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A Vision without Action is a Daydream.
Action without a Collective Vision is a Nightmare.

Authors: Kathleen D. Dannemiller, Dannemiller Tyson Associates Therese Fitzpatrick, Independent Consultant

Adorean Boleancu, Vice President, Strategic Initiatives at Brio Technology in California, articulated what has become the title of this article in a recent communication to us. Brio is a business intelligence software company consisting of about six hundred and fifty employees in the United States and abroad. Adorean is describing an insight he gained from a community-style, strategic planning event Brio recently completed. In this article, we will discuss the whole system approach to strategic planning, used in the Brio community event, which has been part of the Brio transformation experience. We will describe the plan for this event in order to illustrate the robust processes used to bring about system-wide results.

Adorean's insight is profound because he was trained in the familiar corporate model of strategic planning. Traditionally, a person in a corporate planning role is responsible for gathering data from the outside world through analysis of competitors, customers and economic trends, etc. That person also gathers data from the internal world of the organization: employee skill sets, individual competencies, departmental results, etc. Then, using all of the data that have been collected, the challenge is to identify an effective, competitive action plan that will catapult the organization into a successful future. This plan becomes a recommendation that is pulled into a document, often called the Black Book. The contents of the document are presented to the leadership for their approval. If the plan has been communicated well in the document, the leadership will approve it and proceed to try to carry it out.

This traditional approach has outlived its usefulness. In order to explore a different way, which Brio did, let's think for a moment about the word "strategy". What does it really mean? Strategy describes how an organization could act in its environment to obtain a truly successful result. It is a path to reaching a vision of success. It is important that the organization be able to articulate that vision and strategic path. The next step toward effective strategy is to enable the total organization to embrace and enrich the leader's strategic view. This is the best way, perhaps the only way, to truly actualize a strategy. Knowing how to "get there" is impossible if you can't articulate what "there" is. As Peter Drucker taught us years ago, "If you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there." The leader certainly knows that this is true for him/her.

This newer way of thinking about how to do strategic thinking is that it must also be true for everyone in the organization regardless of role. This might seem obvious, and it certainly is. Yet somehow, perhaps because organizations are clinging to the old methods of strategic planning, there are few organizations that are able to create a shared and compelling vision which engages everyone in the organization in implementation. The leadership at Brio chose a non-traditional path and began their work with what they called a transformational event, involving 400 employees in the creation of that compelling vision as a driving force in everyone's life. The plan comes to fruition when everyone in the organization is given the opportunity to interact with the draft strategy.

This group of four hundred is a large sub-group of the whole organization able to hold system -wide conversations, absorb knowledge and create their own wisdom. When this group became one-brain, (everyone sees and accepts the same data) and one-heart (everyone is connected around common yearnings) they were easily able to create a powerful, system-wide action plan to achieve their goals. In this carefully planned and well-orchestrated whole system change meeting, there was a moment when the group became "one-brain and one-heart" - a paradigm shift occurred and new wisdom was created. The participants, including the leaders, were surprised by their own ability to understand and plan radical, new system-wide actions - so much so that they described it as "magic". Each individual shifted -- the whole group shifted -- .. the moment they saw it, their world-view shifted. These shifts allowed them to begin moving forward together in real time in new directions. The title of this article comes from Adorean Boleancu, speaking to the "magic" that he experienced at the Brio event.

What caused the "magic" at Brio?

Craig Brennan was the new CEO of Brio. From his life experience and the history of Brio, he was clear that a radical change of direction was essential for their survival. His question: how could he get all of his new employees, top to bottom, moving in strategic new directions? Speed was of the essence. His first step was to create an Event Planning Team, which was a true microcosm of the total organization. The Event Planning Team was comprised of 15 people of different levels, different locations, and different tenure in Brio. As a result of this composition, the microcosm was a cell of the whole system. The group's assignment was to plan the purpose and agenda for the larger - 400 person - event. Because this group was a microcosm of the whole, they were able to take the transformational journey they were planning for the larger group.

The Event Planning Team began their two day session by connecting around their own system -wide picture of what was happening at Brio, and why change was needed. Each person in this microcosm described their individual view of Brio by answering the following questions:
"From my viewpoint, what do I see working at Brio right now? What do I see that isn't working? What do I yearn to see change in the future?"
Based on the common database they created from listening to each other's answers, the total Event Planning Team was able to agree on a compelling, system-wide Purpose for the larger group's meeting. The question that they needed to answer in order to come up with the Purpose was "What needs to be different at Brio because we held this meeting?" .
Here is the Event Planning Team's Purpose:

CARPE DIEM!
Meeting Purpose: As the new generation of BRIO, everyone will clearly understand & commit to our shared vision with renewed spirit & energy to become a world-class $1B company.

Desired Outcomes:

Embrace the change!
Each of us understands our business - i.e., who are our customers, what we sell, and whose needs our products meet
BRIO's Vision and what is needed to achieve it are effectively communicated
Renew individual and organization spirit…resulting in a performance-based learning culture
We are all thinking globally, internally & externally
Each employee knows what to do to contribute to BRIO's success
Employees understand what our company's organization looks like
Commit to the values and actions (roadmap) needed to be a profitable $1B company
We know how our jobs affect other employees' success & vice versa
Feeling excited and ready to kick-butt!"


If the Purpose doesn't excite you, remember it is their purpose. It did excite the Team and the people who received the invitation in the mail.. When it is the right purpose for the right group, it will unleash and combine their own excitement. And the magic will begin to appear.

From their agreement on Purpose and Outcomes, the Event Planning Team developed the action plan to make it happen. The plan they developed in order to achieve "Action with a Collective Vision" involved moving the conversations amongst the large group from an individual's articulated beliefs, to a table's articulated beliefs, to the beliefs of everyone in the room..and back and forth over time. Imagine a ballroom with a maximum mix of four hundred people, sitting at round tables of 8, with each table a microcosm of the whole room, with the whole room being a significant microcosm of the total company. With the table microcosms, people were able to engage in whole system conversations…since the participants came from different parts of that system.

The Event lasted two-and-a-half days. Here is a summary.

DAY 1: The primary purpose of this day was to build a common database, which would allow the 400 people to see the diverse challenges facing the organization and challenging their future. They heard from customers, partners, Board members, Brio leadership, market forecasts, and they heard from each other in order to build a common view of Brio's internal and external stakeholders. At the end of that day, the CEO presented a draft Strategic Plan and asked everyone to give the leaders ideas based on what they had learned during the day, as well as what they knew from their own "home" views. Overnight the Leadership Team integrated all of the input and rewrote the Strategic Plan to be more accurate and more inclusive.

DAY 2: The second day began with the new Strategic Plan being delivered by the leadership and accepted by the 400 participants. It continued with an exploration of new possibilities that could enable them to succeed in achieving their plan. This was followed by the development of an empowering, connected Preferred Future the group wanted to develop at Brio. Based on that Preferred Future picture, the group developed system-wide action plans to get there.

DAY 3: The final half-day focussed on new ways of working together in order to be truly effective, integrated agents for change. Among the things addressed were creating new norms for Brio, and identifying new solutions to traditional conflicts between departments. The future they had chosen was going to require tough decisions and a unique kind of trust and teamwork that would be needed amongst the entire group. They committed to move forward together.

Conclusion
The CEO, the Leadership Team as a whole, and the Event Planning Team felt confident in the strategic direction the entire company had committed to take. They were clear that people had become bonded, "one head and one heart", in a way that would surely cause the world to be different as a result.
Why does this approach to strategic planning work so well? Why should a business person reading this article consider a move beyond their Black Book and have the courage to use this system -wide approach? Let us give you another quote from Adorean Boleancu:
"In order to succeed together we must first believe together….the only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be any collective doubts of today."

We believe that the successful organizations of today and tomorrow will be those that consciously employ the power and magic that lies within their own people. The secret ingredient of the wisdom released through these robust whole system processes lies in the magic that can be released from each of us. As a result of interactive planning, a magic moment unfolds where the organization in truth becomes "one-brain" and "one-heart". People are connected through a common view of the organization and what it's capable of achieving. As they move off together and separate to go home, they find that their own behavior has shifted…and the brain and heart of the organization as a whole will have truly shifted into a new strategic direction. " The proof of the pudding is in the eating." Brio has just begun its new processes. By the end of 2001, the answer to the effectiveness of their transformational process will be obvious. __________________________________________________

Dannemiller Tyson Associates are authors of two new books: Whole-Scale Change: Unleashing the Magic in Organizations and Whole-Scale Change: The Toolkit, Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. 2000.

KATHLEEN D. DANNEMILLER
Kathleen Dannemiller is the founding partner in Dannemiller Tyson Associates and co-inventor of Real Time Strategic Change and Real-Time Work Design™ (now called Whole-Scale™). Kathie has been a passionate advocate of empowerment, systems theory and whole system change for more than 30 year s. She has been a consultant, coach and mentor to countless leaders, consultants and organizations as they build a better future. She has also been a political organizer at the national, state and local levels as well as a community organizer. Kathie is recognized worldwide for her ability to move entire organizations forward with speed, depth and spirit. Kathie is a member of the National Training Laboratory and the National Organization Development Network. To put it in her own words she helps organizations become "one brain and one heart - we need to bond, become one in what we know, which is the brain, and what we feel, which is the heart." She would also say that engraved on her soul are many of the teachings of Ron Lippitt, one of her mentors. One of those teachings is to figure out who needs to be in the room and what conversations need to take place. As easily as breathing in and breathing out she believes there is no conversation that is above or beneath anyone and that everyone needs to have a voice, a real voice in shaping their future. Her work comes from the heart and is grounded in the foundation theories of the field of OD.

THERESE FITZPATRICK
Therese is an independent consultant living in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She has 15 years of legal, training and organizational consulting experience. For the past year she had been learning about Whole-Scale processes from working with Kathie and collaborating on writing about her life and beliefs.