Aha-experiences in Change Management

A few days ago, I had an interesting conversation with two experienced HR Managers. They told me about several of their change initiatives and the sheer myriad of change management methodologies available to choose from. There was the systemic approach, and team building, and large group interventions, and many more. All of them offering the prospect of being efficient and effective. And all of them quite different in many respects. The two managers were spoiled for choice and yet, something seemed to be missing.

While this situation wasn’t new to me, this time I was fascinated in an unprecedented way. Because without thinking, I didn’t go down the line of saying that my approach is more promising or better, and attempting to justify why. On this occasion, I told them that I didn’t belong to any of these schools or methodologies, but that I’m a coach who is successfully generating aha-experiences for his clients. And where there is no aha, there is no change.

Without realising it, we had just given each other the gift of a mutual aha-experience. Theirs was that there doesn’t need to be fruitless and time wasting exercises deciding which is the best approach or the best fit. And mine was that I don’t compete with any of these schools and methodologies. I was delighted and very grateful.

Aha-experiences have been the source and engine of change since the dawn of mankind. If they are embedded between a goal definition (the contract (C)) and the establishing concrete next steps (what I call chances (C)), aha-experiences (A) can result in real transformational success experiences, for individuals and even for a whole organisation. All it takes is to make sure that CAC is used by the individuals (I) and the teams (T) in the part of the organization (O) that wants to change (ITO).

I believe that CAC for ITO (CACITO) will be the future of Change Management as it transcends the turf war between rivalling methodologies and focusses on the only thing that really makes a change: the aha-experience.