Patrick Seaton's Explanation of His Innovative Change Strategy Tools
My “tools” come from being in many situations over the years (mostly outside the US) where I was expected to make changes. The why, what changes, and who were never identified prior to my arrival. I was also not given any formal training on how to facilitate and manage change. Therefore, out of survival I started to develop my own tools to help me do two things: understand the situation at hand and devise a plan for moving forward.
I was on location for only a brief amount of time in most cases, so I had to find ways to get the people to give their buy-in to the needed changes and also take ownership of the work moving forward. Finally, while the people might not have taken exactly the path I would have taken to get the job done, I needed to make sure that whatever path they took (one that made sense to them) it was in the direction the company had set out for a future strategy.
All this said, I have now developed over 20 focused activities that are designed to bring a small group of people (from 1 to 15 is typical) together to discuss and correct a specific challenge they are facing. The activities usually last between 3 and 4 hours. They are not intended to change the work in one fell swoop. Instead, they are intended to bring clarity, direction, and understanding on a specific issue.
The activities are card based, meaning that I provide small, specially-designed cards that people write on, and the cards are displayed on a wall in front of the people as the session moves along. This helps to create a visual that everybody sees. It creates a common visual for the group. Since I provide the prompts, cards, and structure for the sessions, the content comes from the people – the experts. This makes every session unique and it engages the people because the information is their information. I never tell them what they must do to change the situation. I let the wall tell them. I simply point out certain aspects of the wall that prompt them to consider certain choices and actions.
So that’s a high-level overview of what I do to change people’s behaviors during the change process. There needs to be top-down clarity and vision, but there also needs to be bottom-up support and willingness to act. Bringing those two thoughts together through group sessions and guided reflection is a very powerful thing. While the concept is simple, please understand that the outcomes are very powerful. Moving people forward in a unified manner, to improve the company, is very often a failed act.
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