When facilitating workshops, the plain-language bottom-line root cause of a conversation is always people. From strategy to delivery, people drive ideas, experience and outcomes. 

Insurance, healthcare, telecommunications, automotive, e-commerce, and space, every industry has people problems. 

Supply chain: How do we get X from Y to Z on time, tracked, controlled, and with the least waste? X, Y, and Z need people looking for a favourable outcome. 

Risk management: How do we keep an income if X, Y or Z happens? X, Y and Z are actions made upon or by people. 

Finance: How do you, legally and effectively, engage people to buy, sell, and trade in anything? 

Design leaders and facilitators understand the dynamic of people as individuals and as groups. Experienced design leaders must become facilitators and create safe spaces for authentic conversations. 

Workshop design changes the dynamics of everyday activities. People must get out of their problem-solving methods in a psychologically safe environment. Leverage creative play for a constructive space to open, explore and decide how to move forward in a structured way.

No, the 30-minute icebreaker games followed by 6 hours of speaker-led PowerPoint presentations don't count. Nor do those big concerts, parties, corporate athletics, fancy swag, pizza, and beer nights.

Bonding events alone do not create the psychological safety needed to inspire openness and collaboration and create sustainable change. Organizations invest in strategy sessions at the leadership levels to agree on defining outcomes, objectives, and key results. 

Yet, very few organizations invest in change as a centralized people program embedded into day-to-day activities across the org. Building a delicate balance of friction and alignment is critical across all organizational levels, mobilizing people toward productive action and retaining those who felt powerless to create change. 

Roll out programs to bolster people's confidence amid change. Introduce training workshops to heighten empathy within the organization and with the customer. Make workshop facilitation, digital whiteboarding and design thinking core competencies for every team. Bring in a mediator to resolve serious conflicts. New leaders can step into the micro-moments that make or break the adoption and evolution of changes that result in continuous improvement.

Your business problems are people problems. It's best if you have people to solve them. 

Do you think any of this sounds familiar to you? What's your experience with organizational change? I'm listening to acquisition and change management stories as part of my research into why so many change management programs stall out after acquisition.