Ever wonder how some organizations adapt

gracefully, or even thrive, in a changing

environment while most others crack and
buckle under the same conditions?
We do too, and since so many of our clients have come to us in times of
change, we have decided the topic needs some XPLANEing. We’ve combed
through our client experience for successes and failures, synthesized the
best research from change gurus, and found patterns among organizations
that navigate change successfully. Here is the result: DNA of Change— eight
design principles for organizational transformation. With each principle,
we’ll introduce a few ideas for where to start—exercises that bring the
principle to life. This workbook is designed to help you put these principles
into practice in your organization.
It is not the strongest of the
species that survive, nor the
most intelligent, but the one
most responsive to change.”
—Leon Megginson
Eight Design Principles
for Organizational
Transformation
Organizations that thrive in changing circumstances behave more like organisms
than machines. They adapt and evolve rather than reprogram and retool. They share
a common DNA that helps them bend without breaking. We found eight specific
traits that support a healthy, robust approach to change: clarity, inspiration, visual
alignment, action, co-creation, transparency, harmony, and resilience.
CLARITY
Change begins with clarity about the current state, the future
state, and the terrain that lies between the two. Assess the existing
situation with honesty, driving alignment about the starting point
and case for change. Create a clear vision of the future state and
what success will look like. But don’t mistake that clear view for
a short distance! Diagnose the factors and forces that will impact
the journey.
Sir Christopher Wren, the architect of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral,
was touring the site during construction and asked three stonemasons
what they were doing. “Cutting stone,” said one; “earning a wage,”
said another; and the third replied, “I am building a great cathedral.”
Every leader can relate to this: you may have a clear vision in your
head, but those working with you also have their own vision. You want
everyone striving to build that cathedral – to have singular clarity of
the collective mission.

The first design principle of organizations that excel in changing

environments is clarity. Change begins with clarity about the current
state, the future state, and the terrain that lies between the two. Social
psychologists have a different term for clarity: “shared mental models.”
All of us walk around with models in our heads for how the world
works. Clarity is the extent to which those models align. Change, social
psychologists argue, occurs when an old mental model is replaced by
a new one. In a fantastic summary of research on mental models and
change, Sally Maitlis and Scott Sonenshein write, “A fundamental
aspect of strategic change is the breakdown of shared meanings around
an organizational identity and the subsequent establishments of a new,
different shared organizational identity.”1

Humans intuitively know that clarity requires a clear vision of the

future. However, many organizations forget it is just as important
to clarify the current state. A 2010 McKinsey study showed that 75
percent of successful change initiatives included a clearly defined
current state and assessment of the capabilities required to get to
the future. Conversely, they found only 9 percent of unsuccessful
change initiatives explicitly defined their current state and
assessed capabilities.2
Define the Change Worksheet: Change Lever

The Change Lever is a simple way to map any organizational change.

The Change Lever works like a real mechanical lever. There is a load
that can be lifted if the right amount of force is applied to the lever.
The amount of force depends on where the fulcrum is positioned.

WORKSHEET: CHANGE LEVER 1 CURRENT STATE 2 FUTURE STATE 3 BARRIERS

1
Think about the change you want to create.
Describe the current state. Your starting point
is where your organization is right now.

2
Now, think about where you want to go. What
does that “future state” look like? How big or
small is this change—i.e. how heavy is the load?

3 4 ORG CAPACITY FOR CHANGE

When you look at the distance from "current
state" to "future state," is this a long distance 2
or a short one? What types of barriers might FUTURE 5
you encounter along the way?
STATE

4 ACTIVATION
Consider your organization's capacity for change.
This is represented by the fulcrum. Does your
organization readily adapt to new ideas and 3
ways of working, or is it entrenched and difficult
to shift? The more adaptive an organization is,
the less force is needed, and companies can
move larger loads longer distances. Entrenched 5 ACTIVATION
organizations will require greater "force" or N T
E
should be moved in smaller increments or 1 U RR E
C AT
population sizes.
S T ORG CAPACITY
4
FOR CHANGE
5
Now consider what it will take to move the
organization you have described from where it
is to where you want it to go. This is represented
by the force on the lever. What strategies and
tactics can you design to activate the lever? ADAPTIVE ENTRENCHED
Don’t Mistake a Clear View for a Short Distance Worksheet: Barriers to Change

Diagnose the factors and forces that will impact the journey. There are many organizational culture
diagnostics, change readiness assessments, gap analysis tools, etc. Make use of them to become clear
on the distance between where you are and where you want to be.

XPLANE has identified 37 common barriers to change, shown below. Our Barriers to Change card deck is
a great way to diagnose what objections end-users may have to a proposed idea. Consider your audience
and check off which of these quotes you’ve heard them say. Prioritize which are the biggest barriers and
proactively work to address those concerns. Select each barrier that applies.

WORKSHEET: BARRIERS TO CHANGE

ENGAGEMENT PROBLEM ALIGNMENT INTERPERSONAL THE UNKNOWN EXECUTION

SATISFACTION PERSPECTIVE INFLUENCERS SAFETY NET ITERATION

“I’m dissatisfied with the goals of my department “From where I sit in the “The people I trust aren’t “If I fail at the change, I’m worried “Leaders don’t seem prepared to
or company, regardless of this change initiative.” organization, this isn’t an issue.” bought in to the change.” I’ll never make it here.” adjust the solution based on my
feedback.”

CLARITY
DIAGNOSIS ORGANIZATION BAD MEMORIES MEASUREMENT
“If you tell me what to do, I’ll do it; it just isn’t clear
what I’m supposed to be doing differently.” “It seems like we’re trying to “Our complex organizational “This change is reminiscent of a past “It’s hard to know whether my peers
solve the wrong problem.” structure is going to stand in failure. Haven’t we learned from and I are succeeding or failing at
the way of change.” being burned before?” the change.”
INCENTIVES
“This change is a significant sacrifice for me.
EMPATHY CULTURAL ALIGNMENT JARGON RESOURCE
What’s my incentive for change?”
“The current way we do things “This change doesn’t seem to fit “I don’t understand what all these “I don’t have the right tools, access,
works great for me; why are we with our culture.” new terms mean; it’s like a or resources to make the change.”
REWARDS changing?” foreign language.”
“This change is a big opportunity and has a lot of
upside for the organization. If I’m a part of the
change, will I benefit and share in the upside?” AWARENESS POLITICAL ALIGNMENT DISRUPTION SOLUTION QUALITY
“I didn’t realize there was a “It’s clear that factions within the “This is going to change everything; “This solution isn’t working as
COMPETING PRIORITIES change being considered company don’t agree on the change.” the way I work will not look the same.” designed. Glitches or temporary
“I see the need for change, but I have bigger or underway.” workarounds are affecting my
priorities to focus on.” experience.”

PROCESS ENGAGEMENT NETWORK EFFECTS FEAR / UNCERTAINTY ABILITY / SKILLS

INTRINSIC MOTIVATION
“I wasn’t involved in the “Unless everyone makes the change, “I’m afraid of this change and what it “I don’t have the right skills to make
“I don’t see a connection between this change and decision to change, yet I’m a it doesn't matter whether I do. If this might mean to me, my department, or the change. I’m not confident that
what motivates me intrinsically.” key stakeholder.” change succeeds, I'm happy to fall in my daily work.” I’ll know how to do the new
line. Until then I'll hang back to see if behavior or use the solution.”
others step up.”
DISINTEREST
“This change is too dry and boring to get excited about.”

SOLUTION ALIGNMENT
SMALL POTATOES
“This change is too small and insignificant to warrant CONFIDENCE STRATEGIC ALIGNMENT SOLUTION FIT CULTURE CHANGE
very much of my attention.”
“I don’t believe we can “I don’t understand how this change “This solution doesn’t address the “If we're going to succeed in this
achieve this.” connects with our company’s past, root cause underlying the need change, the whole culture needs to
VISIBILITY present, and future.” for change.” change. The challenge is much
bigger than what we've scoped.”
“It’s hard for me to remember to do the new
behavior – it’s just not top-of-mind.”
SETTING EXPECTATIONS SOLUTION DESIGN CO-CREATION
“I know we need to change, “This solution is more difficult to work “I wasn’t involved in the design of
COMMITMENT but this solution isn’t what with than the old way. It takes me the solution, and I have great ideas
“Who knows if they're actually going to follow through I expected.” more time and effort.” that could have made the solution
on this change. I'll believe it when I see it.” much better than it is.”
“You never change things by
fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a
new model that makes the old
model obsolete.”
—R. Buckminster Fuller
INSPIRATION
Success and failure leave clues all around us. Search inside the
organization for barriers and bright spots that build empathy
and understanding. Look outside the organization for new ways
of thinking about challenges. These insights become guiding
principles authentic to each organization.
Change is often sparked by an urgent need to fix a problem. Successful
companies recognize that buried in problems are opportunities to
transform weakness into strength. How can you tap into this positive
potential? Seek inspiration inside and outside looking for clues left all
around by past successes and failures. Collect these clues at three levels:
Microscope (the organization), Binoculars (relevant adjacencies), and
Telescope (inspiring analogies). Authentic to your organization, these
insights become guiding principles for change.

Microscope
Listen to Your Organization
Search inside the organization for barriers and bright spots that
build empathy and understanding. It is just as important to look
at successes as at challenges. Chip and Dan Heath have pushed
this thinking to the forefront in Made to Stick: “When you find a
bright spot, your mission is to study it and clone it.”3 Researchers
at the Center for Positive Organizations have been systematically
proving the superiority of making choices based on what they
call “positively deviant organizational performance” rather
than conventional “problem solving.”4 A 2010 McKinsey study
showed that organizations that focus equally on problems and
strengths reported achieving far greater success in reaching their
transformation targets than those that focused just on problems.5
Your employees, especially those on the front lines, offer a wealth
of insight into what’s working and what’s not.
Binoculars
Watch Adjacencies
In 1798 a box was delivered to the British Museum from the Far East.
Inside was the carcass of a strange creature: furry with a tail like
a beaver, webbed feet like a seagull, and a duck bill. The museum
dismissed the creature as a hoax and spent months examining the
body for glue, thread, or other signs it had been assembled from other
animals. Eventually, they acknowledged this was a new species –
the platypus. Organizations often dismiss the innovations of their
competitors. Keep an eye out for the platypus of your industry:
the infant innovation, the perplexing competitive move, the
business trend you can’t quite make sense of —yet. How are others
approaching the challenge you are facing in a new and different way?
What are their results?

Telescope
Learn from Analogies
Many organizations do binoculars and microscopes well; they
understand their competitive landscape and are tuned into the
waves of innovation lapping up on their beach. Breakthrough
opportunities are often identified by looking wider to analogous fields
that on the surface don’t have much in common with your industry
vertical. For example, what might the airline industry learn from
amusement parks? Or what might healthcare providers learn from
retailers? Organizations need to seek outside inspiration because the
human brain faces a gravitational pull toward familiar models and
paradigms. To get the best outcomes, battle cognitive biases such as
anchoring (the idea that human judgment insufficiently adjusts from
starting impressions), overconfidence (the paradox that humans
express more confidence in topics with which they are less familiar
with than topics with which they are more familiar), and availability
(the concept that humans give greater weight to ideas to which they
have been most recently exposed). Telescope inspiration encourages
breaks out of the current paradigm and helps organizations leap from
“best-in-class” to “best-in-world” practice.
Identify Your Inspiration Landscape Worksheet: Inspiration Landscape

The Inspiration Landscape helps organizations look for clues in

all the right places.

WORKSHEET: INSPIRATION LANDSCAPE BRIGHT SPOTS CAUTIONARY TALES

MICROSCOPE
MICROSCOPE
Look inside your organization. What are
examples of where change has succeeded
wildly? What are the biggest failures, and how
could you get over these barriers in the future?

BINOCULARS
Look outside at relevant adjacencies such as
your competitors or similar industries. What
organizations are experiencing great success in
the area with which your company is struggling?
What are the cautionary tales of mistakes from
which you can learn?

BINOCULARS
TELESCOPE

Seek out inspiring analogies outside your

industry. What can you learn from the arts,
athletics, government, technology, retail, etc.
Identify inspiring organizations that might teach
you something about your challenge (e.g. How
does NASA do this?). Think also of how you can
learn from ill-fated endeavors (e.g. What might
we learn from the bee colony collapse?).

With your Inspiration Landscape in hand, head TELESCOPE

out and do some research in each space. You'll
come back with balanced insights that help you
confidently begin to design the journey and the
destination for your organization.
“When I’m working on a problem, I
never think about beauty. I think only
how to solve the problem. But when
I have finished, if the solution is not
beautiful, I know it is wrong.”
—R. Buckminster Fuller
VISUAL ALIGNMENT
The future doesn’t exist yet, so it’s especially tricky to see. Visuals
make the invisible visible. Shared mental models are critical for
maintaining alignment among people working collaboratively over
space and time. Visuals accelerate this alignment by removing the
ambiguity words often hide.
Change involves moving from current state to a desired future state.
It requires energy and commitment, fueled by the belief that the future
state is both possible and worth attaining. How can you inspire people to
believe in and work towards something that does not yet exist and that is
therefore impossible to see?

We strongly believe in the power of visual thinking to accelerate the

understanding and collaboration for change. Vision is by far the most
dominant sense. Visual processing takes up half of the brain’s resources,6
and over 80 percent of new information is handled through the visual
system.7 Images trump words in both understanding and memory.
Research on the Picture Superiority Effect reveals that after three days,
people remember only 10 percent of information presented verbally,
versus 65 percent if that same information is accompanied by a picture.8

In a change effort,
visuals help to:
Explore, define, and communicate what
1. exists only in the imagination.

Transform what is ambiguous and vague

2. into something concrete and clear.

Shape multiple perspectives into a shared

3. point of view.
Draw the Change Worksheet: Roadmap

Bring together a group of stakeholders and ask them to each draw the desired change.
This exercise will uncover multiple perspectives and find common ground for a
framework or model that expresses the change clearly. A good test is whether you can
communicate the change on one piece of paper. An even better test is if that visual is
simple enough to be drawn on white boards and lunch napkins across the company.
Diagrams travel intact far better than words

WORKSHEET: ROADMAP TODAY TOMORROW

1
In the clarity section you sketched a current
state picture and a future state picture. The
single best way to illustrate change is to show
these side by side today and tomorrow. Contrast
creates definition.

2
Link the two images with a roadmap: no more
than five steps or phases that define how you
will get there.

ROADMAP
See Where a Group Falls on Worksheet: Line of Alignment

a Line of Alignment
Identify the component parts of a proposed change and label them DISAGREE AGREE
as elements to the right. Draw a line from complete disagreement to
agreement on each of these issues. Ask people to mark their position
on the line. (Repeat and compare over time.)

WORKSHEET: Line of Alignment

ELEMENT 1 ELEMENT 2

DISAGREE AGREE DISAGREE AGREE

ELEMENT 3 ELEMENT 4

DISAGREE AGREE DISAGREE AGREE

ELEMENT 5 ELEMENT 6

DISAGREE AGREE DISAGREE AGREE

Empathy Map Your Stakeholders Worksheet: Empathy Map

Empathy Mapping for organizational insight is a valuable tool to ensure

change is designed in a people-centered way. Call it user-centered design
or human-centered design; the principle is to start with the people who
will directly experience change and design with their needs in mind.

WORKSHEET: EMPATHY MAP

What do they THINK? What do they SEE?
1 WHAT REALLY COUNTS HAPPENING AROUND THEM

Segment your organization. Identify the relevant MAJOR PREOCCUPATIONS MARKET

audiences impacted by the change. Possible WORRIES & ASPIRATIONS

segmentations include geography, function,

hierarchy, or stakeholder type

2
For each segment, put yourself in the shoes of
people in that segment. Imagine what they think
about on a daily basis, what they see, say, do,
hear, and feel.

3
Better yet, meet with them, observe them,
interview them, and engage them. Once you fill
out an Empathy Map, show it to several people
in that segment. Invite them to validate and
challenge your assumptions.

What do they HEAR? What do they SAY?

WHAT CUSTOMERS SAY TO COLLEAGUES
WHAT BOSS SAYS TO CUSTOMERS
ON THE STREET TO BOSS
IN THE OFFICE

What do they FEEL? What do they DO?

EMOTIONS ATTITUDE
BEHAVIOR
CO-CREATION
People support what they help build. Communication alone is
insufficient for engagement. Fully engaging stakeholders in a
co-creative process brings diverse perspectives, increases the
quality of ideas, and instills ownership. The effect is an army of
evangelists ready to create change instead of a mob of victims
fighting it.
People support what they help build. This is intuitive: a three-year old
is much more likely to eat vegetables he’s carefully tended in the family
garden than those from the grocers. (Hard evidence is growing, too.)
A 2010 McKinsey study of successful transformation shows a direct
correlation between the success of a change initiative and “the extent
to which staff were able to contribute their own thoughts and ideas to
shape or co-create the company’s change initiatives.”9

When organizations talk about “engagement” around a change

initiative, sometimes they really mean “communication”—at best
a two-way dialogue and at worst a one-way cascade of information.
Communication is important, but communication alone is
insufficient for engagement. Amy Arnsten’s neuroscience research
at Yale University indicates that when employees lose autonomy over
their work and are dictated tasks rather than collaborating, their
brain’s cognitive functioning (and subsequently work productivity)
decreases.10 Co-creation, the participatory co-design of solutions, is
often the missing link between communication
and engagement.

Five years ago, many executives were afraid to trust their staff or
customers to co-design business and organizational strategies. But
we’ve seen a major shift in leadership’s acceptance of co-creation as
an essential method for making organizational change stick. The
2013 IBM CEO study reinforces this trend, predicting major shifts in
collaboration with employees, partners, and stakeholders in the next
3-5 years. While today 54 percent of CEOs report collaborating with
employees, 93 percent believe they will collaborate with employees
by 2018.11
This is an exciting trend,
particularly because the
benefits from co-creating
change are so strong:
Powerful solutions emerge from
1. diverse teams.

Collaboration creates a shared

2. mental model as a byproduct.

Advocacy for and adoption of new

3. ideas emerges authentically.

The process builds enduring

4. organizational capacity.
Re-Examine Your RAPID/RACI/ Worksheet: Stakeholder

Stakeholder Matrix
Stakeholder segmentation matrices like RAPID or RACI are great tools for clarifying how you
intend to engage key audiences. A commitment to co-creation involves moving stakeholders
from passive roles to active roles. This need not imply that you should broaden your “decide”
group to an unwieldy level - efficiency around decisions is important. High levels of inclusion
in gathering input and exploring ideas can often make decisions easier by rapidly filtering and
validating concepts.

WORKSHEET: STAKEHOLDER DEFINITION RESPONSIBLE ACCOUNTABLE CONSULTED INFORMED

1
List your stakeholders using any of the
responsibility assignment tools, such
as RACI or RAPID.

2
Highlight which stakeholders you should
involve in co-creating. Think about people
on whose support the project depends.
Take Multi-Dimensional Diversity Seriously Worksheet: Co-Creation Planning

When pulling together your co-creation team, look for multi-dimensional diversity.
A recent Harvard Business Review study demonstrated the performance advantage of
teams representing both inherent diversity (traits you are born with) and acquired diversity
(traits gained from life experience).12 Another study of 41 innovation teams showed that
groups with a variety of cognitive types (e.g. creative, generalist, conformist, detail-oriented)
produce higher levels of innovation.13 Co-creation succeeds not just because of a process,
but because of the people animating the process.

WORKSHEET: CO-CREATION PLANNING STAKEHOLDERS EXPERTS AUDIENCE/USER WILDCARD

1
Consider the three essential groups for co-creation:
stakeholders, experts, and audience. List names
relevant to your initiative.
STAKEHOLDERS: Who has the formal or informal
power to influence the outcome of this initiative?
EXPERTS: Who knows the most about the subject
matter of this initiative?
AUDIENCE: Who is the "end-user" affected by
this initiative?

2
Within these three categories, consider diversity
and balance across several factors.
GEOGRAPHY: Are multiple geographies impacted
by this initiative?
FUNCTION: Which functions, disciplines, roles, or
departments in the organization are impacted?
HIERARCHY: Do you have good distribution from
all levels of the organization?
ECOSYSTEM: Thinking outside your organization,
is it relevant to include other members of the
ecosystem, such as customers, suppliers, investors,
or influencers?
THINKING STYLE: Balance the group for thinking style.
Look for a mix of creative, practical, big picture,
analytical, relational, and detail-oriented voices.
DIVERSITY CHECK

GEOGRAPHY FUNCTION HIERARCHY ECOSYSTEM THINKING STYLE

Change the Power Structure
Look at the power structure of your meeting design—and yes, every meeting is designed,
whether intentionally or not. Great workshop design includes inclusive techniques such
as a neutral third-party facilitation; a mix of individual and collaborative exercises to take
advantage of introverts’ and extroverts’ relative strengths; structuring opportunities for
every voice to be heard; and democratic techniques for assessing and prioritizing ideas
based on strength vs. criteria, not the volume of an advocate’s personality.

Check out the book Gamestorming for ideas on how to improve meetings and workshops. The following presents “10 Essentials for Gamestorming.”14

THE 10 ESSENTIALS
We’re entering a new age of discovery where we are exploring a world
1. OPENING & CLOSING of information and possibility. Like the explorers of the past, we need 10. TRY SOMETHING NEW
Give innovation its shape. Know when it’s time to bring along a short list of essentials to help on the journey. If you You won’t discover and invent new things unless
to open, and when it’s time to close. Don’t try practice and become comfortable with these 10 things, you will be you get used to taking risks and trying new
to do both at once. able to work your way through nearly anything. things. Make it a practice to challenge yourself
and you will inspire others to do the same.

2. FIRESTARTING
Where’s the fire? To create anything new, you must first
create a compelling challenge. Start with a question and
see what it ignites.
3. ARTIFACTS
If a great idea isn’t captured, does it make
& 4. SPACE
Walls are for working and for sharing.
an impact? Use whatever you have to make Any conversation of reasonable
ideas tangible, portable, and sharable. complexity needs a whiteboard.

1 a b c
What If... 2
3
4
5

5. GENERATION 6. RANDOMIZATION 7. SKETCHING & 8. IMPROVISATION 9. SELECTION

When opening, populate your world with
as many and as diverse a set of ideas as
you can. Obey the laws of brainstorming:
there are no bad ideas (yet) and stick to
the topic at hand.
Not everything comes to us in order.
Practice randomization, filling in the
blank, and forced analogies to
breakdown the patterns that we’re
all stuck in.
MODEL MAKING
If it can’t be drawn, it can’t be done. The
fastest way to make an idea concrete is
to sketch it out, and you don’t have to
be an artist to “think on the page.”
Brainstorm with your body and see what You can’t do everything, and when
comes naturally. Just make sure someone it's time for selection, be ruthless.
is playing the role of the customer. Start with a criteria and make choices.
Vote, rank, prioritize.
“People may doubt what you say,
but they will believe what you do.”
—Lewis Cass
ACTION
Actions speak louder than words. Change requires new
behaviors a  nd new values. The best way to express new
priorities is to courageously and visibly model them within
the organization, e  arly and often. Successful organizations
keep their words-to-actions ratio low.
“Actions speak louder than words.” As one of those axioms heard so
often, it’s easy to forget how much impact leaders can have when they
demonstrate a commitment to priorities and values.

The former CEO of Campbell’s Soup, Douglas Conant, showed he cared

about employee engagement by sending hand-written thank you
notes to employees. In his 10 years as CEO, he sent more than 20,000
personalized notes. In his first week on the job, Best Buy’s CEO Hubert
Joly went through the standard new employee training before putting
on the trademark blue shirt and working on the sales floor. It took
courage and commitment for Conant and Joly to model the behavior
they valued, and those actions told their employees loudly and clearly
what was important.

Here’s why action works:

Actions create stories. Stories are retold and spread
1. more rapidly and coherently within organizations
than “messaging.”

Action tests theory much better than discussion. “We

2. are all much more likely to act our way into a new way of
thinking than to think our way into a new way of acting.” 15
—R. Pascale, M. Millemann, L. Gioja

Action creates a “commitment bias” for leaders per-

3. forming the action, making them more likely to behave
consistently with this public display going forward.
Translate Your Vision to Symbolic Events Worksheet: Anthropology Study

Joly wanted to show that customer service in the store was vital. It didn’t cost him a lot to work
in the store for a week, but it carried tremendous weight. If you want your teams to embrace a
new open office plan, be the first one to move out of your corner suite. If you want meetings to
start and end on time, make a point of following a strict agenda in your own meetings, starting
and stopping exactly on time.

WORKSHEET: ANTHROPOLOGY STUDY

1
Imagine you are an anthropologist studying your NAME: CUSTOMS
organization's people. Who are their heroes that
DATE:
legendary tales are told about?

LOCATION:
2
What artifacts seem to bear unusual importance
for them? HEROES AND LEGENDS

3
What customs do you observe? What activities VALUES AND BELIEFS
are repeated over and over in a ritualistic way?

4
What values and beliefs do they operate under?
What are the unwritten rules that govern their
behavior? ARTIFACTS

5
What is unique about their language? Are there
LANGUAGE
special words that carry weight? What terms do
they use to describe the big ideas of the
organization?

With these insights on cultural context in hand,

generate ideas for how to take symbolic action
that brings to life your future vision.

IDEAS FOR SYMBOLIC ACTION

Create a Listening Tour Worksheet: Listening Tour Plan

Managers often tell employees they want feedback or their door is always open, and then what
employees see is a boss too busy to talk. If getting input from your team is important, create a
listening tour. Develop open-ended questions that help you stay in touch with your business.
Then make half-hour appointments with staff members and sit down to listen to them.

WORKSHEET: LISTENING TOUR PLAN

PEOPLE I WANT TO LISTEN TO AND LEARN FROM LISTENING TOUR QUESTIONS NOTES AND INSIGHTS

1 1

2 2

3 3

4 4

5 5

6 6
TRANSPARENCY
Ambiguity and uncertainty are natural by-products of change.
The antidote to ambiguity is not certainty; it is trust. Trust is
the result of two-way communications, shared goals, and a
history of promises kept. Establish a tempo of activity with
open communication and a transparent program structure
that ensures visibility of successes and failures. Trust doesn’t
require perfection, but it does demand responsiveness.
Change and uncertainty go together like peanut butter and jelly. It’s
impossible to imagine a change where some level of uncertainty and
ambiguity aren’t a factor. Yet it’s clear ambiguity and uncertainty can
kill productivity and squash culture. How do organizations overcome
this tension and embrace a future of rapid innovation and accelerating
change? Transparency.

In an article for Fast Company, “How Radical Transparency Kills

Stress,” neuroscientist Dr. Robert Sapolsky discusses how “the damage
[from stress] comes when people are marinating in anticipation, in
the threat menace, which can last for months or years. It’s the anxiety
over the future that has the worst effect.”16 The article suggests that
radical transparency reverses the stressful effects of uncertainty on
organizations. In fact, a trend toward organizational openness was also
one of the key insights of the 2013 IBM CEO Study, which showed that 27
percent of CEOs have abandoned command-and-control approaches for
organizational openness in the last year.17
Reinforce Trust Worksheet: Trust Pyramid

The antidote to ambiguity is not certainty; it is trust. A great description of how trust is
created over time is summed up in this pyramid. When all three elements are present,
trust is built and maintained. If any are missing, the pyramid falls.

Leaders of change should consider devoting at least a third of their day engaging in
activities that reinforce the trust pyramid.

WORKSHEET: TRUST PYRAMID

TRUST
1
Consider the health and reach of your two-way
communications. Do you have strong dialogue
with all relevant stakeholders? If asked, would
they consider this relationship one-way or
two-way?

2
Consider how aligned your goals are with your
stakeholders. Do you have the same destination in
mind, or are your visions at odds? Be transparent
about where goals are aligned and where there
are genuine differences. In building trust, honesty
about goals is as important as commonality.

3
What promises have you made, and are you TWO-WAY HISTORY OF
keeping them? Perhaps you didn't call it a COMMUNICATIONS PROMISES KEPT
promise, but from your organization's
perspective, what do they believe you have
committed to and on what timeframe? Keep
track of promises made to individuals and
groups. Provide regular updates and clearly
communicate when commitments are fulfilled.

SHARED GOALS

TWO-WAY COMMUNICATIONS SHARED GOALS HISTORY OF PROMISES KEPT

Make Progress—Success Worksheet: Making Progress Visible

and Failures—Visible
Transparency doesn’t require perfection, but it does demand responsiveness. Teresa Amabile’s
fantastic research in The Progress Principle shows that the single most effective predictor of
employee satisfaction is visible daily progress.18 Create a central space (physical or virtual) that
features daily small steps toward the goal. No matter whether your team experiences steps
forward, backward, or sideways, a firm commitment to visible communication reduces anxiety
and helps your organization focus on the next step.

WORKSHEET: MAKING PROGRESS VISIBLE IN-PERSON

e.g. physical dashboard / status wall, bulletin board, office hours e.g. meetings, 1-on-1 conversations, brown bag lunches
In the space at the right, list all the places people
can go to get the latest information on the initiative.
Share this with all your stakeholders and ask
whether they are satisfied with this transparency
or whether there is room for improvement.

SYNCHRONOUS / BY APPOINTMENT
ASYNCHRONOUS / ON DEMAND

e.g. intranet, shared drive, social e.g. email, chat, video conference, webinar

DIGITAL
Establish a Tempo of Activity
Make the unpredictable predictable with a steady cadence of open communication and
transparent program structure. Like the rafters in this image, don’t let change feel like
going over a waterfall. Break the drops into stages for your team. Creating a familiar
rhythm (e.g. learn/try/evaluate or open/explore/close) can make even the murkiest of
futures seem manageable.
HARMONY
Change does not happen in a vacuum. It has a ripple effect,
and where it encounters friction, it will slow and eventually stop.
Consider the organization as a system in balance. When changing
one part of the system, understand how other parts will need
to shift to reinforce the change and maintain congruence and
harmony in the system.
Richard H. Thaler’s book, Nudge, explores the concept of choice archi-
tecture, where a choice architect is anyone who “has the responsibility
for organizing the context in which people make decisions.”19 That
means everyone is a choice architect. Whether or not designing with
careful intent, Thaler shows there is no neutral choice: all choices have
consequences, both seen and unseen, intended and unintended.

Ensuring the organization reaches new equilibrium in the wake of

change is critical to adopting and sustaining change. Organizations
behave far more like organisms than they do machines, and a body
will always reject that which is acting out of harmony with the rest
of what is in balance.

Identifying, anticipating, or even locating these ripple effects can be

difficult in the abstraction of an organization, but these frameworks
can help.
The Eight Dimensions of an Organization Worksheet: Eight Dimensions

This simple framework is an incredibly effective tool in helping locate and articulate change
within an organization. It provides greater granularity than a model such as “people/process/
technology” and can be applied or re-applied as a gap analysis tool at any point in the process.

WORKSHEET: EIGHT DIMENSIONS

R S ST R
1 I O UC
AV TU
H RE
BE
Locate the
primary change.

TIT G E,
E
UD
ED

TA
WL
AT

L
EN
L S,
KNO

T
SKIL
2

Identify impacted
dimensions.

OLS
VISI

TO
STR
ON

S,
,M
AT

EM
3
ISS Y
EG

ST
IO

SY
N,

List what you might

need to shift to keep
the system in balance.
E S
PR L U
OC V A
ES E ,
S U R
C U LT
Force Field Analysis Worksheet: Force Field Analysis

Identifying barriers before they are encountered informs planning and aligns teams around
the challenges ahead. This framework allows teams to articulate these elements, and then
rank, prioritize, and sequence them as needed. A Force Field Analysis is also incredibly useful,
serving as a catchall for naysayers’ negativity for all the reasons a change won’t work and
harnessing that negativity into useful insights and eventually solutions.

WORKSHEET: FORCE FIELD ANALYSIS FORCES FOR FORCES AGAINST

1
What forces are pushing us toward the desired
goal? Where is the wind at our back?

2
What forces will hinder us from achieving
success? Where is the wind in our face?

THE DESIRED FUTURE STATE

RESILIENCE
Failure—in fact, repeated failure—is a core characteristic
of successful change. Its counterbalance is a continuous
improvement mindset that values rapid iteration, safe
sandboxes for experimentation, and responsive feedback
loops. Resilience and adaptation mechanics are designed
into the best change programs.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb writes about non-fragile systems being robust
(strong but ultimately breakable), resilient (rebuilds stronger when
broken) or anti-fragile (thrives on volatility).20 Too often change
is “managed” as a robust system in which a top-down machine of
worksheets, charters, and governance bodies presses the organization
toward its stated goal. Taleb, among others, recognizes that systems are
less fragile when designed bottom-up than top-down. This is similar
to the law of requisite variety Dave Gray discusses in The Connected
Company: “Any control system must be capable of variety that’s greater
than or equal to the variety in the system to be controlled.”21 When the
complexity of change exceeds the complexity of “change management,”
organizations are fragile.

Resilience and adaptation mechanics are designed into the best change
programs. The answer is to deploy change less like a machine and more
like an organism. By looking at organic forms of organizing for change,
companies can face the unpredictability and complexity of the future
with resilience, rather than robustness that obscures underlying fragility.
Anticipate Obstacles Worksheet: Anticipating Obstacles

A core skill of resilient organizations is the ability to anticipate and design for
obstacles. The idea is not to prevent obstacles from arising, but to focus more
energy towards identifying safety nets that will successfully catch people when
they stumble. Where in your organization should you anticipate the need for a
safety net?

WORKSHEET: ANTICIPATING OBSTACLES OBSTACLE NO. 1 OBSTACLE NO. 2 OBSTACLE NO. 3

1
As you imagine the change journey in front of
you, what obstacles might you encounter?

2
For each obstacle, brainstorm ideas for the best
way over, around, or through it. These are your
safety nets.
SOLUTION NO. 1 SOLUTION NO. 2 SOLUTION NO. 3

3
Special credit: consider how each obstacle might
not be an enemy, but a friend. How can you turn
a potential weakness into a strength?

OBSTACLE NO. 4
4

2
SOLUTION NO. 4

1
Build Your Hive Worksheet: Feedback Hive

The brain-center of your change initiative should be as close to the front lines as possible,
diversely distributed among those who are experimenting with the new way. Like a hive of
bees or a colony of ants, ensure your center of gravity is placed physically, organizationally,
and psychologically at the nexus of their paths. This is the single best way to design
responsive feedback loops into the fabric of the effort.

WORKSHEET: FEEDBACK HIVE PHYSICAL WORLD DIGITAL WORLD

1
Identify the people who are actively executing
the new vision. These are the frontlines of the
change, the people you can watch to see if the
change is working. Put each person or group in
a hexagon in each panel on the right.

2
For each hexagon, indicate where they spend their
time, whether working or hanging out, where are
you most likely to bump into them. Consider both
the physical and digital world.

3
Now, connect the hexagons with lines, diagramming
where these groups overlap. What are the common
nexus points? Pick the top 2-4 nexus points and
consider these your hives: where you should locate
centers for actively gathering, displaying, and
responding to feedback in real time.
“Companies are not really machines,
so much as complex, dynamic,
growing systems.”
—Dave Gray
CLARITY, INSPIRATION,
VISUAL ALIGNMENT,
CO-CREATION, ACTION,
TRANSPARENCY, HARMONY,
AND RESILIENCE.
Organizations that encode these eight principles in
their DNA grow faster, adapt more quickly, and are
more resilient in our ever-changing world.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this summary of our research

and practice at the intersection of design and change.
Along the way, we hope you’ve had some breakthrough
moments by thinking about change not as a
management task but as a design challenge.

We’d love to get your feedback on the ideas in this

workbook. Let us know what’s working for you
and what could be improved by contacting us at
dnaofchange@xplane.com.
 The DNA of Change: References and Sources

1. Sally Maitlis and Scott Sonenshein, “Sensemaking in Crisis and Change: Inspiration and Insights From Weick (1988),” Journal of Management Studies (2010): 47(3) 551-580.

2. Scott Keller, Mary Meany, and Caroline Pung, (2010). “What Successful Transformations Share: McKinsey Global Survey Results,” McKinsey & Company Insights and Publications
March 2010, http://mckinsey.com.

3. Dan Heath, “How to Find Bright Spots,” Fast Company, May 12, 2010, http://fastcompany.com.

4. Center for Positive Organization, University of Michigan Ross School of Business, 2015 http://positiveorgs.bus.umich.edu/.

5. Scott Keller, Mary Meany, and Caroline Pung, “Successful Transformations,” KcKinsley & Company.

6. John Medina, Brain Rules (Seattle: Pear Press, 2008), 181.

7. U.S. Department of Labor, OSHA Office of Training and Education, “Presenting Effective Presentations with Visual Aids,” 1996.

8. John Medina, “Vision,” Brain Rules (2014), http://brainrules.net/vision?scene.

9. Scott Keller, Mary Meany, and Caroline Pung, “Successful Transformations,” KcKinsley & Company.

10. Jordan Cohen, “Stop Telling Your Employees What to Do,” Harvard Business Review, April 26, 2013, https://hbr.org/2013/04/stop-telling-your-employees-wh/.

11. IBM, “Insights from the Global C-suite Study: CEO Perspective,” IBM, http://www-01.ibm.com.

12. Sylvia Hewlett, Melinda Marshall and Laura Sherbin, “How Diversity Can Drive Innovation,” Harvard Business Review, December 2013,
https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-diversity-can-drive-innovation.

13. Ella Miron-Spektor, Miriam Erez, and Eitan Naveh, “To Drive Creativity, Add Some Conformity,” Harvard Business Review, March 2012,
https://hbr.org/2012/03/to-drive-creativity-add-some-conformity.

14. Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, and James Macanufo, “10 Essentials for Gamestorming,” in Gamestorming, (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2010).

15. Richard Pascale, Mark Millemann and Linda Gioja, “Changing the Way We Change,” in Delivering results: a new mandate for human resource professionals, ed. David Ulrich
(Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1998), 179.

16. Janet Choi, “How Radical Transparency Kills Stress,” Fast Company, (July 15, 2013) ,
http://www.fastcompany.com/3014160/how-to-be-a-success-at-everything/how-radical-transparency-kills-stress.

17. IBM, “Insights from the Global C-suite Study: CEO Perspective,” IBM, http://www-01.ibm.com.

18. Teresa Amabile and Steven Kramer, The Progress Principle (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2011).

19. Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 2008), 3.

20. Nassim Taleb, Anti Fragile: Things That Gain From Disorder (New York: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2014).

21. Dave Gray and Thomas Wal, The Connected Company (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2012), 114