Facilitation

Facilitating Strategic Change

The development and implementation of a fundamental cultural change encompasses more than changes in behaviour. It is about how the organisation thinks – it’s policy and strategy processes; how it feels – the values and behaviours “how things are done around here” and how it acts – the products and services and even the design of facilities.

To complete the delivery of such change will take time – indeed the task may never be completed! However it is possible to substantially shift the culture quite rapidly with a carefully designed set of interventions. It may well be that the restructuring can be used as a “Trojan Horse” for introducing cultural changes.

Phase One: the Change Plan

The “Why, What, How and When”

The Why is about the fundamental purpose of the organisation – “what business we are in”. It is often assisted by the intensive involvement of key people in creative workshops to both develop the Why and ensure the commitment of leaders big ideas.

The change plan will need to identify the next layer of detail regarding the “What”:

The behaviours – future state, current state and gaps
The management processes
The Policy development approach
The Management system
The early wins
etc

Then the “How”

The overall approach to change “unfreeze – change – refreeze”
How rapid?
Who will lead- who will follow?
Which levers first – behaviour, systems, structure, processes?
Communication strategy
Etc.

The “When”

Detailed project plans for each aspect of the change process with timelines, milestones and accountabilities including the role of the steering group(s)

The roles of the facilitator in phase one:

Analyse and understand of the review and surrounding documentation.
Provision of methodology for change
Interviews with key players
Design workshops
Strategy workshops with teams to develop draft plan(s)
Workshops & discussions to test the draft
Partners and decision-makers workshop to sign off draft phase 1)

Phase 2) Implementation Projects

This is the substantial work of the Project and would normally take of the order of six months. The projects would have been defined in phase one.

The roles of the facilitator in phase two:

Participate (chair?) the steering committee
The “sheep dog”; maintaining the energy and momentum particularly with senior managers.
Facilitation work in the projects themselves – particularly around staff buy in to the process and support of the managers as they develop new ways of working together.
It would be reasonable to expect a number of cross functional projects to break up organisational silos – these need sophisticated facilitation.

Phase 3) Follow up – locking in the changes.

Includes measurement and assessment of the projects and the transition from “Change” to “Business as Usual”. Normally takes up to 12 months.