Whole-Scale Change: Unleashing the Magic in Organizations

McNeil

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Preface

What you hold in your hands is a very valuable map to the New World of organizational change. For many years, the brave folks at Dannemiller Tyson Associates have been pioneers and explorers. While many of us hovered at the edges of this New World, peering out across its dark and turbulent waters, wondering whether it was possible to change our methods and beliefs, they plunged into the unknown. Now, after many years of experimenting with radically new approaches to organizational change, they are sharing their hard-won maps with us. I’m grateful that they have been so courageous and that they kept such good records.

Dannemiller Tyson Associates set sail from the Old World that had taught us many restricting and pessimistic beliefs about ourselves as human beings. We were told that humans work well together only in small groups, that experts have our answers, that most people lack the ability to think creatively, and that people want to be told what to do by their leaders. These beliefs, and many more, are still discernible in most organizational change strategies. Most change techniques are variations on this basic process: A select few are assumed to know what is best for everyone. Vision, redesign, reward structures—each of these is the work of a few smart people. Small groups of the smart are sent off to do their work. Then they return to the organization and tell people what to do. All these others are eagerly waiting for the results. They gratefully accept the new set of directions and eagerly implement them. Everything works according to plan, and the organization is transformed.

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Though this approach to change still predominates, we have a lot of firsthand experience with its failures. Research from several different sources (and, I assume, from your own experience) demonstrates that between 70% and 90% of change initiatives fail to achieve their objectives. The same is true for mergers and acquisitions. Not only do they fail to achieve promised results, they create many more problems with their unintended consequences.

From this abysmal record of failures, we can draw one of two conclusions: Either it is impossible to change human organizations, or we’re using the wrong approaches. Because of our colleagues at Dannemiller Tyson Associates, we now know that it is possible to change, that it is our approaches that have been wrong, and that, with the right methods, true magic is possible.

All those engaged with whole system approaches are teaching us that when the entire organization or community is engaged in the work of planning its own future, or dealing with a difficult and meaningful issue, wondrous possibilities emerge. Using the term magic is absolutely appropriate. People who engage the whole of a system always use the word miraculous to describe the results. And after all the negative images we’ve carried for so many years—believing our colleagues were dull, self-serving, greedy, and disinterested—what we observe at a whole system event is miraculous. We quickly notice that our colleagues are engaged, creative, funny, compassionate, and forgiving. We discover one another in our full power, no longer held back by confining beliefs, stereotypes, or roles. We discover that we all care about the organization, that we all want to contribute, and that we’re all surprisingly creative.

Now that is a miracle.

And this is a time that requires miracles. We can no longer solve the problems of organizations, communities, or nations by staying apart, leaving it to the experts, or depending on leaders to solve our difficulties. Yet at the very time when we most need to come together, we live with badly fractured relationships. Leaders don’t trust workers; we don’t trust one another; intractable problems refuse to be solved by piecemeal approaches. Everyone is exhausted by endlessxximeetings, meaningless work, data overload, recurring conflicts, bad behaviors, heroic leaders, and problems that get larger rather than resolved.

I believe that, at its essence, our work is to reweave the world—to call together those we have kept apart, to understand problems in all their rich dimensions, to become sensitive to how systems move and change, to become aware of human potential rather than human problems. We are finding our way past the fragmenting and dehumanizing values of a worldview that told us we humans and the whole world could be understood by breaking things apart. As we free ourselves from this mechanistic worldview, we are invited to return to a more humane and traditional way of working together. Our species memory offers us the knowledge of how to work together for the common community— how to develop systems of relationships that sustain not only individuals, but the whole system. This memory and skillfulness is in us because it is in all life. We are remembering not how machines are put together, but how life organizes. It is this deep wisdom that needs to return to our organizational processes.

The wisdom is in each of us, and we are blessed that Dannemiller Tyson Associates has given us their maps. They lead us back to the rich and fertile land of human capacity and to a future where people know how to work together in relationships that give birth to new possibilities.

Margaret J. Wheatley

Author, Leadership and the New Science

Co-author, A Simpler Way

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Chapter 1

Discovering the Magic:

What Is Whole-Scale?

Introduction

Our ever-changing environment combined with the warp speed of technology has placed unparalleled demands and expectations on each of us both where we work and where we live. These demands require leaders to uncover new approaches that harness the tumult, speed, and complexity of the new environment and use them to the organization’s advantage. These demands are also requiring employees to adapt, change, and then change again, as they respond to the same challenges facing their leaders. As consultants, we believe there is an overwhelming need to change from the old structural organizational models of the twentieth century. We need commonsense ways to tap into and unleash the wisdom present in the entire workforce. We need processes to release the energy and combine that knowledge. That is the reason we believe that the Whole-Scale methodology makes important sense today. Whole-Scale enables the organization to quickly and effectively assess today’s environment and map and implement a strategy to deal with it successfully now and in the future.

This writing is driven by the urgency we feel in bringing about change that empowers organizations and the people in those organizations to be truly successful in the future. We want to open our hearts, share some of our experiences, and pass on ideas, theories, models, and processes that are robust in creating change.

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The Richmond Savings Story—1995

We were approached by the President and CEO and the human resources director of the third largest credit union in Canada. They asked if we would go to Vancouver to work with their organization, using our Whole-Scale processes. These two men had been able to observe a Whole-Scale large-group event the month before and had a vision of what they could accomplish with their own organization.

Richmond is a suburb of Vancouver, changing culturally based on the influx of immigrating Hong Kong Chinese who are settling and building houses in Richmond. The president, Kirk Lawrie, had worked out a new Vision statement for the credit union in response to these changes. After seeing the Whole-Scale event with another company, he realized that he needed to involve all of his employees in setting direction toward that Vision for the year 2000.

Two Dannemiller Tyson Associates partners met with the Leadership Group of Richmond Savings and developed a draft Mission and Strategic Goals statements that could be articulated to and enriched by the entire organization in a series of large and small events. The first event was with a group that we call the Event Planning Team (EPT), which was a true microcosm of the whole credit union, including one of the leaders, a couple of middle management directors, and front line people of all types (tellers, loan officers, secretaries, technicians, and so forth). This group of twenty met with the consultants for two days to agree on a meaningful purpose and agenda for a large group event (250 participants). Together they answered the questions:

What will be different in our world as a result of these 250 meeting for three days (Purpose)?

Who needs to be in the meeting in order to achieve that Purpose?

What conversations need to take place among that group in order to achieve that Purpose?

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The Purpose this group debated and finally consensed on was:

To ensure the continuing success of Richmond Savings by capturing and focusing the energy toward shared direction, actions, and results, where each individual and group understands, passionately commits, and contributes to that collective success.

At that point, the group agreed there were some people missing from their own microcosm Event Planning Team, whose voices needed to be part of planning with the Purpose in mind. These people were invited and joined us. We then agreed on the following plan:

Days one and two would be a diagonal slice of people (another, and larger microcosm) representing all of the levels and functions of work geography (branches, central office). That group held discussions for two days, hearing from the various stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, each other, leadership, and competitors (role played by Richmond people), and would finish the second day with input from everyone in the room on the draft Strategy. Then that microcosm would return to work, freeing the other half to come together on days three and four to repeat the processes from the first two days, ending with input regarding the Strategy. The next day (day five), the leadership team returned to the meeting room, read and discussed the input they received from the entire organization, and rewrote the Strategy based on the wisdom the group had given to them.

Day six was a Sunday and the branches were closed, enabling every person in the organization to come to the meeting place to take the next steps. The Leadership Team described the work they had engaged in and the resulting rewrite of the Strategy, a copy of which was at each person’s place when they arrived. When the leaders finished telling everyone what they had done, the President asked: How did we do? Did we get it? The room erupted into excitement and applause, even ending in a sustained standing ovation. The leaders were overwhelmed with the response.

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Let us show you how the Strategy had changed:

See Table

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The rest of day six was spent developing systemwide action plans that would cause change in work processes and enable the group to achieve the new goal statements. After these plans had been developed and agreed upon, back-home groups developed committed action plans for their own office or branch. Follow-up continued by computer reports and by all-hands meetings to share what was happening.

Two years later, Kathie Dannemiller received a phone call from the President asking her if she would be willing to be interviewed for a Canadian news magazine that had noticed the amazing success of this group. Kathie, of course, agreed, and asked him what had been so surprising. He said, We thought we were writing a strategy for the next five years, and the most surprising thing is that we have been successful on every measure in just two years. And what’s been particularly amazing is that we have achieved the original goals, the draft first created by leadership, and we have achieved the rewritten goals. We are amazed. How do you account for us having achieved both sets? Kathie said, The goals, in fact, were the same.… The language of the rewritten goals spoke more clearly to the front-line person, and because people could viscerally understand what was needed, they made it happen!

Although their leadership has changed, Richmond Savings thrives today, their strategy evolving appropriately because of the work they did together in 1995.

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The Roots of the Term Whole-Scale

Our work with systemwide consulting has undergone significant change over the years. As the challenges of our clients have changed, our work has changed to support them. Each time our understanding of what is needed has undergone dramatic change. We have chosen to call what we do by different names as the work has evolved. Based on our work with Ford Motor Company in the early 1980s, the name we used was Large-Group Interactive Processes. During that time our clients told us that they needed to bring larger and larger groups of people together, in order to move quickly in the same direction. Later, from our work with Boeing on the challenges facing them in the early 1990s, they identified the work they needed to do as getting large groups of people connected around developing a common and accurate strategy. We then began to call our approach Real Time Strategic Change. During that time we discovered that when a microcosm of the organization had a common database and could identify what needed to be different in their work, at that very moment (Real Time in the meeting), change began. Several years ago, we realized how dramatically we had expanded our work and changed the focus. Ford taught us to go big; Boeing taught us to get focused with strategy; and now clients were asking us to continue doing those things and also find ways to go deeper by changing day-to-day behaviors and work processes in their organizations. By combining everything we knew about moving large groups fast in a focused direction, we realized that in these same types of microcosms the client could also develop new work structures and processes—large groups doing details in real time.

United Airlines, Indianapolis Maintenance Center, provided us our first real opportunity to combine and integrate the Socio-Technical Systems approach we had called Real Time Work Design, created by our partner Paul Tolchinsky with the Real Time Strategic Change. Both had been highlighted in Bunker and Alban, Large Group Interventions (Berrett Koehler, 1995). This new approach helped organizations meet their needs to move faster and deeper. We began to call our approach Whole-Scale because the power of the microcosm

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allowed them to see the whole system and work the whole system (the whole in Whole-Scale) regardless of the size of the microcosm (large or small—the scale in Whole-Scale).

What our clients helped us see is that the same robust change processes we had developed for Ford and Boeing could be applied to process issues, organization design problems, and the daily work issues of organizations. United forced us to develop a methodology that would not only move them faster, but would also take the conversations from the strategic to the day-to-day issues of whole systems. What we learned is that with any size group, when we work with a microcosm of the whole, we can help the system think whole about their present realities and future needs. Building a common database ignites action to begin in the moment. In that fashion we bring about significant change without having the whole system in one place at one time. Whole-Scale means that we are always operating as well as thinking of the whole organization as we work with true microcosms of that organization. Whether we are working with twenty people or 2,000 people, the principles of the microcosm and seeing whole are the same.

Large-group approaches to organizational change have become increasingly popular in the last few years because many leaders have learned that the style of management often referred to as command and control no longer works. Leaders are learning that they need to get real buy-in on strategy from their people. They need to find new ways to align and engage large numbers of people around a common, effective strategic focus and an organization structure that can be executed quickly!

The organizations we work with are typically being challenged by a quickly changing environment and experiencing a sense of urgency about operating in that environment. It is our goal to help leaders and organizations understand and believe that the change processes we call Whole-Scale are a viable way of responding to that urgency.

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Unleashing the Power of the Microcosm

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 organization—in the overall change process is one of the features of the Whole-Scale approach that allows you—and the organization—to think and see whole system. The microcosm contains the essential DNA of the whole organization. Working with groups that mirror the whole allows you to work with the whole system at a different level. The best way to change a system is to engage the whole system. Microcosms are the best windows through which to view the whole system in real time. They provide access to the whole system quickly and effectively. Having a critical mass of microcosms experiencing a paradigm shift helps the whole organization shift.

The underlying assumption in the use of microcosms is that the wisdom necessary for success is in all the people of the organization. The most effective change efforts include the voices of all key stakeholders, not just the voices of the top or the bottom or the middle. All of the people in the organization— plus those who are counting on the organization, such as customers, owners, or suppliers—must be able to speak and be heard. When you cannot get all— getting the DNA re-creates the whole, without having to have everyone. The decisions of any one representative microcosm should be exactly the same as those of any other DNA microcosm would be.

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Why is this so important?

The traditional consulting approach has been to pull together the experts on a particular issue—often people who thought alike or had the same background or had the right status in the organization. This view is necessarily limited, often focusing on data of high-ranking, influential views. It’s necessary to include those views; and, by themselves, they are not sufficient. Using the holistic view from a microcosm (or many microcosms) will illuminate the fact that people can contribute powerfully when they have enough information and when they are invited to do so.

In Whole-Scale, using microcosms means tapping into the wisdom of every area and every level of the organization—all the way throughout the process, not just the night before implementation. In Whole-Scale, involving people means engaging each person in a deep and meaningful way.

Whole-Scale processes evoke the system’s wisdom without needing to direct or control the results. Thus, when the system is ready, the answers come. The job of leaders and the consultants who support them is to help the system get ready. The microcosm will have all the knowledge it needs once the organization has uncovered and combined the knowledge it possesses. Through the power of the microcosm, it is possible to create identity in the moment and to form new identities, without having to define every aspect of the system or get inside each person’s head.

This moment, when new identities have formed within a microcosm, is the moment we call the paradigm shift moment. People (individually and as a whole) are seeing the world differently, are seeing themselves differently, and are connected around a common picture of their future and the actions they will need to take to get there. After the paradigm shift experience, participants are able (and indeed clamoring) to flex their newly uncovered wisdom and build toward the yearnings they have uncovered together.

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Some of the small-group examples of microcosms that make the difference in Whole-Scale are Research Teams, cross-functional Task Teams, Core Teams as integrators, and Event Planning Teams. In Whole-Scale events, you can use microcosms in several ways. One of the most useful techniques is to use max-mix seating, which is simply a group of eight people at a table, representing basically the same mix of knowledge, yearnings, functions, levels, and attitudes that will be in the larger group. Each table in a Whole-Scale event is thus a microcosm of the room, and