A Year of Leading Change with The Metropolitan Council – An Invitation

Gisela & David introduce the Grove’s facilitation model.

Recently as part of my role at The Grove Consultants International, I had the opportunity to work with the Metropolitan Council  in the twin city of Minnesota to them help them develop their internal process and change leadership capability. I partnered with David Sibbet and together we designed and co-led a one-year Leading Change Program for 20 of their emerging leaders. The program was successful all around and we feel encouraged to offer it again.

Below is a look inside the program and what we did to embed it into the organization in order to build capacity by addressing existing change challenges the organization was already facing. If this approach, learning by doing and doing by learning, resonates with you, and you would like to support such a program within your organization or are interested in participating in a public offering of this program, we invite you to write to us.

Our Client

The Metropolitan Council is a regional body, overseeing all of Minneapolis-St. Paul’s wastewater, transit system, […]

2019-03-27T22:02:04+00:00March 27th, 2019|Change, Global Learning, Leading Change, Multi-Stakeholder, Organization Change, Organizational Consulting, Social Change|3 Comments
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Creating a Culture of Collaboration and Change at a College of Business Administration

Recently I teamed up with Laurie Durnell, The Grove’s co-president, to design and facilitate a visioning and culture development process with the College of Business Administration at Cal Poly Pomona. The college of six academic departments and more than 5,000 students needed to move beyond a culture of silos, update some of its administrative processes, and address what seemed to be a lack of opportunities for innovation. As the college was getting ready to celebrate its 50th anniversary and was shifting from a quarter-based to two-semester-based system, the timing was ripe for a major renewal process.

This is a story of how change methodology, dialogic practice, and visual facilitation combined to achieve a successful result, symbolized by the completed Grove Storymap® (see above).

Launching the Project

Our first step in the process was getting clear on the specific objectives. The dean of the college, Dr. Erik Rolland, asked us to:

  • Support the college to move beyond a culture of silos to become a culture that more fully embraces change, collaboration and innovation;
  • Develop a […]
2018-10-01T17:21:01+00:00May 19th, 2018|Change, Culture, Organizational Consulting|0 Comments
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Facilitating a Vision & Change Alignment Process for the University of California – Merced

Here is a case study written for The Grove Journal about one of several whole-systems change projects I have been co-leading with David Sibbet and other Grove consultants.

Driven by economics and demand, the University of California’s newest campus in Merced is expected to double in size by 2020. No fewer than 72 change projects faced Michael Reese, vice chancellor of Business Administration, in 2016 when he engaged The Grove’s Gisela Wendling, Ph.D., and David Sibbet to facilitate a campus-wide 2020 Visioning and Change Alignment Process.

The process combined large-scale strategic-change consulting, visual facilitation, Grove Storymapping®, and interactive-network technology in a series of large summit meetings with faculty, staff and students. The meetings were guided by a Change Alignment Team (CAT) of top project managers led by Reese and the former dean of the School of Engineering, Erik Roland.

At Chancellor Dorothy Leland’s insistence, the process streamed real-time to students, staff and faculty who couldn’t attend the face-to-face meetings. An interactive platform provided by Grove partner Covision allowed virtual and in-person table groups to share […]

2018-09-25T22:30:00+00:00June 15th, 2017|Culture, Dialogue, Multi-Stakeholder, Organizational Consulting|1 Comment
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Working with Crucibles of Change

One of the central topics that David Sibbet and I explore in The Grove workshop Designing and Leading Change is how to identify and work with crucible-type situations in organizational change processes. The Liminal Pathways Framework which we introduce in this three-day workshop indicates the crucible phase as the center of the transformative process—at the threshold or place of transition where one is no longer the old and not yet the new.

In metallurgy, crucibles are used to melt metals and combine elements under strong heat. Alchemists used crucibles in an attempt to turn base metals into gold, and they explored how their own magical interactions might cause a transformation to occur. So the crucible has become a metaphor for human containers (or processes) that can handle a great amount of tension – generative and challenging – for a shift or for something new to occur. The container needs to be strong, and at times also malleable and flexible, depending on […]

2021-08-06T17:49:31+00:00February 20th, 2016|Change, Dialogue, Indigenous Wisdom, Organizational Consulting, Transformation|3 Comments
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