I wrote this in response to a colleague.

Something close to Lewin’s original change work inside and outside of organizations definitely still exists. We operate with small groups of consultants, if that is what your question meant, sometimes alone, sometimes as a team usually consisting of my brother Chris and myself. We often have people from the organization learning to facilitate the process we use. We work with the existing groups throughout an organization…in our most recent intervention, that includes every group based on the literal reporting relationships, all the way to the frontline workforce. We make small adjustments and improvements but we do not need “new models and tools,” nor do we need a diagnostic period beyond our initial conversation with the top leader. Each group, starting with the lead team, does their own analysis of what is in the way of getting the work done and each group comes up with their own solutions. Hourly workers lead many of the actions. We help the organization organize and sustain the effort until the majority of actions are implemented and can be evaluated by the people who came up with them. The process, because it works, becomes informal, continuous, and for the most part independent of the need for further consultation, although we do strengthen the culture with our T-group methods. Throughout my 40 year history any place that does this type of work has quick results in terms of their own performance metrics and in terms of morale (discretionary effort, etc.).

The unfreezing of over-reliance of management and consultants to do all the thinking instantly elevates the system to a new level of performance which is easily frozen into place because the results are fast and undeniable and the actions make sense to the people in the system (for example, the current plant is discontinuing the use of new gloves which were inferior in preventing finger injuries…their main safety issue…and going back to better gloves which were already on site collecting dust in storage…the type of practical action that hourly workers want to see, and that managers are often too overwhelmed to listen to). Actions like that weren’t force fed from above or outside the system. Indeed, nobody about or outside would have any clue as to that possibility.

The current location had a significant bump in their metrics within a week or two of our initial work, which was a T-group based workshop with their leadership team. Those results were enough to make the plant manager, who was new to us and thus making a leap of faith based on what he had heard from a respected peer (whose plant was consistently getting the best performance in their system after years of using us) enough of a believer to commit to deep work with the entire location.

I’ve written plenty about this, including my upcoming book, “Leadership and the frontline workforce,” which includes before and after interviews with hourly workers who have been there during our interventions in their system. It also is a “how to” book. Let me know if you want more information, such as my recent OD Review article, “A scientific method of change,” or listen to my podcasts at https://ascienceofchange.libsyn.com/.

Happy New Year 2025!

Gil