1. Stop Managing Change – Start Doing It!
How organisations DO change and how we can help them with it

2. It ain´t what you don´t know that gets you into trouble
It ain´t what you don´t know that gets you into trouble. It´s what you think you know that ain´t so that does.
Mark Twain 2

3. You only learn what you tinker with yourself.
Ernst von Glasersfeld 3

4. SF: a conversational model of OD
useful for effecting a change of “culture” 4

5. Focus in SF on direct interactions: “What happens between the noses?”5

6. What are useful therapy conversations? - 1-on-1 or with small groups6

7. OD settings: What are useful 1-on-1 conversations?
Formal & contracted:
Individual coachings
Briefings & de-briefings, “interviews” (1st and 2nd sessions)
“Shadow consulting”
“on-the-job-coaching” …
Informal & spontaneous:
Spontaneous informal chats
(Intentional) informal conversations (re-framing, complimenting, asking,…) 7

8. What are useful conversations with teams and large groups?8

9. OD-Settings: Multi-layering of conversations
Main Client (Sponsor, Project Owner/s, ..)
Internal Co-Consultant
Managers (at various levels, management teams, …)
Diagonal-cut groups (TF, CoP,..)
All staff (Large group interventions, Town halls,…)
Stakeholders (BMs, SBs, HR, Governing Board, Staff Council, …) 9

10. What else do SF OD workers DO?
Contracting with a lot more people and groupings, with different kinds of clients
All together describe the preferred future and start on a journey there
Consultant and sponsor need
to plan how to engage the organisation in conversations around the preferred future, what works, signs of progress, and around what to do
Respond to the responses from these conversations in a continuous dialogue over time, taking turns! 10

11. Dialogic OD: Gervase Bushe & Robert Marshak11

12. How can I have or facilitate useful conversations with people I have no direct contact with?12

13. 13

14. Conversations with myself14

15. How can I have useful conversations with myself?15

16. What are useful conversations with myself?
Mental discipline of maintaining a positive bias towards the client
What is working in the organisation?
Where do I see resources?
What do I appreciate most in the people I am dealing with?
etc. 16

17. What else?
How would I deal with my client if s/he were already in her/his preferred future? > And then do it! 17

18. What else?
What are my own best hopes (in terms of the client´s PF) from this conversation? 18

19. What else?
What seeds do I want to plant in my next interactions? yes and… what else? Best possible… 19

20. Cherish my SF assumptions about organisations and change20

21. Views of change
Episodic change
Emergent, continuous change 21

22. Organisations seen as networks of fluid and evolving relations in close interaction with their contexts 22

23. Change the conversations. Change the organisation.23

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26. What does the SF OD coachultant do in “laying down pathways” that is different to having conversations? 26

27. Initiating conversations, and then stepping back…27

28. …to allow lots of self-regulated conversations to occur…28

29. … in order to energize, inspire, and authorize the people present to do what they think is best to make the change occur. 29

30. The Art of Creating Pathways
Quality of questions!! – often co-created with client
Right mix of people
Person who is inviting and their style of hosting the event(s)!!
Attitude of “serious play”: a probing, experimental, “playful” attitude combined with a “we mean it” message from the sponsor 30

31. SF change is not run like a project because…
We are not just implementing or executing something pre-defined
We need to discover what exists already (motivations, ideas, initiatives,…)
Of emergent practices
Of different power relations
Of needing to take time to build coachultant – sponsor – change agent relationships
Of needing to engage and inspire the members of the organisation 31

32. Principles of SF OD work
Work in a probing, experimental mode
Work in phases: evaluate outcomes, re-contract
Quickly abandon trials that don´t work
Start work with a “good enough” vision, work out the details later with different stakeholder groups
Recognize the importance of imagination! – get people into a resourceful mode/frame of mind 32

33. What else can we do to foster the “ripple effect” of change in organisations?
Build SF concepts / tools into organisational programmes / systems /…such as: performance reviews, talent review processes,…
Identify and support change agents
Start the work in a promising corner of the organisation
Build communities of practice
What else? 33

34. The Power of Generative Images
new words, wordings or phrases, texts, pictures, objects, symbols… 34

35. “Best (Possible) Parliament”35

36. “Best (Possible) Parliament”36

37. Supreme Court of Justice 2015
Highest possible quality of decisions
Organisationally top
Presentation to the public 37

38. Modernisation of the Supreme Court of Justice – some years later38

39. PLEASE have a conversation about:
What do you do – or have observed others doing – that works in order to foster the ripple effect of change in organisations? 39

40. Let´s be inspirational rather than instructional
Let´s be inspirational rather than instructional. Let´s connect our clients to a sense of possibility rather than constraint. 40

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