Are You Ready for The Radical Shake Up?
This three-day process will turn your business or organisation on its head.
This is one of the most revolutionary processes in becoming a conscious business.
A radical shake up is rarely easy, can be hugely painful, but also releasing and invigorating. A radical shake up can save the life of a business and begin the process of turning a failing one around.
What is a Radical Shake Up?
The Radical Shake Up is a process that gets to the usually hidden core of what motivates a business. What is really driving what we do, our identity as an organisation and our core purpose.
The shock often comes when we realise that what is “moving” us as a business is not what we think is moving us, indeed, what we have assumed for years is driving us forwards.
The Radical Shake Up is a deep dive beyond the artefacts (the external signs of what we do) and the stated beliefs and values (what we say and believe our values and motives are) and into the realm of our hidden assumptions. This gets messy because we often have beliefs about what our assumptions are, and they aren’t our real assumptions at all!
This sounds a bit like psychology. But the Radical Shake Up isn’t only concerned with the mind of a business or organisation. It is concerned with the “egregore” – the collective will force, the motive energy – the thing that is moving it to believe and do certain things, many of which may have made sense long ago, but are no strangling the business from within.
The motive force of a business is complex, often lost in history and can behave a bit like a poltergeist. It can haunt the business, sometimes in ways that are obvious to quickly name and confront, but often are subtle, nuanced and very hard to name. Often they dress up as their opposite, appearing as benevolent motives even as they do harm, below the radar of business consciousness
A conscious business often emerges out of a Radical Shake Up. No-holds-barred conversations, deep questions, plenty of detective work, uncomfortable dialogue, a look at the past, present and future timeline of the business, surfacing taken for granted assumptions and a facilitated process of naming the demons.
Are you ready to take the next step ?
The Radical Shake Up Process
The full Radical Shake Up is a three step process. It is possible to complete the first step, the first and second steps, or the whole three step process.
STEP 1 is the Conscious Deep Dive
STEP 2 is the Radical Rethink
STEP 3 is the Radical Change
STEP 1 – The Conscious Deep Dive
During step one, we ask a lot of questions, we interrogate the organisation and its leadership. We approach the organisation’s past, present and future from many different points of view.
As facilitators, we pose questions and challenge assumptions, as well as facilitating penetrating dialogue between members of the organisation and, where relevant, key external players and influencers. The Deep Dive gets to the heart of the organisation, seeking to uncover the real motives that are creating current beliefs and behaviour. This is about rooting out problems, uncovering latent passion and potential and, most of all, surfacing the deepest and often hidden influences and assumptions driving business and organisational action and behaviour.
Processes used include: the conscious business audit, the past, present, future audit, open space technology, assumption surfacing, multi-perspective questioning, deep listening, environmental scanning, collusion breaking
At the end of STEP 1 we have a deeper, more real and conscious picture of the organisation
STEP 2 – The Radical Rethink
Step two creates a real and flexible way forward. This is concerned with a conscious process of imagination. We look at the organisation’s past, present and future timeline and start to rethink how it might become more conscious as a business, more able to internally and externally sense what needs to be done. The radical rethink creates a compelling wake up call to the organisation and its citizens.
The radical rethink applies non-collusive innovative thinking and creative impulses to the products and services that need to be an authentic response to the needs of those who use or might use the those products and services. We ditch what is not working and focus on thinking practical thoughts into useful and usable approaches to action. This is a no-holds-barred dialogue that makes full use of what has emerged from the deep dive.
The radical rethink may require a further, even deeper dive. All rethinking is born from a much sharper and more conscious view of our motives as a business or organisation. Hidden agendas surfaced and exorcised, blurred boundaries named and clarified, fuzziness built in as design, not accident. We also accurately name strengths and achievements, building an image of continuity alongside change. integrated the present good and true with future potential and emergent possibility.
Processes used include: conscious futuring, assumptions checking, setting the organisational narrative, biographical work, internal and external needs auditing, innovation potential audit, further collusion breaking
At the end of STEP 2 we have an authentic picture of the present and the future; we have clearer thoughts about the organisation’s driving purpose
STEP 3 – The Radical Change
We continue to flush out those forces which will dilute the vision arising from the radical rethink. We check for collusions of mediocrity (avoiding the real conversation in favour of non-challenging safety). We arrive at a place where steps can be taken.
The change plan is conscious, double loop (with live feedback, feeling real time and present) and any external help needed is identified and utilised. We root action in real people, time and resource commitment. We identify where improvisation is needed and where firmer structures supports consistency and awareness.
The organisation redesigns and evolves around newly identified and possibly changing scenarios and impulses. Roles morph and products and processes emerge out of a real time response to open dialogue with customers and stakeholders. Once again, a deep motive check takes place and we look at newly emerging motives and assumptions. Measurement becomes, not an end in itself, but a useful means of leading and working in real time. Responsiveness is not reaction but pro-active engagement with the chain of value in which the organisation exists.
We change from where we were to where we need to be, staying awake through accurate and authentic communication. The organisation wakes up, not onto to its vision and motives, but also to its needed purpose, its processes, capabilities, flows and resources. We build systems for resilience and for prevention of sleep states and complacency.
STEP 3 never really ends. It is an ongoing process of unfolding the biography of the organisation as consciously as possible, staying awake and responsive, seeking fulfilment and upholding authentic purpose
The Outcomes
For Step One – a real picture of the organisation, its motives and what is blocking it and holding it back from achieving its potential. A reality check, including a clear vision of the dark corners of the business
For Step Two – Fresh, new thinking. A realisable vision for the organisation. It has woken up to what it is need for and what it is genuinely capable of. An inspiring, improvisational picture for the future.
For Step Three – Revolutionary sustainable change and a purpose rooted in being a conscious business, self-motivated by an organisational self born from a dialogue with its community. An organisation acting according to its potential and successful as a result.
Get in touch if you are up for a radical shakeup.
Paul Levy 