"Welcome to the Coray Gurnitz Consulting Blog! Our purpose is to share our insights and thoughts with our client and partner base. Our intent is to add value and intellectual capital to our community of government and NGO clients and our associates and teaming partners."

Picture This...

2/8/2007 | Posted by: Stefanie Farhat

As a consultant working in the world of business process re-engineering, organizational development and change management, I am always looking for new and exciting tools to bring to the table. The massive amounts of note taking, handouts, and power point presentations can get rather dull when trying to spark that imaginative fire in the minds of our clients and their colleagues. Whether I am capturing an organization’s history, mapping the way forward, or strategically visioning for the future, there needs to be a little something extra to make that necessary mark and make the mark stick!

The idea of graphic facilitation, or using the power of pictures and visual thinking, to support communications in a meeting or during a web conference (typically in real-time), has always sparked my interest. After learning about the history and benefits of this tool, along with the continual desire to use my artistic and imaginative side, this was definitely just what the client ordered. Learning from one of the masters, David Sibbet, president and founder of the Grove Consultants , was a true gift for me and offered me the tools that I needed to take groups (of all sizes) to the next level. (See David Sibbet’s blog for an exciting look at this tool in action and to find links to more information).

We at CGC can bring this stimulating new approach to the table, allowing groups to actually “see what they mean” and share a map of their organizational territory…opening up opportunities for everyone to contribute and collaborate.

Why is this necessary? Well it’s more than just breaking up the monotony of a meeting. Studies show that people retain around 65% of what they see and only 15% of auditory concepts. Combined…memory increases to around 80%. A great additional read on this topic is Visual Language: Global Communications for the 21st Century by Robert E. Horn , where he details the real power of combining graphics and words.

Bringing this tool to groups has shown our firm and the client’s we work with a new sense of passion for what we do AND for what they do. We’ve used these techniques internally to improve the effectiveness of our planning and other meetings (see the picture below of us mapping our own history) as well as with our clients.





Just a few weeks ago, when working with the Meals On Wheels of Central Maryland (MOWCM) , we were able to graphically bring some new light and perspective around the real mission of this organization and what continues to make them passionate about providing warm food, health and life to seniors in need. Coupled with our firm’s Appreciative Inquiry approach, we left them with a graphic vision of what’s possible for their organization, and more importantly, something that they can actually look at and keep coming back to while focusing on their future. As our firm uses the art of graphic facilitation along with the rest of our toolkit, our clients continue to push through barriers and create faster, more lasting change.

Triple Bottom Line

1/29/2007 | Posted by: Kevin Coray

Many organizations have become interested in reporting more than financial information to their stakeholders. One recognized idea is the “Triple Bottom Line.” The triple bottom line idea allows an organization, its shareholders and/or the general public, depending on the nature of the company, to look at a company’s
• financial results,
• environmental results or footprint, and
• social responsibility results.

Exemplary manufacturing companies have begun to do this (Visit the Interface Sustainability site and/or see CEO Ray Anderson’s book Mid-Course Correction ). Some companies have begun triple bottom line action and reporting because “they can do well by doing good.”

This tagline was a sub-title for the “ Business as an Agent of World Benefit ” (BAWB) conference in which I presented a paper. The conference was co-sponsored by the Academy of Management, the Case Weatherhead School of Management, and the UN Global Compact. The conference was generally focused on global sustainability issues, attended by CEOs, NGOs, and business academia.

The paper I co-authored was about sustainability of the elderly population in this country, particularly those who go hungry. Why did I participate in writing such a paper? Not because doing this good would help a little firm like us (frankly, few would even notice since we are so small). Rather, it is because it is the right thing to do. Writing the paper was a way to help focus the efforts of a not-for-profit, for which I am a Board member, and to end senior hunger by using business-based ideas like shared services to end waiting lists without additional Federal funding.

The paper was the vehicle that took me to the BAWB conference. Once there, I was greatly moved by the commitments of many global companies to make a global difference, to help out at the bottom of the pyramid, and to become energy-neutral.

A little knowledge can be a dangerous thing… So, I started to ask our great staff how a little firm like ours might make a difference at our own scale.
• Environmentally speaking, we quickly became more conscious of our energy and resource use. We’re not in a line of business nor do we have the scale to do Carbon Emissions Trading—even if we wanted to. Yet one simple thing we did was look at how much paper we used last year. Even at our scale, it surprised us all. So, we started measuring and posting the results. We have a measurable goal to use less paper this year. We have improved our recycling-both in terms of breadth of what we recycle and our commitment to it.
• Social responsibility-wise, the individual staff members of our firm each contribute to many causes. As a company, we have done substantial pro bono work. But as a company we had not done organization-wide thinking and planning about these matters. These are tricky waters that run deep. As a group, how do we decide what is the right thing to do? One thing we did is we talked about it, we made a list, we voted on the list anonymously, and we have started participating in various ways. We also figured out that by giving our help away to community-based organizations that can’t afford us, we can also gain a richer understanding of social responsibility, as well as creating learning environments for both ourselves and these organizations. It’s quite a bit like a one-company version of the Seattle-based Community Consulting Project that Geoff Bellman and his colleagues have created.

My partner, Allison Gurnitz, has made a huge commitment to fundraising for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society this year, and voluntarily, we are all behind her.

We’re just starting, but it feels good. Check back on us regularly as we figure out how to report on the triple bottom line in a way that feels natural and values-based. Read the abstract to my paper, Imagine There’s No Hunger (see the link below). Then, please give us your feedback on how we can be conscious of our triple-framed impact on the world. If you are interested in reading the full paper, please email co-author Kevin Coray .

Your ideas are another way to make a difference!
Imagine Theres No Hunger-Final Abstract.doc

Not-for-Profit Observations: Board and Staff Alignment Fuels Exponential Growth

7/21/2006 | Posted by: Kevin Coray

The logo for Jim Collins’ book, Good to Great , is a graph that represents an organization that has continued for some time in a steady state, a relatively flat and stable level of performance. Then, at an inflection point, the organization makes a steep growth shift. An inflection point is a point on a curve at which the sign of the curvature (i.e., the concavity) changes. Collins’ book, Good to Great, and the public sector monograph , are about organizations that have been able to make and sustain such growth well beyond the inflection point (see Jim’s excellent description of the inflection point diagram on page 3 of his brief on-line materials: Where are you on your journey from Good to Great? ).

For CGC and our clients, a central focus of our work is what happens at and after the inflection point. This is a critical event, a transformation. To engage in trying to make the shift is one thing. To engage in accomplishing and sustaining the change is another.

In the Not-for-Profit world, the growth shift is often brought about by a few very successful projects. These key events begin the growth incline. It is the nature of Not-for-Profit staff to tend to the organization on a day-to-day basis and for the governance/volunteer board to intermittently tend to the strategy and operations of the organization—after all, they haven’t quit their own day jobs! As such, the staff leadership often sees the effect of this growth and its potential before it is fully apparent to the governance/volunteer board.

Not-for-Profit board members, often founders or long-term volunteers, have a clear sense of the organization’s mission, rooted in its history and steady-state that has preceded the inflection point. This understanding is a social construction, and appropriate for members of the organization. As a member of both the organization and its board, they know the conventions and language, and they are aligned with the culture. Although this supports the rhythm of an organization, it also can support an insular paradigm--witness the British Society’s support for the competition to find a reliable method of measuring longitude to aid in navigation. Its members had severe difficulty over a course of decades in accepting what at the time (late 1700s) was a far superior analog method using a remarkable clock vs. the astronomical approach to measuring longitude ( Dava Sobel , 1995).

Consequently, if an organization wants to move forward, the staff leadership and the board have to enter uncharted territory. This territory is a crisis of mission, vision, and membership culture. The question for the organization now becomes, “How do staff leadership and the board work together in a new way that respects the membership culture and maintains the new growth energy (shown after the inflection point)?” Geoff Bellman has said that change of this sort is very difficult because people (membership/ governance) have worked for many years to mold the organization and its culture into its current form – not to change it (see my review of his The Beauty of the Beast: Breathing New Life Into Organizations ).

A useful Organizational Development (OD) aphorism (originated by Marvin Weisbord ): “the organization is perfectly designed to get the results it gets.” At some point, the staff leader becomes frustrated—he or she wants the board to recognize the organization’s achievement and focus on new possibilities, yet the staff leader is unsure how best to do it. To break out of this groove, the environment and method of communicating needs to change. What is needed is a way to change the status quo, focus on strategic business communication, and engage all in a look at the future - creating what Appreciative Inquiry (AI) calls a possibility statement. From a systems-thinking perspective, the board and the staff leaders need to collectively plan the practical infrastructure and cultural changes needed to sustain their combined and aligned imagination of the future state.

Staff leaders intuitively sense the need and value of a third party to help mix things up. To encourage change, a naturally occurring event like a board meeting or a retreat can be arranged to signal that things will not be as usual. We’re frequently called in at this point to “facilitate” a board meeting—one the staff leaders hope will be somehow different. If we get the call in time, we can help to shift the design of this communication opportunity toward the possible future. Our Appreciative Inquiry approach is a key aspect of helping both the board and staff to understand what has led to the growth, how it was enabled and what a tremendous appreciation of assets it has brought. CGC can then help lead the Board/Staff inquiry into future possibilities for how best to leverage these appreciated assets into new levels of contribution to society – around which both the board and the staff leaders are aligned and poised for action.

To be effective, much planning and design work should go into the event. We often start the planning one-on-one with the staff leader. After some dialogue, we usually discover the phenomenal growth curve that the leader is well aware of, yet frustrated about because of its obscurity.

Getting back to the inflection point discussion, and using the organization’s own data, we start drawing the inflection point graph in an incremental manner working from the organization’s history and documenting key events that gave rise to the change. Honoring the past is critical to the value of this exercise.

Drawn to scale and including years of time-based data, the image representing the magnitude of change over time often surprises staff leaders. Once it is visual, an “Ah Hah” moment frequently follows. As the image is being drawn, it’s almost as if a documentary of the organization’s long suffering commitment and recent success are being filmed. Objectively, we are watching it unfold! We have thus created a creative moment--time to fully discuss the diagram, understanding important roles and influences, and grappling with meaning and the excitement of the possible future, while continuing to realize the crisis the picture conveys (Chinese definition of crisis: danger and opportunity).

Daniel Quinn said (in his The Story of B ) that “change comes from changed minds.” In the early interview and visualization process with the staff leader, we demonstrate that by imagining the organization working at its future best one simultaneously and unconsciously changes one’s mind in the direction of the desired end state (Appreciative Inquiry principal of simultaneity). It is then possible to start discussing how we might engage the board in also imagining this positive possible future so that together the organization’s key leaders will be inclined toward it. This opens the space to engage all in the barrier-free dialogue.

As an OD and strategic change firm, CGC brings the toolbox and expertise to enable the staff leader and the board to practice the art of the possible (see the great tool from Grove Consultants to facilitate this visual discovery). This valuable time spent with the staff and board is both a great grounding and orientation as well as an eureka phenomenon producer. As with the staff leader, once “Eureka” is uttered by the board, we have a creative moment to engage all in vision and alignment for the future. We can help the leader sort through additional options for improving the organization like AI, Open Space , Whole Scale Change , Future Search and Dialogue . Together, we can design the right event at the right level of effort and bring possible new contributions out of obscurity and into the light—a nurturing place for continued growth.

The Spiral Way: An Aspect of the CGC Approach

4/26/2006 | Posted by: Kevin Coray

The spiral is a symbol that is centrally featured in our logo and images throughout our website. It’s an ancient symbol used with many meanings by many people. The Anasazi’s used it in petroglyphs. Possible interpretations are about where to find water, the way in or around, or emergence. There are spiral galaxies, spiral ways, and spiral mazes.

For us, it is a dynamic symbol for managing change. One meaning is about keeping the end in mind and being able to deliver at any point in time, with a given level of effort. Managing change is not linear. It is a spiral way. Our spiral symbol is about the effort it takes to emerge successfully.

Examine the figure on our blog page. I’ve superimposed a timeline on a spiral. We start in the center with the client, imagining the end in mind, co-designing a series of change events or implementation steps, and perhaps making an early intervention, such as conducting an executive retreat. Conducting the executive retreat takes us to t1. This cycle took a relatively limited amount of time and effort for each party (i.e. me, my client, and his/her staff). Yet, the end-in-mind is previewed, shared, and co-designed at that event, and in and of itself, begins the change (in Appreciative Inquiry this is called the Principle of Simultaneity).

The first intervention – or half cycle – to the first deliverable opportunity with an organization takes relatively little effort and has a relatively little sustaining result on the ultimate desired result. Yet, it contains the kernel of the end-in-mind. Recursively, or holographically or fractally speaking, it is the end if it is played out fully. This is why with Appreciative Inquiry (AI), the first question we ask is fateful—because it contains the first intention, kernel, or imagination of the end-in-mind. It has been said that change comes from changed minds. That’s why identifying “high point experience” stories are so powerful--they move us toward what’s possible.

At this point, the change may be just “talk.” To move from t1 to t2 along the timeline is not a linear movement of equal units of time. Rather, to move from talk to action takes much more effort. Collectively, we have to begin to expend energy. The leader has to communicate like crazy. Helpful mechanisms in the system have to be developed and fielded. A guiding coalition has to come together. Stakeholders have to be aligned. This t1 to t2 cycle takes exponentially more time, energy, and gumption than the beginning at the center to t1. On the other hand, if we’ve done our work right, we’ve increased the involvement of a larger group of people in creating the change (level of effort goes up…or in AI parlance, our investment is appreciating). The area below the curving full spiral cycle from t1 to t2 shows the ever increasing level of effort it takes to get to t2.

In our favorite engagements, we’re a full partner for the long haul. We want to be along for the hard work and implementation ride in which this simple whirling dervish turns into a chaortic, self-organizing system (like the way a storm becomes a spiraling tornado or hurricane, or at a greater level of effort - a galaxy) that ultimately organizes at a much higher level of power/performance and which creates a massive return on investment.