Collaborative Action Principles that guide Change Initiative Consulting Services:

1. Internal Dialogues: Collaborative Action always invites clients to engage with them from Internal Dialogues. We design, implement, and test the overall change intervention, as well as the criteria for success, from internal dialogues, i.e., the thoughts and feelings that are typically not openly discussed with individuals directly involved.
   
   A few examples of difficult to discuss or undiscussable consulting issues uncovered from previous CA research with consultants and clients include:
   
   

   For the Consultant about the Client	For the Client about the Consultant
   They don't have realistic expectations. They don't know what they want. They're not going to implement what we've designed. They don't want change; they're just looking for window dressing.	I don't dare challenge the consultant. S/he's the expert. Nothing's going to change. This is just another fad. I better go along with them for now. After they leave, things will go back to normal. Sounds great, but these ideas never work; they don't address our real needs.

   
   
   
   
2. Co-Creation
   
   
   • Constant Co-Creation: All parties to the change recognize that all past and future actions and their consequences are jointly created.
     
     
   • No Blaming: Blaming disregards co-creation and transfers to a vulnerable party the sole responsible for actions and their consequences. Blaming diverts energy from the process of diagnosing difficulties and producing effective change.
     
     
   • Collaborative Design: Introduce Collaborative Design framework to clients with the intent to maximize business value and productively make discussible gaps in what we intend to produce. We invite a full range of stakeholders to participate in the change process, as appropriate.
   
   
   
3. Mutual Value Exchange fosters genuine commitment to the process by assuring that all participants receive value through their participation.
   
   
4. Training / Orientation assures that all key stakeholders have received training or orientation to the Collaborative Action tools to enable them to more fully engage in the project with greater precision and less political risk.
   
   
5. Informed Choice provides opportunities for all participants (e.g., clients and consultants) to make informed choices by highlighting the data driving decisions.
   
   
6. Critical Business Issues
   
   
   • Alignment: Design and implement a genuine business partnership with client organizations so that all interventions remain functionally aligned with even small shifts in business.
     
     
   • Goals: Jointly create and make public clear intervention / project goals.
     
     
   • Current Needs are identified and interwoven in such a way that solutions are constantly focused on current client needs and business issues.
     
     
7. Validate Information
   
   
   • Grounded Information: In discussing problems or patterns, individuals should use information that can be tested and validated with others
     
     
   • Opinions: Avoid reliance on client or consultant untested opinions about what is needed.
     
     
   • Blind Spots: Avoid unknowingly designing from consultant and client blind spots
     
     
   • Usability of Data: Generates reliable, meaningful, and complete data that is easily translated into usable data by participants in the field.
     
     
8. Measurement
   
   
   • Unintended Consequences: Action patterns are tested in a way that detects existing and newly created hidden, unintended consequences.
     
     
   • Business Cost and Value: The discussions should include business cost and value in addressing and not addressing the critical patterns facing the organization. Similarly, individuals should be able to illustrate the business value of the proposed interventions in dollar terms to the organization as a whole.
     
     
   • Tacit Measurement: Clients are asked to help us understand the unspoken measurement system and shift from tacit to explicit measurement of process, outcomes, and success
     
     
9. Continuous Improvement and Learning
   
   
   • Continuous Detection of Non-Productive Patterns: Design and implement solutions that work, while continuously detecting other counter-productive patterns.
     
     
   • Improvement Areas: Continuously identify and document areas for improvement.
     
     
   • Quality: Examine quality in the short-term for immediate modifications, as well as in the long-term, based on business value produced.
     
     
   • Learning: Implement solutions in a way that both accelerates individual and organizational learning and allows for continuous improvement as an operational norm (not an espoused norm).
     
     
   • Institutionalization: Solutions and new skills are truly imbedded in the organization's standard day-to-day practices. Members do not roleplay commitment. On the other hand, given continuous improvement, the institutionalization is flexible enough to allow for detection of unintended consequences over time.
     
     
   • Knowledge Transfer: The skills, knowledge, and learning gained through understanding one pattern or problem is usable in other areas.
     
     
10. Investment
    
    
    • Incremental Investment: Invest in elements of a project, measure the business value received, and make an informed choice about subsequent investments.
      
      
    • Minimal Investment: Do all of the above effectively at the lowest cost and investment of time possible