We’ve been asked to submit a number of proposals to various large organisations across the public and private sectors in the last three months – describing how we would support ambitious change processes.
This has brought home to us the challenge of explaining clearly a) the distinctiveness of our integrated, ‘minimal interventions’ approach and b) why, exactly, this approach makes such sense…(!)
Below, I offer a flavour of what we’ve said in these proposals – and we’d love to hear your reactions in response. After all, we are clearly going against the grain – perhaps even contributing to a ‘new paradigm’ of consulting practice – and we need to continue learning from, and responding to, the feedback this generates.
a) The distinctiveness…
The table below attempts to summarise how our approach to change consulting tends to differ from the more standard, ‘programmatic’ forms of interventions.
* For more specific examples of the actual interventions implied by the right-hand column, see our FTSE 100 Performance + Culture Change case-study, where this table first appeared.
b) The sense….
Once a client has bought into the idea that their organisation can most effectively be understood as a ‘complex adaptive system’ – rather than a more mechanical, machine-like entity, for example – it becomes clear to them that neither they (nor we) are likely to be able to deliver change via the more usual, top-down and linear programmatic intervention, planned and costed in detail from the outset.
But they are generally less aware of the value-add of a more emergent approach to working, until these actually show themselves once the work is in progress.
So, just to be clear about some of the headline benefits of our approach as outlined above, they include:
- An engagement process that is especially meaningful because people are always responding to ‘live’ data and emergent, actual indicators of change/stuckness
- Interventions which are nearly always ‘spot on’, because they are being devised in response to actual progress, targeting system ‘nodes’ of maximum leverage – which can rarely be predicted prior to their actual emergence as the work progresses
- Leadership teams better supported to face the inherent uncertainty of change – and to grow their authority and credibility by showing high awareness of key difficulties, intervening skilfully and communicating progress in a genuinely resonant and motivating way
- A change process integrated into the core business of the organisation - which is energised by this, partly because of the day-to-day operational improvements and bottom-line benefits delivered in the process
- Efficient focusing of resource (including consultancy spend!) on what is likely to deliver most impact for minimal input at any one time
Of course, all these ways of working require a particular sort of relationship between us as consultants and our principal client(s) in the organisation – specifically involving higher degrees of trust and more ongoing, mutual feedback than is often the case.
So this will be the subject of my next post!
SHARE
One month ago, as a result of the combined effects of a daily habit of surfing the news in the early morning, and a wish to interact with a wider peer group, I submitted the following question to a LinkedIn Group called Organizational Change Practitioners which attracts a mixture of consultants and in-house HR/OD people from across the globe: