Repeating Patterns

Change always starts with an individual and the circle then widens to include others. Throughout an involvement process you don't just go through the steps we have described once. You go through them many times.

Consider how the pattern repeated itself at a global manufacturing giant. The work started when the vice president of engineering realized something had to be done about the double-digit attrition rate that was affecting his 23,000-person organization. First, he called together his staff and key union officials to get clear on the work and decide what kind of involvement was needed. Because of the matrix nature of the leadership group, they then involved fifty key leaders in the next step, which was to review the purpose of their work and identify the boundaries of participation. As a result of this meeting, the group refined their purpose to "create a work environment where everyone could be successful."

The group then decided it was time to involve a wider spectrum of employees to set the strategy for going forward. Two hundred fifty people met from all levels and functions along with key union officials. A key question at this meeting was whether the change process should use a waterfall approach, going level by level throughout the organization, or whether the change process should use a ripple strategy, bringing horizontal groups of the organization to decide needed changes. The group said the change strategy should combine the waterfall and ripple approach.

Over the next few months this strategy was implemented as employees came together to carry out the purpose of the work—to create a work environment where people could be successful—and to do it in a way that was consistent with the four principles outlined in Dick Axelrod's earlier book, Terms of Engagement: Changing the Way We Change Organizations. These principles are widening the circle of involvement, connecting people with each other, creating communities for action, and embracing democracy.

This work started with one individual answering our questions:

• What kind of involvement is needed?

• How do I know whom to include?

• How do I invite people to become involved?

• How do I keep people involved?

• How do I finish the job?

At each stage of the project from Hank's first meeting, to meetings involving employees throughout the organization, to individual work groups, these questions were answered over and over again at different levels of complexity and different levels of depth by effective involvers throughout the organization.

Three years later, the attrition rate had dropped dramatically; an employee survey indicated a 25 percent increase in employee satisfaction, and when it came time to vote on the union contract, the same group that three years earlier had gone on strike overwhelmingly approved the contract.