Читать книгу Horse Sense for People - Monty Roberts - Страница 12

Paradyne employs more than 800 people at its corporate headquarters in the Tampa Bay area of Florida in the United States and has regional offices around the world. Paradyne is a pioneer in high-speed network access and is revolutionizing the data communications industry. More than 50 percent of Fortune 500 companies, and businesses in more than 125 countries, have chosen Paradyne.

In 1997, Paradyne had a huge challenge on its hands. The company needed to adopt a new information management system, and get it up and working in eighteen months or less. The company had an archaic information system. It was necessary to install a new system, which would change everything they were doing, from giving a quote to organizing payment at the other end. John Guest of Paradyne brought in management consultants. They put together a team of people in charge of getting change under way and titled it “the foundation team.” The consultants showed the foundation team my Join-Up video. They were not at all sure how the film would be accepted—after all, I was a cowboy talking about horses.

The consultants needed to stir up creativity and willingness, and began by exposing the team to metaphors from the horse world. Time was limited: they had only two days to put the team together. To take an hour out of those critical days to see a video about a horseman was a bold step for these consultants. Would the foundation team see the connection between the nonconfrontational methods I use with horses and its need for people to accept a completely new information system? The team was asked to write down all the connections they saw between the project in front of them and the film. Within two minutes people were nodding, then busy writing and listing the connections as they saw them—more than a hundred in all, including: a nontraumatic, noncoercive environment; allowing bucking to occur; expecting resistance; keeping the pulse rate down; establishing trust; and keeping the dialogue flowing. They recognized the value of never taking out their frustrations on a colleague.

The consultant team sat back at this point, breathed a deep sigh of relief and realized the message was getting through. Join-Up became a metaphor for the willing acceptance of change that the team sought.

The film helped to establish the tone of the workshops and the changeover to the new system went well. In record time, Paradyne was reaping the benefits of change, with a level of acceptance its executives had previously not considered possible.

In 1999, I was in Texas meeting with my friend Flip Flippen about his work with the school systems in parts of that state. And as an aid to our conversation he told me about an interesting experience he had with Transit Mix.