Helping organisations to change... and change the world

Oxford Change Management

“If the only tool you have is a hammer, you’ll see every problem as a nail”

 

-Abraham Maslow

Tools and Methods

Our approach to organisations is not tied to a single method. Rather, we design each piece of work from first principles.  We apply the best of organisational thinking - combined with experience of our team of consultants - to choose the best tools and interventions to match the situation.  The range of tools we draw upon includes:

 

Action Learning: integrates learning and action by combining work on real problems, implementing solutions, and focusing on learning while doing.  It leads to better learning, and builds the ability of individuals and organisations to change themselves in a rapidly changing world

Appreciative Inquiry: A way of understanding the present, and planning for the future, by building on what works. See: Appreciative Inquiry Commons

Art and Drama: are disciplines that use curiosity and creativity as keys to organisational change, personal engagement, and compelling forms of communication

Dialogue: is a method for raising the level of shared thinking, to enable groups to invent bold strategies, solve problems,  and build stronger relationships. For a full discussion, see: INFED, Dialogue and conversation

Group Process Consultation: A powerful approach to team building, where the consultant ‘sits in’ on team activities and gives observations, tools and methods to help the team become more effective, in real time.

Large Group Interventions involving the whole organisation in a change process, and so fostering  ownership, commitment, alignment and speed. We  use different approaches for:

¨ Creating  a future direction in a way that generates collaborative action(Future Search),

¨ Restructuring or redesign work, addressing current decisions, problems, or issues, or generating new ideas (Real Time Strategic Change)

¨ Seeing the whole picture and creating workable solutions (Open Space) .You can find out more at Open Space World

Managing Conflict and Agreement: A tailored approach using  measurement instruments that help users to understand the conflict, and their role in it, and then building skills to reach agreements.

Personal instruments can help individuals understand the strengths and weaknesses in their approach to the world, in order to:

¨ Enhance individual and team capability to meet aspirations and to manage change  - LIFO (Life Orientation)

¨ Understand underlying factors of behaviour that impact overall team performance, to improve team function and effectiveness – Belbin Team Roles Inventory

¨ Improve team function, facilitate conflict management and individual performance improvement and career development – Myers Briggs

Play: Well designed, purposeful games can, in the right environment, open up incredible learning and understanding. Physical activity can also be an effective way of gaining information from our bodies about the situations in which we find ourselves

Sociotechnical system analysis: Provides a way of looking at an organisation in its totality, to identify where  and how improvements can be made.

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