Decision-makers. Executive teams. Champions. These groups are vital to making change work. However, if you don’t include the larger group, you miss out. Involving the entire employee team en masse provides you with a more diverse set of ideas and often-times a more realistic set of solutions. Furthermore, if you involve the big group in the big decisions, they will want to own it and run with it – and that’s a good thing.
Often, the decisions that most impact the larger employee group are made behind closed doors. When it comes time for roll-out, people resist – and then a lot of time and effort is dedicated to counter the resistance.
Engage the masses.
If properly facilitated, involving large groups in brainstorming, analyses, design, development, and evaluation doesn’t slow down the process; it speeds it up. When a critical mass of employees are involved, enough to create momentum -- they have an interest in seeing the projects succeed and a shared understanding of what it looks like. Also, by including them and using their valuable input, they feel they are in control and that their future is predictable, making them perform better.
How is this done?
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Identify the groups you want to include. Organization-wide? Departmental? Project-based? Regional? Functional? We’re talking scale here – you need enough people to generate momentum when you’re done.
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Once you have your target audience, determine how you will reach them. Meetings? Retreat? Workshop? They need to be together, face-to-face at once to make this really work.
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Create an agenda focused on concrete outcomes. Begin by making them smart – frame the issue, bring in external speakers, explain how you’re going to achieve the end goal. Then break the problem into elements the group will work together.
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Once an outcome has been agreed upon, open up the discussion again to fine-tune a workable, realistic, actionable solution. As people begin to see the formation of a tangible result, the psychological momentum will increase.
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Ensure every member of the group is clear on their next step. They need to leave the gathering ready to charge.
A few examples:
A major defense agency engaged us to introduce technology to all field offices. Rather than deploying a prescriptive change plan, we pulled the entire organization together in regional meetings, 200 at a time, to create plans for their own offices. As they completed the templates, they debated the issues, they answered their own questions and they created the momentum necessary to effectively deploy the new system. This mobilized the organization with a shared vision, concrete understanding of first steps, and support for the deployment strategy.
A large, multi-national corporation needed to restructure and spark momentum in a short timeframe. As opposed to bringing in one large group after another, we employed an iterative approach. We involved a core group of 30 who attended the working sessions. They then socialized the findings to key stakeholders and brought feedback to the next working session. During the session, we incorporated the feedback of the broader group and then repeated the process. Each session brought the group closer to a solution built and influenced by a large number of stakeholders. By the time we finished, we had the input and engagement of the whole organization.
Attached are a few pages from our new book, The Change Book, published February 2011 by ASTD Press. The first file describes the principles of large-scale engagement, and the second describes the organization design process used in our second example, above.
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Lessens resistance.
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Creates momentum.
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Reduces fear.
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Eliminates the spread of rumors.
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Boosts morale.
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Creates an inclusive environment.
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Increases a diversity of opinion.
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Results in solutions that work.
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Creates a forum which highlights those employees who want the project to succeed and those want to see it fail.
Do a pilot:
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Identify a small initiative with clear objectives.
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Involve the broadest affected group in the entire process.
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Make sure to:
- Communicate effectively before during and after.
- Facilitate in a way that creates deliverables real-time so when people walk out of the room or exist the session, they see what an accomplishment.
- Devise a way to get feedback from the majority by having participants gather feedback from the larger organization, then conduct another session to respond to key themes.
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Involve the group to evaluate what worked and what did not.
I like the emphasis on inclusion, as well as the reminders to start small and to beware of potential challenges and stumbling blocks. This ideal is sound and strong. An idea from the masses might be the most honest and insightful component of any plan. The challenge is to remain efficient while maintaining an open forum. Very helpful.
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Great blog Tricia! I am a big believer in large scale design work and really love the way you presented your approach in a straightforward and pragmatic manner. In today's complex business environment your emphasis on 'inclusion' is more and more important as I believe that well-led organizations will be defined by their ability remain productive and creative while facing increasing ambiguity and effectively synthesizing multiple perspectives.
I am looking forward to reading your book!
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Trish, Glad to see you hacking in. Dick Axelrod would be happy about this particular post. The bigger problem for me is when we get to questions of larger scale operations - say, 1K plus employees. How do you "broaden the circle of involvement," particularly given the new social networking tools now available to employers (both proprietary as well as free resources out there).
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Hey Aaron,
Great to hear from you. All of my experience using this has been with organization exceeding 60K ee's, and has worked equally well in public and private sectors. Virtual tools are an amazing enabler, but few interventions beat face-to-face. My preference, whenever possible, is to start with a flesh & blood meeting to establish trust, then undergird it with the virtual tools. The face-to-face should involve a critical core -- think "lever" -- whatever it takes to generate momentum. The virtual should be at the same time and at intermitten times following. It's all about momentum.
In one gov't organization that exceeded 25K ee's, we conducted a series of meetings of 200 per meeting. At a large oil organization exceeding 60K ee's, I used a core group that socialized the new org designed in a compressed time. An integration of four companies, two defense and two technology, involved a pivotal core. The key is to determine what is exactly enough to create momentum. The technology is secondary to the intent.
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