Organizational Change
Organizational development is about change. Due to the wide variety of internal and external circumstances an organization may be facing, our approach to supporting change is consultative. We reference our integrated approach to provide a compass heading for supporting change through:
- Expanding the organization’s cultural worldview and values to process greater complexity
- Developing new behaviors and engagement that reflect the revised worldview and values
- Building new organizational designs, structures, practices and processes to support the change
- Managing to the delivery of key milestones and goals
We help our clients implement change through three key processes:
DEFINING THE CHANGE
The key to change is establishing what the leadership author Robert Fritz called, a “creative tension” between current reality and an aspired future. This tension provides the impetus to undergo the transformational process of change. Our service begins by helping organizations define the state of their current reality and the change they want to see. We do this through facilitated conversations, interviews of key stakeholders and review of business plans. We also use assessment tools that dimension perceptions of the organization’s current and desired states. The combination of the qualitative and quantitative assessments provides insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the business and culture to make change happen.
STRATEGIC PLANNING
We facilitate and coordinate the development of strategic plans. Our work focuses on using strategic planning as a tool to clearly articulate medium term organizational goals and key initiatives as a road map to achieve the organization’s aspired future. This often includes defining mission, vision and values as well as strategic goals, initiatives and tactics. We also provide a process to support the distribution of the goals and initiatives of the strategic plan down into the organization. This enables a focus on making the planned change a reality. An essential part of this process is helping stakeholders learn to think strategically and increase their awareness of the inter-relatedness of all the aspects of the organizational system.
CULTURE CHANGE
Culture is the collective values and behaviors of an organization; the ‘what is important to us and how we do things around here”. The key enabler to executing the strategic plan is the alignment of organizational structures, systems and interpersonal engagement with the goals of that plan. We use the qualitative and quantitative assessment data as a starting point for a facilitated conversation about the values, behavior, process and design changes necessary to support the implementation of the strategic plan. A part of this process is asking leaders how they need to change to start “walking a new talk” that models the changes they want to see. Leadership development focused on the new cultural qualities is often an essential component of the change process.
We have learned that organizational change takes time and requires deep commitment to be successful. Senior management support is essential as is the building of a strong partnership to work through the challenges to make change real and lasting.