Change Of Space
The Impact of Space in Implementing Company Change
Programs
Tom Colvin was excited. As vice president of
human resources for a booming dot-com, he had spent
the past six months developing a new recruitment
program. The program had all the bells and whistles
of the latest Internet technology including finding
the best new employees available, matching them with
the most appropriate job function and allowing
everyone on the global human resources team to share
information. And today was the meeting when he would
lay out the program parameters for the team of 50
human resources generalists. Betsy Kohart,
Colvin’s assistant, walked in the room 10
minutes before the meeting and felt the
program’s ultimate implementation success was
threatened.
Why? Betsy noted that all of the chairs
were set in regimented rows facing the speaker podium
complete with a PowerPoint projector. Each chair had
its detailed agenda of the steps for the
implementation and a schedule of the assigned
training days for each of the 50 generalists. The
room itself consisted of white walls, no windows and
one door next to the front of the room.
Engagement in Change vs.
Installation
Sound familiar? While Betsy and Tom are names that
have been changed, the situation is real and similar
scenarios are played out daily in companies around
the world. Companies invest massive amounts of
resources in developing new programs to improve their
business results and when it comes time to implement
these programs, they are forced upon employees.
“Most change strategies are simply
sophisticated forms of coercion and create resistance
within the very individuals we want to implement the
change,” notes Phil Grosnick, president of
Designed Learning, a Fanwood, New Jersey-based
company that helps companies and individuals develop
their consulting skills.
“The problem,” notes
Grosnick, “lies in how we view implementation.
It is not a set of tasks to be done but a process of
engaging others, garnering support and valuing
dissent and diverse opinions. And the space in which
we engage others in the change is one of tools we can
use to accomplish this.”
Most of us have had plenty of experience
in the typical meeting rooms. Airless, windowless,
sterile environments—an operating room of
sorts. The subtle implication, like an operating
room, is that something is going to be done to you by
someone else and your ability for choice is limited.
The meetings become anesthetized, a prison sentence
of one to two hours that we simply want to survive.
It is, in short, the inherent culture. The fact is
managers do not implement decisions. They get
implemented when employees commit themselves and
choose to be accountable.
Embracing Nature
“Deming, in fact, insisted that meetings be
held in such rooms and in towns that had nothing to
offer,” says Jan Tritsch, director of program
planning and work process redesign for Visiting Nurse
Service of New York. “His fear—that if
people had these distractions—no one would
return after lunch.
“Unfortunately, our bodies and
minds do not work that way,” says Tritsch.
“We should embrace nature and work with it
rather than against it. If people are not returning
from their breaks and lunches, then perhaps they are
not engaged in the meeting and we need to address
their lack of engagement.”
“If the program is about change
then we must do something different than what we did
before,” Grosnick notes. “Why would we
not allow the environment to fit the purpose? And
furthermore, why would we not allow participants to
make that decision?”
“When you begin an event, the
first item should be setting the context of the
meeting and focusing on how the group wants to
proceed. Part of that context is how to set up the
facility.”
Rearranging the Room
Grosnick designed with Peter Block a two-day workshop
entitled, “Flawless Consulting 3:
Implementation,” based on the new material in
Block’s second edition of the best-selling
“Flawless Consulting: A Guide to Getting Your
Expertise Used.” One of the simulations used in
the two-day workshop is to allow the participants to
rearrange the room to best fit their intentions for
the meeting. This occurs after a context-setting
situation where attendees discuss their responses to
four basic questions: How valuable do they plan the
experience of the workshop to be? How participative
do they plan to be? How much risk are they planning
to take? How concerned for the entire community do
they plan to be? The key is, as in any meeting or
change program, participants choose and plan their
responses to these items. They cannot be facilitated
or drilled into them.
“I was conducting a workshop where
we asked the hotel to leave the room exactly as it
was that evening,” notes Grosnick. “The
next morning we entered the room and practically
everything was back in rows with a podium. Vanished
were the pods for individuals to confer in small
groups and the center circular table. We were back to
the default culture.” And that default culture
is what most change programs have to address.
“The default culture will win out
if you do not do something specific or
concrete—a concerted effort to change the
environment. Right now, we are so used to the space
the way it is, that this sets the message,
‘business as usual is no more.’ We must
begin by making a concerted effort to change the
environment,” adds Grosnick.
Space is also more than the place where
we come together to meet. “It also includes
groupings,” says Charles Fields, principal of
The Fields Company, Tolland, Conn. “I have
become more conscious of the rooms where we meet to
do things. Most of the places that we go to meet and
deliberate to come together are very sterile and
unfriendly. Meeting planners feel that windows just
distract us, and that is unfortunate. I used
creativity and innovation and had to deal with those
typical meeting rooms. I used to work to create a
user-friendly space even in the most boring
environments. Many times I would bring a bunch of
posters and allow attendees to select one and post it
on the wall. The traditional room simply reinforces
that the person in the front of the room with the
crayon has the control. Engaging people in change is
about shifting that view to one of shared control and
accountability. You can demonstrate that very
emphatically by changing the room in which you speak.
I often encourage anyone who takes a new job to
change the position of their desk. After all, if we
come together in the same way we always have, we will
only get what we’ve already
got.”
Space—the Turbo that Drives the Meeting
Engine
“In some of the more successful meetings I have
participated in, the lay out, the look and the
décor definitely impacted my propensity to get
involved with the conversation. However, if the
content is something that is engaging to me already,
the room has less of an impact,” says Tracy
McDonald, director of human resource service,
AgriBank, FCB, St. Paul, Minn. “I like to view
utilizing the space as a turbo engine. If the meeting
and design is the engine for engagement then the
space is the turbo or booster. If the room looks
dingy that sets a tone or mood that you can overcome
given the right activities, but it doesn’t from
the very beginning and open it up to engagement. And
what is crucial is engagement. I recently conducted
sessions around establishing a peer-to-peer
evaluation program,” continues McDonald.
“People generally have a lot of reservations
around such programs. Normally, our meeting room
would have been set up classroom style, but I was
able to get tables of 5-6.” McDonald asked the
group key questions about their commitment to the
program and asked what reservations people had about
moving forward. “We flip charted the
limitations and then discussed them as a group. The
new approach engaged people in a different way that
made the implementation smoother,” adds
McDonald.
Luckily for Tom Colvin, Betsy Kohart was
able to quickly rearrange the room and Tom allowed
the 50 human resources generalists to choose their
forms of engagement including arranging the room. The
program was ultimately implemented with ease. Tom and
Betsy and their counterparts found that by changing
the room, they changed the conversation. And when it
comes to implementing change programs, conversation
is where it starts—authentic
conversation—allowing everyone a voice of
support or dissent and working as a community to make
the implementation successful.
July 2001 News
for a Change Homepage
Issue Highlight —
Turnabout Is Fair Play
