“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference”.
Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr, American ethicist (1892-1971)
We often know what needs to be changed in our organisation. In that case we can plan the change and use e.g. Deming’s PDSA-cycle and other Quality Tools for improvement. However, more and more changes cannot be planned, they emerge. For situations like these, I developed the ACCRA (C) model.
ACCRA (C) Model
If the context is rapidly changing or unpredictable, Van Kemenade ACT starts from the Emergence Paradigm (Hardjono and Van Kemenade, 2017), using a great variety of alternative products, methods and tools. The main focus of all these instruments can be summarized under the five principles of the ACCRA © model.
1. Attention
In every intervention, be it an audit, coaching, consultancy or training Van Kemenade ACT takes care of attention to ‘I’, ‘we’ and ‘it’. That is to say to the individual, the group and the subject, topic at stake.
2.Context
Nobody has the monopoly of the truth. There is not one solution for every situation. On the contrary. Van Kemenade ACT does not work with prefab models. Every activity is tailor made and takes the specific context into account.
3.Commitment
Van Kemenade ACT strives with you to increase the commitment of staff to excellence. “Because excellence in the end is a personal journey”. In stead of the traditional Mission, Values, Vision I suggest to use: Purpose, Virtues and Impact for your organisation.
4.Reflection
People often do not take enough time to reflect on what they are doing. I strongly support individual and group reflection as well as dialogue being a prerequisite for change and improvement.
5.Action
But of course thereafter we should ACT.
More on the ACCRA © model can be found here. In English and Dutch. The Model has been adapted for use in the Caribbean ©.
ACT for organisations
In the end, sometimes you have to understand things cannot be changed, at least not by you. Then it might be wise to stop trying to control and just accept the situation. Like the American writer of inspirational poetry Helen Steiner Rice said: “You cannot change reality, but you can control the manner in which you look at things”. You can focus on what you can influence, you can follow your purpose, your ‘ikegai’, you can continue to live your virtues and increase your impact. For these cases Van Kemenade ACT adapted the Acceptance Commitment Therapy Model for use by organisations and teams.