Success in achieving and sustaining organizational health and balance through the Genuine Contact™ program is dependent on building the capacity of individuals and organizations to navigate with change. This requires a healthy, balanced foundation for the organization to work from as an "operating system". It is an accurate metaphor to say that Genuine Contact provides an operating system for a living organization. It provides patterns of simple, elegant processes that can handle, and benefit from, all the complexity within and outside the organization (conflict included). Genuine Contact™ process doesn't dictate a particular organizational culture - each organization has its own unique culture, based on its purpose and its people - but the patterns it provides work to invite the gifts of all the people involved fully and effectively into engagement.

Through this program, we equip you with simple and practical "how to" methods, processes, and key ingredients of achieving organizational health and balance that are duplicable throughout the organization. The Genuine Contact™ program achieves amazing results in working with what Stephen Covey calls the new “Whole Person Paradigm” that is required for organizations with knowledge and service workers to succeed.

The purpose of the Genuine Contact™ program is to assist leaders and organizations to achieve successful healthy and balanced organizations creating what we refer to as the Conscious Open Space Organization. Individual workshops in the Genuine Contact™ program also have great benefit taken on their own without commitment to the whole program.

What is achieved through working with the Genuine Contact™ program?

Through its holistic approach to business success, the Genuine Contact™ program provides an effective and quick means to access the issues that need to be addressed in your organization, and the solutions that need to be implemented. A participatory architecture is created to foster a solution-focused base for your organization, achieving results that surpass expectations. It provides a nourishing environment in which the human spirit can flourish creatively and fulfill its potential. Solutions come from the collective genius and passion of the organization's existing human resources, generating the energy to implement them in the process.

We designed the Genuine Contact™ program with simplicity in mind, using meetings as a catalyst to develop healthy and balanced organizations for successful, sustainable optimum effectiveness. We chose meeting methodologies that tap into the intellectual and intuitive wisdom of the individuals involved, and of the whole collective. We then identified key ingredients that needed to be in place to support the new or enhanced way of getting work done. The resulting healthy and balanced organization is life nurturing, working as an interconnected learning organization. The process is organic, so every organization brings about its own unique change from within, simultaneously enhancing skills, capacity and competency for working with change in our rapidly changing times.

The Genuine Contact™ program is also a program for building the skill and capacity within the organization to address change. It is designed to keep external consultant involvement to a minimum, providing training and mentoring work only so that working with change is led from within the organization. Leaders within an organization are taught to develop and use an operating system in which business is conducted with genuine contact at all levels on an ongoing basis. Upon completion of the nineteen days of training, leaders are authorized to teach the components of the Genuine Contact™ program to others within the organization, in an ongoing internal process, until the new operating system is functioning fully in a growthful, sustainable and effective way. During year one, during and following the initial training, a consultant to the organization coaches and mentors this "in-house" team as the "in-house" team leads the change process for its own organization.

Tangible Results from using the Genuine Contact™ program include:

1. Breakthrough learning resulting in solutions to complex challenges
2. Appropriate structure
3. Genuine community and effective communication
4. High morale and commitment
5. Spirited performance
6. Engaged involvement
7. High efficiency
8. High productivity
9. Shared leadership
10. Shared vision
11. Clear purpose
12. Growth from within
13. Elimination of barriers to doing a job quickly with excellence and pride
14. Increased creativity including creative problem solving
15. Sustainable and renewable organizational health and energy for further successes
16. An ability to navigate with change and take quick advantage of the opportunities it brings
17. An environment where the creative human spirit can flourish
18. Benefits from intuitive knowledge and rational knowledge working together in tandem

As an organization develops greater health and balance, change in actions, behaviors and patterns are required. More important are the changes in the way that purpose, values, assumptions, and structure are understood and worked with. For both individuals and organizations, growthful change comes from deep within. For both, change uncovers our fears of the new and unknown, yet we know that we must face the unknown if we are to grow and flourish. In the Genuine Contact™ program, change is viewed as life nurturing rather than life depleting.

Leaders within an organization are taught to develop and use an operating system in which business is conducted with genuine contact at all levels on an on-going basis. These leaders are then empowered to teach others within the organization in an ongoing internal process until the new operating system is functioning fully in a growthful and effective way. This way of working is duplicable and self-replicating throughout the organization, and is customized to suit every specific situation.

What is required to bring the Genuine Contact™ program into your organization?

* Commitment of the senior management team. Establish the commitment of the CEO and senior managers to developing an organization that recognizes and draws upon its workforce potential, is open, participative, interconnected, and working to improve its learning and capacity. The commitment of the CEO and senior managers includes:

1. a commitment to 12-16 days of training for skill, capacity, and competency development over a one year period of time in 4 blocks of 4 days for an internal team chosen to implement the transformation of the organization
2. a commitment for up to 24 days of mentoring/coaching from an external consultant for the senior management team and for the internal change team
3. a commitment of a number of days over the first year to working with the consultant as the senior management team. The consultant will work closely with the senior management team during the change process

* Develop an internal team to lead the change. Form an internal team to be trained by the consultant who is authorized in the Genuine Contact™ program. It is recommended that this team include managers, human resource specialists, organizational development specialists, and in the case of unionized environments, union leaders. The maximum recommended size of this team is 35. At the completion of the training phase, each member of this team will be authorized as a trainer of the Genuine ContactTM program for others within the organization. The consultant will work closely with this internal change team during the change process. This team will implement the transformation of the organization into a Conscious Open Space Organization capable of navigating change effectively and productively.

* Orientation session and start of the change process. The consultant takes the internal change team through a three day process learning to do a simple diagnosis of the health and balance of the organization. The session includes the development of the change plan. The internal change team is coached and mentored in working with the whole organization to begin the change process using what is learned in the three day process. Sessions are scheduled, according to the change plan, for training of the internal change team for particular skill, knowledge and capacity development. It is not necessary for the training to be in place prior to the start of the change process.

* For larger organizations, training can be done for the internal team on-site. Smaller organizations may choose to arrange to send the internal team to external training programs organized in various locations in the world.

A statement of values considerations for working with the Genuine Contact™ program is also available as a printed document. If you would like a copy, please contact us with your request.