Much of the power of the Bear Clan Meta-Compass comes from the process of taking diverse models and integrating them into a blended meta-model. It’s been my experience that this process has multiple benefits.

It makes it easier to remember key points of various models. It leads to insights about movement within a new change model. It leads to insights about how a new change model relates to other models (other compass levels within the Meta-Compass).

One of the themes readers will see within my writings is the integration of a professional business perspective with human service perspectives. What I consider to be the single most important teaching I received during my MBA training is a model for how to engage in strategic planning and strategic management.

Here in The Strategic Change Compass Part 3 of 3, I’m going to demonstrate how to take a change model, in this case one that isn’t from the field of psychology, and create a new level of the Bear Clan Meta-Compass.

If you’re blending in some perspective that’s not a complete change-model, then you can think about where it might fit in the Archetype Compass – The Chief, The Artist, The Scout, The Warrior. To some extent, that level of the Meta-Compass serves as a catch-all for a variety of concepts that make up the character of each archetype.

In Part 2 of The Strategic Change Compass, I introduced an 8-Step model for strategic planning and management:

(1) Clarify Principles (2) Create Shared Vision (3) Analysis (4) The Plan (5) Implementation (6) Reality Testing (7) Feedback and (8) Modification of The Plan.

To create a new compass level on the Meta-Compass it’s necessary to understand the qualities associated with each of the cardinal compass directions, and then assign the various stages to the appropriate direction. Movement within a compass level typically starts in either the North or the East and moves clockwise around the compass.

The North – Clarify Principles:

The North in Bear Clan is the realm of values and beliefs. It includes a person’s (or an organization’s) executive functions and skills. These include planning, organizing, time management, working memory, and meta-cognition. Those abilities allow for response inhibition, self-regulation of affect, task initiation, flexibility, and goal-directed persistence.

The most important single thing I learned in business school is a strategic process for managing change. It works for creating change at the highest level executive functions within a business. It works for the most basic projects.

It also works in therapy.

Why does this transformation process work at all levels of business and even at the level of individual people?

Because organizations function in a manner that reflects how individuals function.

Strategic planning and management is a best-practices process for how to create and manage change. It’s a process for transforming an organization and it can also be a process for transforming an individual.

In this article, I’m going to present the basic strategic planning and management model, illustrating how it applies to therapy. However, if you’re involved at any level in leadership, management, or project and program development then this is a process you should know.

What people have discovered in studying business is that there is a basic strategy to creating transformational change. There’s a basic process to unifying people to all work together with the same purpose. While there are different models to strategic planning and management, the following diagram presents the basic approach that has proven itself to be effective over and over again:

Again, it doesn’t matter whether you’re at the highest level in a complex organization, or a therapist working with a single particular client. This model suggests certain steps and actions if you want to maximize your chances of being a successful change-agent.

Step 1: Principles

Establish and communicate the mission, values, and vision that are intended to drive and guide the change process. For a therapist,
that translates into early work that you do with a client to create a shared understanding of: