Leading the Big Conversation

Technology will disrupt all our businesses in the next 5 years, and play a key role in changing how people work together. We used the pilot of our Leading the Big Conversation workshop to explore what it means for different organisations.

Participants from Accenture, ABRSM, BAE Systems, Defra, and Oxfam agreed:

  • Machines will take over many roles but people will remain at the centre of successful organisations
  • We will all need to acquire new skills to cope with new technology and its capabilities
  • Some will struggle to keep up with smarter working patterns and the cultures required to support them while traditional work/life balances will suffer
  • But the speed of innovation and the shift from hierarchy to network structures will also liberate people
  • Customers will benefit and new service relationships evolve
  • Competition will become fiercer, arrive from global sources and to stay competitive we will have to keep automating work
  • Risk management will require rethinking as threats to reputation and security multiply
  • Big data will transform what we do but we do not know how

The group translated this into a Big Picture and then used this to explore what it meant for them. As it was a pilot we collected lots of feedback on the impact of the process and implications for using it within their organisations. Feedback included:

  • “This approach is powerful”
  • 100% strongly agree that they appreciate the value of conversation as an approach to change
  • 100% agree today has been a good use of my time
  • “Fantastic day!”
  • “Feel a real sense of achievement.”

Here is a short video that captures the day.

I was helped by David Gifford who did his usual fantastic job of interpreting people’s ideas and scribbles into a coherent whole. I am also hugely indebted to the strategic facilitator and supporter of numerous colleagues Michael Ambjorn

Michael helped put the short video together and provides strategic facilitation and other services.

 

 

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The Big Conversation

I was in Hanover today testing the appetite in Germany for The Big Conversation approach. We were slightly worried because some members of the client’s leadership team had expressed concern about whether the approach would ‘land’ here.

We had groups involved in testing work in progress on the current visual – a Big Picture of the Group’s strategy. So we talked them through the concept, the draft visual and they gave us 1 1/2 hours of feedback.

Reactions? They loved it! They thought it a great way of bringing strategy to life and involving teams in thinking about its implications for them.

By coincidence I ended up sitting next to one of the clients leadership team on the flight home. I told him the reaction and he was not surprised. He had shown some colleagues in Germany the UK version of the story and they had loved it too. So, rest assured – the Big Picture/Big Conversation approach does travel and works in cultures where some may fear more traditional business attitudes may prevail.

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