This insightful video delves into effective strategies for organizational development, emphasizing the importance of engaging key stakeholders in the change process. The author, drawing inspiration from experts like Marvin Weisbord and Jack Sherwood, explores the critical roles of individuals with decision-making authority, financial control, expertise, and access to information. The video advocates for a holistic approach, encapsulated by the acronym “Cairo,” representing Consult, Advise, In the Room, and Owner. It navigates through considerations such as who is likely to be affected, involved in implementation, or holds the power to support or hinder change initiatives. With tags like communication, conflict, change, leadership, teamwork, and organizational development, this piece provides a comprehensive guide for fostering positive organizational change.
Transcript
When and how to involve them or who are they? Well, they are all the people that need to be, should be, ought to be engaged in your change initiative. When do you bring them in? How often do you bring them in? When do you not bring them in? This is just a few minutes on the way. I approach that question, and I got two out of the three things I’m showing you. One is from Marvin Weisbord, and the other is from Jack Sherwood, both dear, dear friends and colleagues over the years. So let’s get started. The first one is from Marv Weisbord. Like who needs to be involved? What kind of people? When you’re thinking about a change initiative and you’re having meetings to do planning and to do breakthrough thinking and so forth. Who do you want to have in the room? And Marvin, Sandra Janov came up with this idea in their book. A great book called “Don’t Just Do Something. Stand there.” Highly recommended. Called “are in,” I think it came from one of their participants. The first thing, you want to have people in the room who have authority, people who can make a decision. There’s nothing worse than a group of creative people coming together, doing some fantastic work, and then having to sell what they came up with to someone with the authority to decide who doesn’t understand how they got there and so forth. Better to have the people with the authority, if at all possible, engaged in the process. The R stands for resources.
Who are the people who have the money? You know you want to have the financial people who are the people that can control the schedules, the money, all the things that are required to make the implementation actually happen. The E stands for expertise. Some people have expertise, facilitators, people who have expertise in a particular technological area. Like if it’s an IT issue, you want to have people in there that understand the IT world. If it’s about sales or marketing, same thing. Who are the experts in that particular area that need to be involved so you don’t do something really, really stupid? Then the second word AI is information. Who are the people that know stuff? Who are the people that have access to information? Expertise is different. Expertise is people that know how to do something. People with information are the people that know where to go to find out things. They don’t have to know it, but they need to know where to go to find out. And then finally, who has a need to be there for some other reason. For instance, politically, are there people there who need to be there? Because if they’re not, you know, they’re going to feel left out or something and can make problems down the road. So this is Marv and Sandra’s model for how you and when you engage people. This is mine a little bit different but similar in some respects. I call it the involvement or the engagement bullseye. Who are the people who are going to be affected by this change initiative? Who are the people that are probably going to be involved in implementing the changes when they come out? Who are the people who have expertise again, might be able to help with information or expertise, and who are the people who are in a position to block or support whether they would or not.
But if they wanted to, they could make it either hard or easy for your change initiative to go forward. I like to say that people in the very center because some people are less affected, some people are more affected, and so forth. I like to in my project, I like to invite all the people who are who are at the core of this set of four into the process in some way. Now. How to involve these people. Now, this is from Jack Sherwood. It’s called Cairo, as you’ll see in a second. Who are the people who need to be consulted before something happens? Let’s say you’re having a series of meetings about a particular issue or problem you’re trying to create a breakthrough in before each meeting. Who are the people that need to be consulted? Who are the people that need to be advised? After the meeting, we make sure these people know what happened. Very important. Who are the people who were in the room for the meeting? Might be some of the same people, by the way, but who is going to actually be in the room looking at each other during the meeting? The are is who is the person responsible for the output, for the process, for the recommendation? They may not be the decision-maker; they may be the team leader.
Speaker1: Somebody who’s responsible for getting the recommendation to a shape where it can be sent to the person who owns the decision. So it’s Cairo, Cairo, and this is how I like to use it. I use a diagram or a matrix like this. And it’s I call it the stakeholder analysis diagram. Here’s the issue of the project, the date, and who is the Spa. The single person accountable for this particular team. Who’s who’s the are basically. So here who’s likely to be affected. Who’s likely to be involved in implementation. Who’s support do we need. Who has expertise or information. Then over here who needs to be consulted, advised in the room who’s responsible and who’s the owner on these particular items? This is a simple way to plot out how you want to work with people in your process. Who gets the credit? Marv Weisbord, Sandra Janoff, Jack Sherwood for the Cairo process. Try this. Use it. I’ll tell you what, it to me, makes a lot of difference in being more intentional about when and how you involve people. And frankly, when you go to invite people into the process, you can show them this and say, this is the role we think is appropriate for you. Do you agree? So all along the line, you’re getting people to understand your process, buy into it makes it a whole lot easier later on.
