Last week sitting in a session on the SATIR Change Model, a personal favourite, I heard the word Nemawashi. Admittedly it is a great word to say, but when I looked it up, I realised, I have been doing Nemawashi for a long time, but calling it W(h)ine & Cheese. According to Wikipedia, Nemawashi is a Japanese word which translates literally as "going around the roots".
“Last week sitting in a session on the SATIR Change Model, a personal favourite, I heard the word Nemawashi. Admittedly it is a great word to say, but when I looked it up, I realised, I have been doing Nemawashi for a long time, but calling it W(h)ine & Cheese. According to Wikipedia, Nemawashi is a Japanese word which translates literally as "going around the roots".”
Translated into a commercial sense, this is the activity of laying the foundations for ideas or potential projects, through information sharing, seeking opinions and gaining consensus with peers, colleagues and leadership. It involves many layers of an organisation through communicating in 1-2-1s or small groups about the ideas or projects and allows people to feed in and give input, thereby creating that sense of having a stake in the success of the idea. Nemawashi is core to the foundations for Change & Transformation projects and programmes. When people have an involvement in the birthing of a new idea or project (or skin in the game) they are more likely to collaborate and actively participate rather than block or challenge.
I know you are reading this thinking:
“Good grief, this just adds time to moving forward rapidly”.
“Isn’t this normal business practice?”
“Isn’t this just politics & lobbying?”
If done well, it is a powerful practice in any project or programme, that brings people together and creates that feeling of investment in the success of the idea or project/programme. It creates unanimity, with everyone in the organisation striving towards a common goal. Through nemawashi, it becomes easier to achieve:
The idea or project itself coming to realisation, as risk is reduced as everyone has already bought in
Pace for the idea or project to come to fruition in the delivery mechanism, as some of the difficult change and communications work is done earlier on
People’s involvement and ultimately adoption through everyone being clear and understanding what is to come. They have also fed into the idea or project so there is skin in the game to create the success.
So next time you have the lightbulb moment and have a cool new idea or project to birth, practice the art of Nemawashi. It could just create an even greater idea with more buy-in, more support and some fun new elements to it that you never thought of but the collective gave you the power!
If you would like some support for the art of Nemawashi, drop me a note. I would love to help you create the most potent impact with your change programme.
Sayonara!
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