16 October 2005

Deep Change in 3 Days

At our online meeting yesterday, Roland and myself made a lot of progress with our current assignments courtesy Yahoo Messenger.

I am currently working on an assignment with Roland, who I dearly call Mr. Yogi, here in Dubai and it involves transforming the leadership team of a mid-sized wholesale distribution organization. We discussed the purpose, outcomes, and steps in the intervention including specifics for a three-day executive team-building retreat in December. It is going to be the most exciting three days of my career as I will see Change in the making first-hand. I will get to see what my mentor Mr. Yogi has been doing over the last 40 years. The retreats are usually full working days off-site from the walls of the organization where the team gets down to basic processes, what needs to be changed, action and committment plans, and clarifying roles and responsibilities. The pre-work to this vital retreat will consist of one-on-one interviews with the top team who will be transformed into performing to their best, and a report on the kind of topics that should be tackled in the retreat.

A question arises as to how is deep change possible just by the top team going away someplace for 3 whole days discussing strategies. I think the answer is that it is vital to have a seasoned facilitator who can monitor the direction of the sessions, who builds trust in the team, and can turn plans into actions with gentle compulsion.. all information must be non-threatning and nobody leaves without agreeing on strategies to make the company greater than its current state. The other important point to remember is that change won't happen in these three days, but it is the only way that deep change can begin to take shape. In all his 40 years, Mr. Yogi has never seen change happen any other way which convinces me that this mastered process has able to withstand the test of time and cultural difference.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is Roland, Mubeena's partner in UAE. Here is a quote that i just recieved from a co-consultant that I led an change intervention with. Todd is the internal change agent.It conveys the excitement that Mubeena referes to in her deep change post.


"Also just got a call from Todd. On Thursday Bill told his command team that the retreat was the highlight of his 34 yrs in policing. We nailed it and they are marching into the next steps already. Todd says that it feels like a whole new place."


Our next step will be to take the entire organization of almost 200 people off site for three days to get everyone aligned with the strategic direction of the executive /command team.

October 16, 2005 6:51 PM  

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