Change Keyboard: 90 Keys

To drive successful transformations in organizations, a comprehensive approach is needed that blends strategic thinking, leadership, and emotional intelligence. We have summarized our experiences of transforming organizations since 2012 in the Change Keyboard. It is a tool for genuine transformation that demonstrates how change succeeds – humanly, practically, and sustainably.

Potentials

• 1: Thinking through scenarios in the realm of possibilities
• 2: Engaging key stakeholders
• 3: Actively listening to stakeholders
• 4: Combining decentralized know-how
• 5: Recognizing, activating, and promoting potentials
• 6: Finding pioneers for the change movement
• 7: Forming and empowering diverse change teams
• 8: Engaging the informal leaders
• 9: Empowering people
• 10: Leveraging opportunities of digitalization and automation

Origin

• 11: Acknowledging the organizational history
• 12: Understanding the business engine
• 13: Building on comparative strengths
• 14: Listening to the messages in the resistance
• 15: Detoxifying the organizational culture
• 16: Valuing the diverse backgrounds of employees
• 17: Bundling and prioritizing resources
• 18: Destigmatizing fears and insecurities
• 19: Caring for the vulnerable
• 20: Being authentic (alignment between verbal and non-verbal communication)

Will

• 21: Creating emotional resonance
• 22: Outlining and elaborating an inspiring vision
• 23: Identifying the need for change
• 24: Defining core values and corresponding behaviors
• 25: Defining strategic goals
• 26: Deriving operational objectives from strategic goals
• 27: Formulating challenging team goals together with the teams
• 28: Taking hopes and concerns seriously
• 29: Investing passion and dedication
• 30: Celebrating shared success

Environment

• 31: Establishing an orientation framework between vision and current reality
• 32: Creating a consolidated situation awareness and keeping it updated
• 33: Distinguishing facts from assumptions
• 34: Identifying discrepancies instead of addressing symptoms
• 35: Identifying tipping points
• 36: Uncovering the unwritten rules
• 37: Making sociocultural patterns visible
• 38: Identifying change barriers
• 39: Deriving proactive courses of action
• 40: Developing (immediate) measures

Route

• 41: Creating a framework for action between vision and current reality
• 42: Co-developing strategies with those responsible for implementation
• 43: Highlighting key areas
• 44: Deriving critical skills and requirements
• 45: Considering the emotional phases of transformation
• 46: Identifying and operationalizing the need for action
• 47: Developing plans, including forecasts and contingency planning
• 48: Writing and explaining the story of change
• 49: Crafting and communicating key messages
• 50: Avoiding lazy compromises

Navigating

• 51: Taking ownership and leading by example at C-level
• 52: Gaining and maintaining an overview
• 53: Creating and utilizing space for design and decision-making
• 54: Clarifying expectations
• 55: Cultivating a mutual flow of information
• 56: Leading meetings
• 57: Scheduling off-stage time and fostering relationships
• 58: Taking responsibility for results
• 59: Engaging in genuine dialogs instead of rhetorical debates
• 60: Moderating emotional problem-solving conversations

After Action Review

• 61: Allocating space for reflection
• 62: Cultivating a learning environment between comfort and fear zones
• 63: Allowing and promoting discourse
• 64: Making mistakes – and learning from them
• 65: Learning through experiences
• 66: Learning through 360° feedback
• 67: Learning from adaptable systems
• 68: Ensuring learning transfer
• 69: Praising behavior and performance (in public), and criticizing (in private)
• 70: Evaluating experiences

Volition

• 71: Ensuring psychological safety
• 72: Conveying meaning and purpose
• 73: Developing teams into star teams (not teams of stars)
• 74: Promoting autonomy of the smallest unit
• 75: Enabling strategic agency
• 76: Encouraging off-stage contributions
• 77: Creating 'aha' moments
• 78: Staying capable of acting and effective in uncertainty
• 79: Maintaining flow equilibrium and ensuring regeneration
• 80: Avoiding «paralysis by analysis»

Intuition

• 81: Creating space for both «Science» (cognition) and «Art» (intuition)
• 82: Sharpening organizational and individual perception skills
• 83: Reducing assessment errors
• 84: Freeing yourself from prejudices
• 85: Resolving blind spots
• 86: Listening to the inner voice
• 87: Intuitively perceiving complexity
• 88: Separating signals from noise
• 89: Resolving organizational and personal traumas
• 90: Developing personal serenity