Why would you do it the Caterfly way?

Because deep organisational change requires real human engagement.

The ‘secret’ of the power of Caterfly’s Open Smart Transformation is in the Open Space events. Crucially, OST is based on invitation not coercion, on opt-in participation, encouraging self-organisation and increasing engagement. While the first Open Space event invites people to start co-creating the change story, the second Open Space event marks a formal end point in the chapter of learning, a review of the new reality and the beginning of a new chapter of consolidation.

As vital markers of the BetaLab experimental period, the opening and closing Open Space events are critical for this change process to work.  The events frame the cocoon in which prototypes are co-developed and tried out.  What happens in the cocoon may include coaching and training, and need not to differ substantially from conventional interventions, but the opening Open Space event will have put participants in an extremely experimental mindset.  The closing Open Space event ends the beta-phase and is an opportunity to evaluate what worked, what didn’t and to consider what to adopt (as such standardising the customisation).

The Main advantages of Open Smart Transformation are:

• Fast effortless change: Lasting, efficient and fast change with high success factor. Aspirational, transformational and inspirational

• Everyone Engaged: Increase positive engagement of all staff.  Positive approach with full commitment from workforce

• Transparent Process: Open and transparent process.  Visualisation, Management 3.0 and Kanban encouraged to enable simple transparency

• Co-owned & customised: Customisation of change, as all staff were involved in its co-creation and co-shaping.  Co-ownership of new co-created way, so everyone behind it

• Risk proofed: Ill thought out aspects of change are uncovered during prototyping. Risk mitigated due to low-cost local prototyping and rapid iteration

Other benefits include:

• Collective wisdom: Taps into collective wisdom of the organisation. Invitation-based, so with no dependency on external help or experts. Resistance to change doesn’t come about, because everyone engaged in the co-creation process, i.e. “managing resistance” is irrelevant

• Plug in: Can work with existing or new teams of leaders and/or consultants (does not require replacing any existing change, but rather enhances it)

• Leadership development: Enables leadership shift from hero mentality to facilitative inspiration

• Innovation: Innovative, disruptive and nimble, leading to break-through

• Scale: Scalable, for large or small, large scale synchronous conversations enabled

• Objections:  Objections, rather than opposition, enables internal feedback loops

• Learning organisation: Building new skills, creates the basis for a genuine learning organisation

• Complexity: Can handle complex systems change very well, including ambiguity and uncertainty

• Emerging Design and Prototyping: ULab compatible, can integrate U-process in cocoon

• Change platform: Creates a change platform where organisation can thereafter change by itself autonomously and continuously. Develops self-sufficiency, can adapt and change without external help. Develops a built-in change mind-set

Ultimately you get the transformation work done naturally, effortlessly and vigourously, with an engaged workforce which now operates from a mindset of continuously changing and improving automatically and autonomously, or as Toyota would say with ‘Jidoka’ (“autonomation”).

How do you create platforms for sustained company-wide conversations that can amplify weak signals and support the complex problem solving needed to address core management challenges?  We believe that three shifts in approach are necessary: 1. From top-down to activist-out. 2. From sold to invited. 3. From managed to organic. Change comes naturally when individuals have a platform that allows them to identify shared interests and to brainstorm solutions.   Prof. Gary Hamel,  Build a Change Platform, not a Change Program, McKinsey & Co

Get in touch to talk through your needs, or to go a little deeper into how our methods engage a collaborative transformation, click here.