Whole-Scale Change has been used extensively in a variety of public organizations—city and national government, education systems, community organizations, and non-profits.

Developed by Dannemiller Tyson Associates, this highly participative approach provides a robust, highly effective and predictable set of processes to help organizations and communities identify and utilize their own internal abilities to grow, to better lead, and to create the organizations and communities of their own choosing. Typically, organizations and communities already know what kind of difference is needed: implementation of a new vision or strategic direction, new or redesigned work processes, restructured roles/jobs/teams, cooperation between labor and management. What they do not know—which Whole-Scale helps to provide—is (1) how to put the difference in place rapidly and effectively through whole-system solutions, and (2) how to continue the process.

The goals of Whole-Scale are simple. Through a series of small and/or large group interactive sessions that are purpose-driven:

• Organizations and communities work to build a shared understanding of their current reality, a vision of the future, and the action steps to get there.

• Individuals and groups seek to gain a broader ‘‘big picture’’ of and critical need for cooperation among all elements of a system.

• Whole system solutions are created real time and people work to implement them within days or months instead of years.

• Diverse people strive to become ‘‘one brain and one heart’’ which shapes how they go about their work—acting individually with the wisdom of the ‘‘whole.’’

• Personal connections are forged between stakeholders at the individual ‘‘max-mix’’ tables over the two to three days of an event, where each table is a cross-section of all the diversity in the room. Actually knowing people makes calling on them for assistance or information easier and is key to implementation.

• The organization develops skills for using Whole-Scale processes as a way of staying connected and working together, engaging microcosms to continue to refine roles, tasks, and actions. They design and facilitate their own reunions to continue learning and changing.

The paradigm shift

Whole-Scale Change seeks a paradigm shift—a new way of seeing the world. Once people see the world differently, they cannot be stopped from taking the actions that begin to transform their shared vision into their shared reality.