I have moved on, please follow me

As you might seen, I haven't posted here for more than two years. That's not because I stopped writing. Not at all. I do write at different places. I don't want to list them all; I am sure you stumble upon them now and then.

However, the good and important news is that I have resumed writing blogs on my original website, The Change Management Toolbook. This is the website which I created 15 years ago and which is now being curated by Ivan Overton. Recently, Ivan has brought together a handful of some of the finest bloggers on change management. So, I decided that I do the majority of my writing over there. I feel very much at home at this site and I would hope that you visit me at my new blogger home.

I am planning a new website which brings together all my different activities which are now dispersed over the web. Please be patient!

The Berlin Change Days - Coming Soon

There are less than five weeks left until the annual Berlin Change Days will open their doors for organizational change practitioners from Europe and beyond. In its second year, the Change Days are already known as the networking and learning event for a community that more than ever is in the process of redefining and reshaping their own discipline. We know from our experiences of the last 20 years that so many change projects go wrong. but we also know that we can develop new approaches and frameworks that help managers understand better of what is needed to make their organizations more effective and the people within more content.

Here is the programme:

Pre-Conference Workshops

Friday, November 5, 2010, 9.00-17.00
Learning from our ancestors - Following the steps of wisdom traditions (English)
by Sumita Dutta

Friday, November 5, 2010, 9.00-17.00
FSL: your flatrate connection to the field (English)
by Jascha Rohr

Conference

Saturday, 6th November 2010

Time	German track	English track	Mixed track
9.00-10.30	Opening: Are you ready for change?
11.00-12.30	Neue Trends im E-Learning by Claudia Musekamp	Leading through ambiguity and change by Amy Stratbucker	I and Theory U (bilingual) by Dr Christian Kemper and Dr Susanne Korsmeier
14.30-16.00	Die erwachsene Organization by Thomas Gernbauer	Dialogue Life (English) by Tapio Kymäläinen and Matti Hirvanen	Von Wellenreitern und Erbsenzählern - multisensuelles Arbeiten in Changeprozessen (Deutsch) by Andrea Steckert
16.30-18.00	Shakespeare goes Change by Raphaela Dell	How to channel positive energy in organizations? by Rik Berbé Msc	Soziokratie – gemeinsam den Wandel aktiv gestalten by Christian Rüther
Evening	Party

Sunday, 7th November 2010

Time	German track	English track	Mixed track
8.30-9.00	Meditation als Tor zu neuen Lösungen by Annegret Torspecken
9.00-10.30	Ganzheitliche Unternehmenstransformation mit Führung 3.0 by "Unternehmen Chance"	Crises: passageway to transformation by Jascha Rohr	Change facilitation through Art (English) by Piritta Kantojärvi
11.00-12.30	Intra- und Supervision - Psychohygiene und Qualitätsverbesserung by Bettina Lobenberg	Appreciative strategy in developing social sustainable enterprises by Doug Gilbert	The Change Journey - a concept to facilitate complex change processes (bilingual) by Holger Nauheimer
14.30-17.00	Grande Finale: Multi-level reflection on the learnings of the Berlin Change Days. CFAN Change Initiative Award

Post-Conference Workshops

Monday, November 8, 2010, 9.00-17.00
Theorie U und facilitating change in der Praxis (Deutsch)
by Barbara Zuber and Renate Franke

Please register here for the conference

Forget Change Management

We are living in asynchronous times. There are still a lot of potential clients who haven’t even accepted that their complex projects don’t follow linear patterns. Some have just started to implement change management programmes. On the other side, many, in particular large international companies have gone through myriads of change projects and have experienced that even the smartest change management strategies can’t prevent that 60-80% of those projects fail.

It’s time to change change – forget change management.

Here is my analysis of the crisis of change management:


1. Everything is change

After 30 years after the first concepts of change management emerged, there is still no common understanding of what change actually means. Just look at the following list of change projects:

• A company wants to implement an enterprise resource management (ERP) solution. It takes twice the time and much more resources than originally planned.
• Two companies merge but after a couple of years people still stick to their original corporate identities. Value is destroyed.
• The largest economy of the world tries to reform their health system but fails to do so for a period 20 years.
• Somebody needs to move to a different country for his job. His family is upset because they feel uprooted.
• The government of an OECD country supports the capacity building of the administration in an Asian country to fight corruption and to introduce good governance.
• People of a country overthrow their government.

We are surrounded by change. But what is the essence? When should we talk about a change project, and when not? Do the models of change management apply equally to all kind of major and minor transitions from state A to state B? Do we need change management approaches in every corner of our private lives, societies and organizations?

Can change be defined as a planned or unplanned transformation of any social system? Where are the boundaries of our discipline?


2. The terminology is a problem - "change" is a war term

“Change” has been devaluated and in many organizations, people freak out when their bosses or some hired hands just mumble the word change (or any of those fancy project names, like “Horizon 2010”, “One Blablabla”, “Fit for the Future”, etc.). It seemed for a moment in history that President Obama was able to give a positive twist to the word change. Yes, this is history as well…

It is not that people don’t like change at all – it is more that they are tired of their leaders’ big but shallow promises. People are tired of simultaneous change programmes imposed on them. At Harley Davidson, they used to say “Bend over, here it comes again” when a new change programme was introduced. I don’t think that we will be able to give change a general positive connotation. As a consequence, any given change programme has a close to 100% risk of resistance.


3. Change cannot be managed

The idea of change management suggests that given the appropriate resources, a change project can be implemented according to Gantt charts. What a weird idea! Change in social systems is complex because social systems are complex and their behavior is largely unpredictable. How could anybody believe that change management plans have anything to do with organizational life? Let us face reality: soft sciences like sociology, psychology, economics still seem to suffer from an inferior complex vis-á-vis “exact sciences” (like physics etc. – mind you: the predictability of physical effects has been questioned ever since Heisenberg formulated his uncertainty principle). They make us believe that more research will eventually explain how the world works. In don’t buy into that.

Let’s assume that all things in the universe follow a finite set of rules and that every single cause-action relationship could be theoretically determined (including all human reasoning – an issue which is still heavily debated). N. N. Talib, in his groundbreaking book “The Black Swan” explains that when you want to compute the way of a billiard ball, you might be all right for the first two, three, four contacts with another ball or the wall of the table. I am always stunned by the capacity of the world billiard elite to estimate up to eight movements of their game. However, Talib says that to make an exact physical prediction, starting from the ninth move you have to include the gravitation effect from the person standing next to the table. Let’s say that it would be possible to let a ball have 56 touches with the other balls or the wall of the table – in that case you would have to take into your calculation every single particle of the universe. That’s physics, let’s move on to social science.

Organizations and societies are complex social systems because:

• Each person in this system has their own set of believes, attitudes, concerns, needs and purposes which determine their behavior. You have 500 people – you have 500 variables to consider.

• People make many unsupervised decisions every day. Some estimates say it’s thousands of decisions a day every person takes. Researchers at Cornell university say, we make more than 200 food and beverage decisions every day. Can anybody compute the compounded effect of those decisions?

• People are related to each other in many different ways. We know that an organizational chart doesn’t tell us much about the real relationships people have at work, or out of work. There are pretty good network analysis tools out there, but what they provide is only a model of reality.

• There are unlimited small and large external influence factors interacting with any give system. Stock brokers are usually great to compute these effects but have recently experienced that their models aren’t worth the paper they are written on.

When I did my PhD, I learned the sentence “What can’t be measured, can’t be managed.” So, how can we believe that change in social systems can be actually managed?


4. Models don’t work

Change management specialists have come up with models that help us to understand how systems react, and what needs to be done to transform them. I know around hundred of them, and new models pop up like crocuses in spring. The problem of models is what they do is reducing complexity to an extent that they have nothing in common with reality. The fact that 60-80% of change projects fail is in my view largely attributable to the blind application of change models. Let’s trash them all – they make things worse!


5. We are not living in an ideal world

Why I got into change management was because I liked the human touch that most text books have. Change management is about the people in organizations, and it is about creating conditions in which people are motivated, engaged, and passionate about what matters for them. So, shouldn’t we just create conditions for people to collaborate and we’ll be fine (like my teacher Robert Dilts once said “Creating a World to Which People Want to Belong”)? This assumes that the ultimate motivation of all people is actually to live in a world that is just. It assumes that money and power does not corrupt people. The capitalist system is built on greed (and the socialist system discourages people to stick out be exceptional). We haven’t found the right rewarding systems that would motivate anybody in an organization or a society to work for the benefit of all (including their own). How can we develop organizations if people have their hidden (or not so hidden agendas)?

Frankly speaking, I don’t think we can get out of this misery if we just try to improve our models and tools. We might still find clients who buy in to our approaches, and some change projects will actually work out well.

So, what's the next step if we want to change how we think about change?




Meet us at Berlin Change Days 2010!

A 3 step model for change?

Those who follow me closely know that I have recently recommended that we forget about all change models for a while and let the client organization design the Change Journey. Today, I came across a nice and very simple 3 step change model: 3 Ways to Overcome Change (you will probably need to be a member of the LinkedIn Lead Change Group to see the original post). I am not sure who the author is but it says: Today's Management Tip was adapted from "Four Ways to Attack the Castle — And Get a Job, Get Ahead, Make Change" by Rosabeth Moss Kanter (which reads quite differently).

This is the short text of the post

People often react to change by resisting it, and smart change agents know that being aggressive only makes people increasingly defensive. Here are three ways to move around the defenses and closer to your goal:

1. Find another way in. If your change is rebuffed, try another tactic. Find out what matters to the people whose support you need and shift the focus of the change to take their preferences and goals into account.
2. Befriend people closest to your resisters. Make friends with administrative assistants, direct reports, or other people who spend time with them. These relationships often yield useful information and help get your ideas heard.
3. Go bottom up. If senior management is resisting your idea, start from the bottom of the organization and build grassroots support. With enough backing, you may be able to convince leaders to reconsider.

While I love simplification, I think we should Einstein's suggestion that everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. In that sense, the three tips on how to overcome change are a bit simplistic for me. And, less because they are only three (I would live to come up with a 3-step formula for change).

A problem I have with these three specific tips is linked to the initial statement "People often react to change by resisting it..." to which the strategies are related (in fact the strategies themselves are not bad as such).

I believe that the main reason why change efforts fail is exactly this attitude of change managers: We have the solution (because we are smart), and the people are the problem. I would like to turn that around: People have the solution because they are smart, and the managers are the problem. Then, the three tips would read like this (finally while writing I have come up with a 3 step model!):

1. Find another way in: Create containers in which people can discuss what matters to them, to their working place, their team, their company, and the industry.

2. Befriend people closest to the champions and supporters and let them drive the change.

3. Go bottom up. In any case, start from the bottom of the organization and build grassroots support. Involve everybody, even senior management.

Making Virtual Teams Fly

Here is a video of a webinar I gave last week for HealthPromotion, a network of health professionals, on blended collaboration.

Virtual organizations, and effective virtual teams offer opportunities for new forms of collaboration that have not existed before. Yet the principles of virtual organizations are not fully known. Applying the case study of a truly virtual organization, this session will provide a theoretical framework as well as very practical hints on how to create and sustain such an entity.

Making Virtual Teams Fly – Collaboration and Change in Virtual Environments from Michaela Conley, HPCareer.Net on Vimeo.

The Internet Nominated for 2010 Nobel Peace Prize

By Ker Than, TechNewsDaily Managing Editor
posted: 11 March 2010 11:53 am ET

If some people have their way, you could be the winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize. "You" in this case being used broadly to mean the billions of people who log online daily.

Yes, the Internet is one of a record 237 nominations for the coveted prize this year.

Some groups have been advocating the Internet for the prize for months, but the nomination was officially accepted only this week, during the first meeting of the Norwegian Nobel Committee on March 9.

...

According to the BBC, the Internet submission was backed by Shirin Ebadi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003 for her human rights work, and by Nicholas Negroponte, founder of the $100 laptop project, One Laptop per Child.

Read more...

Virtual Collaboration in Organizations: A Change Issue

If you want to build a wiki, don’t drum up people by sending them emails and adding them as users. Rather make them long for access to the important information your wiki contains. (Juliane Neumann, Radical Inclusion)

Lately, our group has been reflecting on what it takes from an organization to implement effective Virtual Collaboration (VC) processes. The question is not a new one – the idea of collective Knowledge Management (KM) has been around since the dawn of the WWW (and even before), but the great visions have turned out to be disappointingly shallow promises. We have come to the point where the tools have reached such maturity, adaptability, and user-friendliness that we all cannot help but rub our eyes asking why the adoption rates of virtual collaboration are far below even the most pessimistic expectations.

How does KM fit into the concept of VC? Wikipedia gives the following definitions:

Knowledge management (KM) comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences. Such insights and experiences comprise knowledge, either embodied in individuals or embedded in organizational processes or practice. (Source: Wikipedia).

Virtual Collaboration – Originated with the advent of video conferencing technologies provided over the internet. Two or more people working together to accomplish a task without the use of face to face interaction. Early examples of virtual collaboration include Audio Conferencing, Video Conferencing, or Computer mediated communication. With the advent of web 2.0 interactive capabilities virtual collaboration took on a much broader meaning, allowing for the full spectrum of activities and behaviors that are required for two or more people to come together and co-create new work through a process similar to stigmergy in living systems. (Source: Wikipedia)

We believe that this definition of VC is not broad enough. For us in Radical Inclusion, VC encompasses the whole spectrum of synchronous, near time and asynchronous tools and methods with which people can creat content, exchange ideas, work together on documents, make decisions, etc. without meeting face-to-face. In this sense, KM is mainly covering the asynchronous parts of VC.

So, the tools are there but people just don’t use them – why is that so? We believe it is for a multitude of reasons, including the following:

• People driving VC and KM projects are not the potential beneficiaries of the VC tools. VC and KM are categorized as “IT issues”, and the users are rarely involved in design and implementation of the collaboration tools.
• Knowledge and information are organizational currencies, and they are not given away for free. We share information when we get something in return, and knowledge can be a powerful asset in power play situations.
• Collaboration is a question of trust and loyalties, and these ties don’t often follow official organizational structures. People have contradicting loyalties as most organizations have implicit and explicit organizational structures. Also, organizational boundaries in collaboration are not that clear as people adhere to and trust individuals and groups outside of the organization.
• Collaboration is not encouraged. Few organizations have reward systems that encourage collaboration, and even fewer have a collaboration strategy.
• Effective physical collaboration is different from effective virtual collaboration. Most organizations try to translate traditional forms of collaboration, i.e. face-to-face meetings, into virtual collaboration. Thinking that a face-to-face meeting is a pinnacle of collaboration neglects to take into account the new and different opportunities that synchronous, near time, and asynchronous VC tools offer. Virtual meetings that mirror face-to-face meeting processes end up being frustrating experiences because of technical shortcomings and poor virtual process skills.
• General attitudes towards virtual collaboration are not favourable. VC is usually considered as a second-hand substitute for physical face-to-face meetings. Few people believe that they can be effective, efficient, and most of all, fun!

Hence, effective Virtual Collaboration is a question of organizational change, and in order to become an organization with effective VC processes, the organization needs to start from catalyzing a change process. However, there is no blueprint for a process of complex change, and no shortcut around the need to facilitate such a process. Here are a few principles that apply to a change journey:

1. People do not resist change as a given. However, all people have concerns, purposes and circumstances that matter to them. If people feel that their issues are acknowledged and respected, they will support change.
2. Change has its boundaries and limits. Change is partly given to us, and everything is not negotiable. There will always be conditions that we need to accept and work around. Also, we have to respect that usually the entire organization will not change.
3. Problems become our friends little by little. We need to start small in the beginning of our change journey and improve the process along the way.
4. Everybody needs to become an innovator. Widen the circle of involvement as much as possible and get people to buy in. Identify or create containers where new thinking emerges and smart systems can multiply.
5. Multilevel communication about change is essential. Connect people to the content of the change and to each other by virtual and face-to-face means.

We have only just begun to understand what it takes to catalyze effective collaboration – in both the real and the virtual world!

(originally published at http://radical-inclusion.com/)

What is the Change Journey Map?

The Journey Map is the tool for facilitating a team dialogue on how to create a design for the Change Journey, is unique for each organization. The Map which is based on laws of complexity has 23+ places that symbolize different aspects of change that teams and organizations might need to consider during their journey. For example, some organizations might believe that they have to focus on creating sustainable actions first. Others might want to start with creating trust in teams. Others, in turn, might want to revisit their goal of the change. Only people involved in the change process can answer the question "Where to go next?". This simple question reveals the start of the journey. Once the first steps are defined, change leaders can bring in all their tools to master the specific part of the journey. The Change Journey is neutral when it comes to application of other change methodologies and frameworks. The Map comes along with a set of cards which offer questions for deeper exploration of the places.

We will reveal the Map step by step. Watch out for our upcoming webinars and global workshops. Do you want to be involved?

Watch an Introduction Video

How to Use the Map
Watch the places on the map and explore them individually or collectively, in a small meeting or a large workshop. Good questions are your guides, and for each of the places on the Map, you will find some good questions in our Exploration Cards that come along with the Map.

You might find the following procedure helpful:

1) Have a dialogue about where you are currently on the map. Compare different perspectives of individuals. Adhere to the the principles of The Change Journey.
2) Reflect on where you came from and how you got here. Was it a journey full of pain or full of joy? Was it a planned journey or was the route taken by coincidence?
3) Find common ground on what should be the next destination of your journey.
4) Explore the new destination(s) with the questions you find in the materials section. Find your own questions. Define new places if needed.
5) Define the activities and resources you need for the next step.
6) Repeat the Journey cycle as often as needed and develop your own change strategy. Write this strategy down and make it visible to all. Get feedback from those who were not involved.
7) Agree on a reflection process that helps you to learn from the journey. Adapt your journey along the way.

The Places
There are 23+ places on the Map and some empty spots to define new places. One by one, we will show you all the places, and you will have the chance to define your own ones. So, please make sure that you revisit this page frequently.

The Mall of Human Needs: A place to explore people's aspirations and potential reasons for resistance (added March 1, 2010)

The Laboratory: In the Laboratory, teams create small pilot projects to experiment with new processes, procedures, principles etc. (added March 1, 2010)

The Light House of Common Principles: Share the values that you hold in common for the Journey (added March 1, 2010)

The Arena of Leadership: Define what are the leadership patterns that move your organization forward (added March 2, 2010)

The Gym of Skilly and Capabilities: In the Gym, we identify and grow the essential skills we need for the future.(added March 2, 2010)

The Change Journey Starts Today

Today is the day of the official inauguration of the Change Journey.

Vesa Purokuru and I have worked for the last year to present you this meta model to change processes. It does not replace any other model or tool - it incorporates the entire wisdom and knowledge that exists on the dynamics of change processes.

What will happen today
Become a member of the crew at www.changejourney.org.
At 15.00 CET / 10 AM EST, we will have a 20-30 minutes short web introduction on the map concept. If you want to join, please write me an email at holger@change-facilitation.org.
Over the entire day, I will be twittering (#changejourney), facebooking, adding to various blogs, expanding the text base of this website, etc. You are invited to join me by giving your inputs.
Please join this community and also become a fan on Facebook.

Countdown!

Only two days left for the official inauguaration of the Change Journey. Lots of small last minute adjustements, building up the social networks and starting to create buzz. I am on the road again and I have no idea where this journey will lead me.

Here is the plan: The Change Journey concept will be introduced step by step over the next months. On Tuesday March 2, 2010, we will send out invitations to look at this website, understand the basic concepts and to join us via our Ning community and our Facebook page. In parallel, we will be looking for hosts for the global workshops. In April and May, we will organize a series of virtual lectures in which the Change Journey concept will be explained in further detail. Starting June 2010, I will travel around the world - a journey that will be covered by a social media campaign. During the road show, change practitioners have the opportunity to get a deeper insight in to the Change Journey concept and become a licensee of the Change Journey Map. Stay tuned and watch the buzz!

Workshop on Deep Democracy in Berlin

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.

Trust in Virtual Teams

Finally, we met. After nine months of successful and rich virtual collaboration, the team of Radical Inclusion met face to face. Not that we needed that meeting for issues of team building. But we all had the urge to look into each others faces, to hear the voices without delays and distorsions, and to have a couple of drinks together. So, it was good to come together as a team. But the trust was there, before. Most people who haven’t worked in virtual teams believe that a precondition for trust in teams is an initial face-to-face meeting. I don’t believe so anymore, rather do I believe that people use this argument because it helps them to maintain their bias against virtuality.

Let us think about people how build trust. A common way is to be influenced by the first visual expression we have, plus the additional information we get from our other senses (tone of voice, smell, etc.). Some of us are good at that and some of us are regularly fooled by their hormones or their presumptions (I am definitely one of those). That is what my colleague Jouke Kruijer who has done some research on the issue calls affect-based trust.

A second possibility to build trust is to analyse the information we have about this person plus his behavior and come to a more rational verdict (coginition-based trust).

And a third possibility is to observe team members’ behavior while working on joint projects. This is what Jouke calls swift trust. Are they reliable? Do they walk their talk? Do they take resposibility? How do they deal with conflicts, problems and shortfalls? All these questions can be answered in virtual teams as in face-to-face teams.

What brought us together was the Real Time Virtual Collaboration workshop on May 9, 2009. This was a workshop in which we were able to test and develop our collaboration patters. After the project was concluded successfully we knew that we wanted to continue as a team. We found new projects, and step by step we strengthened our relationships. We tested hundred of collaboration tools until we found the right mix (I will write a blog post about these next week, as a continuation of this post). We did not define any rules of collaboration but we worked on trust base.

Finally, it was time to meet and it was as if we had known for a long time…

(reposted from Radical Inclusion)

Using the Concept of Complex Adaptive Systems for Organizing a Kids Birthday party

Today, I came across a hilarious video of David Snowden on how to apply different systems perspectives when organizing a children's birthday party:

First Berlin Change Days

I would like to invite you to join the first Berlin Change Days (Nov. 9-10, 2009) in the Berlin Hub. This is a conference for practitioners, leaders and managers who would like to discuss aspects of change processes. CHANGE nowadays is a ‘buzz’ word, especially since President Obama has made it the focus of his campaign. Corperations, non-profit organizations, and administrations have all become aware that the complexity of change processes cannot be handled by single actors or small groups. This complexity exceeds both their decision as well as implementation capability of traditional management structures. There is a worldwide demand for internal and external support of change processes. The development of new tools and methods continues.

The programme of the 1st Berlin Change Days responds to the needs of practitioners who are involved in everyday change processes of organisations and social institutions, offering guidance for better results but also a longer term perspective for the development of human resources as well as internal and external structures. In two parallel streams, the programme entails events in English and German language. If you are passionate about change in business, government and society, the Berlin Change Days are the most important event this year – and hopefully in the future!

Do people resist change?

Steve Simpson writes in his Blog Inspiring Cultures:

Why do people resist change?

I think the answer to this is really simple... People resist change because of a combination of up to three reasons:

1. They don’t like their boss(es) - if people don't like those who are asking them to change, then despite the logical value of the change, people will resist out of retribution. This is all about the relationships
2. They don’t like the change itself. This can relate to two separate, but important aspects - the process by which the change was introduced or implemented (ie, the way in which it was done) and/or the content of what is proposed (ie, the what). For example, people will resist change if they feel they weren't consulted. They'll also resist if they feel the proposed change doesn't result in sufficiently important benefits (either to them or the organisation)
3. They don’t like the impact it will have on them. For example, change may mean extra work in a context where people are already very busy, or it might expose people's weaknesses within the 'new' environment. This is all about the ‘me’

I don't agree. I don't believe people resist change at all. I do believe that systems resist change - this is a typical pattern of complex systems, as a result of their auto-poietic behavior.

People have concerns, purposes and circumstances. If we acknowledge them, they will cooperate. If we neglect them, they will not cooperate.

But most people are not against change. Make a simple experiment with any group of people in an organization: Draw a matrix on the floor. One axis is about change in personal life (from "I seek for change in my life constantly" to "I love stability"), and the other axis is about change at work (from "I adapt easily when I am asked to be changed" to "I don't like to be changed"). Ask people to find their space on the grid. You will find that most people will be in the quadrant that says "I seek for change and I adapt easily", while they would say that their staff and bosses are in other quadrants. Isn't that a paradox?

Crowdsourcing and Systems Change

Today, I found a great blog post which links large systems change with the concept of crowdsourcing:

Crowdsourcing for Employee, Customer and Stakeholder Engagement

Crowdsourcing as a technique for gathering useful information stems from the concepts outlined in The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki. Obviously, this is what Open Space Technology practioners (and those applying other large group intervention techniques) have been doing for the last 20 years. Now we have a new label for it! :)

The job of a leader in today’s hyperlinked and transparent organizational world is to instantiate the crowd’s intelligence and / or wisdom with a clearly-stated and purposeful mission and objective, and then listen ! This is where social software and methods like crowdsourcing can shine. They can and I believe will, eventually, replace or augment even the most sophisticated culture change initiative or surveys and diagnostics.

Amen!

Change Model 5: Change is a Roller Coaster You Can't Escape

Background

My main head ache with existing change models has been the linearity of most approaches. In it's simplest form, look at Kurt Lewin's change model (which I yet have to describe in this series - this is not a chronological approach): Unfreeze - Change - Freeze. 3 steps, a clear start and an end. But what if there is no clear start because the change process is not a project which has been designed and implemented by the Central Committee? What if there is no end because a new change process emerges before the last has been completed?

Change Model 4 (The Change Journey) partly answers these questions, in particular if it is about living in constant change. And it is probably the most radical model you can perceive - except maybe the model that says there is no change, don't even try it.... It is my favourite model but I do understand that some clients need more details that describe what actually needs to be done to make change happen.

A couple of years ago, I came across Chris Spies, a great thinker and practitioner in the field of non-violent conflict resolution. In his seminal text Resolutionary Change: The Art of Awakening Dormant Faculties in Others, he develops a model for developmental change. I took the liberty to take it a bit further and apply it to the change processes I am involved in as a consultant and a facilitator. The model presented here is based on the idea that if you are in an organizational change process, there are certain aspects in which the wider system has to be involved, there are other aspects where team rules needs to be development, and there is also the need for giving space for personal experiments and growth. Combine this with the main tasks that need to be done when operating in a changing environment, and you have my model.

The difference to other phased models is an obvious one: there is no starting point. This is less a proposition but a fact of life - like Open Space Technology principle #2: "Whatever happens is the only thing that could have." So, when you find yourself or your team or your organization in a change process, just have a look where you are on the map and start from there. But don't forget - all the other phases are important as well.

There isn't really a name of this model - maybe we should call it the "Rollercoaster Model"?



Phases (not to be meant linear)


Here are a couple of guiding questions, which you can utilize to reach a common understanding among the stakeholders of a change project:

1. Goals
What do we want to achieve?
What is the purpose?
What is the long-term benefit of achieving the goal?
Who should be involved in the implementation of the project?
Who might be positively or negatively affected by the change?

2. Check In – Establishing Trust
How is change generally perceived in this organization (threat, opportunity)?
What can we learn from other successful or failed change initiatives in this organization?
What resistance to change is emerging before the project has even started?
Which groups will likely make or break the change process?
What are their needs (see also 3. Analysis)?
What support from top management do we have (spearheading, role modeling)?

3. Analysis
What do we know about
- hopes and fears of the involved people
- impacts of the project – required changes in work processes, communication patterns, job descriptions, etc.
- early initiatives
- early adopters / potential change agents

4. Envisioning
Do we have the broad picture?
Where to will the change initiative lead us?
What is taking shape here? What future is emerging?
What is our best potential?

5. Review
Which processes must be changed? What do we need to let go?
What must be preserved? What is essential for the integrity of our organization?
What mistakes of the past must we not repeat?

6. Experiment
What pilots can we create to verify our strategy?
Which are the small and which are the big changes we need to implement?
What extra resources do we need to allocate to allow for experimentation?

7. Nurture
What leadership style do we need to adopt to make change possible?
What extra support do we need to give to those who carry the change forward (resources, time, training, rewards, incentives, etc.)

8. Coach and Mentor
How can we provide constant feedback to those at the front line?
What learning mechanisms do we need to effectively implement the change?

9. Celebrate
What are the essential milestones that will demonstrate success of the change initiative?
What is our culture of celebration and rewarding?

10. Monitor and Communicate
How do we know that we are on the right track? What are indicators of success? How will others see that we are achieving our goals?
What are new processes, products, requirements, standards, etc. that others need to be informed about?


Applicability

The Rollercoaster Model can be applied in any change process with a lot of diverse stakeholders. It is basically a check-up of where we are, what we need to do and what should not be forgotten.


Does the Model Relate to Complexity Theory?

Yes. It is systemic in its core but it could be misunderstood as a mechanistic model. Only if individual growth, team learning, and organizational development are harmonized, the change process can be successful and satisfying for those impacted by the change.

Strengths

• It is circular
• It takes into consideration change at different levels: Individual, Team, Organization and Environment
• It helps you define where you are

Weaknesses

• Because of it's phased structure, people tend to understand it as a linear model
• It might suggest that if all phases are well planned, the project will succeed
• It does not define roles and responsibilities
  

Change Model 4: Change Is A Journey On Which You Embark

Background

This model was developed by Vesa Purokuru. It is the base of a book that we are writing.

The Change Journey is a metaphor for the change process:

You choose a destination (India), set the direction, find a team, a sponsor, a vessel, food and things you might need on the way. You prepare and you set up sails to departure. On the way you constantly monitor the weather, the sea, the motivation of the crew and the environment. When needed you adjust sails and check the direction. In the course, you make new discoveries (America), find new people, and may change your direction, if that is right to get to the destination. In the end, the change journey is for the good of the organization, may be not for the good of all stakeholders.

What is the Change Journey?

• It helps me (& you) to understand constant changes and the complexity of today's work environment.
• It gives me (& you) confidence and "step by step" framework even it is impossible to predict what happens on the way.
• It will be my approach and attitude to face something new and unpredictable
• It gives me trust: I know where to start from.

Why do we think that change is a journey? In this complex and constantly changing world, we cannot manage, mandate or program changes the way we would like to. Neither can we sell new things or new thoughts successfully.

Most of today's work is not mechanistic and repeatable any more. Instead, most of nowadays work is based on thinking kind and fueled by enthusiasm, passion & dialogue.

What we can do is to invite people to co-create their futures. The more people you are able to invite, the more successful you will be in reaching your preferred destination.

By doing so it is difficult to predict precisely what will happen but it is sure that there are a lot of committed experts thinking the best possible solutions and innovations to create a sustainable future.

This journey is mainly about attitudes, and the belief in the power of self organization, passion and responsibility and that the most powerful processes of change happen at the micro level where relationships, interactions, small experiments and simple rules shape emergent patterns. The change journey leads and encourages us to trust in two things that are essential for change: people and processes.

In the journey we leave the concept of "change management" behind. Instead, we talk about "change facilitation". Although we do appreciate that their are actually a lot of tasks to be managed and planned in a change process, we would like to focus on the term "getting ready" for the change.

So, the Change Journey is about new attitudes and paradigms towards change but additionally it gives you suggestions what to do and how to do it if you have set your sails. There are advices how to create a roadmap for involvement, participation and first and foremost - how you can get ready for the journey yourself.


Phases

1. Preparation:
-Getting prepared for change journey: known and unknown
-Exploring & understanding reasons and alternatives
-finding common mind set: balance between top-down & bottom-up
-Choosing change models
-Finding right partners
-Agreeing the rules and principles
-Making first plans
-Discovering change forums

2. Starting the change journey:
-Getting everybody involved and engaged by joint planning,
-Understanding A to B journey
-First moves & actions towards the goal

3. Living the change journey:
-Living the new reality
-Using strengths
-Solving problems measuring and changing the change
-Becoming aware what works and what doesn’t

4. Creating skills for working in constant change:
-Learning from the experience,
-Developing new skills,
-Being prepared for future changes,
-Being able to change things fast


Applicability:

The Change Journey is applicable for highly complex change projects and for organizations that are aware that change has no end. It helps to identify those skills that are essential in situations of high uncertainty.


Does the model relate to complexity theory?

Yes. The model is based on the notion of complexibility. Change is perceived as a process of constant reevaluation.


Strengths

• The model does depart from the illusion of planability of change processes
• It is highly participatory
• It supports multiple leadership

Weaknesses

• no roles are defined
• the model might be perceived as exclusive - what about the people who are left out
• it does not give any guidance and therefore requires an organizational culture of risk taking

Storytelling and Design

This is a great presentation which I found at Frogpond's Blog about how we can co-create the future together by storytelling:

Story and Emergent Design

View more documents from Hugh Graham.

Change Model 3: John Kotter's 8 Steps of Leading Change

Background:

For leaders of organizations, managing change is an important strategic task. In the last ten years, there have been numerous studies which all confirmed that between 60-80% of all change projects fail fully or partly: either the objectives of the project are not achieved or the projects cannot be completed in time or on budget. Usually, a lot is at stake: money, personal reputation, and the health of the organization.

So, the 1 million dollar question for any change leader is: How can I make sure that my change project is successful? John Kotter, one of the leading management thinkers and writes has given his answer to this question by providing an eight step model for leading change. Except for the mother of all change models - Kurt Lewin's unfreeze-move-freeze, which I yet have to describe in this series - Kotter's eight steps model is probably the best known and the most applied.


Originator of the Model:

John Kotter, his book "Leading Change" (1996)



Phases of the Change Process (taken from strategicconnections.com):

John Kotter's 8 step process - an overview
Steps	Transformation Suggestions
1. Increase urgency	Examine market and competitive realities Identify and discuss crisis, potential crisis, or major opportunities Provide evidence from outside the organization that change is necessary
2. Build the Guiding Team	Assemble a group with enough power to lead the change effort Attract key change leaders by showing enthusiasm and commitment Encourage the group to work together as a team
3. Get the Vision Right	Create a vision to help direct the change effort Develop strategies for achieving that vision
4. Communicate for Buy-in	Build alignment and engagement through stories Use every vehicle possible to communicate the new vision and strategies Keep communication simple and heartfelt Teach new behaviors by the example of the guiding coalition
5. Empowering Action	Remove obstacles to the change Change systems and / or structures that work against the vision
6. Create short term wins	Plan for and achieve visible performance improvements Recognize and reward those involved in bringing the improvements to life
7. Do Not Let Up	Plan for and create visible performance improvements Recognize and reward personnel involved in the improvements Reinforce the behaviours shown that led to the improvements
8. Make Change Stick	Articulate the connections between the new behaviors and corporate success

Applicability:

The Kotter model can be applied for all top-down change processes, i.e. for projects that have been decided at the top management level of an organization. The US Army applied it to prepare the troops for the new forms of asymetrical threat.

Does the Model Relate to Complexity Theory?

No. Kotter's eight steps is a linear model that assumes predictability and manageability of change processes.


Strengths:

• Focus on buy-in of employees as the focus for success
• Clear steps which can give a guidance for the process
• Easy to understand
• Can be successful when all steps are well communicated
• Fits well into the culture of classical hierarchies
  

Weaknesses:

• The linearity of the model can lead to wrong assumptions.
  
• Once the process has started, it is difficult to change the direction.
  
• The model is clearly top-down, it gives no room for co-creation or other forms of true participation.
  
• Can lead to deep frustrations among employees if the stages of grief and individual needs are not taken into consideration.

More Resources:

Website of John Kotter.

Conference and World Café Meeting in Second Life

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to attend a conference on "Using Virtual Reality for Stakeholder Engagement", which was organized by PublicDecisions, taking place in Second Life. Not everybody of my readers know what Second Life, therefore, I provide a short explanation from Wikipedia:

Second Life (SL) is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab that launched on June 23, 2003 and is accessible via the Internet. A free client program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another, or travel throughout the world, which residents refer to as the grid.

Already quite early, Second Life attracted training providers, universities and other educational groups, and already more than a year ago, a World Café had been organized there. Yesterday's conference wasn't really a World Café but rather more a classical conference, with the following components

- Panel discussion on using virtual worlds for stakeholder engagement



- Field trips to interesting sites in SL for stakeholder engagement (I went to a project of Tufts university for citizen engagment in urban planning and the Centre for Virtual Native Lands, an education site about Native Americans)



- small focus groups discussion about the potential of virtual worlds in stakeholder engagement (this came as close as it gets to a World Café setting).



The conference went over six hours, quite a real and exhausting experience!

So, what are the pros and cons of virtual conferences/workhops in Second Life?

Pros:
- Second Life facilitatates the use of either voice or chat technologies to interact. The quality of voice transmission is rather good, so the experience is quite close to meeting people.
- People identify with their avatar so it feels like "being there".
- Through integration of other media such as videos, embedded websites, information notes, etc. one can create an environment that supports different learning styles

Cons:
- The barrier of entry is quite high, in particular for people who are not technology savvy.
- Creating the environment for a learning/meeting experience can be quite time and money consuming. However there are some places which are open for use to the public, in particular for non-profit organizations (Such as Squirrel Island). The organizers of yesterday's conference had quite a large support staff on site.

It goes without saying that Second Life conferences/workshops, like real life workshops need skilled facilitators to create an environment that is conducive for meaningful conversations.

I wonder what it takes to organize an Open Space Technology workshop in SL.

7 Dimensions: Principal Skills of Change Facilitators

Some months ago, Nils Atle Krokeide, Bernd Weber and I sat together and tried to define what are the general skills of a change facilitator. This is what we came up with:

Dimension 1: Ability to Grasp Clients’ Needs

Key Aspects:
The ability to grasp or understand a client’s needs is the precondition for the design and redesign of the change process. The skilled change facilitator is aware of the fact that that the client’s needs will rarely be fully revealed nor fully known neither by the client nor by the facilitator. The Client-Facilitator System must be able to perceive these needs as fully as possible and to formulate and to document these needs as they are developing. This is the basis for the initial proposal to the client. The facilitated system understands that needs will continually be uncovered, revealed and developed during the change process and requires regular adjustments (contracting).

Related Skills:

• Empathy
• Ability to understand context specific culture
• Analysis of the need system, e.g. stakeholder needs, functional needs, basic individual needs, business needs,
• Identification of compatibility, contradictions and potential conflicts
• Interview techniques e.g. systemic questioning
• Tools for documentations and monitoring of changing needs
• Informal and formal information gathering
• Sensitivity for the clash of intra-organizational cultures, traditions and rituals.

Dimension 2: Contracting Process

Key Aspects:
The traditional understanding of consultancy sees “contracting” as one step in the consultancy process which ends with a signature. The Change-Facilitator understands that contracting includes the whole process of creating, maintaining and changing the professional relationship between facilitator and client. In this light contracting starts with the first contact and ends only with the facilitation process. CONTRACTING turns out to be “The full assignment management process”, combining project and relationship management.

Related Skills:

• Have an ear for the (changing) client’s needs, budgeting, conflict management, analysis of documentation, intercultural communication, differentiation of roles (customer/process owner/client/key actors, etc.), dealing with role complexity, proposal writing, structure of contracts, differentiate and facilitate the formal and the informal contracting (informal shifting of contracts, formal re-definition of contracts, intermediate and final contracts).
• Contract context analysis
• Contract structure, examples of real contracts
• Frame contract, intervention contracts and TORs
• (Self-) monitoring of contract development
• Sales and negotiation strategies

Dimension 3: Dealing with Complexity

Key Aspects:
The concept of complexity in change facilitation is based on system theory applied to the social field. Whereas in everyday contexts the polarity is seen as being SIMPLE vs. COMPLICATED, COMPLEXITY is a BEHAVIOUR that can be observed also in simple systems. In complex systems the relation between cause and effect (= the system’s behaviour) is non-linear. Logical analysis of social systems such as organizations is not enough. Complex systems tend to show chaotic behaviour. That is one reason why they are not easily manageable. The systemic approach is holistic and proved to be successful for dealing with complex systems.
Complexity may, for example, grow by increasing diversity in the stakeholder system, by growing amount and intensity of interconnections (feedback-loops) between the elements of the system, but also by growing uncertainty by changing roles or increasing role-mix of individual actors etc.

Experienced facilitators know: “People do not resist change, systems do.”

Related Skills:

• Identification of logical and non-logical aspects of group and organization behaviour.
• The principles of occidental logical thinking. Hierarchy as the social construction that manages may create and manage complicated systems, but fails with regard to complex behaviour of real social systems
• Examples for non-logical thinking traditions (e.g. occidental: dialectics, Gestalt-Theory and oriental: Yin-Yang thinking)
• Complex behaviour of organizations and institutions: functional complexity
• Intra-individual complexity
• Dealing with and separating different levels of complexity in change (Ralph Stacey and David Snowden models).
• Intervention design and implementation that uses logical and non-logical strategies

Dimension 4: Design of Change Interventions

Key Aspects:
Change in organizations happens simultaneously at different levels: individuals change their beliefs, skills and attitudes; they have to let go of old habits and welcome new ones. Teams establish new rules, processes and relationships. The organization as a whole might change culture, structure and leadership models. The skilled change facilitator is able to think multi-dimensionally and to translate the client’s needs into a sequence of interventions that has to be designed with care, creativity and respect which addresses these different levels of change.

Related Skills of a Change Facilitator:

• Systems thinking
• Ability to communicate at different hierarchical levels (shop floor to board room)
• Broad knowledge of change facilitation intervention techniques
• Flexibility in design and redesign
• Methods for co-creating intervention designs together with clients and for getting their ownership
• Project management skills
• Conceptualization and drafting skills
• Ability to use different graphical and presentation software
• Creating a change facilitation plan

Dimension 5: Implementation of Change Processes

Key Aspects:
In change processes, roles are not stable. As a consequence, change facilitators are the implementers of change strategies. Although the client is the owner of the change process, they hold us accountable for success or failure. This contradiction is a fact. The facilitator may initiate, plan, organise and carry out specific interventions such as training courses, expert consultations, coaching, facilitation of workshops, design of communication strategies, steering of the process, trust building, creating and supporting communities of practice, and much more. The classical division between process and expert consultant has been replaced by a holistic role model of the change facilitator, who is a true multi-artist.

Related Skills:

• Training skills (online and face-to-face)
• Facilitation skills (online and face-to-face; classical and whole systems change)
• Coaching skills (online and face-to-face)
• Expert consulting skills and knowledge (online and face-to-face)
• Project management skills
• Conflict management and mediation skills
• Ability to recognize own strengths and weaknesses and flexibility to assemble the right team to do the job
• High frustration tolerance within an environment characterised by uncertainty, low transparency and open or hidden power struggles
• Broad spectrum of change models and intervention methods, including paradox interventions
• Facilitation of interventions for personal development
• Ability to tailor-make new interventions that respond to the client system’s situation and facilitate experiential learning
• Ability to hold time and space – allowing the right things to emerge (whatever happens is the right thing...)
• Ability to consequently apply the minimum intervention principle - do one thing less

Dimension 6: Roles and attitudes

Key Aspects:
The skilled facilitator is able to differentiate behaviour, role, function and position in organizations. In everyday communications in organizations, these concepts are used in a clouded way. When the organization starts to change, this might prove not to be functional any longer.

Facilitators are able to perceive and to communicate which role mixes are assigned to them by the client and to negotiate change of roles according to the systemic needs. This process requires a set of attitudes which are accessible for the facilitator all the time: being a servant, humbleness, ability to be a warrior and a healer, reliability, persistency, being a continuous learner and curiosity.

Related Skills:

• Self-reflection and insight of one’s own changeability
• Determination to stay the course
• Goal and success orientation
• Empathy
• Ability to identify and communicate the difference between behaviour, role, function and position in organizational change processes

Dimension 7: Change models

Key Aspects:
Presently there exist a variety of change models starting from Kurt Lewin’s classical unfreeze-change-freeze model up to recent models such as Theory U of Otto Scharmer, etc. The skilled change facilitator is aware of the fact that “THE correct model” does not exist.

Related Skills:

• To identify the change models that lies in fact behind the client’s interventions realized before the contracting the facilitator
• The ability to decide what kind of change models which will support change interventions in different situations and contexts of the client’s system.

Change Model 2: The Grief Cycle

Background:

The most common myth about change is that we resist it, but this is a misunderstanding of change. Change is an event. Change is a point in time when something old stops and something new begins. What people resist is not the change itself, but the impacts of change. (Lucy Garrick).

Change can be chosen, emergent, or imposed. This model is about imposed change, or, more specifically, about the emotional response of people to change. In essence, the model suggests that people go through several phases of a process when change is imposed. Change leaders need to acknowledge and recognize these stages and offer support that corresponds with the specific need people have in a respective phase of the grief cycle.

Originally, the model was developed by Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross (see below) in order to describe the phases which terminally ill people undergo after they have learned that they are going to die. "We can clearly observe similar reactions to those explained by Kübler-Ross's grief model in people confronted with far less serious traumas than death and bereavement, such as by work redundancy, enforced relocation, crime and punishment, disability and injury, relationship break-up, financial despair and bankruptcy, etc.," (from: Buinessballs), and in particular in processes of inforced change.

Leaders of change processes need to recognize each of the stages in order to implement the appropriate interventions. For example, when people are in anger stage, they won't be very susceptible for communication that tries to sell them the benefits of the change. The model calls for respecting emotions of people and responding to them rather then impleme

Image via Wikipedia

nting a just rational, inflexible change programme.

Creators of the Model:

Elisabeth Kuebler-Ross: on Death and Dying (1969). The model has found its way into management and organizational dynamics but I have no idea who to give the credit for. Do you know who was the first person who applied for change processes in organizations?


Phases of the Change Process (adapted from Wikipedia):

1) Shock: Shock is a first reaction to a change projected that is announced to people. Sometimes this is not the initial reaction to an announced change but the entire cycle only starts when people realize what the change means to them personally. Example - "My God!"; ""What?"

2) Denial: Denial is usually only a temporary defense for the individual. Example - "I feel fine."; "This can't be happening, not to me."

3) Anger: Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy. Example - "Why me? It's not fair!"; "How can this happen to me?"; "Who is to blame?"

4) Bargaining: The third stage involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone, delay or neutralize the change, or to get an adequate compensation. Example - "What's in it for me?"; "What does that mean for my future?"; "What can I do?"

5) Depression: During the fourth stage, the dying person begins to understand the certainty of change. Because of this, the individual may become silent, refuse dialogue and spend much among peers who feel the same. It is an important time for grieving that must be processed. Example - "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?"; "What's the point?"; "They are doing this to us, whether we want or not."

6) Acceptance: This final stage comes with peace and understanding of the change that is approaching.People buy-in and start to become pro-active gain. Example - "It's going to be okay."; "I can't fight it, I may as well prepare for it."

Does the Model Relate to Complexity Theory?

No. The model is a linear one, describing the behavior of individuals on a clearly defined path. However, the cycle of grief can enrich a systemic model of change that tries to explain what actually happens in organizations. So, like a weather model can explain why a thunderstorm happens, Kuebler-Ross' cycle can explain why people do not cooperate in certain stages of the change, particularly when combined with a human needs model such as the one of Manfred Max-Neef that I favor.

Applicability:

The model comes in handy as a roadmap for leaders who want to understand their people. It gives suggestions on when to give emotionally support, when to decrease the speed of change and when to accelerate.

Strengths:

• The model helps leaders to put their focus on the individuals. It is individuals who can make or break the change.
• It shows clearly that communication and involvement needs vary according to the phase of the change project. It gives lots of room for flexibility to chose the appropriate intervention.
  

Weaknesses

• It is a model that has been transferred from terminally ill people. The decisive difference to change management situations is that terminal ill people cannot escape while people in change processes might indeed have other options.
• The model only focuses on the negative aspects of change. We know from scoial constructionism (as applied in Appreciative Inquiry) that those things on which we focus get stronger.
• The model which was originally not meant to be applied for change processes does not take into account the wider environment and external change drivers.
  

PLEASE DISCUSS THE MODELS: WHAT ARE YOUR EXPERIENCES?