How I work

Whole Room™

My change management method

Best practices exist. The conditions to sustain them usually don't — and that part is nobody's job.

Change lasts when everyone who holds a piece of the problem sees it together — and names what's in the way themselves.

Whole Room is how an organization gets there, in three stages. Whole, as in complete: every piece of what's producing the problem, in one read.

I'm not the only expert in the room.

The three stages

Step one of every engagement

Diagnose the Cage

Find what's in the way

I start by asking how you see the problem, and why you think others see it differently.
Then I read what you already have: the plans, the numbers, the past reports, the documents your people work from. What you've already invested in gets built on, not redone.
Then I gather what's missing.

I take the questions your own material can't answer and design interviews, small-group sessions and a survey around them, and I host those conversations with the people living the problem, the people around it, and the people with the power to change it.
Then I analyze all of it, looking for the connections that are hard to see from the inside: whether what's in the way is skill, will, or what people have around them, and who has the power to change each part.
I bring it back as one synthesis that everyone reads before the sessions.

Each finding shows up in more than one place:

in what your people said,
in your own numbers,
in the documents you work from.

A room can't reach one read of a problem without the same evidence in front of it, which is why this comes first.

The sessions with your leadership team

Facilitate the Breakthrough

They name what's in the way, and decide what it looks like when it's working

Everyone in the room has read the same synthesis, so the conversation starts from what it means.

I facilitate it, and I help your leaders look at what the synthesis shows in a new way, until the room names for itself what's in the way.

Then your people decide together what they want to be true, tied to your mission — down to what each role would be doing and saying.

Every barrier gets named, with what it would take to clear it. That's when people can commit, because now it looks possible.

Saying it role by role is what shows each leader which part is theirs.

Co-Architect the Path Forward

They choose what goes first

Before they do, I lay out the tradeoffs and the impact of each choice.

The question I put to the room is which of these makes the others easier. Those go to the front of the line, and the rest get permission to wait.

You leave with the plan in that order, one named owner for each priority, and what you would see or count if each one were moving.

It starts with a concrete action plan for the first few months, and after that come milestones.

Then you decide what happens next

The plan is yours. Some teams take it from here.

Where the plan needs something built — a program, a process, a way to measure it — I design it and hand it to your team, or we build it together, with an end date, until they can keep it going on their own.

Why it works

Three of the seven principles behind it.

Same evidence, one read

Most organizations have plenty of data, and each person refers to the part closest to their own role. That makes sense, and nobody is doing anything wrong.

It also means each person's data backs their own story about the problem, which is why the data people have had all along rarely disrupts those stories.

So everyone reads the same synthesis before we meet: your numbers, and the interviews, focus groups and survey that speak to what your existing data can't, with the patterns, connections and implications named.

One shared synthesis cuts through the separate stories.

The people who decide are in the room

The people living with the problem and the people with the power to change it build the same understanding of it, together. That's how the people with power see which part is theirs to change, not only what everyone else should do differently.

Discomfort is not harm

Hard conversations are supposed to feel hard. That feeling is a reason to keep going, not a reason to stop. The room has three rules: speak your truth, accept a lack of closure, and discomfort is not harm.

What it's for

It usually starts with a sentence like one of these.

"We did the strategic plan. Nobody can tell me what it changed."

What's going on

Everything was a priority, so nothing was first — and no one could tell how their own work connected to the number at the top.

Afterward

Ask four people what the top three priorities are and get one answer — and each of them can point to what tells them their part is moving.

"We trained everyone. The reviews were great. Nothing changed."

What's going on

Nothing downstream of the training required anyone to work differently, so the old way stayed cheaper.

Afterward

You can name what has to be true before you fund the next rollout, so it stops being a coin flip.

"Everything used to flow. Now I'm in every decision."

What's going on

The whole picture exists in one person's head, so every judgment call has to route through them.

Afterward

You're out for a week and come back to decisions that were made the way you'd have made them.

Which service fits is what the first conversation is for.

See the five services →

When we're done, every leader knows which part is theirs, and can see whether it's working.

See it in practice:

Read the St. Martin Parish case study →

Read the Doster & Hoffman case study →

Start with a conversation.

Thirty minutes by video, and it's free. You tell me what's going on and what you've already tried. I tell you how I'd approach it, and you decide whether there's a next step.

Book a conversation