“Nothing will change until the status quo is more painful than the change.”

— Laurence J. Peter

Observation: Politicians and people in power haven’t solved a certain violence problem - mass shootings at schools in the USA.

Reaction: ”Hey, we are Change Management. Maybe we have skills.”

Suggestion: Apply collective skills of Change Management group to explore progress on a narrow slice of violence in the USA.

Scope Boundaries for Actors, Actions, Objects

Success Factors | Pre-mortem

Document things in the right order
- Exhaust Current State documentation as much as possible before turning attention to Future State documentation
- Among people, process, and technology, likely postpone documentation on technology; early emphasis is likely best on process documentation
- Some of us are top-down thinkers; some of us are bottom-up thinkers; both are great, just get it down on paper and we’ll see where it fits later
Try to treat the other side as “opponents'“ not enemies; think Green Bay Packers and Chicago Bears and Army versus Navy football game; don’t give up on Win-Win solutions
Keep the customer in mind; your customer might be different than another stakeholder’s customer
The intersection of customer and seller is a critical interface to understand incentives, motivations, and to “follow the money”
Think of your opponent as your customer and a prospective buyer
Dominant buyer motivations include: need, acceptance, fear, health, impulse, pleasure, financial gain, aspiration
Engage, include, and involve your opponent as early as possible; without them, you have no football game, no audience, and no customers
Your past customers already agree with you and already bought what you’re selling; your next customer is not yet buying what you’re “selling”
“Selling” your idea to your buyer might include educating them on how the status quo is unattractive and how their alternatives are unattractive
Partition this “wicked problem” into smaller parts as much as possible, e.g. build a process hierarchy with parent processes, children process, predecessors, successors; Legos fitting together, scenes of a play that, together, comprise the whole audience/customer experience
Meet your customer where they are; seek first to understand then to be understood
Consider where a Stoplight Report applies, i.e., health of some body of work in terms of Red/Yellow/Green (metrics, lessons learned, status report)
Process flows feel daunting, so consider a simple script as an interim step (see two-column template below)
Disagree don’t demonize; task conflict is good, personality conflict is bad; if something feels inflammatory, ignore it if you can and “don’t give it oxygen”
Consider the temporary merits of absurd ideas
Bring a problem, win 1 point. Bring a solution, win 1000 points.
A growth mindset always wins

“Just get it down on paper, and then we’ll see what to do with it.”

— Maxwell Perkins

Stakeholder Wilson-Lowi Matrix (Orientation)

Costs and benefits are concentrated for stakeholder groups with small population: lobbyists, gun manufacturers, gun retailers, mental health patients.

Costs and benefits are diffuse for stakeholder groups with large population: students, teachers, gun owners.