A Day with Dick Axelrod 
Wednesday
November 8, 2000
McCall Field
Upper Darby, Pennsylvania

Dick's website is www.AxelrodGroup.com. Visitors can listen to an interview with him about the "Terms of Engagement" and download the first chapter. Click here to purchase the book from Amazon.com (at a 20% discount). Dick's email is dick@axelrodgroup.com.

Resistance to Change?

We put great energy into trying to change our organizations and it is always more difficult and takes longer than we imagined. Some of this is in the nature of change and the general human reluctance to give up a known though painful present for an unknown though possible future.

Much of resistance to change, however, is grown out of the way we try to achieve it. Often I think that people are not so much resistant to change which happens all the time, as we are resistant to imposition and to persuasive, new-age coercion.

~ Dick Axelrod

In this one-day workshop with Dick Axelrod we will explore:

The Problem and the Solution

• Why Change Management Needs Changing
• The Engagement Paradigm

Producing the Engaged Organization

• Widening the Circle of Involvement: People and Ideas
• Connecting People to Each Other
• Creating Communities for Action

Getting Started

• When Engagement Disengages: Some Words of Caution
• The Power of Engagement

Participant Comments

Dick's workshop confirmed for me the on-going transformation we are seeing in large group interventions.  Models such as Appreciative Inquiry, Future Search, Open Space, Whole Scale Change, Real-Time Strategic Change, the Conference Model, etc.  have all been key learning steps in our development of the CORE PRINCIPLES that need to drive any large group intervention.   And it is the core principles, not the specific models, that must inform the way we design large group work for each of our unique clients and their business needs.

--Ray Wells

Regarding yesterday's session, a couple of my "take-aways":

Regarding leaders and their roles:  2 sterling qualities for leaders to exercise: listening intently to others, and willingness to be vulnerable. The key jobs of leaders: to identify what needs to change, to engage the organization in finding its answers, and to keep boundaries clear on the arena of change - what is/is not on the table - which gives people freedom. Too-tight boundaries, people will say "why bother?".  Too loose, and people flounder.

I left the session reflecting on what my stand needs to be if I want to act on Axelrod's principle-based approach to designing change efforts.  Perhaps it is:

To be a consultant who partners as an equal with my clients, to shape how responsibility for change is deployed within the organization.

Thanks for helping bring Dick to town for us -- great learning opportunity!

--Gerry Gorelick

Dick told us he wrote "Terms of Engagement" in part because he needed to move to a "higher level" than the Conference Model – his approach to large-scale change. What I took away from the day was a very clear articulation of why "engagement" (lower case "e") is critical to organization success and some "how" to encourage more of engagement. It seems to me that processes and procedures are not sufficient even, as with current favorite approaches, it sometimes seems like they are the surest routes to success. Looking at least one level higher is always useful. I believe "more engagement" can take us closer to "community" in the workplace (and elsewhere too). Community, at least on the people side, is "the answer." Seeing more of it would make me feel the hard work and the more painful aspects of organizational change work are worth the effort.

--Warren Hoffman

It was a day that was as stimulating for me as it was for the participants. As a group we spent the day in interesting and provocative conversations about our practices and how the principles of the engagement paradigm - widening the circle of involvement, connecting people to each other and ideas, creating communities for action, embracing democratic principles- impact our work. The conversations were affirming in that they highlighted how those present were currently applying these principles and stretched people as they explored how they could go even further in applying the principles in their practice. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting the members of the Philadelphia ODN and dialoguing with them throughout the day.

--Dick Axelrod

Richard Axelrod, author of Terms of Engagement: Changing the Way We Change Organizations (Berrett-Koehler, June 2000), helped revolutionize the world of organizational change when, together with his wife Emily, he developed the Conference Model, a process for engaging the entire organization in system-wide change.

Join us on Wednesday, November 8, 2000 for a blend of theory with practical application, case studies, and dialog on this critical issue for our time.

If you have any questions, please contact Kim Eberbach at 610-415-9990 or e-mail at keberbach@concentrics.com.