Organizations have an inherent world of values, emotions, fears and desires. This most human, and often unconscious or hidden, world is an important part of organizational life. It is the bedrock of power and trust – these two vital forces that shape an organization’s culture, its people’s day to day behaviours, and thereby the outcomes it creates. Those leading transformational shifts in organizations need to be able to work with these forces. Traditional interventions addressing the why and what of transformation are important but not sufficient. To get to the heart of transformation, we need to address the heart – the human dimension. For this, we can draw on work in these three domains:
- Organisational Change interventions like Deep democracy, Agile and Scrum, Design Thinking, Storytelling, Pattern Recognition to release creativity and help designing meaningful change.
- Coaching, workshops and events engaging people not only at the intellectual level, but also at the level of feelings and emotions, using mindfulness, interactive exercises, rituals, art, and bodywork, to connect people to their humanity and to each other
- Design a change process allowing groups and individuals to challenge established ways of doing and being, explore and establish new ones, to better serve the purpose of the organization
To illustrate this, we will present a case study of the European Investment Bank. In this we show why and how different forms of art and artistic expression are incorporated in training, team development and away days. And we will also share the initial results of a project about the development of constructive work relations through art and artistic interventions. This project is sponsored by the Bank’s Personnel Directorate, and at the same time intentionally set up and empowered as a bottom up initiative. In this project staff from across the organization design a series of events to bring about connection and dialogue between people in the organization, thus creating small steps towards a shift in the organization’s culture . Finally, we will engage and inspire participants to co-create their own change design using scrum methods to leverage art to surface Power and Trust in transformative design.
