Application: Change leadership & culture transformation

Many organizations are trying to make fundamental changes, even to the point of transforming their culture. Such change requires leadership as well as management and VE, because of its ability to support dialogue in the face of complex challenges, is a useful tool for change leadership. The Change Handbook, 2nd Ed.(2007) lists Visual Explorer among 60 effective methods and tools for whole-system change.

>>see also the Culture Development Cycle

Benefits

• Asking new questions / Imagining alternatives / Building on ideas
• Fun and playful, yet at the same time serious dialogue
• Clarify and communicate mission, vision, and values
• Paying careful attention to details and to big pictures
• Surfaces individual and shared assumptions
• Create new metaphors and shared images
• Sharing of perspectives about an issue in a way that leads to synthesis and the construction of new perspectives
• Mutual understanding of emotions, intuitions, and tacit knowledge that might otherwise be left unspoken and unillustrated
• Self-disclosure and vulnerability in a safe context.
• Tapping into personal experiences and passions
• Get people out of their “stuck” perspectives

Background

An important part of change leadership in large systems is what we call “taking it to the middle.” Taking it to the middle means engaging leaders across all parts of the organization, with special attention to what Barry Oshry calls middle integration. Often this requires getting “the whole system” in a single room, and engaging diverse perspectives, while striving for shared direction, effective alignment, and common commitments.

Facilitation

The use of VE in change leadership and large-scale culture transformation requires substantial preparation and experience. VE is merely a tool in such contexts, always used as a part of a larger leadership strategy and extensive tool kit. The use of VE in change contexts should generally follow the steps taken for creating dialogue, but adapted for large groups, across many gatherings.

Example

A Hospital in Kinston North Carolina practices change leadership in support of transforming the organizational culture. A multi-day whole system retreat was held with the senior leadership team and broad and deep representation of middle management. The purpose of the retreat was to “take it to the middle”—for senior management to fully engage the middle and the whole of the organization in leading change amidst significant challenges.

On the 2nd day of the retreat an Open Space Forum (per Harrison Owen) was run, in which the 40 or so attendees clustered into groups around 10 self-nominated issues. For example one issue was “becoming the employer of choice in our community.” After some initial discussion of the topic, each of the groups then did a VE session. Everyone was given several broad options for framing questions as they selected an image: What’s most puzzling or troubling about this issue? What does it look like to you? Or simply, What stands out? Each participant completed a worksheet in which he or she stated the issue, reflected on the framing questions, and then after picking an image, described the image and its connection to the issue. After the VE session, each group continued its open space conversations by writing up insights and action steps. The VE sessions proved helpful in coalescing these insights across sometimes conflicting perspectives.

Afterwards, a slide show was distributed that combined key words from the participants overlaid on the VE images they chose. Flip charts of insights and steps that each group produced were photographed and included in the slide show. At the top and bottom of this post are two images from a group who talked about “becoming the employer of choice in our community.”