Forget the Kotter approach to change – here comes VFOT!

The?Kotter?approach, often referred to as Leading Change, was the best change management model of the 20th century. It looks pretty dated now. The new kids on the block are?VFOT, or Very Fast Organizational Transformation approaches: They are time-boxed, invitation-based, principle-based, and un-phased – which means they get all the willing to work the system, all at the same time. All of which makes these approaches scale naturally. In so doing, VFOT allows to transform any organization at any point of time, within just a few months, regardless of size. Sounds ridiculously unbelievable, right?

Believe it or not: A new era of change has dawned. But let me tell you first how I noticed that this new era of change was dawning.

I worked with the Kotter approach myself for around 15 years, between 2003 and 2018 approximately. The first to point me at Kotter's work was my colleague and mentor at the Beyond Budgeting Round Table, Robin Faser. Robin was applying the Leading Change logic at a company in Northern Italy he consulted with, trying to help the client adopting the full set of twelve Beyond Budgeting principles (now: the BetaCodex). And Robin's client had gotten pretty far. Farther than any previous attempt at Beyond Budgeting-related change we had seen. That company in Italy had gotten really serious with the transformation Robin and I aspired to promote. Soon I attempted to do the same with clients in Brazil I was working with, and who where eager to actually get Beyond Budgeting.

Doing this kind of consulting work with client companies from all kinds of industry made me sense that, in spite of our progress on organizational transformations, something was still missing in our approach. Over the following decade, my consulting partners and I tried to enrich the Kotter approach with William Bridge's Leading Transitions concept. We tried to accelerate the change and make it more robust using psychometric diagnostics. We added large-group methods like OpenSpace to the mix. And lots of other methods, too. But none of these additions could really fix the problem: There was always something missing, and what that something was puzzled us. What we did know was this: The transformation work still took way too long. It would take us 6 or 12 months to get started with a guiding coalition. And at some point soon after that, the work seemed to fizzled out. We would run into all kinds of resistance, after 18 months the lastest. Or our efforts (in fact: our client's efforts) usually ended half-way or got interrupted by some external crisis.

Most of our clients were still happy with the results they got from their change work with us. Some even told us that they had gotten farther with us than with any previous change initiatives. But we knew that something was still wrong with our approach to transformation. We would find out what that something was by shock. That was in early 2018.

And then, just like that, change management died

In early May 2018, Silke Hermann and I would spend a few days in Portland, Maine, due to a speaking commitment I had at the Agile Maine conference. Silke and I had written a few articles, papers and books about Beta organizations and organizational transformation before. We had also devised concepts such as?Org Physics, Complexitools?and?Change-as-Flipping. Before our joint stay in Portland, I would go on a several-day road trip with Daniel Mezick, a maverick agilist who lives in Connecticut. Daniel and I decided to combine our trip together up the East Coast with a couple of small events for his current consulting clients. Daniel also set up a keynote for me at an Agile meetup in Boston. All that while driving up from Connecticut to Maine.

On our first evening in Portland, Silke, Daniel and I had dinner together. We talked about changing organizational systems, or models, and about how to make use of people's motivations and potential while doing so. Daniel shared his ideas about?invitation-based?approaches to change, instead of?imposition-based?process. We talked a lot about how to frame change differently, so that it can be time-boxed, reliable, robust and happening “with all the right people”. Daniel had developed this sort of approach to make Scrum and agility happen on a larger scale, calling his concept?OpenSpace Agility. Silke and I had this hunch that the same kind of approach could be used to transforming much more than just software development: It could be applied to transforming entire organizations of any kind.

The next day, the idea for?OpenSpace Beta?was born. Silke and I fleshed out the rough concept over the 2 following days, during a stay in New York City. Thanks to Daniel and his consistently?open source?way of collaborating, we were able to draft and develop the whole approach within just two months. We managed to publish the OpenSpace Beta handbook & timeline in October 2018 within just five months after the initial idea. We offered the first sold-out qualification course in Wiesbaden within just another two months. And we were lucky: We were able to start the first transformation with OpenSpace Beta with a client company in Germany, in January 2019 already. Only half a year later, the first OpenSpace Beta chapter ended and an entire company had transformed to Beta.

Not only had the client achieved the transformation way faster than it could have ever been achieved with the Kotter approach. A lot more work on the system had been done, too. The company had gone live with its neat, decentralized Cell Structure Design and even concluded a full month of operating within the new system - all well within the 90 days of transformation in OpenSpace Beta. To everyone's surprise, the first positive results of the transformation on client satisfaction, client acquisition, and even financial results had manifested before the OpenSpace Beta chapter was concluded.

On a side note: The BetaCodex and OpenSpace Beta are both open source social technologies. They are “available to all” and free to use for anyone, by just adhering to the?CC-BY-SA license from Creative Commons.

How transformation can be achieved in just a few months

The overall structure of OpenSpace Beta is simple:?Invite?everyone?in the organization to do the change work, together. Then begin in OpenSpace?and end in OpenSpace, with a?90-day period?of joint?Practicing, Flipping, Learning?in-between. That is the fundamental structure of OpenSpace Beta that is also visualized in the timeline (shown in the illustration).

Within the duration of the 90 days, members of the organization are empowered to take action as to develop the organization, always within the principles of the BetaCodex - to which additional principles such as those of the?Agile Manifesto, Scrum, Lean?or?QRM?can be added. This way, in effect, everyone can work the organization, within the coherence of the BetaCodex principles.

To make full-fledged organizational transformation happen in such a fast, simple, and elegant way is not trivial, of course. It contradicts a great many?conventional assumptions that we hold about change, about organizational development and leadership. One also has to set the right boundaries to unleash the level of self-organization required. In other words: You have to put all those 31 indispensable components in place that are shown in the concept overview. Only by considering all 31 components of OpenSpace Beta, self-organization, engagement and mindful organizational development by all can unfold, making Very Fast Organizational Transformation possible.

The concept of invitation guarantees that engagement throughout the transformation with OpenSpace Beta is consistently higher than in mandated change. Radical invitation or?opt-in participation?means the invitation can be declined without punishment. You can also opt out! What sounds like a problem really isn't. Because full engagement among those opting in will be the result. Those who accept will be the right people to do the work "An invitation accepted means the specific object of the invitation is wanted", Daniel Mezick once told us. "When an invitation is declined, you can never quite know why." Which is why marveling about rejection of invitation is of little help. It is far better to keep inviting, and to keep making invitations that are attractive.

The roles in OpenSpace Beta

VFOT requires a very differentiated stance at roles. In OpenSpace Beta, there are ten different roles to be considered, the roles of?Sponsor?and?Master of Ceremonies?being the most complex of all these roles. The Sponsor role is taken on by a single person from within the organization: One who is authorized and willing to invite everyone to join the first OpenSpace Meeting in OpenSpace Beta. The Sponsor also has to write the invitation to OpenSpace Meeting 1: In this written document, the Sponsor outlines the urgency, or the rationale of the transformation, and the principles to be adopted. The Sponsor will later take care that the agreements from OpenSpace Meeting 1 will be put into practice. So the Sponsor is really the key figure with whom every transformation with OpenSpace Beta starts. Without a Sponsor, no transformation.

The?Master of Ceremonies?is a role to be filled out by a single external consultant. The Master of Ceremonies serves the Sponsor to fulfill her or his role, and guards the OpenSpace Beta rite of passage. We like to think of the Master of Ceremonies as the “guardian” of the OpenSpace Beta chapter. He or she is something of a “process?Gandalf”. While the Sponsor might be compared to?Thorin Oakenshield, because he is in charge of the mission at all times, the figure of the guardian is more like Gandalf: A confident, knowledgeable and wise companion. This person understands the dynamics of the rite of passage, thinks ahead calmly, and safeguards the rite of passage.

All in all, the role of (external) consultants is very limited, very reduced, and quite invisible compared to conventional Change Management approaches or the Kotter model. Which leaves the responsibility for the transformation squarely in the hands of the Sponsor, and the client organization.

VFOT puts organizational development in the hands of the many. Where it belongs

The best way to sum up the philosophy of Very Fast Organizational Transformation is to say that coherence matters. We summarized VFOT in an indivisible set of principles, as follows:

1. Principled, not ambiguous
2. Time-boxed, not indefinite
3. Radically inviting, not imposing
4. Whole-system, not piecemeal
5. All at once, not stacked

If you look closely at these principles, then you will notice that traditional change management and the Kotter approach flatly ignore or oppose all these principles. We believe that this is why we see so many failed change initiatives out there today. The five VFOT principles must be adhered to, in order to keep the energy up and in order to set engagement free, which is necessary to work the system together, and to focus everyone on the outcome of making the system fit for organizational high performance.

Read the BetaCodex Network white paper about the world of?VFOT

Read the 2019 BetaCodex Network white paper about Change-as-Flipping

Get the OpenSpace Beta handbook by Silke Hermann and Niels Pflaeging , or buy the Ultimate Changemaker Box, exclusively available from Red42.