Marta Mellinger
“At 27, I went to work for a very large organization and first encountered the dreaded institutional mantra, ‘Information Is Power’.”
I grew up watching my Dad’s career – over 40 years with the same corporation. He succeeded beyond his most ambitious dreams. When we were kids, we set the clock by Dad: Every night, he walked back in the door at 5:12.
When Dad retired at the top of his profession in the early 1990s, his company’s pace had accelerated unimaginably. It felt like every week something erupted that changed the future. The company’s systems, communications structures, decision-making practices, integration of technology, org charts: All were fluid.
I’ve followed my bliss in my career, had incredible opportunities to accumulate knowledge about how things get done in the world. Strategic communications is my skill-base: I learned how to establish brand, how to engage partners, how to map workplans and flowcharts so many-tiered teams could accomplish anything I could envision.
In the mid-80s, I was hired as part of a small consulting company that consulted on organization change. We helped deconstruct Ma Bell into the baby Bells; guided financial institutions to become more competitive. I developed the integrated strategy necessary to build “buy-in” from employees.
Buy-in comes from not only communication, but involvement. Buy-in starts from the very beginning – the bigger the change, the more you need to plan your strategies. Transparency is critical, because in the end, change requires trust. You have to model the goals and values you’re trying to achieve, and hold a dialogue between those who are guiding the change and those who will be impacted.
Those early lessons stand solid at the center of every project The Canoe Group undertakes. Convenings and other face-to-face gatherings are the bread n’ butter of change-making. People have to look one another in the eye to build their trust for one another. By the mid-90s, I recognized my affinity for design and facilitation of group discussion.
Chaordic theories and learning organization practices inform everything I do. With every project, I learn more about how to navigate change. And now, what is most interesting to me is to figure out how I can pass along what I’ve learned to others. Hence, The Canoe Group.
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