darth vader, interrogation, Toby Elwin, blog, organization, intervention

An organization intervention is not an organization inquisition

An organization’s present is built upon their collected history. This history is an essential core of their organization’s being. The past set the present capabilities. Rattling an organization’s history is rattling the foundation stones of an organization’s culture.

A highlight into what people do wrong attracts attention to … what people do wrong. No one likes association to something broken. No one likes it pointed out they work within, are part of, or manage broken processes.

An intervention should not open an inquisition for blame and shame, but an inquiry into the possibility of what can be.

Benjamin Zander, inquiry, appreciative, Toby Elwin, blog, Crowdsourcing your organization strategy, what’s to appreciate

Crowdsourcing your organization strategy, what’s to appreciate?

Crowdsourcing taps into the sociological power of people potentially unfamiliar with each other or with the situation. Crowdsourcing a strategic solution is the antithesis of the bureaucratic, and often autocratic, strategic planning performed by chosen few, behind closed doors, and finally unleashed unto the masses.

Appreciative Inquiry is a process where people participate and co-create a future they wish to be part of. Where people, formerly known as an audience of employees or stakeholders, now become the collaborators and designers who are approached as partners in modeling and forming organization strategy.

The result: replace a strategic plan pronouncement with strategic plan involvement.

oliver twist, buyer persona, strategy, development, Toby Elwin, blog

The pain with change management

A leader’s job is to not create a space that causes so much pain that people must move, but to create a compelling future vision people are drawn to.

If leadership starts their focus on what did not work or what you do not want to happen then effort goes into putting procedures in place that constrain. If leadership focus starts on what worked or what it looks like when it worked and the focus shifts to how it worked to and what is achievable, what is possible.

Appreciative Inquiry, as a principle for design and change management, allows organizations to change the focus. Where we inquire, we move and Appreciative Inquiry changes the change.