It takes more than Tweeting to Change Your Organization!

Don’t struggle alone. Instead, learn to collaborate with other stakeholders to facilitate change.

I want to share concrete examples of the application of co-creation drawn from my consultancy practice, such as the change process going on right now in a public organization. The organization wants to become more effective, in part by encouraging employees to assume a greater degree of personal responsibility for managing themselves. We have worked with the organization to design a change program. The process involves the following steps:

1. Identifying and exploring general and quite specific opportunities to apply co-creation
2. Co-creation “tasting workshops” where employees try out co-creation management practices
3. Training a number of employees to become internal facilitators
4. Workshops with internal facilitators to develop practical solutions via co-creation

To the astonishment of the organization’s directors, freshly trained facilitators are now running additional workshops independently to help the organization evolve to one characterized by self-organization, greater efficiency and higher quality decisions and output.

Another example is a young IT company seeking to help their new recruits, often fresh out of university, make the transition into the professional world. They face a special challenge because their employees are client-based most of the time. We have worked with them to employ co-creation techniques in meetings held every trimester with their staff. The meetings take the form of learning and exchange venues. Each participant is given a copy of my book and attends an introductory “tasting workshop”. Additionally, in-depth workshops attended by staff as well as by clients have been held. Participants have worked together on topics such as how to develop self-organization skills and how to improve knowledge and experience exchanges between IT professionals. Thanks to the application of co-creation practices, management is able to spend less time on staff oversight and is spending more time on the strategic development of the company.

The last example comes from my work with an international engineering company. Their activities are spread over the globe and their service group strongly believes in co-creating solutions with in- and external clients. All members of the European Services Solutions platform received a copy of my book and participated in co-creation tasting workshops. They are now busy resolving technical issues by applying co-creation practices together with their internal and external clients. They are already realizing greater efficiency of internal processes leading to cost reductions and larger profit margins.

These examples show that co-creation works in many different settings. It could also add value to your organization. Don’t struggle alone. Let yourself be inspired by co-creation and self-organization and the value these management practices can add to your work environment and your bottom line.