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?

Change Model 1: The 4D Model (Appreciative Inquiry)

Background:

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

Alana Karran writes about the difference between problem and outcome orientation approaches:

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

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

Creators of the Model:
Suresh Srivastva, Ron Fry, and David Cooperrider, 1990

Phases of the Change Process: (taken from new-paradigm.co.uk)
Discover—people talk to one another, often via structured interviews, to discover the times when the organisation is at its best. These stories are told as richly as possible.

Dream—the dream phase is often run as a large group conference where people are encouraged to envision the organisation as if the peak moments discovered in the ‘discover’ phase were the norm rather than exceptional.

Design—a small team is empowered to go away and design ways of creating the organisation dreamed in the conference(s).

Destiny—the final phase is to implement the changes.




Does the Model Relate to Complexity Theory?

AI and the 4D-Model are deeply rooted in complexity theory. The underlying principle of simultaneity (change of mind and change of organizations happen at the same time) and the principle of poetry (the story of organizations can be recreated in conversations) relate to a basic systemic process: organizations can not be described as the sum of its parts but only as a whole.

Applicability:

The model has been applied to many different kind of organizations, from the profit (e.g., British Airways) and non-profit (United Nations) sectors. It is suitable for a wide range of transformation processes, including quality management, vision/mission/value creation, improvement of collaboration, etc.

Strengths:

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

Weaknesses:

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

More resources:




Website of Appreciative Inquiry Commons
Case Study: AI at World Vision
Timeline of Appreciative Inquiry

Related articles by Zemanta

• Appreciative Inquiry - Tools and Methods (LearnThis.ca)

Photo of David Cooperrider: Ovationnet

PLEASE DISCUSS THE MODELS: WHAT ARE YOUR EXPERIENCES?

Change Models: A Systems Perspective

Like other people who collect stamps, I collect change models. I find it interesting and fascinating how much energy and passion people put in the development of a conclusive generalization in what happens during a process of complex organizational or political change. And most of the models make a lot of sense - in certain contexts, organizational cultures or applied to a specific issue that the organization needs to address. However, I haven't found a model yet (and I believe I will never find it) that is applicable to all different situations on the ground. Or, maybe better: although many models might be applied to all kinds of contexts, the result of this application in terms of an improved organization or political process is not always satisfactory to
either the client or the people who are impacted by the change process. I can't believe that some consultants still have only "their" model in their briefcases.

Let us first have a closer look at why no change model can be a panacea and then have a look at different change models and evaluate them in terms of popularity and applicability. There is no finally proven scientific concept of change - as their is no universally valid sociological model that explains human groups or societies - because change happens in complex social systems. The behavior of highly complex social systems can be described and modelled but not exactly predicted and it looks like that it will never be possible to do so. All change models that do not take into account the enormous complexity and final unpredictability of human systems might help to understand certain aspects of how a system reacts to a change driver but it will evidently fall short to produce repeatable explanations that are valid and accepted for all different stakeholders. Present the same model to 10 different people in an organization and you will hear 10 different interpretations of it. You might say now - if a change model fails which does not take into account complexity theory, can't we then find a universally valid change model that respects the laws of complexity theory?

Well, there are indeed a variety of complexity theory based change models. Problem is that complexity theory is a very young discipline which developed over the last 30 years, originally based on the mathematical description of theoretical or artifiically created systems. Since then, complexity science (vulgo: Chaos Theory) has been expanded but those theorems that have been proven experimentally are not that specific enough to explain every aspect of a a system's behavior. (John Smart says: "Most prediction is a predictable failure."). Let us look at what seems to be the scientifically agreed fundament of systems theory. These theorems are not taken from a text book but I wrote them up. So, as I am not a complexity scientist, please tear me apart if you can:

1. Complex systems consist of different, interconnected and interdependent parts.
2. Complex systems show non-linear behavior.
3. Complex systems are not stable; if they look stable, they are in a state of equilibrium.
4. Emergent phenomena are a common feature of complex systems not because they are magic but because we lack the computational power to exactly predict the behavior of the system.
5. Social systems are complex per definitionem.
6. You need a specific model for each kind of system to compute/predict its behavior. The more complex the system the more we depend on empiric findings to establish a specific model. Any prediction can only be an approximation.

Because of theorem No. 6, no model for organizational or political change can be universally applicable to more than a limited set of change processes. Practice will show its validity.

In the next weeks, I will publish a series of blog posts that describe different change models, their background, theoretical foundation, applicability, field validation.

The Change Journey Continues

For the last days I had the pleasure to work together with my friend and colleague Vesa Purokuru from HUMAP Ltd. and with Antti Huntus on our joint project THE CHANGE JOURNEY. The Change Journey is an innovative concept on how to live the change in turbulent times.

We weren't alone. As we are co-authoring our book on a wiki, we invited outsiders to join us for 48 hours in our writing. And 20 people from around the globe did. Here is a first idea of the phases of THE CHANGE JOURNEY:



* Getting prepared for the journey
* Depart for the journey
* Living in constant change
* Creating skills for working in constant change

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

More to come soon.

It fits well that this morning I found an interesting blog post fro Bill Taylor at Harvard Business:

The 10 Questions Every Change Agent Must Answer. These are the questions.

Please read the full article to get more information:

1. Do you see opportunities the competition doesn't see?
2. Do you have new ideas about where to look for new ideas?
3. Are you the most of anything?
4. If your company went out of business tomorrow, who would miss you and why?
5. Have you figured out how your organization's history can help to shape its future?
6. Can your customers live without you?
7. Do you treat different customers differently?
8. Are you getting the best contributions from the most people?
9. Are you consistent in your commitment to change?
10. Are you learning as fast as the world is changing?