Nexus for Change - One Conference in a Million

There are few events where one has to be. These rare occasions happen maybe once in 10 years. The first European Appreciative Inquiry training 1999 in Riccione, Italy, was such an event, at least for Europeans. Now, Steve Cady, with the help of Tom Devane and Peggy Holman about whom I have blogged already twice, has organized a conference that will bring together the majority of those folks who had a deep impact on facilitation of change. The attendance list of the Nexus for Change Conference (March 22 & 23, 2007 Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio) reads like a Who's Who of collaborative methods for change.

Among the more than 100 participants will be Emily & Dick Axelrod, Juanita Brown & David Isaacs (The World Café), Sandra Janoff & Marvin Weisbord (Future Search), Harrison Owen (Open Space Technology), Diana Whitney (Appreciative Inquiry), and many many more...

The focus will be on leveraging the power of over 60 approaches being used to transform whole organizations and communities as they tackle 21st Century Challenges. These approaches are broadly referred to as large-group methods/interventions, whole system change, or large-scale change. What make them unique are two foundation assumptions: high involvement and a systemic approach to improvement.

The Change Management Blog will report daily about this unprecedented event. Be there!
www.nexusforchange.org

Changing the Telecom Industry

It became evident when in 2005 Skype was acquired by Ebay for $ 2.6 billion that this company will shake the telecom market. Their newest relase shows the direction: Skype version 3.0.0.217 for Windows has an increadible new feature: it recognizes telephone numbers in any give website. If the country code is not give on the website, Skype "guesses" and suggests the country. With your Skype Out credit, you can call them directly with a click.

It is easy to forecast that the next step will be that many organizations will establish Skype accounts and add their Skype alias to their website so that the vision of the Skype founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis - nobody will pay for telephone communication in the future - is getting closer.

Further, they have introduced a new service, Skype Pro, which allows users in some countries to make all calls to national landlines for a flat fee of about $ 2.50 a month. Please go ahead, Mr. Zennström.

PS on March 4, 2007: I am experiencing problems with the Skype 3.x versions on my notebook. The incoming sound is significantly distorted and shreddered into pieces. Anybody who experiences the same problems will probably ask themselves what to do. I did not have an older version of Skype on my machine. Fortunately, there is a very convenient website that provides old versions of common software: http://www.oldversion.com/. Here you can get a 2.x version of Skpye, which solved my problem. I am waiting until Skype reports a fix before I reinstall version 3.x.

Kevin Kelly Revisited

For me and many other new economy maniacs, Kevin Kelly was the Guru of the nineties. He was the founder of the cult magazin WIRED (which is still an important source of inspiration for my future scenarios), and the first to write a popular book about how complexity theory will influence our daily life, 8 year before Michael Crichton published the first nanotechnology fiction book (M. Crichton, 2002: PREY). Out of Control, Kelly's first book, published in 1994 was a sometimes dark, sometimes optimistic scenario of the fundamental impact technology will continue to have on our societies, and for me as important as Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics. More...

Change Facilitation a New Practice?

Some will say that change management or change facilitation that many of us will prefer to call it, is a relatively new practice. It is not. Jethro, a biblical figure lived some 3.500 years ago and has sometimes been called the first international management consultant. His experience of change facilitation that is recorded in the Bible book of Exodus chapter 18 is probably the one of the first written sources of change facilitation that we can find and to me it is challenging to see how we still are struggling with many of the same problems that they faced back then. More...

Conspiracy Theory (1)

In our German listserv on Open Space, there is currently an angry discussion on conspiracy theory and chain emails going on. This was started because one member of the group posted a typical conspiracy letter and asked the rest of the group to forward it. Many people (initially including myself) reacted strongly to this misappropriation.

However, I had a second thought. Wouldn't it be interesting to analyze conspiracy theory from a systemic viewpoint? If, as Appreciative Inquiry and other solution focused methods suggest, all change starts in the heads of people, and organizations are as good as the perception people have of them - then, conspiracy theory must be the flip side of the coin. The more people believe in such a theory, the more it will become reality. Paul Watzlawick has written about that long ago, when he reported about a perceived increased incidence of scratches in windscreens of cars in Seattle, which was attributed to either a Russian atomic fallout or a new chemical used to pave the highways in the State of Washington. When the US Government sent an investigation team, they found out that there was no increased incidence of scratches in windscreenes of cars.

I will post more about this topic in the weeks to come. So far, I have to share two great websites with you.

The first is, like always, Wikipedia, with a lot of good articles. I like the list of alleged conspiracy theories a lot.

The other one, you must visit (!) is a site where you can create your own conspiracy theory. Just enter a few key words, press the Conspiracy button, and you have great fun.

A short portrait of Chaiwat Thirapantu

I met Chaiwat on different occasions. One was the famous first European Appreciative Inquiry training of David Cooperrider and Diane Whitney, 1999 in Riccione, Italy. Then at the Society of Organizational Learnng International Conference 2005 in Vienna. We sat together, when the entire group of 400 went to the Heurigen (a typical Austrian trinking and eating event), and we talked about old and new times. Chaiwat told me that he was about to facilitate a mega event back in his home country Thailand. More...

Change Toolbook features Change Handbook

I had blogged about Peggy Holman's Change Handbook some days before. We have now the pleasure to announce that the 61 methods described by Peggy and her co-authors are now also featured in the Change Management Toolbook, so the number of tools and methodologies that are described on our website has doubled from on day to another. We hope that this will increase the visibility of this unique publication.

Please check back, I promise that the Change Management Toolbook will have one exciting new feature per month.

Fritjof Capra at the 2006 ISSS conference

The International Society for the Systems Sciences (ISSS) is among the first and oldest organizations devoted to interdisciplinary inquiry into the nature of complex systems, and remains perhaps the most broadly inclusive. The Society was initially conceived in 1954 at the Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, Kenneth Boulding, Ralph Gerard, and Anatol Rapoport. In collaboration with James Grier Miller, it was formally established as an affiliate of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1956. Originally founded as the Society for General Systems Research, the society adopted its current name in 1988 to reflect its broadening scope. taken from: ISSS

More...

Otto Scharmer: Journaling Exercise

I have been following the work of Otto Schamer since the book Presence was published 2 years ago. "Presence" was an instant hit within the change management community because it goes against all collective wisdom of the Western way of approaching change in individuals and organizations. Well, for the Eastern thinkers Otto's concept might not be that alient - the principles have been in the field of collective Eastern wisdom for some thousands of years. No wonder that already in 2005, I met a group of Taiwanese consultants who work with this concept in large Change Management projects. More...

Visual Complexity

Image 1 (top right): Genome Diagram. Leighton Pritchard, Jennifer White. Scottish Crop Research Institute - Plant Bioinformatics group, 2004

The development of new projects on the Web is breathtaking. Today, I found a wonderful website called "Visual Complexity".

VisualComplexity.com intends to be a unified resource space for anyone interested in the visualization of complex networks. The project's main goal is to leverage a critical understanding of different visualization methods, across a series of disciplines, as diverse as Biology, Social Networks or the World Wide Web. I truly hope this space can inspire, motivate and enlighten any person doing research on this field.

Many of the currently more than 400 images that can be found on this website are of breathtaking beauty. They are taken from different fields such as Biology, Arts, Cybernetics, Social Networks, etc. This is a great opportunity to explore complexity in a non-intellectual, right brain, analogue way. We want more!











Image 2 (bottom left): Blogosphere. Image by Matthew Hurst, 2006

The Guerrilla Consultant

Since I have my own blog, I became more interested in other blogs. One I like a lot (although it is only loosely connected to Change Management) is Guerrilla Consulting®. I like in particularly the series “25 tips to become a good consultant”. Have a closer look if you want to improve your marketing:

These are the 16 tips Mike McLaughlin has offered so far (RFP = Request for Proposal):

Tip #16 of 25 - Be Accessible
Tip #15 of 25 – Resisting the RFP
Tip #14 of 25 - Be Accessible between Projects
Tip #13 of 25 – Enter with an Exit Strategy
Tip #12 of 25 - Solve the Right Problem
Tip #11 of 25 – Win—Don’t Just Answer—Every RFP Question
Tip # 10 of 25 - The Secret to Consulting Success
Tip #9 of 25 - Mediocrity is the Kiss of Death
Tip #8 of 25 - Get Paid What You're Worth
Tip # 7 of 25 - The Consultant Is a Buyer Too
Tip #6 of 25 - Think Guarantees
Tip #5 of 25 - Write Case Studies That Sell
Tip #4 of 25 - Clients buy, they're not sold

An example - I like this one a lot:
Tip #3 of 25 - Share Your Stuff
Some consultants resist sharing their ideas and the products of those ideas (AKA intellectual capital) with clients before they're hired to do a project. They fear that clients will take their work and try to complete the project on their own, or worse, give it to another consultant.

The world is awash in information and ideas. If you're stingy with yours, it will show. Besides, client aren't buying your methodology, tools, or your point of view. They're buying your expertise, and that can't be pilfered by poring over proposed workplans, preliminary recommendations, or your perspectives on how to solve a problem.

It's true that clients have been known to hijack work product consultants develop during the sales process so they can try to complete the project without consultants. But that's the exception, not the rule.

Be generous with your knowledge, not foolish. Qualify every opportunity before bringing forward your best ideas. But don't hesitate once you believe you've got a serious opportunity.

Consulting is an ideas business. Keeping your best ones locked in your head, brief case, or computer will leave a door open for your competitors to walk through.

Tip #2 of 25 - Keep Proposals Short
Tip #1 of 25 - Send a Lumpy Package

Tools versus Attitudes

In a coaching session with one of my trainees, I was reflecting on the old discussion of tools versus attitudes in consulting. Regularly, I get this very strange experience. Books like Peggy Holman's Change Handbook or websites like the Change Management Toolbook are very successful and everybody likes them. But most consultants would say: it is not the tools that count but the attitude with which you approach a change process. This is true. Think of "Only fools worship their tools" - or "If the only thing you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail (Abraham Maslov)". However, I have not met a single consultant or facilitator who said of herself: "I just focus on the tool, and I don't care of the process". Even among the specialists who just use one method, let's say Open Space Technology or Six Sigma etc., I have never met one who said that "her tool" was the solution of all problems of the world.

Yes, attitude, client focus, flexibility, openness, etc. are essentials for a change facilitator. It is just difficult to teach them, at least when you just see your trainees for a couple days in their long life. Probably a long apprenticeship and a good mentor help are more appropriate. But there is hope. I believe that clients have a good sense for whether the consultants they meet want to sell their tools or whether they are genuinely interested in the client's needs. So, probably there is a good selection towards the solution and process oriented personalities of us and I believe that those consultants are more succesful that really help the client to getting things done. On the other side, we all need and love tools - that is why we spend a lot of money in training courses to learn new methods ourselves. Sometimes, when I have to fix a screw and I just have knife - I am dying for a screw driver.

I believe there is no either/or. A Change Facilitator needs the write attitude, alot of soft skills, personality, and sometimes technical knowledge of the sector, depending on the type of assignment. She needs tools, too.

What do you think of the tool vs. attitude discussion? Please leave yor comment by clicking on the "comment" function below, and I will publish them in one of the next blogs.

The Change Handbook - A Book We All Must Have

We have been waiting for that book for a long time. Peggy Holman's Change Handbook is now available in its second edition. Since its first edition in 1999, it has increased in volume and in significance. Peggy and her co-authors describe 61 collaborative methods that can be applied for working with large groups in private corporations, the public sector and for the development of democratic institutions. The book provides more than a thesaurus and an encyclopedia of change - it contains probably more than 90% of the current world knowledge on whole systems change applications. Beside the well-known methods and frameworks such as Open Space Technology, Appreciative Inquiry, etc. there are a lot of new methods that I have never heard of. Unfortunately, there is no article on Worldwork and the Process Oriented Psychology Framework. Next Edition, please?

The Change Handbook is very well organized, methods are categorized and there are good hints for when to apply the different methodologies. It is a must for Change Practitioners. If you are keen on The Standard Reference, you need to buy The Change Handbook.

Order The Change Handbook now at:

Open Space: New Stories from the Field

The discovery of Open Space Technology by Harrison Owen in the eighties has been one of the greatest gifts to the communities of Change Practitioners. Never again since has a tool so much excited - but also sometimes divided - people who care about change in organizations and communities, maybe except The World Café. Open Space Technology is the most elegant but also the most radical approach to self-organization of groups. It might not apply everywhere as some of the opinion leaders (for which I have greatest respect) sometimes seem to suggest. It might not always be the right indication for an organization issue to be addressed. But I am pretty sure that the full potential of Open Space Technology for transformation of organizations and societies yet will unfold. More...

A short portrait of Chris Spies

The dilemma with change is that everyone likes to talk about it, but very few have insight into their own willingness to change, let alone their ability to influence change. Those who see the need for change often want others to change first. That applies to adversaries and onlookers, but also to analysts and practitioners. Why is this the case? (Chris Spies)

Chris Spies is a specialist in the field of conflict transformation, development and community building processes. He worked as pastor in a depressed rural community in South Africa in the 1980s. As the Regional Organiser of the Western Cape National Peace Accord Structures and later as Senior Trainer and Researcher at the Cape Town based Centre for Conflict Resolution he was deeply involved in peacebuilding in South Africa in the 1990s. In addition to his work in South Africa he has gained extensive experience and a proven track record over many years in various countries such as Kenya, Somalia, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Namibia and Norway while working independently as a consultant. Elements of his life and work are described by Susan Collin Marks in her book Watching the Wind: Conflict Resolution During South Africa’s Transition to Democracy (USIP, Washington, 2000). Chris recently worked as Peace and Development Advisor for the Guyana Social Cohesion Programme based at the UNDP in Guyana and has now returned to South Africa.

The citation from Chris is the opening statement in a text that Chris has just published. He provides a great summary of important Change Management principles, including a developmental model for change processes and a model of Manfred Max-Neef on human needs that helps to understand resistance to change.
Resolutionary Change: The Art of Awakening Dormant Faculties in Others

CHAORDIC CHANGE REQUIRES CHAORDIC LEADERSHIP

Original Article by Dee Hock
Adaptation by Gilbert Brenson-Lazan

Dee Hock is founder and coordinating director of the Chaordic Alliance. He is also founder and CEO emeritus of both Visa USA and Visa International, now a $1.25 trillion enterprise jointly owned by more than 20,000 financial institutions. He is a laureate in the Business Hall of Fame. This article appears as part of "The Art of Chaordic Leadership". More...

Emerging Technologies

One of the change drivers that keeps fascinating me a lot are emerging technologies. It goes without saying that there has not been such a strong change driver as the WWW for ages. The way we are working, communicating, organizing, making contact, learning, etc. is fundamentally different than only 10 years ago. When did you start to work on the Internet? For me, it was 1995, and in 1997, I published the first version of the Change Management Toolbook. When did your organization recognize the need to adapt to the information age? What is different today, or better, what is not different compared to how your organization worked? Fascinating to see that some organizations can successfully resist the technological change - and I am not talking about the small shop keeper in a South Indian village. Recently, I saw a feature about the main criminal court in Berlin. They do not have an electronic filing system for the cases - all is still stored in an enourmous paper archive. More...

Change Drivers

If you want to analyze change in organizations, a good idea might be to look at the change drivers - and how people feel about it. That is one of the first things I do in organizations - I let people brainstorm about the change drivers which they think are important and let them rank them, discuss about them, express their fear about them etc. More...

Welcome to Change Management Blog

Change is a fact of life. On the positive side, change may be seen as akin to opportunity, rejuvenation, progress, innovation, and growth. But just as legitimately, change can also be seen as instability, upheaval, unpredictability, a threat, and disorientation.

The concept of change management describes a structured approach to transitions in individuals, teams, organizations and societies that moves the target from a current state to a desired state. Stated simply, change management is a process for managing the people-side of change. The most recent research points to a combination of organizational change management tools and individual change management models for effective change to take place.

Are you personally ready for change? Is your team in serious need of new ways to work together? How can your organization deal with a change project which lacks focus or direction? Do you want to know why change is inevitable but hard to achieve? Do you want to surf on the waves of change? This blog, together with Change Management Toolbook, will try to provide answers for all your questions.