GAINING OWNERSHIP OF ANALYSIS, SOLUTION, AND IMPLEMENTATION PLANNING
It is one thing to do a brilliant job of analysis, diagnosis, and prescription and to build a well-thought-out implementation plan. We find it can be a much bigger challenge to get people in our client organizations to accept it and act on it. This is another situation in which we have found it helpful to turn to OD experts who have developed and tested principles and tools for engaging organizational members in change efforts. Two useful principles to remember are that:
• People don’t resist change, they resist being changed
• People support that which they help create
Here are two resources we have found helpful for engaging people at all levels in a change effort:
Flawless Consulting. Peter Block’s classic book provides practical techniques for partnering with your client at every stage of the consulting process, from data gathering and analysis through choosing a solution and planning implementation (Block, 2000). This book is an investment that will pay dividends for as long as you work with organizations. Pay particular attention to the chapter on implementation.
The Grove Consultants International. The Grove, at www.grove.com, offers a set of large, wall-sized templates for leading a group through many organizational assessment and planning activities. Each has a leader’s guide explaining how to use it with groups of different sizes and compositions. The templates use a visual metaphor to frame a task, such as assessing the organization’s context.
One of us has extensive experience using this visual approach and finds that it is equally successful with clients at any level of an organization. Tape it on a wall in front of the group, simply ask questions, and write their responses to fill in the blanks. When a template is complete, everyone can see all the interacting elements of their organization’s context and their inter-relationships. The templates have been broadly tested and applied successfully to many organizational uses.
Especially useful for engaging clients in assessment are the templates titled Context Map and Industry Structure Map, both based on Porter’s External Scan. The Five Bold Steps and the Graphic Gameplan templates are wonderful for group problem solving and implementation planning. Executive groups typically respond to the templates with enthusiasm, because they help show the big picture without sacrificing the complexity they must deal with to make good decisions.
Being Persuasive at a Distance
To enroll people in organizational change, performance consultants must craft messages that will hold up when we are not personally there to deliver them. We must capture people’s imaginations, then enable them to pass their conviction along to others in the organization (Heath & Heath, 2007).
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