Delta7 Change Process: stage 1 – Clarify
In the Clarify stage we work with the leader and the senior team to create a Big Picture that visualises their strategy and helps them agree the strategic message they want to tell.
Process
Our clarify stage has, broadly, two steps:
1) CEO interview: We interview the leader of the organisation to find out the core story / message that needs to be communicated and what is at stake. From this, we create a first draft sketch and outline story.
2) Leadership team Visual Dialogue: We then use the draft sketch and story in a workshop involving the full leadership team to develop and align around a shared message. This is followed where possible with one-on-one interview sessions with the team members to get as honest a reaction as possible. These are all visual sessions rather than plain interviews, so the content grows iteratively, resulting in a picture of the leadership team’s shared vision.
Benefits
Clarity of purpose: This is the single greatest benefit of the process at this stage. By translating the verbal language of business strategy into the visual language of Big Pictures, leaders are forced to articulate what their vision actually looks like. Our experience is that senior staff are often unaware of how abstract the language they use actually is, and how differently it is interpreted by different people, even within the leadership team. Visualisation provides a common language and a common set of descriptions for where the business is going.
Commonality of purpose: Because we involve a wide variety of people in the process, the sense of ownership is spread beyond the management team. The picture becomes a bridge between the experiences of the leadership and the experiences of the employees.
Disclosure of issues: By using visuals throughout the discovery process, we find issues emerging that otherwise would have been hidden. Things that read fine on paper often raise questions when discussed visually, because the pictures are closer to the actual experience of the interviewees. Because of this, the feedback we can provide to leaders at this stage often proves invaluable.
Next Steps
The Clarify stage alone delivers Board Alignment and this is the first step in achieving Employee Engagement and subsequent Behaviour Change. The next stage in Employee Engagement and Behaviour Change is Engage.
