1. The document discusses leading change in complex environments and creating shifts in mental models to focus on citizens, gifts, and possibility.
2. It provides strategies for gaining cultural support for change including addressing values, arousing need, and overcoming objections.
3. Successful efforts create a sense of urgency, empower stakeholders, produce short-term results, and anchor new behaviors in culture.
Being a Catalyst for Community-Based Collaboration
1.
2. The Compassion of Hospitality
The Presence of Association
The Giving of Gifts
3. Why is it so
difficult to
build
collaborations
and lead
change in
complex
environments?
4.
5.
6. Through our mental models, in
other words, we use our past to
make sense of our present in an
effort to predict and control the
future…..
7. ◦ Bounded Rationality:
The Penchant to find Best-Fit vs. Optimal
Solution
◦ Sense-Making:
The maps we construct to make sense
◦ Social Construction:
Collective effort to reduce to level of
manageable understanding
9. Creating a shift in our mental models:
◦ To People are unfinished works of
progress, not problems to be fixed
◦ To a belief in the social fabric
◦ To associational life as central
◦ To a focus on citizens
◦ To a focus on Gifts and Possibility
10.
11. Think about when you’re at your best, what
are the unique skills and knowledge you
have?
What is the gift you’re here to bring in to the
world? (Clue: It surprises you when others
tell you about it).
13. Take Stock of the Situation
Force Field Analysis:
Forces for Maintaining
Forces for Change The Status Quo
Transitional Period
Desired
Present
Situation
Situation
(goal)
Strategies to
achieve change Resistance
Time
14. Cultural Change for a
Community-based Collaboration
The culture of the group can be defined as:
A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the
group has learned as it solved problems of
external adaptation and internal integration, that
has worked well enough to be considered valid
and, therefore, to be taught to new members as
the correct way to perceive, and feel in relation to
those problems.
Organization Culture and Leadership, Edgar H. Schein, 1992
15. Gaining Support for Creating a Community
Collaborative: The Underlying Change Process
Address stakeholders’ cultural support for change
(values, attitudes, beliefs, norms)
Arouse attention, need, support for change (induce
anxiety)
Develop desire for change (acknowledge benefits,
negatives)
Use group members / composition of group to elicit
support
Use informal community network (constructive
gossip)
Overcome objections to change
Resolve problems and difficulties as they arise
16. In the most successful efforts, people move through
complicated stages in which they:
Create a sense of urgency and call to action
Put together a strong enough team to direct the
process
Create an appropriate vision
Communicate that new vision broadly
Empower stakeholders to act on the vision
Produce sufficient short-term results to give their
efforts credibility and to disempower the cynics
Build momentum and use that momentum to tackle
the tougher change problems
Anchor the new behavior in the collaborative’s culture
17. Planning for Collaborative:
Have a well-defined goal that is clearly understood and
communicated
Pay attention to its impact on stakeholders at all levels,
Develop an integrated process and content change plan
Recognize how much and what type of training is required
Recognize that there may be additional workload during
the transition, and new responsibilities after
implementation
Determine the impact on resources, financial and
otherwise
Avoid underestimating the impact of your plan
18. People need: Purpose, Picture, Plan, and Part
Provide a clear vision and objectives that enable
responsiveness at the local level
Focus on disadvantages of the present situation
(if applicable)
Provide a plan with milestones
Be consistent in messages, actions, and rewards
for desired behaviors
Celebrate success
19. Understand the underlying issues
Build understanding, before seeking
commitment
Confront the reality: It Is What It Is!
What’s the information/ data that supports
your call to action?
Establish the “cost” of not changing!
20. Define “Dialogues/Conversations” as the
Plans of Action
Initiate and convene conversations that shift
people’s experience, which occurs through
the way people are brought together and the
nature of the questions/conversations that
engage them.
The Conversations will build The Plan
21.
22. What can this group create
together, that you cannot
create alone?
23. What are the possibilities that exist for you
and your agency by your being here?
What declaration of Possibility can you make
that has the power of to transform and
inspire you?
I am the possibility of _________________!
25. How valuable do we believe this approach to
be?
How much risk are we willing to take?
How participative do you plan to be?
To what extent are you invested in the well-
being of the whole?
What is the story we plan to create?
What is the payoff for creating this new story?
What is the attachment to creating this new
future?
Adapted from Block, 2008
26. What promises am I willing to make?
What measures have meaning for me?
What price am I willing to pay?
What is the cost to others for keeping or
failing my commitments?
What is the risk that is a major shift for me?
What is the promise I’m postponing?
27. Whatis your commitment in
being here, what is it you
will commit to while you’re
here?
28. What kind of sense are we making together?
What are we coming to talk about as we
converse?
How are we shifting our understanding of
what we are engaged in?
What kind of enterprise are we shaping?
29. What haven’t you discussed that if it were to
happen would be a game changer?
What probabilities occur around this?
What is the capacity for flexibility and
adaptability for emergent phenomenon?
What is/are the commitments people are
willing to act upon?
30. Change Management activities of respondents with
very good or excellent results
Educated others on the need for change and
how the new project will operate
Built executive/ political support and
sponsorship by giving presentations/holding
conversations and encouraging involvement
Developed and implemented a communication
plan to create awareness and commitment to
the new narrative/project
Performed pilot tests and simulations
31. Change Management Activities of Respondents With
Very Good or Excellent Results
Involved others and end users in project
planning and design
Reviewed the process periodically and
reinforced use of the new process
Implemented a formal change process
Clearly defined the process and process
boundaries
Addressed resistance to change
Communicated and Held
Ongoing Conversations!
32. The future is not a result of choices
among alternative paths offered
by the present, but a place that is
created--created first in the mind
and will, created next in activity.
The future is not some place we
are going to, but one we are
creating.”
unknown
33. Bridge the best of “what is” and “what might be”
Challenge the “status quo”
It should be desirable
State it in affirmative and bold terms
Fit within the architecture of possibility
Participative process
Balance the management of continuity, novelty and
transition
34. There are only two ways to live
your life. One is though
nothing is a miracle. The other
is as though everything is a
miracle.
Albert Einstein
35. What’s the next step
you need to take
that will empower
you to achieve your
collective dream?
36. 1. Create and ensure a shared vision and
philosophy which encompasses the
collective dreams, goals, and
expectations.
2. Create, ensure and maintain a
commitment to the “best” of what is
possible.
37. 3. Create and implement a comprehensive
strategy to achieve the collective dream,
incorporating accountability for all.
4. Continue to pursue self-reflection and
growth developing insights and the
requisite attitudes to achieve the
envisioned collective dream.
38. Do you see opportunity; a
future of possibilities?
Do you see a mystery?
Doyou see adventure in the
journey ahead?
39. Ah, but one’s reach should
exceed one’s grasp,
Or what’s a heaven for?
Robert Browning
40. Know your own mission and part in
achieving the dream
Make more informed decisions, go after the
information you need…don’t make your
knowing based on waiting for someone else
to get around to telling you
Prepare and act to make a difference every
day
Achieve your own highest level of
effectiveness and performance
41. Get others involved in a conversation to start
doing what is necessary to achieve the dream
Build toward long-term improvement, even
while doing short-term work
Lead your own individual and the
organization’s change; don’t wait for
someone else to do it
Communicate powerfully, especially your
commitment to the journey and the dream
42. Make the transition in to new ways of doing
your role
Get the most out of your own personal
commitment to growth
Always remember why you started this
collaborative and cue yourself each day
Know that ingenuity, plus courage, plus
work equals miracles!
43. Act as though everything you do
makes a difference….
If you worry that one person
cannot make that big a
difference, remember what
Margaret Mead said,
“It is surely the only thing
that ever has!”
44. Support a cause, don’t just do your job.
Trumpet an exhilarating story.
Be a generator of enthusiasm.
Embrace and promote optimism.
When you say, “I Will”, with conviction,
magic begins to happen.
Willy Amos
45. “Some people look at things the
way they are, and ask Why?
I dream of things that never
were, and ask,
“Why Not?”
Robert Kennedy
46. So, I would offer this:
Keep you feet on the ground…
And, keep reaching for the stars!
In complex organizations and environment we recognize that Interactive non-linear processes and relationships are difficult to define and defy meta-narrative understanding, since each of us potentially sees something different when we see organization(Mangiofico, 2003 based on adaptations of Clegg & Hardy, 1996)Thus, Sense making helps us to understand this…We are challenged then to reconcile meaning of what it is we’re addressing…ergo, what we are speaking of today is a difference in metaphors of how we frame our perception of organization and what that implies in terms of what we pay attention to as OD professionals and the possibilities we facilitate organizations being able to see.The future is recognizable when it arrives, but not predictable before it does. However, this paradoxical nature of organizational life is unacceptable to business that perceives it should be able to resolve any paradox in its efforts to find solutions for business planning. Systems theory tools, e.g. SWOT, environmental scanning, and so forth presume a predictability that complexity theory would challenge is possible in a context of complex dynamics. How do we reconcile divergent views?
And, this is our dominant business model…it’s based on the Systems Theory Model. And it works in slow environments, manufacturing environments, but begins to breakdown the more complex our environment or value proposition and the more complex the potential influences are….
Possible Layers of the issue:Top Layer: The presenting issue.Middle Layer: Other’s (beside the client) contributions to the problem/ issue.Ask: How others are contributing to the problem/ issue.Core Layer: The client’s contributions to the problem/ issue.Ask: How he/she is contributing to the problem/ issue.Resist the urge for complete data at this point;Avoid seeing this as the intervention.
Six Principles of Affirmative ChangeConstructionist Principle: The way we know is fateful.Principle of Simultaneity: Change begins at the moment you ask the question.Poetic Principle: Organizations are an open book.Anticipatory Principle: Deep change = change in active images of the future.Positive Principle: The more positive the question, the greater and longer-lasting the change.Principle of Wholeness: The whole system can have a voice in the future.