Week 6: Theory of Change
We are at the half-way point in the accelerator, and Kurt Lewin’s Change Management Theory seems to be right model to describe what’s happening with Alcye.
Kurt Lewin’s Change Management Theory has 3 stages to describe the process of change — Unfreeze, Change, Refreeze.
The first stage, Unfreeze is realizing and deciding that the current state will not hold much longer or lead to success, therefore must be dismantled.
The second stage, Change is the most complex one. It is a process, a movement towards a goal that has the potential for success. Since the change is not a singular event or clearly defined, this transition is murky. Everyone interprets and reacts to this phase in different ways.
Refreeze, the third phase is a consolidation of the changes and establishing stability. However, current technology and business climate dictates that we do not freeze completely, that is become an ice-cube, but be more like soft-serve, so a subsequent shift, if necessary, is easier.
When I started the cohort, Alcye was a mentoring marketplace, where individual people could sign-on and be matched with peer-mentors who had the skills they needed help with. We had another potential customer — the owners of membership groups (or so it seemed at first glance). The arrival of this potential customer showed me that I had to unfreeze. That Alcye is not so much an individual mentoring marketplace but rather a place to build communities for these membership groups. That decision was a big one and Alcye started to have an identity crisis.
So now Alcye, and I, are in the second phase, the phase of Change. And an identity crisis is perhaps the precise feeling that an organization goes through when it is not what it used to be, but is still trying to figure out it’s next look.
We had an exercise in class this week called the gallery Walk. Each of the cohort members had to walk around and write on stickies what they thought the other ventures were. Two of the ones I got were interesting: “Adult Edu” and “An app that helps people find mentors”. We have all been together for 5 weeks, and two of my cohort members had only a vague idea of what Alcye is.
My first reaction was ‘What! Are you for real?” But then I realized that is precisely how it happens during process of change in an organization. Some are with it at the get go (the enthusiasts), some are still weighing it out (the process folks), and the rest are trying to follow the change trajectory (playing catch up). The stickies I got from my cohort fell in all three categories. To me this is good news.
I also now know, that this is how it will be until we absolutely get the customer down, and unveil a new identity for Alcye. Of course, the issue is that the customer looks slightly different at first glance, but share an underlying objective, so it is not easy to articulate with precision who that is.
It is not how they do it, but rather what they do and why they do it, that unifies these customers.
Here are our last two posts refining our customer:
Customer refinement is such a crucial piece. Because we may run the risk of a False Positive, when we get to the point of determining the market size. That is, if we don’t refine our customer precisely, that we can trick ourselves into thinking that our market is much bigger than it is. We certainly can’t delude ourselves!
But here is an interesting dilemma: How do you phrase what you do when you pitch? Do you dilute how you describe the product/service so everyone understands it, or do you keep the focus tight on who it is for, so the right people will recognize as soon as they hear it?
I have found that when I dilute it, I am having to do a lot more back-end explanation and caveats. Your thoughts?
Here’s Alcye 2.0:
Alcye exists to create a world where adult learners can connect and grow through social learning and peer circles to achieve better learning outcomes and retention, and inevitably, better social outcomes.
Alcye is a web platform that increases engagement within learning communities through shared learning to enable a group to work effectively.
Drop us a line and share your experiences!
Oh, and also, we had a lovely Salon Dinner with cohort members, mentors and partners last week.
