Making Strategy Real

The Challenge

‘We want to hold a strategy conference and we want to do it in a strengths based way. Can you help us?’

The Need

Richard and his commissioning team from the local authority already knew that they wanted to involve myriad local senior decision-makers in the development of their strategy for implementing the government driven initiative ‘Family First’. A day and a venue were earmarked. Up to 200 people were invited. Key-note speakers had been arranged. An exhibition of local services was arranged to run as a trade fair alongside. The planning team knew that within these parameters they wanted to do something different. They didn’t want a conventional conference, they wanted something that was strengths based, something that would make strategy real from the start. Could we help?

The Process 

Working closely with the multi-functional planning team, Appreciating Change designed a day that would be participatory and engaging and would meet the strategic commissioner’s need to develop strategy. Calling on Appreciative Inquiry as a framework, the day was designed to identify existing strengths across the network, to create a variety of shared ideas of what the future could be like if this strategic objective was achieved, and to begin to identify ways to achieve it. The day was delivered by Appreciating Change working in partnership with the planning team.

The Outcome 

The day (attended by 150 people) delivered a number of identifiable strategic results:

•   We improved the social capital of the delivery system of Think Family, that is the quality of trust, knowledge, and information-sharing processes across the system, so increasing the system self-organization abilities and reducing time drag, saving time and energy.

•   We enhanced the relational strength of the delivery system of Think Family, increasing connectivity and the ability for good practice, knowledge and skill to flow to where it is needed to deliver the strategy. We increased the system’s responsiveness.

•   We identified the positive core of good practice that enables Think Family, so identifying the heart of the strategy and saving time and energy collecting and disseminating this information through other means.

•   We co-created a shared understanding, or vision of, and desire for, an integrated, joined up, responsive, flexible, family needs-led, strengthening, honouring, interconnected service for families in the borough, saving time and energy on ‘getting buy-in’ amongst stakeholders to the vision.

•   We helped the system understand itself much better, so enhancing the abilities of the component parts to utilise the strengths of the whole system, increasing overall effectiveness.

•   We created positive energy in the system that enhances its ability to create change reducing the need for driving and motivating as separate parts of the implementation process, saving energy.

•   We created a propensity within the system to act in a greater Think Family way, creating a united strategic intent, saving energy.

•   We created a series of resolutions for individual and joint action that will serve to move things forward, creating positive impact.

All these positive outcomes were achieved at a very difficult time of cutbacks and redundancies (and government change!).

Measured evaluation on the day showed outcomes included increased clarity about how the strategy would look in practice, increased sense that the vision was shared across all stakeholders, greater clarity about the key elements and increased energy and enthusiasm for making it happen. The modal average for all of these indicators moved 3 points on a 10 point scale in a positive direction.

In addition the planning team have now become the sustainability team and are embarking on a process of closely questioning the system to discover detailed stories about the changes in people’s practice and the impact of this on families in the borough. Once discovered, these can be amplified and broadcast to help grow the emerging awareness of system change and improvement.

The Feedback 

Many comments were made at the event about the value of the conversations being held, the stories being shared and the connections being made. One participant was moved to record her appreciation more formally:

‘May I pass on the congratulations of our Line Manager, Mary Taylor, and all members of the Transfer Team for the terrific organisation on this excellent recent conference. The Transfer Team found it to be of enormous benefit and we made some excellent colleague contacts with other teams. We wanted to thank you for the opportunity to learn about the work of other teams and to be able to discuss the work of the Transfer Team with colleagues who have greater direct contact with families who may benefit from our assistance.’

The Council Member was formally congratulated, in Chamber, on the success of the ‘innovative and creative’ event.

In addition the term ‘think family’ became part of the system lexicon, used to call people to good practice and as shorthand for the objective of the changes in practice. This is strategy come alive in hearts and minds.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on the use of Appreciative Inquiry here and on Strategy here.

 

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we can help with Engagement and Culture and how we use Appreciative Inquiry.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Leading Through Uncertainty - Moving From Fatalism To Hope

The following took place over two years during which I worked with a business unit of an engineering organisation. The business unit faced enormous uncertainty and probable decline as current contracts ran down. There was a danger of the business unit succumbing to fatalism and inertia. This is how we worked with in partnership with the leader to try to change this mindset.

Background - ex-MoD facility in decline

The organisation is an ex-MOD facility, a big engineering employer in the local area, with an enviable steady state history and past protection from commercial pressures, which is now experiencing accelerating change. It has already passed into commercial ownership and is beginning to adapt to commercial pressures. At the point we are asked to help they have just been acquired by a new owner, and no one is quite sure what their plans might be. A new Managing Director has been appointed with a very different focus and orientation to the previous one. There is a new leader in this particular unit. And the end is in sight for the product on which this team works – no one is quite sure what this means for them.

Stage 1 - Getting over the shock of change

The new divisional leader invites me in and reports: a dysfunctional top team, no team spirit or cohesiveness, silo working, production going into rundown mode in the foreseeable future with no clear replacement product, quality issues, blame culture, no accountability, problems pushed upwards. He asks me to run a day for the top team.

Preliminary conversations with top team members produce comments like this

• Acting down
• Not seeing any work coming in, spectre of redundancy
• People starting to look elsewhere and leave
• Lots of firefighting - good at it
• Told we are failing
• No future planning
• Rush, rush, rush
• Banter - lively, fast, fun - can be a bit bruising
• Talk over each other

• Tend to think we know everything and have seen everything
• Don't understand other people's roles
• Busy solving other people's problems
• Difficulty in pointing out errors
• Everything takes so long
• Disunity between leader and deputy
• Frustrated about production
• Everyone gives 100%, tries hard. People helpful
• Good personal relationships
• People working at a level below them

We decide to deliver a day based on creating a clear, shared vision of the future of the division. Bearing in mind the uncertain and changing nature of the future we aim to: develop a compelling vision of future possibilities; understand the strengths of the division that can be built upon to help secure that future; identify active opportunities to pursue or focus upon; and, to identify changes needed to the way the division currently works to make it more attractive to other potential customers. I also aim to enhance top team working and engender some hope and purposeful future oriented activity.

Process - getting people to connect and focus on alternatives to slow decline

Given the comments, I include a round of Time to Think based on Nancy Klein’s book of the same name. This is exceptionally successful as for the first time in a long time this group of energetic, engaged and motivated managers really listen and hear each other’s aspirations and hopes. They also genuinely connect with each other’s concerns. The question/topic we used for the round was ‘What is the most compelling vision I have for the future of this division, and what do we need to focus on to make that happen?’ Comments after this exercise included ‘I’ve learnt more in the last hour than I have in the last year of management meetings’, ‘It’s really hard to keep quiet, but you learn so much more.’ and ‘I’ve heard G...say all that many times before, but I’ve never really understood how important it is to him.’ It was probably the most powerful part of the day.

The rest of the day we followed a SOAR design – strengths, opportunities, aspirations and results. By the end of the day the team was motivated to make some changes and had a shared sense of some other things that needed attention.

What they took from the first day

• They were resolved to carry some of the lessons from the Time to Think experience into their regular meetings.
• They realised that they had to be the ones leading the division to ensure that morale and motivation and performance stayed high so they continued to be an attractive proposition.
• They realised also that they had to be constantly ‘selling’ their division’s strengths and abilities within the organization, to make it clear they could be the division of choice for new contracts.
• They had to actively support the business development unit by being available for meetings at short notice, supplying information etc.
• That their leader had to be free to do endless networking with potential client contacts while they ran the division.

All this meant that they had to get the next layer of management to start acting as managers. They needed to delegate more effectively, push decision-making and problem solving back down the hierarchy. They had to build the confidence of their reports to act as managers, make decisions and so on. They needed to actively coach and develop these staff.

Further work and outcomes - resolving short-term issues, looking for long-term solutions

Over the next 9 months the leader and I jointly ran five further days for line managers and front line staff. The emphasis always being on creating a sense of hope, optimism and proactivity that the unit as a whole could positively influence the future by how everyone acted in the present. During this time the quality issue was resolved, the middle managers ‘stepped up to the plate’, and the senior managers started focusing more on their key challenge of attracting new work to the unit. The future continued to be uncertain.

Stage 2 - Removing guilt as an obstacle to adaptation

Ten months later I was invited in again. Now, the leader was in charge of two declining divisions. Everyone was being actively encouraged to apply for other jobs (either within the organization or externally), although the current product had not yet lessened in quantity or in its need for quality work. No new work had been yet secured. These two divisions were possibly going to merge as part of the planned rundown, meaning there would be a duplication of management bodies.

Initially I was asked to work with senior team of the new division. Again I interviewed people individually to enquire into the context and need. This is was the nature of the reports. Remember I am asking positive and appreciative questions!

• Brain drain
• Motivational issues are all
• Recruitment challenges
• Loss of direction, rearguard action/firefighting
• Abandonment
• Old strategies for managing division outdated
• Internal Conflict
• Fighting over particular skills
• Ethical dilemma – should I stay or should I go?
• No ‘give’ in performance expectations
• Uncertainty
• Failing
• Emotional Turmoil
• Recent morale destroying presentation by MD and HR

Process - removing guilt

The day for this team focuses on identifying the strengths of the unit, and giving people a chance to talk about the ethical dilemmas presented to them as managers of a division that is forecast to be closing down.

The question we gave everyone to consider was ‘How can I be a good person in this difficult situation? How can we support each other?’

We had one manager declaring that he couldn’t possibly look for another job. His loyalty to both the product and his staff were such that he felt he had no alternative. Effectively he was sacrificing his chance to secure alternative employment. Those left standing at the end faced redundancy. He looked dreadful. Clearly this statement was going to make it difficult for any other manager to choose a different path. One already had: another manager had already secured another job elsewhere on site. He clearly felt terrible saying this. We were in danger of metaphors such as rats leaving sinking ships or captain going down with the ship as being the dominant, and only, metaphors for these managers’ choices. They had not been able to have these conversations with anyone and were, meanwhile, both encouraging their staff to seize opportunities as they arose, while also desperately needing them to stay to do the work.

During the conversation the leader made it clear that, much though he cared about the unit, he also cared about his family. This meant that he would have to evaluate how to be a good person almost on a day-to-day basis as the context changed. With help, the group co-created more helpful stories of choice, recognised different ways of showing loyalty, developed a concept of provisional (rather than end point) positions and considerations, and a shared recognition that there was no right answer in this situation, each person could only do their best by their lights to ‘do good’ in a very challenging situation.

Outcomes - moving from fixed to adaptive and flexible leadership during uncertainty

It was an important conversation that made it possible for the group to move from a negative downwards spiral of accusation and betrayal in a world of clear-cut choices, to a more nuanced appreciation that opened up the possibility of people making different choices that could all be seen as honourable. Most importantly, from my perspective, it became possible for the person nailed to the martyr position to free himself from that uncomfortable position, and for the person who had secured another post to receive some recognition of the achievement involved in that.

The adaptive leadership was evident in how the divisional leader refused to adjudicate and assert what was the ‘right’ managerial response in this situation, instead he was authentic and honest about his own situation, offering a more complex picture of what leadership can look like.

Stage 3 - facing uncertainty head on

Six months later I’m back again. This time it’s a day with the support function managers from the two units. The day has some interesting features. There is something of a leadership vacuum, the usual leader and the person deputised to commission this day from me, are both absent (so apart from me who owns this day?). Of the two deputy leaders in the room, one leaves at half time (he has secured another job). I am delighted to hear that the other deputy, the one determined to go down with the ship, has also applied for another job. Things are shifting and loosening up.

Process

This time we look the future right in the face and construct three scenarios – best, worst and middling. We consider how to work in a way that means we are prepared for all three. We also do a mind-map to capture what everyone in the room knows about the rapidly changing current context, and to identify the best places to focus leadership energy. We identify the causes for celebration and optimism and we conduct an Open Space session which I label, in the absent leadership context I discovered when I arrived, ‘Doing it for ourselves'. 

Outcomes - hope, not just fear, in uncertainty. A credit to adaptive leadership

This is what I wrote to the absent leader:

'There was, for the first time, some concrete progress to hang hats on, even if it was first baby steps. For me it was quite noticeable the shift from possibilities to some actualities.

I sincerely think that the level of commitment and motivation in the room at what is probably the point at which the change is accelerating for people and the structure starting to dissolve (to hopefully reform in different patterns) is quite remarkable and a real tribute to you, and your deputies.'

The division managed to maintain or exceed all its targets until the final aircraft went. They managed to relocate around 50% of the staff to other areas of the organisation with the other 50% taking voluntary redundancy. 

“Having assumed the appointment as Director of one of our Business Units I needed to swiftly create an ethos of teamwork and focus from the management team down to the shopfloor. This was achieved over a series of one day off-site sessions facilitated by Sarah. Not only did this allow me the opportunity to interact with managers to associates at all levels, but it allowed me to provide clarity and direction for the year ahead. The level of success was demonstrated by the Business unit exceeding all previous targets and setting new standards for others to follow.

Consequently I was then appointed as the Director of an additional business unit with the added aspect that there was potentially going to be the difficult task of a significant downturn in work due to the planned MoD platform out of service date. Again I used the services of Sarah to facilitate a series of one day off-site events. As a result this particular business has seen an increase in productivity as opposed to the expected drop off and improvements in quality across the piste.

Sarah provides targeted and focused facilitation to meet your business needs and I would recommend her support to any other business.
”

— The client

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at how we help with Leadership.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715

Open Space For Strategic Development

The Invitation

‘We want to run a rehearsal process for our EQUIS assessment, and a strategy development day for about 180 people simultaneously. Are we being too ambitious? Can you help us?’

The Challenge

Appreciating Change had run the annual ‘team day’ for this business school community of academics and administrators for the past two years. The first year we introduced Appreciative Inquiry to help bolster their creativity and innovation, the second year was focused on the student experience. This was the most ambitious objective yet. Throughout the day teams of people would be disappearing to table discussions in a simulation of a forthcoming, very important, assessment process. At the same time the body as a whole was to engage with three strands of strategic thinking around: the student experience, the balance of teaching and learning and research, and the integration of services.

Meeting The Challenge

The challenge was to create a design for the event that would facilitate the people involved in the simulation to leave and rejoin at specified times; and that also allowed three themes of discussion. Working with the planning team, Appreciating Change designed a day based on Open Space Technology that would allow the rehearsal assessment panels to run concurrently with a strategy development conversation. In addition we worked with the technology department to create ‘video tweets’ of the different discussions, and a ‘voting’ process at the close of the day to help identify the most important ideas and suggestions from the various discussions.

The Outcome

The day was deemed a great success, working with the complexity of the system in a way that generated productive and useful conversation while supporting the primary purpose of assessment rehearsal and preparation. During the day there were 24 discussions around strategic questions identified by the group such as ‘How can we improve the cultural differences with students?’ and ‘How do we improve contact via technology?’ All discussions produced a record of strengths, opportunities, aspirations and potential results in the area under discussion.

 One participant was moved to write to the organisers to say:

 ‘A quick note to say how impressed I was by the process Sarah used last week at our away day. To get 180 people to work collaboratively across 18 parallel work groups, discussing meaty issues and feeding back results during a full day without being bossy was quite remarkable! Please thank her for me.’

 The senior team came away with a clear idea of the co-identified priorities for the school moving forward in these difficult times for academia, and with some concrete suggestions for next steps.

In addition the individuals present:

• Forged new relationships
• Discovered shared areas of aspiration
• Were energised to help the school adapt to the changing context and environment.

The assessment participants also got extensive feedback about their performance in the simulated assessment.

More on these and related topics can be found in Sarah’s book Positive Psychology at Work.

See more articles from the Knowledge Warehouse on this topic here.

Appreciating Change Can Help

Appreciating Change is skilled and experienced at supporting leaders in working in this challenging, exciting and productive way with their organizations. Find out more by looking at Our Approach to change, or more specifically at how we use Open Space in interventions.

For further information on these alternative approaches to change, please contact us or phone 07973 782 715