Chapter 1
Discovering the Magic:
What Is Whole-Scale?

Introduction

Our ever-changing environment combined with the warp speed of technology has placed unparalleled demands and expectations on each of us both where we work and where we live. These demands require leaders to uncover new approaches that harness the tumult, speed, and complexity of the new environment and use them to the organization’s advantage. These demands are also requiring employees to adapt, change, and then change again, as they respond to the same challenges facing their leaders. As consultants, we believe there is an overwhelming need to change from the old structural organizational models of the twentieth century. We need commonsense ways to tap into and unleash the wisdom present in the entire workforce. We need processes to release the energy and combine that knowledge. That is the reason we believe that the Whole-Scale methodology makes important sense today. Whole-Scale enables the organization to quickly and effectively assess today’s environment and map and implement a strategy to deal with it successfully now and in the future.

This writing is driven by the urgency we feel in bringing about change that empowers organizations and the people in those organizations to be truly successful in the future. We want to “open our hearts,” share some of our experiences, and pass on ideas, theories, models, and processes that are robust in creating change.

The Richmond Savings Story—1995

We were approached by the President and CEO and the human resources director of the third largest credit union in Canada. They asked if we would go to Vancouver to work with their organization, using our Whole-Scale processes. These two men had been able to observe a Whole-Scale large-group event the month before and had a vision of what they could accomplish with their own organization.

Richmond is a suburb of Vancouver, changing culturally based on the influx of immigrating Hong Kong Chinese who are settling and building houses in Richmond. The president, Kirk Lawrie, had worked out a new Vision statement for the credit union in response to these changes. After seeing the Whole-Scale event with another company, he realized that he needed to involve all of his employees in setting direction toward that Vision for the year 2000.

Two Dannemiller Tyson Associates partners met with the Leadership Group of Richmond Savings and developed a draft Mission and Strategic Goals statements that could be articulated to and enriched by the entire organization in a series of large and small events. The first event was with a group that we call the Event Planning Team (EPT), which was a true microcosm of the whole credit union, including one of the leaders, a couple of middle management directors, and front line people of all types (tellers, loan officers, secretaries, technicians, and so forth). This group of twenty met with the consultants for two days to agree on a meaningful purpose and agenda for a large group event (250 participants). Together they answered the questions:

1. What will be different in our world as a result of these 250 meeting for three days (Purpose)?
2. Who needs to be in the meeting in order to achieve that Purpose?
3. What conversations need to take place among that group in order to achieve that Purpose?

The Purpose this group debated and finally consensed on was:

At that point, the group agreed there were some people missing from their own microcosm Event Planning Team, whose voices needed to be part of planning with the Purpose in mind. These people were invited and joined us. We then agreed on the following plan:

Days one and two would be a diagonal slice of people (another, and larger microcosm) representing all of the levels and functions of work geography (branches, central office). That group held discussions for two days, hearing from the various stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, each other, leadership, and competitors (role played by Richmond people), and would finish the second day with input from everyone in the room on the draft Strategy. Then that microcosm would return to work, freeing the other half to come together on days three and four to repeat the processes from the first two days, ending with input regarding the Strategy. The next day (day five), the leadership team returned to the meeting room, read and discussed the input they received from the entire organization, and rewrote the Strategy based on the wisdom the group had given to them.

Day six was a Sunday and the branches were closed, enabling every person in the organization to come to the meeting place to take the next steps. The Leadership Team described the work they had engaged in and the resulting rewrite of the Strategy, a copy of which was at each person’s place when they arrived. When the leaders finished telling everyone what they had done, the President asked: “How did we do? Did we get it?” The room erupted into excitement and applause, even ending in a sustained standing ovation. The leaders were overwhelmed with the response.

Let us show you how the Strategy had changed:

See Table

The rest of day six was spent developing systemwide action plans that would cause change in work processes and enable the group to achieve the new goal statements. After these plans had been developed and agreed upon, back-home groups developed committed action plans for their own office or branch. Follow-up continued by computer reports and by all-hands meetings to share what was happening.

Two years later, Kathie Dannemiller received a phone call from the President asking her if she would be willing to be interviewed for a Canadian news magazine that had noticed the amazing success of this group. Kathie, of course, agreed, and asked him what had been so surprising. He said, “We thought we were writing a strategy for the next five years, and the most surprising thing is that we have been successful on every measure in just two years. And what’s been particularly amazing is that we have achieved the original goals, the draft first created by leadership, and we have achieved the rewritten goals. We are amazed. How do you account for us having achieved both sets?” Kathie said, “The goals, in fact, were the same.… The language of the rewritten goals spoke more clearly to the front-line person, and because people could viscerally understand what was needed, they made it happen!”

Although their leadership has changed, Richmond Savings thrives today, their strategy evolving appropriately because of the work they did together in 1995.

The Roots of the Term Whole-Scale

Our work with systemwide consulting has undergone significant change over the years. As the challenges of our clients have changed, our work has changed to support them. Each time our understanding of what is needed has undergone dramatic change. We have chosen to call what we do by different names as the work has evolved. Based on our work with Ford Motor Company in the early 1980s, the name we used was Large-Group Interactive Processes. During that time our clients told us that they needed to bring larger and larger groups of people together, in order to move quickly in the same direction. Later, from our work with Boeing on the challenges facing them in the early 1990s, they identified the work they needed to do as getting large groups of people connected around developing a common and accurate strategy. We then began to call our approach Real Time Strategic Change. During that time we discovered that when a microcosm of the organization had a common database and could identify what needed to be different in their work, at that very moment (“Real Time” in the meeting), change began. Several years ago, we realized how dramatically we had expanded our work and changed the focus. Ford taught us to “go big”; Boeing taught us to “get focused” with strategy; and now clients were asking us to continue doing those things and also find ways to go deeper by changing day-to-day behaviors and work processes in their organizations. By combining everything we knew about moving large groups fast in a focused direction, we realized that in these same types of microcosms the client could also develop new work structures and processes—large groups doing details in real time.

United Airlines, Indianapolis Maintenance Center, provided us our first real opportunity to combine and integrate the Socio-Technical Systems approach we had called Real Time Work Design, created by our partner Paul Tolchinsky with the Real Time Strategic Change. Both had been highlighted in Bunker and Alban, Large Group Interventions (Berrett Koehler, 1995). This new approach helped organizations meet their needs to move faster and deeper. We began to call our approach Whole-Scale because the power of the microcosm

allowed them to see the whole system and work the whole system (the “whole” in Whole-Scale) regardless of the size of the microcosm (large or small—the “scale” in Whole-Scale).

What our clients helped us see is that the same robust change processes we had developed for Ford and Boeing could be applied to process issues, organization design problems, and the daily work issues of organizations. United forced us to develop a methodology that would not only move them faster, but would also take the conversations from the strategic to the day-to-day issues of whole systems. What we learned is that with any size group, when we work with a microcosm of the whole, we can help the system think “whole” about their present realities and future needs. Building a common database ignites action to begin in the moment. In that fashion we bring about significant change without having the whole system in one place at one time. Whole-Scale means that we are always operating as well as thinking of the whole organization as we work with true microcosms of that organization. Whether we are working with twenty people or 2,000 people, the principles of the microcosm and seeing “whole” are the same.

Large-group approaches to organizational change have become increasingly popular in the last few years because many leaders have learned that the style of management often referred to as “command and control” no longer works. Leaders are learning that they need to get real buy-in on strategy from their people. They need to find new ways to align and engage large numbers of people around a common, effective strategic focus and an organization structure that can be executed quickly!

The organizations we work with are typically being challenged by a quickly changing environment and experiencing a sense of urgency about operating in that environment. It is our goal to help leaders and organizations understand and believe that the change processes we call Whole-Scale are a viable way of responding to that urgency.

Unleashing the Power of the Microcosm

If you want to shift the whole system at one time, you must be able to think the way the whole system thinks. Using microcosms—real subsets of the larger group that represent all the “voices” of the organization—in the overall change process is one of the features of the Whole-Scale approach that allows you—and the organization—to think and see “whole system.” The microcosm contains the essential “DNA” of the whole organization. Working with groups that mirror the “whole” allows you to work with the “whole system” at a different level. The best way to change a system is to engage the whole system. Microcosms are the best windows through which to view the whole system in real time. They provide access to the whole system quickly and effectively. Having a critical mass of microcosms experiencing a paradigm shift helps the whole organization shift.

The underlying assumption in the use of microcosms is that the wisdom necessary for success is in all the people of the organization. The most effective change efforts include the voices of all key stakeholders, not just the voices of the top or the bottom or the middle. All of the people in the organization— plus those who are counting on the organization, such as customers, owners, or suppliers—must be able to speak and be heard. When you cannot get all— getting the “DNA” re-creates the whole, without having to have everyone. The decisions of any one representative microcosm should be exactly the same as those of any other “DNA” microcosm would be.

Why is this so important?

The traditional consulting approach has been to pull together the “experts” on a particular issue—often people who thought alike or had the same background or had the “right” status in the organization. This view is necessarily limited, often focusing on data of high-ranking, influential views. It’s necessary to include those views; and, by themselves, they are not sufficient. Using the holistic view from a microcosm (or many microcosms) will illuminate the fact that people can contribute powerfully when they have enough information and when they are invited to do so.

In Whole-Scale, using microcosms means tapping into the wisdom of every area and every level of the organization—all the way throughout the process, not just the night before implementation. In Whole-Scale, involving people means engaging each person in a deep and meaningful way.

Whole-Scale processes evoke the system’s wisdom without needing to direct or control the results. Thus, when the system is ready, the answers come. The job of leaders and the consultants who support them is to help the system get ready. The microcosm will have all the knowledge it needs once the organization has uncovered and combined the knowledge it possesses. Through the power of the microcosm, it is possible to create identity in the moment and to form new identities, without having to define every aspect of the system or get inside each person’s head.

This moment, when new identities have formed within a microcosm, is the moment we call the “paradigm shift” moment. People (individually and as a whole) are seeing the world differently, are seeing themselves differently, and are connected around a common picture of their future and the actions they will need to take to get there. After the paradigm shift experience, participants are able (and indeed clamoring) to flex their newly uncovered wisdom and build toward the yearnings they have uncovered together.

Some of the small-group examples of microcosms that make the difference in Whole-Scale are Research Teams, cross-functional Task Teams, Core Teams as integrators, and Event Planning Teams. In Whole-Scale events, you can use microcosms in several ways. One of the most useful techniques is to use “max-mix” seating, which is simply a group of eight people at a table, representing basically the same mix of knowledge, yearnings, functions, levels, and attitudes that will be in the larger group. Each table in a Whole-Scale event is thus a microcosm of the room, and all those in the room together are a microcosm of the system.

Uniting Multiple Realities

The consultant must keep a continual focus on the simultaneous and sometimes conflicting realities that exist in the internal and external environments of the organization. In change processes, the real needs of participants in their back-home work should shape the content. Do not use simulations or role-plays. Rather, encourage participants to address real issues in real face-to-face dialogue.

Many organizations base their improvement efforts on the assumptions of problem solving. In fact, assuming that there is one “right” answer disempowers employees. If there is a “right” solution, it follows that there must also be a “wrong” solution. The right/wrong paradigm is a limiting and ineffective way to help organizations change.

You will have greater success if you operate under the belief that there is no “right” or “wrong” answer. An individual’s answer is his or her “truth.” “Each person’s truth is truth” is the phrase you can use to help individuals listen to each other’s perspectives. Helping people realize that all of the truths matter is equally important. Combining our truths gives us a much more robust view of the world and enlarges possibilities enormously!

What Is it? A Journey or a Process?

Whole-Scale processes also consist of a series of events: typically alternating small- and large-group interactions that enable the organization to undergo the necessary paradigm shift. The whole process is an Action Learning approach that uses Whole-Scale events as accelerators and works with microcosms of the organization. Whole-Scale is both a change journey and change processes.

Whole-Scale combines processes to help an organization change in order to meet the challenges of its environment. It takes the organization on an action-learning journey, unleashing the power of the microcosm, uniting multiple realities, and creating a paradigm shift… a change in the way the organization sees its future actions… that enables it to change in real time. As you help clients do these things using Whole-Scale methods, two models and a formula will guide you: the Converge/Diverge Model, the Action Learning Model, and the DVF Formula.

An important model to use is the Converge/Diverge Model, depicted in figure 1.1. The model shows the change journey in which an organization moves, over time, through a series of activities that create and sustain change in the organization. It represents a connected flow that integrates the individual, small groups, and the whole system to expand their database (diverge), combine their multiple realities (converge), explore possibilities (diverge), and make systemwide decisions (converge). The large ovals depict opportunities for a critical mass to “get whole” (converge). In the flow of convergence/divergence, large-group events accelerate the change journey; they bring together a critical mass that combines everything people have been learning from their individual and small-group efforts into a whole picture. In the larger group, they will make the decisions that will move them forward faster and deeper. The wisdom required is in knowing when to “go whole.”

Our process for thinking about when to “go whole” comes from the work of Lawrence & Lorsch, in their book Organization and Environment (Organization and Environment: Managing Differentiation and Integration by Paul R. Lawrence and J. W. Lorsch). In this book the authors talk about the need for an organization to have both differentiation and integration. They define differentiation as “differences in attitudes and behaviors among functional organizations resulting from organizational segmentation with consequent development of specialized knowledge and mental processes.” They see integration as “the quality of the state of collaboration that exists among departments that are required to achieve unity of effort by the demands of the environment.” They also use the term integration as a process of achieving a state of integration. The moment to “get whole” is at the moment of maximum differentiation—to diverge one more inch might pull the organization apart, disconnecting us from each other. At the moment integration occurs, differentiation immediately begins again, and the whole cycle repeats itself!

Figure 1.1 Converge/Diverge Model

In the Whole-Scale approach, the Converge/Diverge Model depicts how you can seek to help an organization unleash and combine its wisdom creating magic by ensuring that productive differentiation is brought “whole” by productive integration.

What Is Action Learning?

Another model that describes Whole-Scale processes is the Action Learning Model found in figure 1.2 (overleaf). The Action Learning Model is a picture of wholeness emerging—generating, releasing, and focusing individual and organizational energy. It provides a continual “plan-do-check-act” set of Action Learning processes. Following the Action Learning path can facilitate a systems approach to engage all of the key stakeholders in the change journey. Based on Kurt Lewin’s Action Research Model, the model is an application of systems thinking and action learning aimed at keeping the system whole at every step of the way.

Figure 1.2 The Action Learning Model

The Action Learning Model is a commonsense way to look at how organizations get on the path to change. The Action Learning Model describes a powerful way to help a client system stay “whole” throughout the learning cycle. Organizations must continually re-examine the results they achieve at different points throughout a change process in order to inform the next step. This axiom is true for the next agenda items in a meeting, the next day of an event, and for the next step in the whole organization’s journey.

Whether you are focusing on an event as an accelerator or the change journey as a whole, your best approach to helping the organization is to get the right people (a few or thousands) to have the right conversations that will enable them to achieve their purpose. Your interventions must be intentional at each step in the cycle. Design the work to engage the organization to provide its own answers to the questions noted beside each step in the model.

Throughout the flow of change, each oval in the model carries a different set of tasks and outcomes on the journey. The questions between the ovals ensure that the right people have the right conversations and thus ensure the wholeness of the system in the subsequent oval:

• What’s next?
• Who needs to be involved?
• What conversations need to take place?
• What will be different because these conversations take place?

A key design issue at each oval and throughout the learning cycle is when the organization is answering the question “Who needs to be involved?” Is this the moment when the organization needs to engage a critical mass of the system to reunite around head and heart—to get a critical mass of the system whole again around its learnings?

Within each oval, the “who” is a microcosm or multiple microcosms (i.e., twenty people or 500 people). One of the initial activities of the microcosm is to build its own common database to inform its conversation and its work. Then, within each oval, the common database that the microcosm builds helps the organization uncover the right issues to address at that point. Once the issues are visible, the microcosm can address those issues and move the system toward the next level of the change process.

Shared information is the common thread that connects all the ovals in the learning cycle. The content of the information shifts as the system moves through that cycle. The focus is to create “wholeness” every step of the way.

In different parts of this model, different microcosms are involved. When a critical mass of the microcosms has gone through the Action Learning Model on the right issues, the whole system will change because it has in fact become an organization with a new paradigm… an organization that has a whole new picture of what it wants to be. We refer to this magical moment when the paradigm shift occurs as becoming “one-brain and one-heart¹.” Everyone in the organization sees the same things and cares passionately about creating this new picture.

The Action Learning Model serves as a general architecture for an overall Whole-Scale change process. Within a change process, the organization may go through many iterations of the learning cycle. For example, when designing and conducting a critical mass/Whole-Scale meeting and follow-up, the organization goes through the whole Action Learning cycle. Each cycle takes the organizational learning deeper and helps the organization reenergize itself to sustain the change process and embed the new paradigm in its day-to-day workings.

Creating Paradigm Shifts: The DVF Formula

The DVF Formula, also called the D × V × F > R Model, depicted in figure 1.3 is a cornerstone of Whole-Scale work. We first developed this concept from the work of Richard Beckhard (Organizational Transitions: Managing Complex Change by Richard Beckhard and Reuben T. Harris, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1987) at the National Training Laboratories. Dannemiller Tyson Associates’ version of the model explains what it takes to bring about real change in an organization or in an individual.

When all of the elements (D and V and F) are in place, in the individual and/or in the organization, the paradigm will have shifted and changes will be a given.

Figure 1.3 The DVF Formula: A Model that Describes Conditions Necessary to Get a Real Paradigm Shift

When all of the elements (D and V and F) are in place, in the individual and/or in the organization, the paradigm will have shifted and changes will be a given.

The first step in lasting organizational change is for each individual and the organization as a whole to share a common database of dissatisfaction “D” with things as they are right now. Everyone must be able to see and understand the view that others hold, and to understand, as previously described, that “each person’s truth is truth.” Everyone needs to see and value others’ views and combine those views with their own perspective to create a common database from which the entire organization can move forward. “D” describes why we must change, the reasons for us to do anything any differently. In one organization, “D” might mean building a common understanding of the key drivers for change.

The second step is to establish a common vision “V” of what the organization yearns to be in the future. “V” describes the end point the organization seeks to achieve. Some define “V” as direction. Regardless, it paints the picture of the next stop on the horizon everyone in the organization is shooting for. Finally, the organization also needs agreement on significant, systemwide first steps, “F,” to take to begin to move toward the vision. “F” describes the concrete actions that demonstrate progress toward the vision. If any of these three elements is zero, the drive for change cannot overcome the natural forces of resistance “R” that exist within any individual or organization.

In the mid-1980s, as we were facilitating the early stages of large-group work, we realized that the DVF Formula explained the results we began to see. The most startling result was that changes that had taken place in those earlier large-group meetings lasted at least six months to a year beyond what we expected. Equally startling was that even though some people believed that nothing had happened since the last meeting or series of meetings, six months later when we would bring people back together and ask them the Action Learning questions (“What did you say you’d do when you left the last session? What did you actually do? What did you do differently that you didn’t expect to do? What did you learn from that?”), they would uncover, as a group, new meaningful results they had not noticed before. Things had changed; they themselves had changed—and yet the changes were not what they had expected when they left the meeting. Instead of doing what they had agreed to do, they did what needed doing. In the old way of working, they would have done what they had agreed to, whether or not it was right. As a result, they viewed themselves as failing because they weren’t doing what they said they would do. Until they became “one-brain and one-heart” again, as an organization, they could not see that what they had been doing, individually, and as a group, was to invent altogether new ways to accomplish the results the participants were eager to achieve.

The D × V × F > R Model is a great deal more than simply a model for change. It is, in fact, an important model that enables the necessary paradigm shift to occur. When you help an organization to combine D, V, and F, when each of us sees the multiple realities in the room, the wisdom of the whole will be in place and a paradigm shift occurs. When the shift occurs, you can feel it in terms of a higher level of excitement and energy in the room. The paradigm shift lasts beyond the initial euphoria. It is literally impossible, once an organization has made a real shift, for it to go back to seeing the world in the old ways.

Summary

Pulling together a microcosm and/or a series of microcosms creates a critical mass of an organization—”one-brain and one-heart”—capable of building and living a new culture in the moment. As this same critical mass proceeds to model what the organization can be and how it will work, it becomes the vehicle by which powerful change occurs in the whole system.

Whole-Scale includes robust processes capable of quickly changing client systems and preparing them for further substantive change by:

• Clarifying and connecting multiple current realities
• Uniting multiple yearnings around a common picture of the future
• Reaching agreement on the action plans that move them toward that reality
• Building the processes, structures, and relationships that keep the organization moving forward
• Aligning the organization leaders and employees so that they can implement the changes together

When the microcosm has gone through this series of processes, it will produce a paradigm shift—a new way of seeing the world. Once the organization experiences the paradigm shift, people see the world differently. They are ready to take the actions that will begin to transform their shared vision into their shared reality.

The Star of Success Model

¹“One-brain and one-heart” means all people in the organization know the same things, all people in the organization know they know the same things, and they are all connected and committed to a common purpose and plan.