Is your current way of handling change working for you?

Last week, I challenged you to take three straightforward actions. The first was to reflect on how well your current change methodology is working for you. Are you getting the commitment across the organisation or system you need, or is it all moving very slowly from one tedious roadblock to another?

A number of you took some of the actions seriously and have registered for both the webinar (which is THIS WEEK) and booked tickets for the learning event itself.  The number of available tickets is reducing rapidly, so don’t delay further if you want to come along.

If you are reading this after registration has closed for the webinar and you would still like to receive the recording, email leaders@tricordant.com, and we will send it to you.

Your reflections 

You reflected and believe your current change methods work fine—that is fantastic. We wish you all the very best of success; keep going strong. However, if you concluded that we believe many of you will, you think something is lacking and you need to do change better.  There are many change methodologies and techniques, and we are familiar with and use many of them.  Most, however, are not directly suited to change across complex organisations or systems.

The thing with complexity is that it’s not about taking ‘here is one I did earlier (aka best practice)’ and thinking that it will work in your situation.  It probably won’t because complex situations tend to have uniqueness, which is part of creating the complexity.  Dealing with complexity is about the novel, the need for probing questions and experimentation and responding using insights from sense-making. This is not standard everyday change management. 

Whole Scale Change methodology comes into its own in this area of complexity, making sense and gaining unity and commitment from stakeholders at all levels across the system.

More on what Whole Scale Change actually is 

Whole-scale processes consist of a series of events, typically alternating between small and large group interactions, that enable the organisation to undergo the necessary paradigm shift. The whole process is an action learning approach that uses Whole-Scale events as accelerators and works with microcosms of the organisation or system.

The core principle is that if you want to shift the whole system at one time, you must be able to think the way the whole system thinks.  Using microcosms – real subsets of the larger group that represent all the ‘voices’ of the organisation – in the overall change process is one of the features of the Whole Scale approach that allows leaders – and the organisation – to think and see the ‘whole system’.  The microcosm contains the essential DNA of the whole organisation.

The best way to change a system is to engage the whole system. 

And that is exactly what whole scale change methodology is all about – engaging the whole system to change the whole system at one time.