Challenge:

A business model that wasn’t a fit for the future

CNIB, a successful and high profile national non-profit agency, had a 98-year old charitable business model that wasn’t a fit for the future.

The Growing Challenges:

• Changing demographics
• Massive increases in demand
• Out-dated performance metrics
• Geographic differences
• Departments silos
• Tension between centralized and decentralized processes
• A historically bureaucratic approach to innovation and performance
• Embedded tension between old charity-based models and new business-based models
  

The Symptoms of Failure:

• Increasing miscommunication between the board and the executive
• Resistance to change from staff was blocking corporate innovation and risk-taking
• An inability to adopt and incorporate appropriate best business practices from the corporate world
• Battles about what was included in corporate “shared” services and what fell under regional control

Ultimately, service levels to clients (those dealing with vision loss) were at risk and the long-term viability of the financial model couldn’t keep up with the aging population of baby boomers.

Solution:

A common understanding, shared language, and a vision owned at all levels

The executive leadership engaged Unstoppable Conversations to help them uncover hidden, embedded ways of thinking amongst executive leadership which sounded like:

• “We know best.”
• “Just keep everyone happy.”
• “It’s easier to ignore it.”
• “They’ll fail and someone’s going to get hurt.”
• “I might do it wrong and it’s a lot more work.”
• “I wish we could, but we can’t.”

Uncovering this blind spot made obvious a historic rift between executive leadership and the board of directors.

Executive leadership was unable to rapidly adapt to changes because they couldn’t see eye-to-eye with the board, and couldn’t effectively communicate their vision for the future. And staff were forming into the “haves” who were early adopters and the “have nots” who were unable or unwilling to adopt new technology, processes, and approaches.

Unstoppable Conversations put CNIB into a nationwide training program to enable a new capacity for “change readiness.” The intention was to provide leadership and staff with a common understanding, shared language, and a vision owned at all levels of the organization.

Results:

A new, permanent $4M annual revenue stream

Together CNIB and Unstoppable Conversations created a tailormade way of thinking called “The Path to Change”, which included:

• “Clients come first.”
• “Answers are in the room.”
• “They can handle it.”
• “I contribute.”
• “Open and receptive.”
• “Transparent and honest.”
• “I trust the people I work with”
• “I’m accountable.”
• “Look at myself first”

They also created a uniquely new context called “Pick a Fight” as a way to break them out of their historic unwillingness to “rock the boat.” While elements of this thinking had always existed within the organization, it hadn’t yet penetrated through the company. There had previously been no common language of change readiness to bring people together in a way they could empower each other.

While many participants said “that’s the best training I’ve ever done in my career,” the best results were the capacity for change readiness, the commonly owned vision, and an ability for straight talk which directly paved the way for radical new business models and a wave of innovation.

After 100 years of operating inside the same charitable business model, the national executive board of CNIB made history by transforming their approach, and in doing so, the CNIB secured a new, permanent $4M annual revenue stream and opened new lines of business as social enterprises.

Further results included a CNIB director saving the organization $100K in a single 20-minute conversation, resolving a 2-year “intractable” union dispute.

The conversation also created an estimated $1M in ancillary value for the organization when regular meetings between CNIB and union management began again for the first time in 3 years.