6.8 Don't Be Afraid of Changes!

The goal of our work with the team and teamdecoder must be to take away the team’s fear of change. And that’s not easy. We've learned that organizations are slow to change—and that it can take years for anything to shift. That’s why teams are often very good at creating unofficial structures. But making those structures “official” and coordinating and evolving them openly with teamdecoder is not something everyone is immediately comfortable with or eager to do.

An example:

I worked with a client to build a new group that was supposed to deal with business clients. We composed the group by bringing together one representative from each of five other groups. This seemed to make the most sense—everyone would be included, no department would be left out, and everyone would be up to date on the latest developments.

In practice, though, it didn’t work. These five people struggled to find time to meet, no one knew what they were supposed to be doing in the meetings, and there was zero output. With each Campfire Meeting, more and more details were defined—tasks, admin responsibilities—but nothing improved.

The mistake was trying to force these five people together just for “political” reasons. They weren’t there because they cared about the actual work. But no one dared to say that out loud!

I watched this for a while and then decided, together with the manager, to try something.

At the next Campfire Meeting, again there was no progress—so I deleted the Circle. Right in front of everyone, I went into teamdecoder, selected the Circle, and deleted it. The reaction was one of surprise: “You can’t just do that!” – “But we had committed to this!”

Sometimes, you have to show the team very clearly what we mean when we say, *“We can change anything at any time if it helps us improve.”* Team members themselves are often not ready yet to take such bold steps.

But everyone knew the business customer segment couldn’t be ignored. A week later, two people volunteered to take on the responsibility in a new, smaller Circle of volunteers. Three weeks after that, everyone was thrilled with how well it was working.

Moral of the story:

As consultants, we are the ones who have to teach teams how change works—and what *trial and error* really means. We must guide this process closely and regularly *demonstrate* how it works. We have to initiate the *trials*—and be the first to admit the *errors* and suggest new approaches.

Change is like a muscle that can be trained. And we are the team’s personal trainer.