In the world of complex corporate change management, sometimes traditional methods just don’t cut it. Here we explore six unconventional tactics that shake up the status quo and breathe new life into organizational transformation efforts.
From smashing elephant piñatas to hosting virtual wine tastings, these creative approaches tackle common challenges like hidden frustrations, team recognition, resistance to change, and communication fatigue. Each tactic addresses a specific audience, an overview of how it works, and a breakdown of pros and cons. Whether you’re a business leader, IT or HR professional, or project manager, these outside-the-box ideas might just be the spark needed to energize your next change initiative and turn resistors into champions.
1. Bash the Past: Release the Elephants in the Room!
Audience: Business, IT, and project leaders at the start of a new transformational project.
Overview: Hidden team issues, frustrations and attitudes that don’t openly get discussed and dealt with can often sabotage complex business and IT transformations. Getting rid of “elephants in the room,” “alligators on the table,” or “skeletons in the closet” creates space for open, honest, frank conversations – essential to move forward in the heat of business transformation.
The quickest and most creative way I’ve seen teams get there is through an elephant piñata exercise. Yes, you read that right: An elephant piñata.
Meeting attendees are first asked to write down the frustrations they feel are not being talked about and as a result, not being addressed. The elephant piñata then comes out. Attendees privately stuff it with their frustrations. Team members then take turns hitting the piñata until it bursts open, spilling all of the frustrations onto the floor, candy too, of course! After everyone settles down, discussions about real blockers kick in.
Pros
Absolutely catches people off guard, provides permission to release their frustrations, drives to productive conversations on change-blockers that have not been addressed in the past.
Cons
May be over-the-top for some individuals and business cultures, yet sometimes an unexpected exercise like this is what’s needed to get to the real stuff!
2. Virtual Wine Tasting: Cheers to Big Team Achievements!
Audience: Core, global project-team celebrating collective success.
Overview: Most committed project-team members put in long hours driving hard toward critical deadlines. It’s hard work. But they persevere. Which is why they were selected to be on the project team in the first place.
These talented, dedicated rock stars need to be recognized and celebrated in unique ways. Even more challenging when many of them are often located throughout the world. A virtual wine tasting was one of the most impressive ways I’ve seen a team come together.
We had about 25 core team members attending; partners and spouses were also invited. One red and one white bottle of wine was mailed to our homes in advance of our meeting. We all logged on when it was time to meet, bonded by briefly chatting about this cool event. Then the founding vintner of the wines we were shipped joined our Zoom. He congratulated us, then walked us through a stunning presentation of his vineyard and an educational tasting of our wines, answering our questions and sharing detailed facts about his production process. Not a word about work for about an hour!
We all toasted each other’s contributions and collective success. Then chatted about the experience for a while after that. One of the most memorable team celebrations I’ve been part of.
Pros
Highly creative, personalized, memorable team bonding event.
Cons
Alcohol-focused experience may be insensitive to some team-members.
3. Key Influencers Keeping You Stuck? Transform Resistors to Change Champions.
Audience: Individual or a small group of stakeholders resistant to change.
Overview: Disengaged key influencers can negatively impact your change momentum. Especially when they have large teams that fall behind their resistance. Best way to re-engage them? Pizza!
As is often the case, disengagement is a result of feeling disconnected. Happens a lot when tenured leaders and subject-matter-experts – frequently those with higher education levels such as engineers, physicians, attorneys, and many other white-collar professionals – feel left out of the change journey.
What I’ve done in the past is to first schedule a 30-minute meeting with them. I book that time when I see their calendar has another 30 or 60 open minutes – hopefully close to lunch hour. I also pre-order a pizza from somewhere nearby that can quickly deliver on my go. Then I get chatting with the stakeholder. Try to get to some meaty issues about 20 minutes in. Then I ask: “Can I buy you lunch and order in pizza? We’re just getting to your important concerns.”
Can’t say it always works but I’ve been part of 30-minute meetings that last another two hours. Those leaders finally felt heard, fully expressed their issues in detail, felt an ease to do that like they never had before. Some of these leaders went on to become Change Champions or Training Leads. Let me tell you, when their teams saw them do a 180 from resistor to believer, they did the same!
Pros
Authentic way to be a good listener early in the Business Readiness phase of a change journey that pays big dividends down the road.
Cons
Hit or miss on schedules. If you don’t get the pizza ordered the first time, you can build rapport and re-schedule a more casual 1:1 at another time.
4. Visualize Your Change Landscape: Everyone May Not See It the Same Way.
Audience: Business, IT, and project leaders at the start of a new transformational project.
Overview: We’ve all got our fill of pie charts, scatter graphs, heat maps, and detailed statistical data presentations. They have their place, of course, but sometimes identifying change gaps in the road ahead among key stakeholder leaders is best accomplished with pictures. Yup. Good, old-fashioned photos.
Goal is to tell a quick and compelling story about your teams’ perceptions of your transformational journey. Once everyone agrees on that (not always the easiest to accomplish!), the work on closing those gaps can begin.
That’s what we did. We presented the same group of photos to the project team (mostly third-party consultants) and the business team (mostly full-time employees of the company). We nailed the key differences, gaps, and attitudes with two photos: the project team believed the current vibe of the change journey and how it should continue was the photo of a group of people partying in Vegas on a Friday night. Employees? They selected the photo of a family at grandma’s house for a Sunday afternoon meal together. Any wonder why the project team had trouble recruiting employees to their side?
Pros
Visual brevity, impact, and honesty of depicting change gaps always land with leaders inundated with hordes of other data competing for their attention.
Cons
Need to be careful not to overgeneralize with a few images. Back them up with other quantitative data, anecdotes, and specific examples of harmful business impacts.
5. Change Fatigue? Communicate through “The Christy Show.”
Audience: All team members.
Overview: Change fatigue is real. Not only at work but in our personal and family lives as well. So when change keeps coming at us at work, many employees slowly burn out trying to keep up with all the people, process, and technology changes they’re bombarded with. They need a break from the transformation tension.
Sometimes you need humor to break through and give people a chance to laugh at all the stress. Sometimes you need to communicate via “The Christy Show.”
First, we searched for a credible, hilarious, honest employee who was courageous enough to go on camera and tell it like it is. Christy was the person we found. We provided Christy with key messages. Then gave her the freedom to share her personal take on the tough change challenges their organization was going through. We filmed those episodes releasing her short segments on the company intranet which attracted thousands to each episode.
Took a ton of courage on behalf of leaders to give Christy the platform to do so. But she had already been doing that on the job every day. Everyone knew of Christy, so she was a natural to host the show. Employees got the laughs and relief they needed. Christy shared success stories with her personal slant. She dinged her infamous orange bell when it was time to kick off a contest or hand out the swag. Everyone was rivetted, watching the full 10-minute shows to avoid FOMA.
Pros
Fun, fresh, authentic, and credible. No C-level talking heads repeating the same corporate messaging in business speak.
Cons
Our video-production values were down & dirty (part of the show’s charm!), however, some may get intimated about creating a video series. Early positioning, key messaging, planning and your iPhone will solve that!
6. Team Members Have Something to Say? Hand Them a Tomato.
Audience: All team members – especially those with a gripe about not feeling heard.
Overview: There’s no shortage of employee-sentiment and survey-collection apps out there. Sometimes, however, you must eliminate digital distance to prove you’re serious about what employees think and how they feel.
Enter our “Bring It!” posters and a basket of tomatoes placed just beneath them.
True story. “Bring It!” was the global SAP business-transformation theme. It was set to be a long, complex change journey involving many different divisions, each of which had their own unique culture. Yet the promise of SAP was to bring them all together, to work more efficiently and effectively so they would all benefit from collective growth. Not everyone liked that idea.
“Bring It!” invited people to share their open, honest opinions to improve the overall SAP change journey. We did invite folks to do that on the intranet, in social channels, in town halls… and on posters in hallways where they could pick up a tomato in the basket below the posters, whip it at the poster, then use the dangling market to add their sentiment or productive idea. Not everyone did it. There were many onlookers. Others took advantage of the opportunity, were somewhat shocked by the approach, talked about it a lot, came to believe that leadership was seriously interested in their ideas. A basket of tomatoes didn’t solve all our problems. But it sure helped kick off the change campaign in a very creative way.
Pros
“What th–?” Yes, we surprised everyone and generated the talk value we needed to get the ideas flowing on the posters and in our digital channels where leaders could review them and take action on the ones that made the most sense.
Cons
Probably obvious. Cleaning staff may need OT pay.
Closing: As we’ve seen, driving organizational change doesn’t always require conventional methods. These six unorthodox tactics – from elephant piñatas to tomato-throwing – demonstrate that creativity and a willingness to step outside the comfort zone can yield powerful results.
While not every approach will fit every corporate culture, the core principles of engagement, honesty, and open communication remain universal. By thinking creatively and tailoring these ideas to your specific needs, you can breathe new life into your change management efforts.
Remember, sometimes it takes a little bit of the unexpected to break through resistance, fatigue, and complacency. So go ahead, embrace the unconventional, and watch as your team transforms from resistant to enthusiastic champions of change. If you need help, contact us to discuss how Pivot’s organizational change management and change communications experts can help.
