Tom and Sophie, change management consultants, share their experience in guiding organizations through significant transformations. They emphasize the importance of understanding the current state, defining the desired outcome, and creating a clear roadmap to bridge the gap.
Their extensive toolkit covers gap analysis, a tool developed by Kurt Lewin, to help organizations navigate change effectively. The process involves identifying the current state, defining the desired outcome, and creating a roadmap. Their Behaviroal Design and improvement coaching approach ensures everyone is working towards the same goal and makes focused progress measurable and achievable. That is exactly what Dora is looking for.
Over the last 20 years Tom & Sophie had the pleasure of working in many industries as change management consultant with Organizational Development challenges, each facing unique contextual situations, but also many similar human behavioral realities. While they were working in the trenches with lots of process & tools they valued the human interaction more while they experienced bigger positive impacts through the facilitation of how they managed to navigate through the tensions and dynamics. Many lessons learned, by experimenting with science models, frameworks, a wide variety of tools and creative techniques.
As pair coaches their backpack with useful inspirational gear and tried successes was quite complimentary. Their focus lies in gaining a deep understanding of the context and the psychological forces that shape behaviour. Tom was heavily invested in behavioral dynamics and psychological guidance of teams while Sophie deepdived in research and history of all she could find. One tool they frequently use to help organizations through simple problem solving as well as complicated transformations is gap analysis, developed by godfather of change Kurt Lewin. How did the facilitation of this tool help the startup shift to scale up after their Product-Market fit and hyper-growth expansion? The evolved from a reactive mindset to a more strategic and professional approach by frequently updating this tool helping the changing organization through simple problem solving as well as complicated transformations. What are the secret ingredients of this Gap analysis? When the godfather of change Kurt Lewin developed his model, he visualized the process using 3 techniques. Let’s focus here n the frst stage UNFREEZE.
AS IS _ Current State
above and below the surface…
questions to ask:
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Baselining a Gap Analysis
To start, we conducted a gap analysis, based on qualitative interviews, enriched with collections Performance Data, Market trends, stakeholders, including client feedback and employee Pulses and business agility assessments. The aggregation and take-aways went into a Leadership in person workshop, involving engage representatives to align the shared understanding where the organization is now (the current state) and where they want to be (the desired outcome).
The Challenge
This particular startup, while full of competent and smart individuals, struggled with effective mature leadership. The senior leaders were constantly reacting to every small change instead of focusing on the bigger picture. They needed guidance to move from their current chaotic state to a more structured, strategic systemic management style and chose my facilitative services as a sherpa to challenge, guide, and support the whole organisation with process improvement and skill building.
TO BE_ Desired State
above and below the surface…
I facilitated a provocative future picture which they didn’t want to see happening and premortem-wise we regressed right to left and aligned on what we all would prefer as more prosperous future.
A premortem is a meeting where a project team imagines the project has failed and then thinks about what might have caused the failure.
This is different from a postmortem, which looks at what went wrong after the project is finished. The goal of a premortem is to find possible problems early so the team can plan how to avoid or deal with them. This helps the team make better decisions and prevent future issues.
In other workshop phases we visualized all ideas, challenges, impediments and critical success criteria. We learned Michael Lloyd’s way of mapping symptons, dysfunctions and potential short/near term opportunities and long term solutions, creating a simpler path to meaningful, long lasting change.
Then reiterated and simplified on one side, we mapped out all the existing factors: the roles, the people involved, and their past experiences. On the other side, we defined the desired outcome: senior leaders who view themselves as professional managers, focusing on the big picture and leading effectively.
Facing the Challenges of Change
The gap analysis presented several challenges. Firstly, we needed to clarify our ultimate goal. This meant defining the organization’s purpose and understanding what they were aiming for. It was important to recognize that change is not just about the end goal, but about the journey itself. We had to clearly understand where we were starting from and plan how to get to our destination.
Understanding the Nature of Change
Change is a journey. It's about moving from where we are now to where we want to be. This involves addressing key issues like uncertainty, different perspectives, complex processes, and the often overlooked cultural and political aspects of change. Recognizing these factors is crucial for creating an effective transformation plan.
Creating a Clear fixed flexible Roadmap
The final step was to develop a practical and revisable roadmap. Using tools like radar charts or spider diagrams, we visualized the distance between the current state and the desired outcome of agreed prioritized metrics. This visualization helped us create a clear, actionable plan for the organization to follow, outlining specific actions and feedback reflections towards goals to achieve over the next 5 years.
As they kept measuring to improve, they found after 5 years the balance of success and hiccups, leaning to uprising new priority metrics to which they had to adapt their focus.
Transformation of the status quo into an actionable journey
Through this process, we crafted a roadmap that served as a guiding light for the organization. It ensured everyone was working towards the same goal and made progress measurable and achievable. The organization successfully transformed its leadership style, becoming more professional and effective.
Reviewing and taking action by validating hypothesis and running experiments is crucial for identifying specific performance improvements, ensuring accountability by outlining clear actions, and enhancing communication within the team. This approach helps businesses address performance gaps effectively, align team efforts, and work cohesively towards common goals.
They applied Improvement KATA and upskilled the managers into more coach-wize leaders; who inspired their teams to continuously improve their accountability and celebrate the transparent progress and responsiveness when some unforeseen setback happened.
Gap analysis is a powerful tool for navigating significant transformations, it inspired many other frameworks. By identifying the current state, defining the desired outcome, and creating a clear roadmap, organizations can align their efforts and measure progress effectively. As a change consultant, I’ve seen firsthand the positive impact this approach can have. When they met Dora, they continued to help organizations like Unison achieve their goals using gap analysis and other ninja tools.
