In response to the shock, division and disaray unleashed by the Brexit referendum, we feel it is essential to make space for people to come together. This is a participant-led ‘Open Space’ event, so the experience and discussions you have is up to you. But with many people distracted from fancy notions of reinventing work by very real and immediate worry, fear, anger, despondency this is your time to let off steam, ask big questions, get support and support others, or get constructive.
One thing seems certain: If it is true that many people have reacted to feeling ignored, impoverished and powerless, then making the workplace work for everyone, of making sure that everyone has a voice and can participate is more important than ever.
How can we respond? How we drive this movement forward? How can we help make work better for everyone? What can you contribute?
Thanks. In despair, in hope, and with determination…. see you there?
Tuesday 21 July 15, Victoria, London: Shift, a participant-led Open Space event Why aren’t organisations shifting? www.events.caterfly.co.uk
Applications of Open Space Technology in 21st Century
self-organising network organisations
Open Space Technology (OST) has been around for almost 30 years, has been applied in 150 countries, with 300,000+ groups or events, involving millions of people having unique experiences through OST. OST (Open Space Technology) has been used:
as a participant-led alternative to conferences (hence “unconference”)
for conflict resolution (in large scale peace deliberations)
for stakeholder dialogues in a variety of contexts and disciplines
… and many situations involving deep discussions, where there is a burning issue, high levels of passion and no preconceived outcome. OST works beautifully because it fulfils some of the conditions for participant engagement, such as connection, communication and meaning. OST has also been used extensively for various intra-organisational purposes within organisations with huge success.
Despite the successes, however, OST has rarely become mainstream practice within organisations. This may be because it does not sit well with the planned, budgeted, command & control management style of most organisations. Moreover OST does not create legacies, i.e. it does not lend itself to anyone taking credit for successful outcomes, because success is collective. So as Steve Denning of Forbes laments in his Drucker Forum 2015 blog “… despite almost a century of fine management writing …. about the humanist strand of management thinking that celebrates team and collaboration through respect for customers and workers as human beings ……. , the ugly truth is that its lasting impact on general management has been limited.” … so it is with OST, too.
Nevertheless, over the last few years, as the nature of organisations has gradually been changing, or is being forced to shift through the internet and social technologies, so the demand for OST is on the increase. As we see from some of the thriving pioneering new organisations (as described for instance in Frederic Laloux’s Reinventing Organisations), the definition and purpose of organisations are changing from linear, mechanical, predictability-based, controlled and top-down structures to fluid, organic, emergent, distributed and self-organising networks.
These new organisations thrive on continuous reconfiguration, plasticity, responsive innovation, synchronicity, eco-centricity, co-creativity and mindful empathy. They are self-organising (and continuously self-re-organising) iterative learning network cultures that are ‘wirearchical’, locally attuned and able to adapt to the prevailing fast changing, diverse and highly complex conditions. All of which is not possible unless “led” bottom-up with all employees or members fully engaged and empowered, and with ‘teams of teams’ exploring and cross-communicating.
It is in these new kinds of organisations that OST could become more common, especially where cross-functional alignment and coordination is sought. OST thrives on unpredictability, fluidity and complexity, where the more conventional interventions of “managing” all of the factors do not work. Assigning people to solve highly complex problems can be self-defeating, for instance, because the very selection predetermines certain outcomes which often turn out to be counterproductive. OST on the other hand provides a platform for self-selection (opt-in), cross border serendipity and self-organisation. In particular OST is superb at enabling what MIT’s Human Dynamics Lab research has found to be one of the necessary ingredients for high perfoming teams: regularly exploring information outside one’s team and usual circle of colleagues. OST excels at holistic cross-functional interactions.
As OST within organisations expands, so will the need grow for more skilled OST facilitators who are able to “hold space” without disrupting the interaction flow, and create “containers” within which authentic cross-fertilising exchanges and deep dialogue can occur. They will also need to be able to create peer-based self-organising learning environments, which will form the source of an organisation’s client- or user-connectivity, iterations and innovations.
OST is the face to face synchronous counterpart to digital networks and social technologies (as used in intra-organisational online networks). While online asynchronous connectivity plays an expanding role in these organisations, people still need direct human contact and serendipitous interaction, and OST excels at this. Indeed recent research at MIT’s Media Lab has shown that face to face communication far exceeds video-conferencing or email in enhancing team performance, so direct interaction will increasingly neeed to supplement digitalisation. It is for these more organisation types or modes of operation that new applications for OST will emerge, all involving larger numbers of people from across different parts of the organisation coming together and communicating across borders. Let me list just a few fresh applications of OST:
As a tool for bottom-up culture change, exploring new ways of working and interacting, establishing collective values and practices through experimentation and co-creativity
For strategy development, adjustment and alignment across the whole organisation (somewhat akin to Hoshin Kanri), with a stronger emphasis on implementation.
For R & D product/service design and development, periodic consolidation and synchronisation (possibly combined with ‘big room’ Obeya)
As a complex problem-solving tool, involving multiple stakeholders with diverse perspectives and no predictable solutions (a more self-organised version of S. Beer’s cybernetic Syntegrity)
As a way for organic organisational reconfiguration (bottom-up re-organisation) to respond to changing circumstances (rewiring team networks)
To enable cross-partycollaboration, e.g. prototyping with designers/ developers, customers/users and producers/suppliers (horizontal feedback)
To create learning organisations through pan-organisational peer-based learning environments which are self-managed and self-regenerating
For many, if not most organisations today, a lot of the above may seem obscure, abstract and remote, far from the current reality. In fact most organisations today are still run in a predict, command and control fashion. At the same time, however, there is an understanding amongst leaders this needs to change. Even though little has changed so far, some leaders are talking of an organisational paradigm shift. Yet many of them have little clue how to go about this. This may partly be because their leadership style stands in the way of culture change: as Einstein said, “you cannot solve problems with the same solutions that created them”. Awaiting a generation change is probably not an option.
My take: Do not even try! You cannot plan, command and micro-manage this shift. Instead let the workers, employees and members of the organisation configure the change through emergence. Give the organisation a platform for letting this happen. Stand back, let go and let it happen. This is exactly where OST can work its wonders. Whatever emerges is the right thing to emerge. Leaders should not try to be heroes and do it themselves, rather let the whole workforce authentically engage, experiment and co-create the shift together. Let Open Space Technology do what it does best. This is probably the most important application of OST currently needed – as a tool for organisational transformation and paradigm shift. Let transformation happen. Let open space begin.
Caterfly in partnership with There’s Better Ways Of Working present:
The art of hosting participant-led unConferences, solving complex problems, accelerating action, leading change in organisations, and hosting conversations that matter.
Why? Do you want a way to rapidly launch new projects, bring participation, engagement, equality and inclusion to your organisation or event? To harness collective ingenuity for problem solving? To lead transformation that is real and lasting? To drive innovation?
What?
Learn how to design and facilitate gatherings using Open Space Technology, a method by which a large group of people can organise themselves into a conference, complete with agenda, break-out sessions, action planning and reports, with almost no preparation before-hand. Open Space allows each participant to do what they need to do, and can be a very effective way of launching large-scale change or responding to a looming crisis.
Who?
This workshop invites those who are new to using Open Space and those who already have some or even extensive experience of using it, to co-learn together, deepen our practice, and share our experiences of using it.
How? This workshop will be run as an Open Space so that participants can learn experientially, while learning how to design, prepare and facilitate an Open Space event, including tips and tricks, likely issues that may be encountered, follow up and incorporating an event within a wider context or strategy.
What is Open Space?
Open Space Technology is a format for organising compostable conferences, unconferences, meetings, stakeholder engagement, BarCamps and CityCamps, with maximum efficiency and minimum time and resources. It is a form of ‘crowd sourcing’ which can be used to bring together a company or any group or organisation to focus on a specific problem or question. Open Space allows for participants to co-create experience, learning and solutions in a way that unlocks creativity.
Open Space is used by large companies, local government, community activists, and forward thinking organisations everywhere, from gatherings of 5 to several thousand people, from a couple of hours to several days, even with little notice or preparation.
* A very limited number of ‘pay-what-you-want’ tickets are available on application. You just need to tell us a dazzling (but short) story of why you think the world will be a better place for you being on the course.
Please contact us if you would like to hire us as facilitators, consultants or trainers.
Martin and Francois also use the Open Smart Transformation model at Caterfly to bring about deep and lasting transformation or problem solving in organisations with Open Space.
More workshops and events: Going Deeper with Open Space (August, 2 days), Shift: Why Aren’t Organisations Shifting? (21 July). Click on events for details.
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It has been my contention for a long time that one of the reasons change mandates experience a 60%-80% failure rate (depending on definition, metrics etc) is not because there is anything wrong with the new system or working practice an organisation is implementing, nor because of poor communication or persuasion skills of the executives or consultants charged with the intervention, but rather very simply because the employees affected are often not asked nor consulted in the matter. They are simply informed of the changes as a fait accompli, they are not invited to co-create the future of the organisation. This in turns leads to disengagement, disenchantment or even cynicism, which can create a block in the change being implemented.
Resistance to Change?
This block is often expressed as “resistance” to change, and most change management programs are often about “managing” this alleged “resistance”. Actually, however, in most cases it is not change itself people are resisting, but rather the imposition of a system or practice in which they had no involvement in creating, and is thus alien. Margaret Wheatley put it this way:
[People don’t] … accept imposed solutions, pre-determined designs, or well-articulated plans that have been generated somewhere else. Too often, we interpret their refusal as resistance. We say that people innately resist change. But the resistance we experience from others is not to change itself. It is to the particular process of change that believes in imposition rather than creation. It is the resistance of a living system to being treated as a non-living thing.”
Or as Peter Senge says: “People don’t resist change, they resist being changed.”
In other words the problem with change and the alleged resistance to change is not change itself, but rather the imposition or mandation of change from above. Japanese organisations have no problem with change, it is part of their culture. This is outwardly reflected in the agility of their buildings to adapt to changing environmental circumstances (typhoons, earthquakes), in traditional shrines being ‘rebuilt’ periodically, and in the fluidity between inner and outer space. In my experience Japanese organisations are continuously re-organising themselves according to changing circumstances, and this is done by all employees, down to the shop-floor, who are taught how to solve problems and how to adapt nimbly. Management consultancies hardly exist in Japan (yes, the McKinseys have plush show offices in Tokyo, but their clients are largely expatriate companies) – you do not need expensive change consultants when you can self-organise and change yourself. Change in Japan is not something thought out at the top, but rather everyone in the organisation is engaged in co-creating the changes.
The problem with Western organisational change, as I see it, is having too rigid organisational structures in the first place (inflexibility by design), imposing change from above without asking those doing the work first, and not giving the workforce the tools and authority to solve their own problems, and hence to co-create change when and as it is required.
The Zappos Case
Recently Zappos, the unique online shoe retailer based in Nevada, has been in the news about a memo from its CEO, Tony Hsieh, to its employees in which he offers all of them severance pay if they wish to leave the company because they are not comfortable in its new management environment. In the last 18 months the 1,500 strong company has been embarking on a massive change program, converting from a ‘command and control’ management structure, to one without formal managers, giving all employees equivalent decision-making powers to elect people to specific needs-based tasks or roles in a self-managed manner. The approach is known as ‘holacracy’, a derivative of the Dutch Quaker creation ‘sociocracy’ (find out more here). This full scale adoption of holacracy is the largest of its kind to date, hence many are following the story with keen interest.
The implementation requires a “roll-out” of a substantial amount of training (running meetings, consent decision-making, circle formations), and the program is now running to a first completion stage. It is clear that it has faced certain difficulties, both successes as well departures by disenchanted staff. Here are a few links to recent reports:
The Zappos story is actually a more interesting case, in my view, than most change programs: in a manner of speaking management here is mandating to abolish itself. The self-organising aspect of holacracy is, in my view, somewhat similar to Japanese management styles. True Japanese firms have managers in a hierarchy, but managers are more like mentors who attribute authority to solutions their staff have come up with and consented to. Moreover the fundamental information flow is horizontal working towards satisfying customers, rather than vertically serving shareholders. Prof Kichiro Hayashi (Tokyo Aoyama University) has referred to Japanese (and Oriental in general) management as organic. This organic style is very flexible and agile at adapting to changing circumstances, yet rather inefficient and seemingly disorganised in a static world; whereas Western ‘mechanical’ management is super-efficient in a stable world, but lacks the capacity to self-organise and self-change.
Ordering no more Orders
The Zappos story is thus to me an interesting Western attempt to address this, and in light of the perceived need to transform our capitalism it is being observed by many with keen interest. You might expect employees to embrace the opportunity to take on more responsibility, without having to be accountable to the eccentricities of a boss. Many do. But as Erich Fromm has shown, many also fear freedom. For some, in a world where they have been used to receiving orders, operating without them is scary and may create in them profound disorientation.
Nevertheless with support and coaching most people could easily get used to the new approach, though the bigger the organisation the more difficult it is to do. At the same time, however, there is a felt contradiction in the CEO being required to order that there would be no orders from hence on. To be fair to holacracy, its website says this about this apparent paradox of the CEO needing power to adopt holacracy: “Holacracy is a fundamental shift of authority: it changes the seat of power from the CEO to the Holacracy Constitution, which then distributes that power through specific processes. You cannot shift the seat of power without the CEO’s approval (and shouldn’t be able to). …, you need a formal agreement from that CEO to vest her/his power into something else — in this case the Holacracy Constitution. Without this formal agreement, you would just be “pretending” to work differently”
So what is it, then, that is causing the CEO to posit such an ultimatum “self-organize or leave the company”? Why is this change program evoking such drastic measures? True, the severance package is very generous, yet the dictum feels a little like a dictator forcing subjects to participate, initiate (with their own views) and be engaged. I cannot speak for holacracy, but that would defeat the purpose of its parent methodology, sociocracy, which envisions “people working together as different, unique persons on the basis of mutual equivalence in decision-making” – yet seemingly no differences are allowed at Zappos. This contravenes the desirability for diversity in order to create richness in decision-making. Unintentionally I suspect, it does look like Zappos want clones of each other. Yet can you really offer severance packages to family members?
So why resistance?
So why is there resistance, what is it some staff are riling against? The issue I believe is that holacracy was mandated or imposed. Staff were never asked or consulted whether they wanted holacracy, nor were they invited to co-develop the holacracy transformation. It was simply imposed on them. Somewhat paradoxically, but imposed nevertheless. What people are really rejecting is not holacracy itself, but being forced to change without consultation. This comes back to what I said initially, it is not the system or new behaviour that people are resisting, but the way it is being mandated and imposed. Holacracy may be a great idea, but mandating it doesn’t work. In the case of Zappos, this was already predicted a year ago in March 2014 in the blog “The Mandate of Holacracy at Zappos” by Daniel Mezick, author of Culture Games and agile coach, who was investigating why it was that 80% of agile adoptions were considered unsuccessful.
In short it is mandation which is the problem, not holacracy nor resistance to change in general. This is what we at Caterfly are trying to address with the Open Smart Transformation model, involving a special framework of two Open Space Technology events, where all affected personnel are invited to hold deep dialogues about the change. The two events also demark a period of 3 – 6 months, a cocoon of iterations, in which all employees are trained and coached in the new approach, are asked to suspend judgement and instead apply the new way on a trial and error basis, learning and prototyping, enabling all affected to be involved and engaged in the transformation process. This open ended playful period ends with a second Open Space event where everyone can work on sorting out what worked, what needs adapting and what to reject. In other words the new approach thereby becomes customised to the particular organisation, rather than being something off the shelf, and this work is all done collaboratively by the staff. Consequently they own the change, it is no longer an alien system, they all co-created the transformation together.
This process was initially developed and applied with great success fo agile adoptions where typically 70 – 80% failed. We realised that the fundamental principles of the new approach are true beyond just agile. They apply to adopting lean, responsive, management 3.0, conscious capitalism, environmental management, and holacracy/sociocracy too, and indeed of any new systems implementation or organisational transformation / change management. While what Tony Hsieh is trying to do is not only extremely noble and brave, and is being done with a great deal of generosity and candidness, it is a great pity it had been mandated initially. I am sure he could have avoided this “accept holacracy or get out” dilemma, if Zappos had invited the staff to co-create the change rather than imposing it on them. However generous the severance package offer may be, it now puts Tony Hsieh in a difficult position – some staff may see him, in trepidation, as the ultimate arbiter of who is to stay and who is to go.
Change Platform
In short, mandation or imposition does not work well! This is also summarised in Gary Hammel’s McKinsey article late 2014 “Build a Change Platform, not a Change Program”. Caterfly’s iterative cocoon-forming double open-space framework and follow up is such a platform, we believe, or at the very least helps establish one. Fundamentally we need to change change itself from a mandation mind-set to one of invitation: inviting all affected persons to co-create the new order of things, and thereby co-own it. Open Space Technology, doubled to form an iterative cocoon platform, is the only offline synchronous platform I am aware of that enables this to scale with large numbers of people, effectively, rapidly and sustainably.
Come join us at Shift: Why Aren’t Organisations Shifting? 21 July 2015, London
Details www.caterfly.co.uk/events
Further reading:
Why telling people what to do doesn’t work – click The problem with change management – click
The course is heralding a new style of education, which I would call ‘the internet of learning‘, and which happens to also align well with our approach here at Caterfly. As it turns out, though not by design, the education style applies many of the principles of SOLE (Self Organised Learning Environments – that I have previously written about here) and Open Space Technology (which is a pillar of our work at Caterfly and our Open Smart Transformation model) to achieve something that so far has largely been lacking in most MOOCs: interactivity, intensive group work and peer learning.
Here is the course description for U.Lab: Transforming Business, Society, and Self:
Learn how to create profound innovation in a time of disruptive change by leading from the emerging future. This highly experiential course is based on Theory U, a framework, method, and way of connecting to the more authentic aspects of our self. It introduces the variable of consciousness into management and the social sciences, and proposes that the quality of the results that we create in any kind of social system is a function of the quality of awareness, attention or consciousness that the participants in the system operate from.
The course has operated as an experience on three levels:
1) Why isn’t fundamental change happening?
It addressed the issues of societal and business change and transformation currently in the Zeitgeist, exploring why it is that there is a sense of great changes in the air, yet in practice actually very little is changing. It explored the deeper source levels of disconnects, which could lead to catastrophic outcomes if not dealt with, and how these could be resolved in a more collaborative and harmonious manner. The fundamental premise is that all transformation has to start with the self.
2) Going round the curve: Theory U and mindful emergence
The course examined the U-Theory process itself. Theory U, as espoused by Otto Scharmer and colleagues, is a process of many steps that allows one and teams to build towards emerging futures through listening to deeper levels of inner wisdom and through co-sensing a new future trying to be born, while co-creating prototypes adaptable and responsive to the future that emerges. At first the 25 or so steps to achieve this appeared to me to be highly convoluted; however, this is why I joined the course, to learn more about this famous U-process without prejudice, and I must admit what I found was quite enlightening and encouraging (many of the steps are actually just refinements of five main processes), if only listening to one’s and others’ hearts with open mind and will.
3) Collaborative, self-organised, peer-learning
The third level was the learning process itself, the SOLE+Open Space-like aspect already alluded to above. The structure followed a similar MOOCs type of sequence commonly found in EdX, Coursera and Udacity courses, with video presentations, readings, assignments and a forum where one could engage in written posts, comments, questions etc, all in itself an interesting way of presenting new academic material. At the same time, however, the ULAB course had a unique interactive component which was developed at the authors’ own website at the Presencing Institute. This allowed the 15,000 participants (or at least those actively following the course) to form into local hubs which would meet, either in person or online, to discuss certain aspects of the course, and moreover to form ‘Coaching Circles’ about which I’ll talk more further on.
There were also three live presentations of 1.5 hours each with the whole ULAB team present and many of the 15,000 participants doing some journalling and deep listening exercises together at the same time. In many cases the hubs met in different cities around the world to view the live presentations together and to discuss the content afterwards, although because people were operating on different 24 hour time zones in many cases the hubs met at other times. There was also a real commitment and energy from the Ulab team. This was demonstrated in the second live broadcast which happened to be exactly on the day when Boston (where MIT is based) experienced one of the worst snow storms it has ever experienced, with all transportation and schools being closed; the team had to get special permission to stay overnight in the closed university to be able to run the live global broadcast the following morning.
The hubs and coaching circles were completely self-organised (with the assistance of the Presencing Institute website platform which enabled this) in terms of who joined which hub or circle, when and where they met, how they communicated and what they did. The Ulab team had provided some guidelines as to how the hubs might form and facilitate their meetings, but it was essentially completely self-initiated and self-organised.
I actually took part in several hubs, one for London which met several times, one for the UK which also met centrally in Leamington Spa, one for Europe, which was more informal, and I was also part of an international hub, which we called the Cloud Hub, which met online only. This Cloud Hub was the most active (of the four), had about 30 participants, from India, Finland, Holland, Spain, UK, Canada, USA, Brasil, Chile and Argentina. We communicated by email, WhatsApp chat, Skype, Google Hangouts, Facebook (we created a Facebook page) and Google Drive for sharing documents, and the Presencing Institute site itself has some communication tools which were useful for sharing things with the whole ULab community.
The ULab team had set an appropriate online environment and conditions for the hubs and coaching circles to form by themselves, and most of the learning happened from peer learning. The deepest learning occurred in the coaching circles. The coaching circles consisted of maximum 5 people who met weekly for 90 minutes, to go through one of our member’s ‘case’. This was a highly structured process which was self-managed using an instruction sheet and a time-keeper. Unlike traditional coaching, the emphasis in these peer-coaching exercises was on supporting the case-giver by holding back from reactions and advice, instead allowing deeper levels of understanding, empathy and wisdom to emerge for collective learning. The exercise engendered a deep form of listening and conversing, both individually and collectively, which enabled far richer conversations to occur than is normally the case. The coaching circles formed some deep conversations which I have otherwise only come across naturally in Open Space events.
Other group tasks included paying attention to the different levels of listening we operate at, journalling, empathy walks, collective mindfulness and later prototyping. The latter is really about going beyond the deep listening and collective wisdom towards co-creating or birthing a new world, by a process of trial and error or build, test out and reform. This process allows the collective to be responsive to changing circumstances. This is a very different type of transformation approach from the planned (based on the past) and enforced or rolled out change interventions usually applied by change makers, and which often cascade top-down through hierarchies. In the past the typical mode has been about making change (following a pre-planned blueprint), often without asking (with the ensuing natural resistance), rather than letting change happen (with a vision of the desired future) and constantly adapting this to the actually emergent future through a prototyping mind-set.
The key learnings I got from this course are: It demonstrated a prototype of a new kind of learning using online digital tools, which relies on and works on the principle of online SOLE – Self-Organised Learning Environments, with a particular focus on peer learning. Fundamentally the same principles are at work as in Open Space meetings – and indeed one of the key words Professor Otto Scharmer kept on referring to was, as change-makers, to “hold the space” to allow the deeper conversations to happen, without which any real organisational transformation is not possible – just as you cannot force people and organisations to learn, so you cannot coerce them to change!
I am not sure how easy it would be to scale the U-lab approach to whole organisations (businesses, government agencies, educational institutions) who are undergoing a transformation, but the one thing I am even more convinced of now is that it is absolutely paramount that the employees and affected personnel in any transformation must be involved in very deep conversations about the desired change at its initiation, in order to co-sense it and co-create it. Change is absolutely not something that can be imposed or mandated up or down as has traditionally been practiced in the past. Indeed change management itself needs to change. And the key to these deep conversations is enabling an environment, holding the space, so people can listen empathetically, mindfully and constructively to each other to co-create the change. The Open Space event format enables this space to be held, and is thus the easiest and most efficient way to invite large numbers of people into the process in the same space simultaneously, so that they can create the transformation together.
Self Organising Learning Environments… and what it means for the future workplace
Anyone who has come across TED prize winner Sugata Mitra’s Hole In The Wall computer experiment in India (see videos below) will realise that organisational management is not the only human activity facing a crisis nowadays, but so is education and schooling in its traditional forms. Both management and teaching suffer from the innate habit of its professionals wanting to micro-manage everything, wanting to command and control, indeed trying to control outcomes, rather than letting them emerge. Sugata Mitra calls for creating Self-Organising Learning Environments (SOLE), and his experiments have shown some surprising results.
In SOLE “teachers” should not supply answers, but raise questions instead. It is not about making learning happen, but letting it happen. Too often the urge is for us to interfere. As Eton former headmaster Tony Little has said, not enough attention is paid to learning from peers; contending that what makes a school great is not good teachers, but creating an environment where learning can happen among peers. Peer learning is so much more powerful than is assumed, as the hole in wall experiments have shown; the problem is that this is also worrysome for managers and teachers alike: in SOLE they cannot control it, the learning happens by itself. Managers and teachers alike find it hard to let go.
A similar self-organising principle takes place in Open Space Technology (commonly Open Space) meetings. Open Space is all about letting conversations happen, rather the making them happen through a controlled or moderated program. There is a marketplace of ideas, people group and regroup in a completely self-organised way and move around freely, thus maximising peer learning, peer problem-solving or peer co-creativity. Open Space merely sets the environment or the right conditions for deep passionate conversations to happen. Those who try to “improve” this seemingly unmanaged process, actually interfere and disrupt the natural self-organising, and all too often poor micro-management and controlling patterns set back in. The biggest challenge in SOLE, Open Space or other self-organising systems is preventing managers, teachers or moderators from interfering – getting them to just let go.
“You cannot teach a man anything. You can only help him discover it within himself.” Galileo Galilei
That self-organised peer learning works I can attest through personal experience. In the 1980’s I was working as language project manager / director of studies at Suzuki Motors HQ in Japan for the massive ‘technology transfer’ project, transferring Suzuki’s manufacturing and management skills (what was later termed Lean Manufacturing, Lean Management, or Lean by others) from its plants to partner Canadian company, CAMI Automotive in Ontario. The essence of Lean is that it is not just about the system employed, but just as importantly about the high level of responsibility delegated and trust accorded to those actually doing the work, the ‘workers’ on the shop floor. Our task was to train over 200 shop-floor team leaders in basic English communication skills and training skills, so that they could train 2,000 Canadian workers in those Lean skills (at that time practically no-one in the West knew what Lean was or how it worked). Toyota were also undertaking similar joint-venture projects at the time (e.g. Nummi, Derby) but took a different approach, sending hundreds of their managers across as expatriates to manage the plants. Suzuki did not have the resources to do that, moreover it had undertaken to operate the CAMI plant as a collaborative venture with the Canadian Automotive Union employing local managers right from the start of production, so it was paramount that the transition and training run smoothly.
The problem was that the Japanese team leaders were highly skilled in the work, but had absolutely no foreign language skills (indeed they had never been abroad) and had essentially been school drop outs, with a clear distaste for formal schooling. The idea that they, at 40 or 50 years old, should suddenly go ‘back to school’ to learn a new language was utterly repulsive to them, and many had threatened to leave the company – they had already ‘given up’ before even starting. It was clear that any more conventional form of language and cross-cultural training program was out of the question. That is precisely why we, our company, were brought in at the time, as we had already had plenty of experience successfully running training programs for ‘blue-collar’ workers, particularly at Kobelco.
“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Our approach was unconventional. Instead of spoon-feeding elements piece by piece, we created a total physical context or environment and relied completely on the power of self-organised peer learning, using approaches like ‘Total Physical Response’, ‘Suggestopedia’ and ‘Structuro Global Audio Visual’ learning. These are all holistic and context driven in nature (which is how babies learn!), much like the computer in the wall. Without going into detail here, it was not what the team leaders had feared, and not only did they have great fun with the approach, they learned so much and quickly from the peer activities, that their attitudes and enthusiasm changed completely, to everyone’s delight.
The second half of the 6 months program was devoted to developing the supervisors’ technical training skills, in English. Most conventional technical English courses would start by teaching an array of technical expressions and role-playing simulated situations step by step. We did none of that! Our program, called SPEC and developed by David Vale, consisted of an empty room, with walls prepared so that notices, posters, kanban etc could be stuck on them, a corner with a rich resource of source material (technical books, magazines etc, nowadays we would put computers, but they weren’t around in those days and neither was the internet!), and a marketplace of projects. Their job was to prepare their workplace training material in English and practice teaching it (practicing with each other). The only thing we gave them were a few guidelines and framework expressions for doing a presentation or running a training session (they had already learned training meta-language from previous TPR). They had 8 weeks with 4 hours each day together in the same room to get ready.
Each day we started in a circle (everything we did always started and finished in a circle), and they would start by deciding what areas they each wanted to work on, and posted their information on the marketplace board. They then naturally grouped together according to their needs, they moved around to other groups as they needed to, and they prepared, organised and practiced with and from each other. We instructors did not interfere at all in this self-organising process, nor in the material they were actually working on. It was all entirely driven by them and our only role was as a resource person, answering questions and giving specific cultural feedback when it was requested. It worked beautifully. At the end they achieved their mission. I cannot emphasise enough how powerful self-organised peer learning can be, if the learning is allowed to emerge, rather than coerced (most teaching or training is trainer-led ‘push’ imposition rather than ‘pull’ emergence).
At the time I had not heard of Open Space Technology (there was no internet), but when I later discovered Open Space I immediately recognized that it was exactly what we had been doing, but instead of in a meeting or conference context, ours was in a classroom learning setting. Instead of 2-3 full days of Open Space, it was 40 half days of SPEC, but fundamentally following the same self-organising peer-driven process. It is also the same self-organising peer-learning principle which plays in SOLE. The biggest challenge for me as the manager at the Suzuki project at the time had not been the initially very reticent learners – once they realised that self-organised peer learning could be fun and rewarding they were absolutely fine. Ironically the biggest challenge was some of the instructors on our own team – we had had to hire highly qualified instructors for image reasons (the clients wanted good bios and qualifications), yet I then had to ‘unteach’ them almost everything they had learned to do as instructors. Some took it up quickly, but others found it very hard indeed to let go and let be.
I should add the project was highly successful. The subsequent training of the Canadians was so effective that most of the Japanese supervisors were able to return to Japan after just one year instead of the planned two years – the cost savings to Suzuki was enormous compared to the initial training costs. This new ‘bilingual’ team of trainers were then available for new assignments – they were subsequently sent on 2-3 year stints to Hungary, India, Malaysia, Thailand and eventually China, from which we see some of the huge changes from shabby box vehicles to modern cars in the new Skodas, Tatas and Protons. I would like to think that our Open Space / SOLE type of training contributed to the economic rise of Eastern European and Asian economies as a support mechanism, though l think that would probably be stretching it a little bit too far; after all they were all joint efforts. Equally I’m pretty certain it is fair to say that it would be wrong to assume that Open Space or SOLE had no role to play at all.
The SOLE principle is also the one we are applying to Caterfly. For a transformation program or implementation of new systems to succeed it is imperative that all affected people are invited in to co-decide, co-learn and co-create the change together. This has to be free of manipulation and needs to be seen to be free of vested interest. The self-organising peer-learning nature of Open Space is ideal to start the leaning process, and let emergence work its wonders. Cocooning the coaching period between beginning and end Open Space events sets protective boundaries within which things can be tried out, played with and people can learn from each other. Caterfly is built on the idea of inviting people into the change process, rather than coercing them, and on the self-organising peer learning that emerges. You cannot control the outcome, the only thing you can do is give it some direction by the questions you ask.
As the brilliant former Wharton Business School professor Russell Ackoff has said (BBC Interview with Peter Day): “Anyone who’s ever taught a course is aware of the fact that the one who learns the most is the teacher. So schools are upside down. The students ought to be teaching. You cannot teach unless you learn. The faculty ought to be learning, that’s what it knows how to do, it doesn’t know how to teach. The old fashioned Roman school house was a room in which student taught student – the teacher was simply a resource to ask for help, not someone who spoke at them, spurning out knowledge. We need to remake schools to be built around learning, instead of around teaching, and that’s a fundamental revision.”
And so too it should be with management and leadership, I would say. Let’s apply the Open Space of learning and the SOLE of meetings to new leadership and its transformation!
You may also like our short piece: What is Kaizen? and our explanation of how Caterfly is pioneering the combination of Open Space with Kaizen: Innovation and Kaizen
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”(Lao Tsu)
What does Kaizen mean?
Kaizen means different things to different people. Some see Kaizen as part of the Toyota Production System, or the essence of Lean. Some have positioned Kaizen as the umbrella concept of Lean or Six Sigma. Others view it merely as a set of techniques or practices. Meanwhile, it is also seen as a leadership style or culture. Toyota see it as the “soul of the company”. To me Kaizen is a pan-organisational attitude and questioning mind-set, which fosters co-creative betterment.
Source: Taivara
Kaizen is fundamentally very simple. It’s nothing more than everyone (in an organisation) asking themselves a single question every day, everywhere they work: “What small step can I take to improve …. (whatever they are working on)?” The emphasis is on small, i.e. it is easy and immediate to implement. For example if you want to lose weight, reducing one lump of sugar in your coffee would be a small ‘doable’ step – as opposed to the big step of going on a full 2-month cruel diet. The Kaizen mind-set is so easy to explain, yet difficult to apply in many corporate settings.
Kaizen is normally translated as ‘continuous improvement’, and indeed that is its effect, continuously improving the workplace, product, processes and so on, little by little. The literal translation of ‘kai’-‘zen’ is ‘good change’ (kai, kaeru = change; zen, yoshi = good), or change for the better. Indeed, strictly speaking the word Kaizen does not actually say anything about small or continuous. Masaaki Imai, who initially introduced Kaizen (as applied in Japanese companies) to the West further adds: Good change “by Everybody, Everyday, Everywhere” – and this is crucial, just little incremental steps but done by everyone regularly (continuously).
Kaizen is not just about improving products or services; it is also about constantly improving processes (operations, standards, office workflow, production, efficiency, sustainability…..), indeed anything that may speed up, embellish, eliminate waste, simplify, reduce a step, remove toxins, fool-proof a process and so on. Kaizen is particularly useful in reducing human mistakes in routine work, by considering small steps that would prevent human errors recurring.
We all sometimes do some simple Kaizen without knowing it, for instance in the kitchen we may move things around to make it easier to cook. Indeed we often treat our homes with a kaizen mentality in a way we don’t in the workplace. Where many people work in the same place, however, some form of standardisation is required; we cannot implement ideas willy nilly, it needs the consent of all affected. In a Kaizen workplace small Kaizen meetings are encouraged to consent to and implement these small changes – which are then also jointly celebrated, and periodically reviewed.
“Take the first step in faith; you don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.” Martin L. King
Kaizen culture
Organisationally Kaizen is about culture, a ‘Kaizen culture’. Kaizen has more to do with human encouragement and development (‘hitotsukuri’) than with improving the service or product of the organisation (‘monotsukuri’). It represents personal development, but not in the abstract, rather it is totally connected to the work being done. Put the other way round, although Kaizen is deeply connected to the workplace, its products and processes, it fundamentally celebrates the human side, the personal and professional development, of all the organisation’s employees.
“Don’t look with your eyes, look with your feet. Don’t think with your head, think with your hands.“ Taiichi Ohno
Tim Mojonnier
Kaizen encourages improvements by everyone, everywhere, all the time. Everyone is involved in Kaizen activities, from the top of a company (role model) to the office or shop floor, where the work is done. A Kaizen culture forces managers to actively encourage small improvements, to listen to ideas, and to enable them to be implemented. Even where there is no immediate financial gain, if it improves the working environment, it helps create happy employees, increased motivation and more engagement, which in the long run are more productive. Everyone does Kaizen – a manager’s job is to create conditions so that Kaizen can happen, an innovation platform – absolutely everyone at all levels and stations is encouraged to think autonomously and creatively.
This means all employees are listened to, appreciated and respected (and this ties in well with the Gemba philosophy of ‘go see, ask why and respect’). Contrast this to organisations where views of subordinates are ignored, with a “that’s not your job” or “we’re already taking care of that”, or even if they are heard, managers tend to then step in and interfere or micro-manage; this in turn irks staff and engenders an attitude of ‘why bother?’ or ‘whatever!…..’. Kaizen is practiced at every level of organisation, all are involved – a structured yet liberating approach.
“A leader must lower himself like water and give credit to his subordinates. If he wants to take credit, they will leave him soon. If a leader frequently interferes with subordinates, they will protest. A leader’s job is to create an atmosphere in which they want to do (work) for themselves with enthusiasm and can fulfil their potential.” Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching.
Kaizen & innovation
Kaizen is often contrasted to Innovation – representing the big steps, the big leaps, the mega ideas. Innovation is more dramatic and produces spectacular improvements (though not necessarily sustainable). Innovation and Kaizen can be compared to the hare and the tortoise, the hare being innovation running fast with big leaps, the tortoise little steps one step at a time. Both are required. Kaizen takes a far more long-term view, there are no immediate results and so it cannot be tied to performance targets. For that reason Kaizen is often ignored in the West. But like compound interest, invisible to begin with, the benefits are enormous in the long run.
“Kaizen is like a hotbed that nurtures small and ongoing changes, while innovation is like magma that appears in abrupt eruptions from time to time.” Masaaki Imai
Source: Masaaki Imai / Ofi Sofyan Gumelar
Both Kaizen and Innovation must prevail: while it is imperative that everyone is involved in small incremental Kaizen activities to create a change-ready platform, sometimes outright disruptive innovation, out-of-the-box thinking, is also needed to avoid the situation of constantly improving the wrong things, e.g. out of date products – for example continuing to refine the fax machine is largely going to be futile. There is a potential danger to watch out for where Kaizen ends up stifling innovation – radicalism is sometimes also needed. Kaizen works well for performance-improving innovations (product upgrades) and efficiency innovations, whereas out of the box innovations are better suited to market-creating innovations.
Innovation gurus sometimes argue that management should not be ‘bogged down’ by ‘petty’ minutiae of Kaizen. But there is a difference between taking an interest in other people’s ideas and micro-controlling them – Kaizen is about encouraging people to have ideas and take initiative independently in the context of the organisation’s aims, it’s not about managing those ideas top down! Yes Kaizen may be the petty cash, while innovation are the big notes. However petty cash is the bread and butter of innovation and if ignored or belittled, one risks stifling innovation, too.
The issue is not about whether it is innovation OR Kaizen. BOTH should co-exist and complement each other. Kaizen and innovation are different sides of the same coin. It is not one or the other, both should be applied in a complementary way. While innovation can achieve big leaps, what Kaizen does well is enable a plethora of small stress-free improvements in all areas of an organisation by all employees to emerge, and this sustains continuity and motivation of the whole workforce.
Does Kaizen work outside of Lean?
Kaizen appears to be difficult to implement in the West. We are trained to think in big steps, with big goals and big ideas. As managers we have to leave our mark or legacy, or so we think. Little steps are often not taken seriously, especially in organisational settings. This contrasts completely to the Asian spirit, coming from a Taoist / Confucian philosophy, as expressed in the saying:
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Lao Tsu
It is somewhat ironic then that Kaizen as applied in organisations was first articulated by the American W. Edwards Deming. He asked Japanese workers to think every day ‘what is one small step you can do to improve the product or process?’ – Deming was talking to the right people, they valued the small tortoise-like approach (whereas his ideas were considered largely irrelevant in America). The Kaizen questioning mind found a natural home and popularity in Japan.
Kaizen later spread to the West via Toyota’s successful Toyota Production System (TPS), where it was implemented as part of Lean Management practice. Actually Kaizen is independent of Lean. Because of its association with Lean, however, it has not really found such a foothold in the West outside of Lean as one might expect. Nevertheless, Kaizen can be applied to any form of organisational platform, whether Lean, Agile, Conscious, sustainable or Sociocratic, as well as outside work in healthcare, family and self-development.
“Grain by grain, a loaf. Stone upon stone, a palace.” (George Bernard Shaw)
The tools
So, what small step can you take to improve your product, your process, your life, your health, your wealth, your relationships, your ….? Kaizen applies both within work, organisations and personally in life. Coupled with Lean, however, Kaizen employs the same tools as for problem-solving, like the 7 quality tools, PDCA, 5-whys, 5-Ss (visual management), A3-thinking and Horenso (bottom up communication) etc. In larger organisations dedicated Kaizen teams are there to support the implementation of Kaizen ideas (to build little jigs etc.). But the most fundamental tool is the daily discipline, like exercising daily for 5 minutes, of simply asking the question what little steps can you take to improve the work – and this is encouraged by both superiors and peers.
“Progress is impossible without the ability to admit mistakes.” Masaaki Imai
Masaaki Imai / Kaizen Inst. India
Because Kaizen ideas are small steps, they can be tried out, experimented with and further improved – and if in the end they don’t work as expected they can be dropped, all done in a playful tone. Experimentation is important: mistakes are not only allowed and unpunished, they are actively encouraged in a spirit of trying things out. Even where more experienced staff can see juniors, for instance, making errors, their job is not to stop them – on the contrary people only learn from their mistakes, so it’s important to let them ‘fail’, in the spirit of learning. Their only job is to contain the scale of the error, to avert major harm. In the Kaizen spirit of keeping things small, this is simple.
Little steps are easy to enact and they eliminate fear (which is the enemy of creativity). Kaizen is well aligned to the plasticity of the brain, with multiple cells each doing a bit: neurologists call it mind sculpture. Asking the simple question of ‘what one small thing can I do to improve the work?’ trains the cortex in looking for solutions rather than blame. This promotes collaboration, team spirit, and a positive attitude. Consider the difference between ‘what little step can you think of to improve your workplace’ with ‘what major contribution can you make to improve the bottom line of company’ – the latter being fear inducing.
“Confront the difficult while it is still easy. Accomplish the great tasks by a series of small acts” (Tao Tai Ching)
Hurdles to Kaizen
So why is Kaizen so difficult to implement in the West? Kaizen requires self-esteem (to overcome the urge to want to achieve mega-results by yesterday), optimism (belief that it will contribute to something larger at some point) and a common vision or purpose for Kaizen take you to. You cannot control the size of the result by controlling the size of the step – yet that is precisely what many managers try to do. Kaizen is possibly not suited to a command and control culture or a top-down business improvement culture; however, times are changing, and as leadership evolves and becomes increasingly distributed, so Kaizen will find a more natural home here too.
Source: Art Of Work blog
Kaizen has often failed in the past, because:
a) it was seen as a short term project, rather than a long-term platform, and thus dropped before it bore fruit,
b) targets and KPIs were overemphasised, reflecting fear-inducing short-termism which stifled the longer-term benefits, and
c) management only paid lip service to Kaizen, thus starving its potential.
Kaizen needs to be supported at all level to succeed. Kaizen is a mind-set, and a mind-set cannot be imposed or mandated. But it can and should be encouraged and nurtured, and given the freedom to flourish.
Kaizen and innovation, while different, are not exclusive – on the contrary they should work hand in glove. Everyone does small steps regularly, ideas build up on ideas with a compound interest effect, and innovation grows exponentially. Some ideas may grow large, but one cannot predict which idea might lead to a major breakthrough. Many big innovations actually did not come about by a ‘mega-aha’ in one leap; more often A has idea, this sparks a new idea in B, which in turn sparks idea in C, and all of sudden the accumulative effect becomes mega – even if the original idea A that set the chain off wasn’t all that good – nevertheless if A had not been allowed to linger, the subsequent mega idea might never have come about. So all Kaizen ideas initially should be treated equivalently.
“Kaizen… is the key to Japanese competitive success.” Masaaki Imai
When to apply Kaizen?
So, when should Kaizen be applied? All the time of course. By everyone, everywhere. But Kaizen is also particularly useful after a failed innovation (to break out of ‘failure’ mode, back to basics), as well as after a successful innovation or transformation (to sustain its momentum and make further improvements on it – and to prevent stagnation or hubris). This is why Caterfly proposes applying Kaizen as the third phase of an implementation or change program (agile, sociocracy, EMS/SMS), making innovation strategy.
Although Kaizen was formulated in Lean, as a philosophy it can be applied to life, family, healthcare etc., in all kinds of contexts. This is why I prefer to treat Kaizen separately from Lean, as a pan-organisational attitude of small ongoing innovations. Yes, Lean needs Kaizen, but Kaizen does not need Lean. I would argue that a Kaizen culture, however counter-intuitive Kaizen itself may appear for managers to implement, may be a better way to achieve change, engagement or innovation in an organisation, than many other interventions aimed directly at ‘change’, ‘engagement’ or ‘innovation’.
Kaizen opens up communication, and enables an organisation to become more responsive and adaptable to a changing world. Kaizen is a platform for continuous change and improvement, change towards a better emergent future. It is a platform for engagement, putting the organisation in the right mind-set to swim swiftly in the natural flow of change.
Copyright (C) Martin Grimshaw, Francois Knuchel & Daniel Mezick (author of Prime/OS™) 2014-15
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This work is based on Prime/OS™, published as an Open Source, Free Cultural Work via the CC-BY-SA license from Creative Commons. Prime/OS is also referred to as OSA when used in Agile Adoptions. Download the Prime/OS™ Definition Here: http://www.prime-os.com/download-prime/
OST is a process implementation methodology that introduces transformation gently into a client organisation. OST implements a ‘passage‐rite’ structure that is framed by two organisation‐wide Open Space events. OST comprises and leverages the following core elements:
Game Mechanics (goals, rules, progress mapping, opt-in presence)
Invitation (including framing right questions)
Leadership Storytelling (and behaviour)
Principles of engagement, participative facilitation and respect
Cultural Anthropology (Passage Rites, “Master of Ceremonies”)
OST applies these various elements across a timeline spanning several months. OST implements a passage-rite-like transformation, which has a clear beginning, middle and end. It is important to note and understand that OST is an organisation‐level transformation process rather than an individual-level one. The organisation is best viewed as a single entity (a single social system, rather than a collection of individuals) when implementing OST.
By ‘SMART’ we mean Smarter ways of working. These can be state-of-the-art systems, methods or organisational mind-sets which aim to enable a business or organisation to be more efficient, more responsive, leaner, more agile, more conscientious or more sustainable. We use the term Smarter Working as shorthand for a variety of more human, healthier, more responsible, whole system, self-organisation or self-management approaches to working together, including but not limited to: Agile, Lean, Responsive, Conscious Business, Sociocracy, Kaizen, Environmental or Sustainability Management Systems (EMS or SMS), Holacracy, Management 3.0 and more.
The big picture of OST consists of 3 distinct “Phases”:
Phase 1:Introduction and Implementation. The start and successful completion of the (first chapter of the) adoption process bound by time and two distinct beginning/ending Open Space iterations
Phase 2:Development and Consolidation. Consolidating adoption through follow-up Open Space iterations, and/or Chapters 2, 3 … of adoption process following same Open Space events as in Phase 1 (where implementation is staged into more than one chapter)
Phase 3:Competence and Continuous Learning. Successful completion of Phase 2, as evidenced by several “Chapters” spanning at least two chapters. Shift to learning organisation mode
OST in more DETAIL: Core Elements
1. OST Phase 1: Introduction and Implementation. Experiencing engagement via opt‐in participation and Open Space. This is the first level, the level of “introduction” to the basic SMART concepts being implemented, and facilities of the OSTmethod: openness, invitation and opt‐in participation.
Opening Consulting with Leadership by Coach/Consultant, including planning for Open Space iterations
Invitation as the primary opt‐in mechanism
Open Space 1 (initial Open Space iteration, which marks the start of the transformation process, incorporating game mechanics: goals, rules, progress scoring and opt-in)
2-3-day Open Space (minimum 1 day) – opening Open Space iteration
Minimum of 90 days of experiments and playing with practices (Beta-Lab cocoon mode), between the scheduled Open Space iterations
Output is learning and some deliveries
Leadership Signalling with Storytelling (and other highly symbolic behaviours, respect)
Open Space 2 (second Open Space meeting, which terminates “Chapter 1” of the process adoption and opens “Chapter 2” of the organisational “story” of adoption) – closing Open Space iteration
FOLLOW UP. Closing consulting with leadership
Processing of Proceedings
Respectful Leadership Signalling with Storytelling (and other highly symbolic behaviours)
Coaching consultant delivers specific coaching on what to (possibly) consider next
Depending on circumstances, coaching consultant vacates the organisation and does not communicate with it for at least 1 month, to trigger self‐sustaining independence self-organising behaviours on the part of the organisation
Open Space 3 if needed (all the steps above repeated)
2. OST Phase 2: Development and Consolidation. Minimum 1 year: recurring Open Space iterations about 6 months apart. This is the stage of “consolidation towards competence”.
Evidence must be present first that the organisation has processed and completed Phase 1.
Several “Chapters” of learning, bound by two Open Space iterationss, may be needed for some organizations to reach this stage. Where the adoption program has been staged into more than one chapter, the subsequent chapter(s) would be introduced and implemented in the same manner as Phase 1, with two beginning/ending Open Space events
Repeat OST’s Open Space iterationss approximately every six months until a true learning organisation culture has been reached, with “all openness, all the time.”
Gradual introduction of Kaizen practices
3. OST Phase 3: Competence and Continuous Improvement – Kaizen & Innovation. No more scheduled Open Space iterations, due to a maturing of the organisation’s ability to sense, learn and respond, so Open Space on an as needed basis. Integration of Kaizen and Innovation practices for ongoing self-organised learning
Evidence must be present first, that the organisation has reached Phase 2, such as:
The scheduled Open Space iterations become less interesting, because the organisation now has an open culture that “is” open space in spirit and content
The organisation can consistently demonstrate a “safe-space” open culture.
Substantial changes to HR policies with intent to support an OST Phase 3 culture of responsiveness and participatory improvements
Establishment of norms for dealing with the ongoing conflict that is a natural consequence of independent thinkers working together in a volatile, high-change business environment
Pan-organisational program of Kaizen (continuous improvement) and Innovation practices to ensure the organisation is performing at peak, without stagnating, will full participation of all its people
Further follow-up Open Space and other events in the following years as required to guarantee continued self-organised learning. Major issues arising from new working practices, including the Kaizen and Innovation programs, can then be reviewed
Kaizen is a philosophy that has transcended its development in Japanese car manufacturing management, where it was a critical component of the country’s post war economic transformation. Today, Kaizen is used across the world by life coaches, fitness and martial arts teachers, schools, healthcare and across all industries. Kaizen is at the heart of the Toyota Way, from which the Lean Management evolved, and is a fundamental component to Caterfly’s model for embedding long term improvement.
‘Kai’-‘zen’ means ‘good change’, or change for the better, done by everybody, everyday, everywhere.
Kaizen is a mind-set permeating throughout an organisation, which fosters a continuous search by all employees at all levels and departments to find small improvements in the workplace, the products, services or processes. This kaizen mind-set creates an organisational platform or culture which is fed by one question asked by everyone at least once a day: ‘What is one small step you can do to improve the product or process you work on?’
“Kaizen is a customer-driven strategy for improvcement… In Kaizen, it is assumed that all activities should eventually lead to increased customer satisfaction.” Masaaki Imai
Kaizen is about improving products or services, but it is also about constantly improving processes such as operations, standards, office workflow, production, efficiency or sustainability, or indeed anything that may speed up, embellish, eliminate waste, simplify, reduce a step, remove toxins or fool-proof a process. Kaizen is particularly useful in reducing human mistakes in routine work, by considering small steps that would prevent human errors recurring. By continuously focussing on small improvements the whole workforce is a state of continuous innovation and change – this in turns makes the organisation nimbler, and more responsive and adaptable to change.
In Kaizen there may be no immediate results. But like compound interest, invisible to begin with, the benefits are enormous in the long run.
Kaizen applied across the company creates a culture, a “kaizen culture”, of participation and development. Kaizen helps improve the services or products of an organisation, but it has an even greater impact on strengthening the personal development of everyone. Kaizen is a form of personal development that is directly relevant to, as well as emanates from the work being done. Kaizen enables experimentation, and requires leaders to listen to those doing the work with positive reinforcement. Kaizen not only allows innovation to flourish, it also motivates and engages the whole workforce.
Kaizen is a platform for change, innovation and engagement across an organisation.
‘Kai’-‘zen’ means ‘good change’, or change for the better, done by everybody, everyday, everywhere.