Comprehensive. Piecemeal, incremental change initiatives rarely lead to the degree of change that most organization's are seeking. We believe that a more comprehensive approach, which considers all of the organizations elements, and the fit or alignment among these elements, is required in todays complex and dynamic business environment. The following is our model of the Elements of Organizations, illustrating their interdependence.

Client-Led

We believe that leadership of change efforts must be in the hands of an organizations leaders. If change initiatives are, or are perceived as being, led by staff or consultants, the likelihood that the effort will be an integral part of improving the business decreases significantly.

In complex change initiatives it is easy to get lost in myriad activities and mountains of data, thereby losing sight of the overall purpose of the project. To avoid this, we work with organization leaders to identify specific business outcomes for the initiative. We then divide the initiative into phases with specific outcomes and a specific time frame for each phase. Reducing the project into manageable phases with specific targets helps those involved to stay focused on the ultimate purposes of the initiative.

Our experience is that those who create tend to support what they have created. For that reason, we strive for maximum, appropriate involvement of key stakeholders in change initiatives. For initiatives to succeed, those who are being asked to change need to understand how and why they need to change and they must be a part of the change process itself. So, we make the process as explicit as possible and include points for integration and agreement-building among the key stakeholders as an integral part of the process. This on-going involvement makes the actual implementation of change and transition into the new organization significantly more achievable and more efficient.

We make the approach to change as clear, explicit, and user friendly as possible. We do this through verbal and graphic descriptions. We believe an explicit approach engenders understanding and support for change initiatives and builds the organization's change know-how for the future.

We always partner with an organization's leaders and internal consultants. We believe that any change effort needs to be driven and led by the client, not by the consultants; and we respect our clients' knowledge of their business, their organization, and themselves as important elements in the process. We also believe that, in the process of creating organizational change, we and our clients bring unique knowledge and perspective to the table. Thus we fully offer our knowledge, skills, and experience to our clients and ask our clients to do the same in return. In this way, we can create powerful synergy.

We want the organization's key players to know as much as we do about creating change when we leave. We do this by making agreements about the process with clients, by making the process explicit, by "shadow consulting" with the key players in the change initiative, and by providing materials that contain the necessary concepts and tools for successful organizational change.