Circles of Change

© 2005, Arnoud Huibers and Coert Visser

The solution-focused approach has brought forward a simple technique which can help to make meetings about organizational change stimulating and effective.

Organizational change
Organizations, departments, and people in organizations work are practically permanently going through large and small changes. Those changes can encompass structural aspects like a change in the business process, merging departments, implementing systems, or changes in the management structure. They can also be about cultural changes like improving customer satisfaction, improving co-operation, raising productivity, and so forth.

Talking about progress
In large-scale change projects, it is very important to keep communicating about the goals of and the progress in the change process. Our observation is that meetings about organizational change often focus on two topics: 1) what goes wrong? and 2) What will we do about that? When people focus attention on these two questions, the result often disappoints. Participants in the meeting can get discouraged of everything that goes wrong and everything that has yet to be done.

The circle technique
The solution-focused approach to change has brought forward a technique that often helps to make meetings about organizational change simulating: the circle technique. It works like this. The facilitator of the meeting draws two circles on a large board or sheet, an inner circle, and an outer circle. In the inner circle, he writes down everything that has already been achieved and in the outer circle, he writes down what has yet to be achieved. It is also useful to divide the circle in two parts. Topics that refer to the department are written on the left side; topics that refer to the whole organization are written down on the right side (see figure 1).

Way of working
You can apply the circle technique quite broadly and flexibly. You can use it in one-on-one situations, in small groups and in large groups. When applied in small groups a serial approach often works well. The process facilitator asks one person after the other which results have already been achieved and which things have yet to be achieved. In larger groups, a parallel approach might work better. All participants can mention examples of achievements and goals. Splitting up the group into subgroups might also work well. Each subgroup is asked to draw their won circles and write down achievements and goals. Of course, after that, these subgroup circles can be discussed and integrated.

Positive terms
The circle technique works best when the words in the circles are phrased as concrete and positive as possible. In finding the most constructive words, the facilitator plays a crucial role. When participants at first phrase a goal in terms of a complaint (“the managers never gives us feedback”) the facilitator may help them to rephrase this complaint into a goal (“helpful management feedback”). De complaint is rephrased in terms of the presence of something positive instead of in terms of the absence of something.

A department manager did the circle exercise together with his team and came to the following achievements and goals (figure 2).

GoalsWhen the circles are filled, the facilitator focuses on the outer circle. First, he asks participants to prioritize the goals mentioned. Often it is wise to limit the number of goals to two or three. Then some attention may be paid to how the goals may be achieved. For this, the scaling technique may be used. More information about this technique can be found here.

AdvantagesUsing the circle technique has several advantages. First, it is very simple and goal oriented. It forces people to focus on the essence: making progress in the desired direction. Secondly, we often notice how participants in meetings are positively surprised by what everything that has already been achieved. This strengthens their confidence, pride and faith. Thirdly, it is very pleasant that people leave the room with some very concrete goals.

Using the circle technique can provide a useful impulse in the change process. We hope you like it and try it out. When you try it, do let us know how it worked!