Visual Meetings: How Graphics, Sticky Notes and Idea Mapping Can Transform Group Productivity

Chapter 19. Facilitating Innovation & Change: Playing with Prototypes

The most challenging kind of enactment is getting a whole system to move to a new level of functioning. This might be a desire to become more innovative or to become more efficient or change the basic business model. Years of working as an organization consultant have convinced me that people do not change by having new information presented to them. People need to feel in their guts that the current situation is not right and needs to change. This felt sense of urgency and what some call seeing a "burning platform" is an emotional thing. If a group has not experienced the need to change, they won't. This is why successful companies get in such trouble when new technologies come along. The old success habits are too deeply rooted.

I'm convinced it is necessary to have hands-on, immersive experiences if you want truly new thinking to emerge in a group. This is why playing with prototypes and simulations has become so popular when conducting innovation. Let's start by looking at the change challenge in general.

We Need a New Business Model!

After the economic meltdown in 2008 many organizations have been thrown into a full reconsideration of their traditional ways of working. I got a call about a 30-year-old organization that provided organizational support to nonprofits. It had been very successful teaching cross-cultural ...