffering resides only in the past and the future. The current moment can hold only peace that is why it’s called the present".

When we believe memories reside in the past it can be very debilitating. In fact it is a major reason that leaders fail to execute necessary actions.

A way to help you reframe this is to imagine a photo of loved ones. The photo resides in the present moment. While looking at it you may experience sensations of actually being with people in the picture, or even hearing them.
These are examples of stored experiences showing up in the present moment.

The key leadership learning in this habit is being able to identify what are past fears versus present moment experiences. By reframing a memory in this way you will be able to choose how you want to respond to your fears.

Habit 2: Developing gentle irreverence

When the cultural mood of a society or an organization is dark, heavy or oppressive, it can cause those within in it to collude with the gravity of a given situation.

If you think of the metaphor of gravity, movement becomes difficult, change is more difficult and likewise shifting the cultural mood becomes harder. Gentle irreverence acknowledges the facts of the situation without emotionally buying into the gravity.

Gentle irreverence provides lightness and in lightness we find creativity and joy, two key leadership qualities that will help you transform darkness into light.

Habit 3: The perception of your experience is your reality

Have you thought that what you experience is reality?

To many of us the concept of reality is just that; reality. We see it as solid, unchanging and undisputable. Recent evidence from the sciences of neurobiology and psychology as well as the study of somatics show that our perception of reality is filtered through our senses much like tea leaves are filtered in a strainer.

Our senses receive a huge 65000 bits of information per second. Our minds have developed the means to filter this information based upon our beliefs, values, behaviors and language.

This filtering out of our experience creates distortions, generalizations and deletions in our experience, thus our experiences are not our reality.

When fully understood the realization is, reality is an individual experience of which our experiences of reality is actually a perception.

Imagine watching yourself on a movie screen. You see the actor on the screen and notice circumstances that the actor has filtered out.

Now step into the movie as the actor of your life and the experiences appear whole and real to you.

This exercise will enable you to create clearer distinctions between your perceptions and your reality.

Habit 4: Developing the ability to stand still in the midst of chaos

When we are in a chaotic environment every input triggers a response of:
“Do something now!” Running around like crazy; hiding to avoid more chaos and fighting against the tide are all hallmarks of being in chaos.

Rollo May said it best when he said: “Man is the only animal that runs faster when he has lost his way”.

This habit is about: “Slowing down and breathing.” When we slow down and breathe we send a message to our brain... a message of safety.

When we perceive safety the parts of our brain responsible for creativity, intelligence and rationality begin to surface. When we perceive danger or chaos our brain reacts with anxiety, paranoia and aggression. This is commonly referred to as the fight/flight response.

Instead of reacting to chaos this habit is about intentionally responding to chaos. By slowing down and breathing you increase the choices available to you in the moment.

Habit 5: Developing the habit of responding intentionally to others

Have you ever found yourself reacting to another person’s behavior?

In this last sentence the misnomer is that behavior drives behavior. If we hold this way of thinking as being true, everything we do is a reaction to someone else’s previous behavior. For example: Someone frowns at you, you feel something, and you react.

The reality is that our behavior is driven by our values and beliefs whether or not we are conscious of it.

You don’t respond to how a person behaves. You respond to what is important to you and to what you believe about that person’s behavior.

By becoming conscious of what is important to you about another person’s behavior, you will become aware of a greater intentional choice for your response.

Habit 6: What you want is what you will get

How many times have you heard this recently? “I don’t want to be upset with the economic problems we are having”.

The interesting aspect with this statement is that we are creating the very thing we don’t want.

Simply put the human mind can not negate. It deletes the word “don’t” and analogous to a computer system runs the instruction, “I want to feel upset with the economic problems we are having”.

There is another aspect to “What you want, is what you will get”. Think of the phrase “I want to be happy”. With this phrase as it is, we end up with an experience of "Wanting" versus an experiencing of being happy.

The intention of this habit is for you to develop greater awareness of the impact of what you say to yourself and how you can become more powerful in what you are intentionally attracting.

Habit 7: Learning to trust your body

Last time that I checked, being in a body was not optional. However, the degree to which you are aware and tuned into your body is entirely optional.

The human body is a powerful tool with sensing and processing abilities that have been developed over millennia. It processes information, it receives information and it transmits information.

In many domains the body is incapable of lying which is the basis for the polygraph or lie detector test. Our gut instinct is rarely wrong and our intuition can be a valid source of cognition.

If we are willing to learn how to tap into, trust the wisdom of our body and harness this effective and tangible way of knowing, as leaders we have something uniquely accessible to us that many other people are simply unaware of.

Habit 7 1/2 : Developing compassion for yourself and others

Of all the habits this is probably the most fundamental.

Simply put: "How can you develop on a daily basis more compassion for yourself and others?"

Posting your comments

Any comments you would like to make regarding this months issue of leadership 2.0 please email the joyfuleditor.

Please feel free to forward to friends so that they can sign up.

April 2009 Issue

Be sure not to miss your copy of the April 2009 issue of Leadership 2.0 which comes out at the beginning of April and covers "Walking the Knife Edge of Belief" and "The Deep Keel of Effective Leadership".

As well as the latest news from Joyful Leadership and a column of your comments.

Additionally during March we will be announcing a series of free teleconferences on leadership, and posting videos on Leadership 2.0 TV, so please keep a look out on the website for these exciting new free leadership offerings.

Brought to you by www.joyfulleadership.com

Change and Transformation - Dr. George Ayee

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 09:24:59 CST

by George Ayee.

There is no better time to embrace change and transformation in our current state of economic meltdown, job losses, closure of great institutions and recession. It all happened so fast that it took the best of economists by surprise. What does this tell us? Change and transformation should be expected, anticipated and ready for all the time because you do not know when it will come knocking at your door. The old paradigms seem not to be working anymore meaning that we are in a continuous state of change and transformation. Those who will survive and thrive are those ready to welcome these changes and renew the mind for transformation. It is time we put aside the old paradigms and get ready for the changes ahead. In an economic down turn, only those in a continuous state of change will see opportunities in the midst of chaos. That is the relm of innovation and breaking out of the mold. Remember that what is stopping you is the mold. Break free from the mold and discover the opportunities within the current environment.

you get what you look for

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 04:49:24 CST

by Becci Wilhite.

People deal too much with the negative, with what is wrong. Why
not try and see positive things, to just touch those things and make them
bloom?

Thich Nhat Hanh
(Vietnamese Buddhist Monk, Teacher)

Entrepreneur Advice Wanted

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 04:46:21 CST

by Teresa guest.

I'm starting a new business in NW BC and would welcome any discussion on the pitfalls, tips, ideas and encouragement needed for a start-up. It's a scary thing to be doing in my 50's but I have confidence it will work. Only serious bloggers invited please.

Why be part of the change management fraternity?

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:01:53 CST

by Ignatius Raphael.

Change Management
A couple of decades back, this term did not even exist, at least not in my vocabulary. But in that period, I had to change. I had to deal with the rapid changes around me. And I watched countless others change too. But we didn't use the term - managing change. We just reacted and did what needed to be done.
There were not many people who even wanted to talk about why we do, what we do. Today the tribe of truth seekers are growing exponentially. Blogging is a great way to connect with other seekers and I look forward to a fun, meaningful interaction with all those out there in this world who want to make this a better place for everyone.
God bless you, your thoughts and your actions.

congratulation

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:44:01 CST

by Ibrahim Ahmed.

Dear All

congratulation for the amazing powerfull new look of the toolbook,it is realy great.

BrandCoach Blog

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:25:25 CST

by Walter Dermul.

See my blog for more information about me, my activities and my approach to brand strategy related change management.
The blog is written in Dutch, but there is a 'google translate' button (for what it's worth, of course )

Ubuhibi Media - www.ubuhibi.com

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:58:47 CST

by Steve Banhegyi.

Late last year we decided to take all of our change and KM related publications and place them into a single brand - Ubuhibi Media. Ubuhibi Media specialises in licensing this media to corporates for their KM and change training and development programmes for just a few Dollars per year per user. On www.ubuhibi.com we have titles on Change Management, on the Isivivane Ritual, on thinking skills and permaculture as a useful metaphor to teach planning, sustainability and design.

Diagoal published an Interview with Me on Change Management

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 06:46:39 CST

by Holger Nauheimer.

Dialgoal, a great new blog on using dialogue for change has published an interview with me on Change Management, Change Facilitation, Realpolitik, and life in general. A few quotes (of myself):

The complexity of many change processes calls for an approach that respects the emergent character of change. Coming back to your original question, a lot of what we do is actually creating room for dialogue in an attempt to – as Patricia Shaw has coined it – “changing conversations in organizations”. We do that by asking questions and by creating space for people to express their passion and consequently take responsibility for what they care for.
... As a system thinker I believe that all political and social change happens – as Bernard Mohr has coined it – “at the speed of imagination”, i.e. if we can anticipate change it is already there. I hope that the work of Otto Scharmer and his Presencing Institute will give us new tools that will help us to see the future as it emerges. ... Enjoy the change, ride the waves, protect your loved ones but don’t be overprotective, do good to yourself and to the world. Enjoy traditions that survive because they make sense to people. Appreciate that some people are conservative – they take care of good things not being lost. Appreciate that other people are progressive; they bring new ideas to the world. Trust that the person working next to you (whether it is your boss or your report) wants to do a good work as much you want. Use your natural facilitation skills; help your teams to be more productive. Believe in solutions for urgent problems can only be co-created. Learn, not because somebody talks about the need for live long learning but because you enjoy to stretch your mind. Tomorrow will be different, for sure. Assume that 95% of people are good, and the other 5% cannot rule the world if you don’t let them. Be an agent of change.

Read the full interview here.

Looking at my own journey - another twist of my life?

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 01:10:32 CST

by Holger Nauheimer.

The last days and weeks have been really exciting. The year started with the workshop on Be the Change in Helsinki (totally technology unrelated, check our presentation). Last Sunday, I delivered my keynote on Web 2.0 and Change, and - finally - I am twittering like hell. The idea of combining my Change Facilitation skills with my newly acquired knowledge about social media on the Web slowly comes together.

It was good to see on the last workshop that people started to make use of the tools that enable us to stay in touch, record our observations in real time and provide the opportunity to check back later. I am going to build on that in my next workshop, coming up in February, where we will combine exchange of experiences in supporting democracy in Asia with an introduction to large scale facilitation methods, mainly Open Space Technology and World Café with a self organized documentation using blogs, podcasts, videopodcasts, Twitter (of course!), arts, and maybe other media. Because usually there isn't much time for harvesting results in such workshops, we will have dedicated time slots of two hours each afternoon where editorial team will digest and organize the information.

I have been an advocate for self-organization and for observing emergent patterns in organizations for ten years, and the latest great discovery for me was actually Open Space Technology. At that time, we talked a lot about Open Space organizations, somehow captured and catalyzed by Dee Hock's book Birth of the Chaordic Age. This was also the time when I first read Kevin Kelly's book New Rules for The New Economy (1998). 1998? Jesus, time is really running, and Kevin's theses are as fresh and valid as they were 11 years ago. In the last two years, growing slowly into the Web community, I have met so many people who really believe that a better world is possible and who life from a position of abundance.

For those of you who think that my occupation with Web 2.0 is all of my professional life, let me tell you that this is just a tiny but growing bit. I earn my living as a facilitator and trainer in change processes. But I feel it is time to move forward: I felt this urge when I met Nancy White from Seattle, who switches between the virtual and real world with such a grace. So, what is the future: more of both. Doing Open Space Facilitation and such stuff and integrating web communities in real whole systems change processes.

I made the start with publishing a new website in German called Virtueller Wandel (that's Virtual Change). At the end, all of this goes back to the old dream of one of my teachers, Robert Dilts of Creating a World to Which People Want to Belong. In my small circle of influence I an happy if I can contribute to creating organizations to which people want to belong. There are about two books to be written this year. One about a new change model that my friend Vesa Purokuru has developed and which we want to fill with life. One about Web 2.0 and Change. Heaven, where shall I take the time for that? I have a company to run and a wife to attend! However, this all sounds like exciting time. Thanks all of you who have been and will be part of my journey.

On Web 2.0 and Change

Fri, 06 Feb 2009 01:02:20 CST

by Holger Nauheimer.

On Sunday, I was the keynote speaker on the topic “The World- a SingleComputer – Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Web 4.0 and Change”. The audience were 170 German speaking change facilitators who meet annually to exchange and network. The tradition of the meeting calls for an input on the first day, and for an Open Space workshop on the second. So far, guest speakers presented new facilitation methods such as Max Schupbach who demonstrated his Worldwork concept in 2008. Matthias zur Bonsen had the courage to invite me for a talk about a topic which was alien to many of the participants: how technology can support change processes.

I basically gave an revised and translated version of my Atlanta speech from 2008, and I encouraged people to twitter and blog during the meeting. In the weeks of preparation (yes, I prepared weeks for a two hours presentation), I had no clue about the level of knowledge and skills of the crowd. I live in two worlds – the world of facilitators who work with flesh and bones, real people in real time, and the world of Web 2.0 geeks who are part of the political and social revolution that is going on the Web. I tend to forget that the “real world facilitators” know little about Web 2.0, while many of the social dreamers in the Web know Open Space Technology (because they use it all the time and call it Bar Camp, or Social Camp). I thought it would be nice to polarize a bit to stir up some dust. So, I took the liberty to recite Stowe Boyd who said that social collaboration on the Web is the last hope for the world. I went so far to say that Web 2.0 is the continuation and the extension of Large Group Facilitation. I said that the Web is thoroughly democratic and will help to make better world.

Besides, I said that some Web 2.0 technologies are handy for marketing and they can also be used for documentation of large workshops.

Soon after I started, there were two phenomena to observe:
1. About 20 of the participants started to twitter right away with their laptops and iPhones, and continued so throughout the workshop. If you understand German, read the tweeds from the start onwards - it gives a good overview on the flow of the conference.
2. A controversial discussion started about the good or evil character of modern technology. Hey, I enjoyed that (I like heated debates) but I was surprised that some people were more interested in that debate which you can have over a beer than going more deeper into exploring what is.

For those from outside Germany I need to explain something: Although we have the best engineers of the world and probably the most patent holders (and the best cars anyhow…), the generation which was born between 1950 and 1960, i.e. those who are now between 50 and 60 are critical or should I say cautious towards technology in general and to IT in particular. I am not (well, I don’t like nuclear power plants, and I think cars should be fuel efficient), so I always want to understand why people resist to technology. In this case, it was particularly interesting to understand why people who call themselves change facilitators seem to resist to innovation (as one other participant communicated via Twitter "I felt like being in a congress of conservatives.") In the given case, these were the main lines of argument:
- web technology is rather used for control and manipulation than for grass-roots democracy,
- our kids are deprived and not able to create social relationships because of mobile communication technologies,
- computers and cell phones are causing electro smog and consequently cancer,
- in a meeting, use of technological devices distracts and destroys relationships.

And there were the two worlds: the early adaptors who created their description of the meeting in real time (I was excited about the tweeds going back and forth), and those who preferred to talk about the risks of technology. It was good to have this discussion and the feedback to my input was overwhelming. Fair enough. Looking at the Max-Neef model of human needs, I would interpret the needs showed as needs for protection, understanding and leisure. This for a first start of the dicussion. Here is my presentation:

Die Welt Ein Computer

View more presentations or upload your own. (tags: ggforum2009)

Meine Twitterpolicy und ein bisschen Hintergrund

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:09:12 CST

by Holger Nauheimer.

Da es jetzt schon einige Gedanken, Bedenken und Fragen zu Twitter gegeben hat, hier meine eigene "Twitterpolicy" und ein paar Hintergründe:

1. Twitter gehört zu den am schnellsten wachsenden Internetapplikationen. Momentan verdienen die noch kein Geld, aber es wird in der Szene gemunkelt, dass einer der Großen (Google, Yahoo) ein Auge darauf geworfen hat. Die Rede is von USD 250 Millionen; ich glaube, die Summe wird am Ende höher sein. Es gibt allerdings auch schon Parallelprodukte, z.B. geschlossene Applikationen für Firmen (müsste jetzt den Namen raussuchen, später vielleicht)

2. Twitter ist eine Basistechnologie und die Firma hat anscheinend wenig in die Weiterentwicklung gesteckt. Da es aber eine Open Source Applikation ist, gibt es Hunderte von Programmen, die die Leistungsfähigkeit verbessern; dazu zählt z.B. auch die Möglichkeit besser zu filtern, mit wem man in Kontakt steht. Hier die neueste Beliebtheitsliste von Twitterzusatzprogrammen.

3. Wie überall im Netz gilt tatsächlich das Tatoo-Prinzip; man muss sich ein bisschen Hygiene angewöhnen, oder einfach furchtlos sein; es kommt darauf an, wie man es nutzen will.

4. Da ich Twitter sowohl als Netzwerk-, als auch als Marketingtool verstehe, habe ich für mich die folgene Politik entwickelt:

Following_Me: Ich folge den Personen, mit denen ich persönlich im Kontakt sein möchte (so wie die Leute vom ggforum2009). Bei Fremden entscheide ich so: Geben Sie Beiträge, die mich interessieren könnten, und wie ist ihre Twitterfrequenz (bei solchen , die 20+ mal am Tag twittern, wird es mir zu viel - dadurch verliere ich zwar einige Meinungsführer, aber macht auch nichts; wichtige Sachen werden ja ge-"retwittert"). Eine weitere Interessante Kenngröße ist das Verhältnis von "Following_Me" zu "Followers_Me". Ein Beispiel: Leo Babauta (@zen_habits) hat ein Verhältnis von ca. 1:130 (66 Following_Me zu 8400+ Followers_Me). Der Mann hat offensichtlich was zu sagen...

Followers_Me: Ich schaue mir jeden an, der mich auswählt. Wenndas Ziel des jenigen ist, nur möglichst viele Kontake zu haben (also umgekehrtes Verhältnis), blockiere ich; die anderen lasse ich zu, aus Marketinggründen. Ich habe auch damit experementiert, meine gesamten Updates zu blockieren, dann können nur die mich sehen, die eine explizite Erlaubnis habe; dies würde aber dem Marketinggedanken widersprechen. Twitter hat ein paar Grundmechanismen in Place, die zu starkes Spammen verhindern; ein Konto wird dann geblockt. Das sieht dann so aus: http://twitter.com/suspended. Jeder muss das letztendlich selbst eintscheiden. Ich bin nach einigem Nachdenken zu der Erkenntnis gekommen, dass der eine oder andere "unnütze" Twitterkontakt (auf der Followers_Me Seite) mir eigentlich nicht schaden kann; er/sie bleibt von mir unbeachtet, und wenn er meine Tweeds finden will, kann er das, auch wenn ich ihn geblockt habe.

Web 2.0

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 02:19:29 CST

by Holger Nauheimer.

Es gibt natürlich viel im Internet zu Thema Web 2.0 Ein grundlegender Artikel von Tim O'Reilly aus dem Jahr 2005, der den Begriff erfunden hat:

Natürlich ist die Entwicklung seit dem nicht stehengeblieben. Wer wirklich angefixt ist, dem empfehle ich die Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Ich war dort vor 2 Jahren und ich kann nur sagen, die Begegnung mit so vielen Menschen, die sich mit dem Thema "Communities on the Web" beschäftigen, hat mir einen neue Welt eröffnet. Manchmal kommt die Expo auch nach Berlin (zuletzt im Oktober 2008), aber leider ist noch kein neuer Termin veröffentlicht.

emsig am Notebook

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:48:23 CST

by Peter Schmid.

links und rechts neben mir wird in die Tasten gehauen, dass es nur so "tätscht"

jetzt kommt das Bild des Tastenhauens

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:48:02 CST

by Peter Schmid.

jetzt kommt das Bild des Tastenhauens

Peter am Bloggen!

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:47:41 CST

by Ralph Hoefliger.

Peter am Bloggen

Barcamp

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:47:19 CST

by Hans Gärtner.

Frage: Welche Rolle spielt eigentlich die Barcamp Bewegung in diesem Zusammenhang?

Barcamp

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:46:50 CST

by Holger Nauheimer.

Die Barcampbewegung ist eine Parallelbewegung zur Großgruppenszene, die sich im Lager der Web 2.0 Enthusiasten gebildet hat. Auf Web 2.0 Konferenzen, aber auch auf anderen Events, gibt es oft eine Open Space ähnliche Struktur, bei der Leute Ihre Anliegen auf einem Marktplatz posten können, dann geht es wie bei OS weiter (in vereinfachter Form). Auch zu anderen Themen gibt es oft "Camps". Ich stehe z.B. in Verbindung mit der von der TAZ ins Leben gerufenen Social Bar, die sich zum Ziel gesetzt hat "Weltverbesserer-Gruppen" im Einsatz von Webtechnologien zu unterstützen.

Wikipedia schreibt hierzu:

Ein BarCamp, ist eine offene, partizipative Unkonferenz, deren Ablauf und Inhalte von den Teilnehmern bestimmt wird.

Seit dem ersten BarCamp in Palo Alto (Kalifornien) im August 2005 in den Räumlichkeiten der Firma Socialtext werden in Nordamerika, Asien und Europa BarCamps abgehalten. So fanden bereits Ende September 2006 in Berlin und Wien die ersten BarCamps im deutschsprachigen Raum statt.

Entwicklung [Bearbeiten]

Der Name ist eine Anspielung auf eine von Tim O’Reilly initiierte Veranstaltungsreihe namens FooCamp, bei der ausgewählte Personen (Friends of O´Reilly) sich zum Austausch und zur Übernachtung (Camping) trafen. Während man zur Teilnahme am FooCamp eine Einladung von O'Reilly benötigt, kann an BarCamps ohne Einladung teilgenommen werden. Foo und Bar sind beides metasyntaktische Variablen.

Normalerweise werden auf BarCamps Web-2.0-Themen wie Webanwendungen in frühem Stadium, Open-Source-Technologien und Soziale Software diskutiert. Mittlerweile werden jedoch auch BarCamps zu allen Facetten bestimmter Themen ausgerichtet, wie EduCamps, die sich mit mediengestützen Lernen befassen^[1], oder WordCamps, die sich thematisch mit der Weblog-Software WordPress beschäftigen^[2]. Auch zum Thema Tourismus gibt es bereits Barcamps in Deutschland^[3] und Österreich^[4].

Der Ablauf von BarCamps hat Ähnlichkeiten mit der Open-Space-Methode, ist jedoch lockerer organisiert. Er besteht aus Vorträgen und Diskussionsrunden (Sessions), die jeden Morgen auf Whiteboards, Metaplänen oder Pinnwänden - sogenannten Grids (engl.: Gitter) - durch die Teilnehmer selbst koordiniert werden. Doch gibt es auch Regeln: Alle Teilnehmer sind aufgefordert, selbst einen Vortrag zu halten oder zu organisieren.

BarCamps werden hauptsächlich in Wikis organisiert und über Kanäle wie Blogs, Social Bookmarks und IRC beworben und dokumentiert. Jeder kann selbst ein BarCamp organisieren und dafür auch das Wiki auf Barcamp.org benutzen. Die Teilnahme ist kostenlos und nur aus Platzgründen limitiert, eine vorherige Anmeldung daher notwendig. Auf vielen BarCamps im Ausland ist es möglich, am Veranstaltungsort im eigenen Schlafsack die Nacht zu verbringen. Die Kosten der Veranstaltung und für Verpflegung werden von Sponsoren getragen.

Example for a Tag Cloud

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 06:34:21 CST

by Holger Nauheimer.

This is an example of a Tag Cloud (here: for my own blog)

Jevon MacDonald changemanagement 0comments web2.0 ggforum2009 1 comments 0comments creativity email Email problems! customercare Webinarreihe: Soziale Webtechnologien sinnvoll im Business nutzen Kundenorientierung logo Global Making Change Work Study technology 6:52 PM changemanagement ulrike@change-facilitation.org 0comments change Kick-Starting Creative Processes: The Spark Plugs Method 9:23 AM 9:34 AM changemanagement research 0comments 10:13 AM 9:08 AM Is it time for Social Media to grow up? Pirittas website Bilinguality 7:41 AM 12:48 PM as I described a few days ago Change Management Toolbook IBM Study on Change Management Grape People my post from yesterday the Newsweek interview of Clifford Stoll from 1995 innovation socialmedia 0comments Just a test! 0comments

Webinarreihe: Soziale Webtechnologien sinnvoll im Business nutzen

Fri, 23 Jan 2009 02:28:07 CST

by Holger Nauheimer.

Sie sind herzlich eingeladen, an einer vierteiligen Webinarreihe zum Thema Web 2.0 im Business teilzunehmen. Die Teilnahme ist am ersten Webinar ist kostenfrei; Sie gehen keine Verpflichtungen ein.

Zielgruppe: Entscheider in Unternehmen und Non-Profit Organisationen, die neue Medien in Ihrer Kommunikation einsetzen wollen. Berater, Trainer und andere Anbieter von Dienstleistungen, die durch einen hohen Kommunikationsbedarf gelennzeichnet sind. Begleiter von und Akteure in Veränderungsprozessen.

Dies sind die Themen:

Webinar 1 (27.2.2009, 17 Uhr MEZ): Wie soziale Medien die Geschäftwelt verändern.

Die neuen sozialen Medien haben in den letzten Jahren eine zweite Internetrevolution ausgelöst. Produktion, Kundenservice, Design, Forschung & Entwicklung und viele andere zentrale Unternehmensfunktionen werden zunehmend ins Internet verlagert. Gleichzeitig wachsen die Möglichkeiten von Bürgerbeteiligung in politischen Prozessen. Im ersten Webinar unserer Reihe werden eine Vielzahl von Beispielen aufgezeigt werden, wie soziale Medien in der Organisationsentwicklung und in der Kommunikation mit Stakeholdern eingesetzt werden.

Webinar 2 (6.3.2009, 17 Uhr MEZ): Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, Slideshows etc. - Wie Sie mit Ihren Kunden in Dialog treten können

So, wie es vor 10 Jahren hieß, keine Organisation kann es sich leisten, keine Webseite zu haben, gilt heute: Keine Organisation kann es sich leisten, nicht in Interaktion mit ihren Stakeholdern zu treten. Viele Unternehmen nutzen bereits solche Tools. In diesem Webinar werden Sie lernen, welche Tools die richtigen für Sie sind und wie Sie den Einstieg schaffen. Wenn Sie bereits solche Tools nutzen, werden Sie praktische Tipps für die Optimierung Ihrer Strategie erhalten.

Webinar 3 (13.3.2009, 17 Uhr MEZ): Twitter - eine neue Technologie revolutioniert das Web

Twitter ist eine der letzten großen Neuentwicklungen des Webs. Der Microbloggingdienst erlaubt es, Netzwerke aufzubauen, direkt und schnell zu Themen zu diskutieren und kurze Informationen weiterzuleiten. Twitter wird bereits von vielen Organisationen eingesetzt. In diesem Webinar lernen Sie, wie Sie Twitter für sich nutzbar machen können.

Webinar 4 (20.3.2009, 17 Uhr MEZ): Netzwerken und Nettiquette

Im letzten Webinar der Reihe lernen Sie, wie sich durch verantwortungsvolles und passioniertes Handeln neue Partnerschaften ergeben. Die Möglichkeiten, sich mit Kunden, Gleichgesinnten Meinungsführern zu verbinden und selbst Meinungsführer in einem bestimmten Thema zu werden, sind vielfältig. Was sind die grundlegenden Regeln und Mechanismen hierfür?

Bei Bedarf wird die Reihe fortgesetzt. In jedem der Webinars werden natürlich Ihre offenen Fragen beantwortet. Die Veranstaltungsreihe ist praxisorientiert. Sie erhalten konkrete Tipps und Tricks, wie Sie neue Technologien einsetzen können. Alle Webinars werden ausführlich dokumentiert, so dass Sie alle Informationen später in Ruhe nachverfolgen können.

Webinarleiter ist Holger Nauheimer. Der Autor des Change Management Toolbook ist weltweit durch seine publizistische Arbeit und sein Wirken in Organisationen bekannt. Seit zwei Jahren beschäftigt sich Holger Nauheimer mit der Nutzung neuer Technologien zur Begleitung von Veränderungsprozessen in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft.

Wenn Sie am Webinar Nr. 1 teilnehmen wollen, schicken Sie eine kurze Email an ulrike@change-facilitation.org. Als technologische Plattform werden wir Dimdim einsetzen. Das bedeutet für Sie: keine Downloads, Sie benötigen nur ein Headset oder Lautsprecher.

Wie gesagt, die Teilnahme an dem ersten Webinar ist frei; die Teilnahme ist begrenzt. Wenn Sie dann an der weiteren Reihe teilnehmen wollen, kostet Sie dies € 168 plus USt für die gesamten restlichen drei Seminare.

Wir freuen uns auf Ihre Teilnahme und bitten Sie, diese Nachricht an interessierte Kollegen weiterzuleiten.

Blog des Lernforums Großgruppen 2009 in Oberursel

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:15:44 CST

by Hans Gärtner.

Für alle, die über keinen eigenen Blog verfügen: Hier haben Sie die Möglichkeit, über Ihre zu posten, YouTube Videos, Slideshows oder Flickr Fotos einzubinden. Probieren Sie es doch einfach. Da wir alle das gleiche Konto benutzen: Bitte den eigenen Namen dazusetzen, und bitte immer mit dem Tag ggforum2009 verschlagworten (im Bearbeitungsmenü unten).

Ich wünsche uns allen eine tolle Konferenz!

Holger Nauheimer

Company 2.0

Tue, 09 Dec 2008 08:57:52 CST

by Holger Nauheimer.

Peter Kim has published an impressive list of 324 companies which use social media for external communication (Benedikt Koehler has published a similar one for German companies, and Jeremyah Owyang has listed companies that were targetted and hit by social media because of an assumed or proven misbehavior). I am sure this list is far from complete but give a good indication of how the corporate world is adapting new technologies.

Some examples of successful application of Web 2.0 tools:

IBM

Blogging: 125 corporate blogs.
Forums: developerWorks.
Microblogging: Smart SOA SocialNetwork ((S3N)) Team on Twitter.
Online video: Rational Heroes machinima videos and Meet Mr. Fong on YouTube.
Podcasting: developerWorks and Social Networking Now.
Social networks: Rational Heroes community space.
Strategy: internal social computing guidelines
Virtual Worlds: IBM Business Center and Rational Software Conference/Hipihi in Second Life.
Wikis: developerWorks.

Not to mention the internal OD work that IBM does with the help of interactive, virtual tools such as its value jams.

Starbucks

Crowdsourcing: My Starbucks Idea, over 50,000 ideas submitted.
Microblogging: Twitter account.

As I have mentioned several times in this blog, the age of virtual change facilitation has just started a few years ago, and most companies still have not seen the value of Web 2.0 for their own enterprise - like it took many companies a couple of years until they understood that they must have a website. Do you know any mid-size or large company that does not have a website nowadays? Likewise, most companies will use some social networking tools in the future.

However, here the choice will me more difficult, as there are plenty of such tools for creating community. Forums, blogs, podcasts and wikis were the first technolgies applied by companies. Meanwhile, mashups (e.g. including Google Maps), micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter), virtual worlds e.g. Second Life) are just some of the applications available.

While these tools have the potential to initiate and support change processes, their introduction becomes a change process by itself. You cannot force people to contribute to a social network on the Web - it only works if they see a compelling reason to do so and have some intrinsic motivation. Reason for employees of a company to blog, podcast, twitter etc. can be indeed manyfold, e.g.

- the desire to learn in communities of practice,
- the potential to engage with customers which in turn might increase a team's performance,
- the possibility to increase one's own knowledge on new media,
- the opportunity to increase one's own reputation and market value,
- the possibility to connect and socialize with co-workers, etc.

The IBM example (324+ blogs) shows that if a company is willing to provide a free space to express, people will do it naturally. ("As they'll tell you themselves, the opinions and interests expressed on IBMers' blogs are their own and don't necessarily represent this company's positions, strategies or views. But that doesn't mean we don't want you to read them! Because they do represent lots of business and technology expertise you can't get from anyone else."). What I like in particular is that the format of the blogs can be chosen individually by the bloggers.

Summarized, in terms of change management, Web 2.0 / social media for companies provide mechanisms for change management; their introduction requires a change management process in turn. Becoming a 21st century corporation might indeed require a cultural shift, and maybe a couple of older board members have had their cultural paradigm changes already...

5 ways that you can create a bloated, obsolete dinosaur of a company

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 03:21:27 CST

by Holger Nauheimer.

Maria Gajewski from NeverTheSameRiverTwice has written a good post about who you can do to run down a company by introducing an anti change management programme. She takes reference to the Big 3 automakers in the US. Her suggestion are:

1) Build Protectionist Walls Around Your Business.
2) Take Advantage of Customer Loyalty by Building Lousy Products.
3) Assume the Future Will Be Just Like the Past.
4) Wait Until a Crisis Hits to Try to Change.
5) Blame Others, Beg for Money, and Reject Sound Advice.

Cool.

How Municipalities Should Integrate Social Media Into Disaster Planning

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:47:01 CST

by Holger Nauheimer.

Jeremiah, a blogger from San Francisco, has written an interesting reflection on the role of social media during Mumbai bombings and other tragedies, and what municipal / regional / national / global planners can learn from it:

Social tools allow both true and false information to be rapidly communicated from sources in real time from anyone using a mobile device. During disasters this both enables and detracts emergency response... Local governments, authorities, and response teams should understand how these social tools work, learn how to integrate into disaster response, and evaluate how they will use them during an emergency.

For all who are in pre and post-disaster work, I really recommed this excellent article with a 5-steps strategy and some interesting comments which add to the article. Like I said before, social change is much slower than technological change, so I assume the issue is less the technology than the implementation in agencies and authorities which are notorious for being conservative and change resistant.

Gabriela Ender Receives the High Award of Ashoka Foundation

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:35:59 CST

by Holger Nauheimer.

This is a moment to celebrate and to honour my good friend and colleague Gabriela Ender.

In this blog, I have talked about the important work of the Ashoka Foundation and I have mentioned OpenSpace Online®, a tool to create high-value dialogue in diverse groups. Now, both have come together: Gabriela Ender has been awarded the highly prestigious fellowship of the Ashoka Foundation on November 19, 2008 during a ceremony in Munich, Germany.

One year ago, I wrote about the book How to Change the World of David Bornstein, who describes the work of the Ashoka Foundation which supports social entrepreneuship around the world. Created by Bill Drayton in the eighties, it has become the leading organization for supporting social activists who create new concepts to help marginalized groups in all parts of the world. People who are able to find innovative solutions for the pressing problems of our times.

OpenSpace Online®, developed about 8 years ago has proven to be a very effective tool for initiating and sustaining change. In their justification of the award, they write:

With the help of a virtual companion, up tp 125 people can work together in real-time, they can co-create results and go into implementation
right away... Gabriela Ender enables organizations around the globe-which would not have thebudget otherwise-to work contructively... on topics like climatic change, urban planning, health care, etc.
Once again: cheers to Gabriela!

Technology and Social Change

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:35:37 CST

by Holger Nauheimer.

One lesson I have learned over the last years is that technological change is much faster than social change. It has not been always like that, or has it? For the past 25,000 years or so, technological progress has been pretty slow and predictable. I found an interesting paper that was recently published by the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia: Social and Technological Change in Western History, accompanied by an well illustrated Power Point presentation. In his paper, Alex Wright gives a good account of the history of technologies for the collection and dissemination of information/knowledge and its implications on social history (I must read his book GLUT: Mastering Information Through the Ages).

Most technologies that revolutionized the way information was managed before and intiated social change are well known to us. Language, different forms of writing, eventually the different alphabets, handwritten books, the Gutenberg printing press, the steam engine enabling the industrialization of printing, telecommunication, and even the rise of personal computers all took their time and were slowly absorbed by mankind. In most cases, there was enough time for people to understand, digest and utilize the new technologies. Only 15 years after email became available and user friendly to more than a few computer geeks, somewhere between 1 and 2 billion people worldwide have an email account (the latest figure I could find was from 2005, when there were 668 million email users. Compare that to the growth of telephone users, which took about 100 years to reach the same dissemination, and only got a boost through the introduction of mobile phone technology.

Meanwhile the technological development moves on, hardly recognized by a large part of the population. Since about 5 years, knowledge and information is widely shared among people who in many cases don't know each other. We haven't really had time to digest that and understand what this means to social change. Well, the younger generation does. While 69% of US adults use email as their main form for sharing information, a growing part of young people marched on. They do not use email any more but one of their preferred social network services such as facebook, myspace, twitter, etc. "Power Sharers are a new category defined as individuals that share content at least weekly and share with 11 or more people through at least one channel. Adult Power Sharers represented 35% of the online population, and Youth Power sharers make up 62% of the online population." (taken from itfacts.biz).

Unlike many other authors I don't believe that the age of social networking was a short one and is basically over. We are still in the experimental phase of it. Change agents in organizations (and their consultants) have only started to scratch the surface of what can be and will be the future of collaboration of large networks. Just to remind you: companies are actually transforming into networks, dismantling their boundaries. It all has just begun. How can we believe that we can solve the problems of the 21st century with approaches from the 20th century?

The latest hot technology that I have just discovered is provided by a company called Cepstral, which is in text-to-speech conversion. Enter any sample text in English, Italian, German or Spanish and select whether you would like to hear it read from David, Linda, Vittoria, Matthias, Miguel or one of the other artificial voices. Instantly, and in a pretty good quality. Amazing

Photo: loop_oh on Flickr (CC licensed)

Change Management in Times of Crisis

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 09:35:15 CST

by Holger Nauheimer.

In October, I had started to reflect on what needs to be done in times of crisis from a change management perspective (Don't Hit the Iceberg). Recently, I did some research in the blogosphere on what other authorities recommed as a rational behaviour for corporations.

John Rosen reflects from a marketing perspective what needs to be done:

Step One: Be absolutely clear about your strategic objectives. Slowdowns are exactly the time when the entire organization should have no question about the overriding strategic objectives. Tradeoffs will have to be made – between, for example, pursuing share growth or maintaining profit margins. Management must be both clear and fully in alignment on the strategic imperatives in four areas:

- Financial Measures
- Maintaining Relationships
- Maintaining Product, Service Viability
- Competitive Attack

Step Two: Be sure you understand your brand, its ability to carry a price premium, and the competitive situation it faces.

Step 3: Re-evaluate and adjust your marketing.
John is providing quite a comprehensive and valuable list of Do's and Don'ts (for example, Do identify new customer segments, or Do invest in brand building). However, this list is fine I feel that his suggestions are the sort of actions that fall into what has been discribed by Peter Senge and others as a more-of-the-same-pattern.

See, I don't underestimate the value of strategic repositioning of the brand. From the perspective of a marketeer, the Servant of Chaos Blog, citing Craig Wilson, suggests that

we may well be at a turning point for both the types of marketing that we do and the agencies that we use to plan, create and execute. In this great, and far reaching post, Craig outlines the state of affairs, the issues at play and makes some suggestions for where we might be heading. Social media may well be rising at
the perfect time. As consumers grow increasingly weary of broadcast advertising, and have more control than ever over the media and content they wish to consume, social media offers a subtle new direction for marketers to build relationships and brand.
What this blogger explains about external communication is applicable for internal communication as well. As I have outlined before, I believe that the real issue now is to realign staff around a common purpose and to change the patterns of conversation in the company. This applies to marketing as well as to other strategic issues. It is dangerous if the staff of a corporation looses their faith in their company's fitness and the meaning of their brand(s). So, do we need a radical new strategy to approach crisis? I think, yes. Reflecting on that, my colleague Bernd Weber writes me in a personal mail:

Crisis of the type we see now means DRASTIC CHANGE to be managed within the company that are a result of a rapid system-environment change for worse. So management has to cut down costs and get leaner and leaner; they have to react by rapidly building new urgent task teams. They have to become faster han before AND they have to find even more creative solutions, again: learning effective and efficient teamwork that holds the complexity as long as possible (alap instead of asap reduction of complexity) might help. They have to take decisions under a much higher level of insecurity and intransparency with regard to cause-effect than normally.

It sounds like a paradox - while most people might believe this is the time for speeding up all kind of activities and fall into an extremely reactive behaviour, this might be the time for slowing down, taking a break and starting to talk to the teams in your organization, asking them questions like

- What do we know?
- How do we know that we know?
- Do we share the same understanding of what is happening around us?
- How do we evaluate the company's strategies to navigate through the crisis in terms of information policy, creation of ownership, priorities and robustness?
- Where can we reduce complexity, where do we need to embrace complexity and uncertainty?

Here, new social media can play a decisive role. Given the overarching need to cut costs, such a dialogue can indeed be intiated with the help of Intranet forums, wikis, external and internal company blogs, complemented by focused fac2face meetings. Radical honesty and transparency is the ultimate prerequisite for such a process to be inclusive to deal with the strong emotions that increase in times of crisis. We call this attitude Change Leadership in Times of Crisis.

Recently, we had a good discussion in our management team yesterday evening. We defined our product portfolio for companies who need support to navigate through crisis:

- Change Skills
- Virtual Leadership Coaching
- Team Dialogue
- Scenario Writing
- Corporate Karate
- Co-Creation of Strategies

More details:

Change Skills. We equip human resources with the most essential set of capabilities that are required to understand and to manage change—in individuals, teams and entire organizations.

Virtual Leadership Coaching. Our change facilitators are available to support decision making and leadership development. We do that by applying online communication tools.

Team Dialogue. We facilitate—virtually and face to face—dialogue sessions in order to change conversation styles in organizations and to align teams around common purposes.

Scenario Writing. We help organizations look beyond the uncertainty and see how the future unfolds in front of them.

Corporate Karate. We strengthen the imagination and the readiness to go through tough times through simulation games.

Co-Creation of Strategies. We design and implement strategies for utilizing the only resource an organization has in times of crisis—the hearts and minds of their employees

Interested in our solutions? Contact me, holger@change-facilitation.org.

The HUB - a Place for Entrepreneurs to Work and Meet

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 03:57:16 CST

by Holger Nauheimer.

For the last 6 months or so, I regular visit the Self-HUB in Berlin. Self is a part of a global network of HUBs, which provide flexible solutions for temporary and permanent working and meeting space and serve as points where social and other entrepreneurs can connect. HUBs meanwhile exist in 16 places around the world (Berlin, Bristol, London, Rotterdam, Brussels, Milan Stockholm, Madrid, Cairo, Johannesburg, Tel Aviv, Mumbai, Toronto, Halifax, Sao Paolo) and more are in the making. Already, the connect more than 3000 people.

For me, as an entrepreneur, it is the ideal place to work - I just open my laptop and connect to the WLan, I can find people there who can provide services that I need (admin, marketing, etc.) and I can create more connections. And the HUB is really a fun place to work.