Kick-off Change

With my colleague of 17 years at the time, Lieve Woutters, we were asked to accompany the soft aspects of a Change journey for  a +200 service organisation that was completely being re-structured, including loss of jobs, re-defined roles, massive recruitment, re-defined purpose and an uncertain longevity.

We started with a Kick-Off Day with key people involved in the change and the management.  The Board of Directors had opted to hold their Board meeting at the same time at the same location so that they could be present for the introduction of the day, to socialize and answer questions over lunchtime and to participate to the harvest at the end of the session.

We made sure that people interacted with each other through appreciative interviews in duo’s and through subgroup work of 5-8.  We made them use their imagination with the use of metaphors and drawings to present their vision of the future, collective intelligence processes for brainstorming, for identifying areas of concerns, and for determining priorities in what to maintain, start or stop.

At the end of the session I shared a poem that I composed during the day, inspired by their energy, the challenge ahead, and their work.  The poem is in Dutch and French.