Our New Blog: Virtual Company

Our Company, Change Facilitation - A Global Partner Who Makes Change in Complex Environments - is going through a period of change. We have consolidated our structure, have made our business plan for the next year and most of all: we have articulated our dream, to become the number one provider of services related to change.

One of decisions we made that will have a significant on the way we work: We want to become a virtual company within a year. Well, most of our work and our business processes have already been virtual but we still maintained an office in Bratislava. Our staff came to the office from nine to five. We had our meetings in the office and we stored our files there. Rather than expanding our office, we will abandon it. We will have our staff working with their laptops from anywhere, we will meet whereever it is appropriate, we will use the most advanced collaboration software.

The move to virtuality will be an adventure and a learning journey. We have many questions and few answer. We need to learn about technology, ways of collaboration, virtual management, etc.. You are invited to travel with us: all our learnings, successes and failures will be described in a new blog: Virtual Company (http://virtualcompany.wordpress.com/).

3rd Global Gathering of CFAN Has Ended with a Promise

From April 21-25, 35 folks from all part of the world met in Austria for the 3rd Global Gathering of the Change Facilitation Associates Network. While we still have to process the wealth of video, slide, audio and photo material, here is a first report:

We started on Day 1 to reconnect. Participants came from: Finland, Norway, Lebanon, Israel, Germany, Philippines, Romania, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Czech and Slovak Republics, Albania, Canada, UK. Using dialogue techniques, we explored the questions that would help us to digg deeper into our tasks and to recognize our joint emerging future. In the evening of Monday, Prof. Susanne Weber talked about Dynamics in Regional Networks.

Day 2 and 3 were dedicated to learning. Terhikki Rimannen, Dennis Morbin and Annika Ranta talked about Co-Creation in Modern Virtual Work. Megatrends of globalization and technology: we are moving into a network society.



Further inputs on Day 2 and 3: Thomas Steinert on Transactional Organizational Development, Yaron Blumenthal on Change Management Consulting in IT Implementation, Holger Nauheimer on Web 2.0 and Change Management, Rik Berbé on Energy8 - Using the Energy of Organizations.

On Day 4 and 5, we went into action planning, using Open Space Technology, facilitated by Erich Kolenaty. A couple of very interesting projects were designed, e.g. a global training course on Change Leadership.

The afternoon of Day 5 was our great day. For the last three years, Change Facilitation and the Change Facilitation Associates Network were one organization. Over the time, we had realized that in order to be more effective, we have to demerge. We have succeeded the demerger process and we have celebrated it: Our consortium now consists of a non-profit organization Change Facilitation Associates Network (Global Network for Exploring, Creating, and Celebrating Change), and Change Facilitation ltd. (A Global Partner Who Makes Change Happen in Complex Environments). Only CFAN members can become owners of this dynamic company.

Our promise: CFAN and Change Facilitation will grow and be the world's reference organizations on change, change management and change facilitation. Why don't you join us now...

More to come, when our material is processed...

Holger Nauheimer on Complexity

During my presentations in the United States, I shot a couple of video clips. Here is a 7 minute clip on complexity in organizations, including some reflections of contemporary models such as those of Dave Snowden and Ralph Stacey:



If you want to see the video in a bigger window, go to Google Videos.

Happy Birthday, Nancy White

Nancy White turns 50 today - happy birthday, Nancy.

Nancy is one of the most colourful, gifted, humble and commited persons I have met. She nourishes various communities of practice, she gives her entire warm personality to any event she attends. Nancy is a great graphical facilitator (I have documented several of her posters here), and she shows us the future of virtual change.

Currently, she blogs from the Seeds of Compassion conference in Seattle which is attended by his holiness, the Dalai Lama.

Photo (and a long interview with Nancy): http://www.netsquared.org/nwhite

At IAFNA: Holger Nauheimer's Slideshow on E-Change

The annual conference of IAFNA in Atlanta ended with the commitment of many participants to meet again in Vancouver, April 2009. For me, it was a great possibility to reconnect but also to meet a lot of interesting people who I didn't know before.

Saturday afternoon, I gave a 3 hours workshop on "Communities not Clients - How Web 2.0 Changes Everything, Including Your Business". Watch my slideshow and read more...

More from Atlanta: The Leap to Coaching Online Communities

Here is another interesting session at the IAF conference in Atlanta hosted by John Caroll from Dynamic Decisions. John starts with giving room to introduction of the 20 participants of the seminar after which he says rightly that he justhas sequentally hearded 20 good ideas which are all to assess and process. He recalls the time when facilitation started to introduce butcher paper, flip charts, paper cards, post its etc. to initiate brainstorming and collecting / clustering ideas. It is interesting to see how technology has moved on like that, and then again: do you realize, how little technology is used in workshops to spead up creativity? Read more...

America Speaks: Engaging Citizens in Large Stakeholder Processes

AmericaSpeaks is an organization that has developed a process to engage citizens in the most important decisions that impact their lives. The process uses ICT technology, including voting touch pads and laptops to record the results round table discussions to produce results that can be taken further by the administration. Read more...

IAFNA 2008 has started: Facilitative Leadership

The Annual Conference of the International Association of Facilitators North America has started in Atlanta, Georgia. What a good place for networking. After some good introduction into Southern US culture we were greeted by a keynote of Dr. Betty Siegel, the former president of Kennesaw State University and a gifted motivational speaker. She talked about connectedness. Read more...

Update on Story of Change

Good news: I now uploaded the entire video called The Story of Change in one piece to the Internet. YouTube does not allow videos longer than 10 minutes, Google Videos does. Unfortunately, the embedding of Google Videos doesn't work as well as YouTube videos. So if you want to see the full 23 minutes of the 40 years history of Change Facilitation, follow this link:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=659271750744887678

Please pass the link around to anybody who could be interested.

A Slideshow on History and Future of the Change Management Field

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to speak at the World Bank in Washington D.C. about current trends in Change Management and Change Facilitation. I made the point that we need to look at organizations from a fresh perspective. After three, four decades of systems thinking we know that organizations can better be understood complex living beings. I further elaborated about some new theories on how to approach change processes and finally talked about Web 2.0 principles and how they will impact the way we deal with organizations. Read more...

My Story into a Conference (7): A List of Top Social Applications

Atlanta is getting close, and I am getting prepared for my presentation at the IAF conference. Have worked my way down the East Coast (Bowling Green, Ohio to Hartford, Connetticut, to Boston, Massachusetts - today with Amtrak from Boston to Washington D.C., what a great train trip! It looks like Connetticut is one of the great places to live). Read more...

The Story of Change, Told at Nexus

At the first evening of Nexus II, on March 30, 2008 in Bowling Green, Ohio, Sandra Janoff facilitated a time line which allowed us to look at the fourty years history of the Whole Systems Change Movement. The storyline has now been published as a three part video on YouTube. Watch 20 minutes of collective memory of 80 folks who were part of this history, told by Barbara Bunker, Dick Axelrod, Peggy Holman and others: Read more...

My Story into a Conference (6): World Café in Second Life

At the Nexus in Bowling Green, I met Nancy White, one of the most talented virtual facilitators. We shared a great Open Space session on Web 2.0 together. She told me that just recently, a full World Cafe has been hosted and facilitated in Second Life. The event was organized for the Rockridge Institute, a think tank whose mission is "to deepen and broaden the public's understanding of the political world." Read more...

Nexus Yet Has to Grow

Nexus II ended with affirmation of most if not all participants that the whole idea of bringing people together who are concerned with large systems change has just begun. The conference provided a balance between exploring possibilities and connecting to the history of the movement. Read more...

Nexus Provides a Space to Explore the Possibilities says Steve Cady

Interview with Emily Axelrod and Steve Cady on Past, Present and Future of Nexus

I spoke with Steven Cady and Emily Axelrod, two of the originators and organizers about where Nexus stands in its second year. “Nexus is the place where all comes together,” says Emily. If Nexus can provide such a space of possibilities, we can actually serve the planet, adds Steve.

Listen to the full interview.

Still at Nexus: Peter Block on Communal Transformation

Peter Block, author of books like Flawless Consulting and The Answer to How is Yesgives us an entertaining afternoon, speaking on community transformation.

Peter about elements of convening

• Leadership is about convening capacity
• Subsitute curiosity for advice
• There are no answeres. Everybody who offers you an answer wants to sell you something
• Transformation is based on a platform of relatedness
• Ask groups not to report their findings but what strucks them

Peter about stories

• Some stories are more powerful
• "Even the past is unpredictable"
• "I was born and I made the rest of it up" - it is all a social construction

"Those large change efforts that were successful and sustainable started slow, small and underfunded. So when you want to be successful as a change manager, as for lots of time, a small project and only some bread crumbs of money."

"I desparately look for clients who don't need me. That's were I learn a lot."

On Your Own System

The gap between you and another is exactly the gap between you and you.

Myron Rogers at Nexus II

Day 3 in Nexus - Deeper Patterns

Third and last day at Nexus. We are listening to a series of conversations about systems. The panel consists of people who have been involved very early in the development and dissemination large scale interventions.

from left: Barbara Bunker, Jean Bartunek, Sandra Janoff,
Myron Rogers, Dick Axelrod, Peggy Holman

Read more...

Day 2 in Nexus - Working with Systems

After a short warming up, we are listening to a panel discussion of four folks talking about sustaining change.

Pamela Thialt talks about a story from Frazer Health Authority in British Columbia, Canada, servicing 1.4 million people. They used large scale methodolgies to engage stakeholders across different levels. Among other interventions, they designed a 2 days visioning conference abotu day, evening and night care, and another 2 days visionig conference to create a strategic design for the deliverey of services to patients with Acquired Brain Injury. The latest intervention is the collaborative design of a new hospital, through series of conferences including design, transition and implementation. What is important for Pamela is they have succeeded to engage people in multi-stakeholder dialogues. Read more...

Day 1 in Nexus II

Day 1 in Bowling Green started with an evening facilitation of Sandra Janoff, the co-developer of Future Search conferences. Sandra ket the group of 80 people into a timeline on development of the OD and Change Management field. Within 2 hours, the group developed a - maybe not complete - but comprehensive summary of the major events and developments of our 40 years history.

I've got everything on video tape. Bear with with me, I am processing the material...

Nexus for Change II in Bowling Green Has Started!

While I wasn't able to attend the first Nexus for Change conference in 2007, I am now in Bowling Green, Ohio at Nexus II and will report live from this exceptional event.

From the invitation:

People around the world are making a difference where they live and work through change methods that tap into everyone’s intelligence. The purpose of NEXUS is to share what we know about whole systems and participative change and what were are learning so that each of us and all of us are more competent to
act in these times.

My Story into a Conference (5): Charles Leadbeater's We Think

On my treasure hunt I came across the work of Charles Leadbeater, a leading management thinker. He is has just published a book with the title "We Think". Read more...

My Story into a Conference (4): Revisting 2007

Today, I am research trends that emerged in 2007 with regards to Web 2.0 . While the term itself was coined in 2004 by Tim O'Reilly and O'Reilly Media, the concept took off in 2006 and 2007, thanks to the publication of books like Wikinomics, The Long Tail, The Google Story, etc, and thanks to a global marketing campaign by O'Reilly Media. While the early adopters, and those on which the Web 2.0 already emerged in the late ninties, the real story began with the explosion of the new market of collaborative platforms such as MySpace, YouTube, Flickr, Xing, LinkedIn, etc.. This was further fueled by the availability of software that allowed mashups such as Google Maps and other social collaboration tools such as tags, wikis, blogs. Read more...

My Story Into A Conference (3): What Did You Think About the Internet in 1995?

Searching for material, I found a historic article on how perceptions about technological change can be invalidated in a short while. On Feb. 27, Clifford Stoll, a known astro-physicist and computer network administrator, wrote in NEWSWEEK ("The Internet? Bah! HYPE ALERT: WHY CYBERSPACE ISN'T, AND WILL NEVER BE, NIRVANA"):

After two decades online, I'm perplexed. It's not that I haven't had a gas of a good time on the Internet. I've met great people and even caught a hacker or two. But today, I'm uneasy about this most trendy and oversold community. Visionaries see a future of telecommuting workers, interactive libraries and multimedia classrooms. They speak of electronic town meetings and virtual communities. Commerce and business will shift from offices and malls to networks and modems. And the freedom of digital networks will make government more democratic.

Read more...

My Story Into A Conference (2): A Short Introduction Into Web 2.0

I am really excited about the MindMeister. What I like in particular is that an embedded widget of a mind map (like in my blog post of yesterday) automatically shows the latest version of the mind map - so you can go back to that widget and follow up what how the concept of my conference input is developing.

Next step: think about what actually is Web 2.0? What is the main idea of Web 2.0? How does it differ from Web 1.0 (which was never called that way)? Read more...