The Story of the Large-Scale Interactive Process and its Journey to India

Almost 40 years back, Ford Motor Company was rapidly losing its market share to Japanese companies such as Toyota.

The situation was critical. A new way had to be invented to bring all of its 200000 people together to transform the company; and this had to be done within 12 months to avoid bankruptcy.

This is when Ford approached Dr. Kathleen D. Dannemiller and her associate at the University of Michigan, Ann Anbor to assist the company.

Kathie and her colleagues met over many weekends to invent a new model of transformation:

D * V * F > R

They said what was needed was first to create a state of positive Dissatisfaction amongst all the people with the spirit “If Toyota can, why can’t we?”

They, then said that all the employees needed to own in their hearts a shared Vision based on values that were very dear to all of them with the voice “All as one and one for All”

Finally, they needed to work across departments and locations and hierarchies to clearly define the First steps of a simple, easily understandable strategy to transform the company.

They believed that if all the three (D, V, & F) came together, the negative energy of resistance which had created the problem of too many silos and hierarchy consciousness (which they called organisational arthritis) would be overcome.

This is how they co-invented with Ford, a unique way for large groups to come together to create a spirit of one heart, and one mind.

In the nineties, Anil Sachdev and his team at Eicher Consultancy, invited Kathie and her team to partner with them to bring this unique technology to India. She had three conditions:

1. She would bring two other colleagues, Roland Loup and Al Vishwanathan, a senior leader from Boeing, who had worked with Kathie on the process.

2. She and her team would come for a month to teach the process and demonstrate its power with a client. They would waive off the fees of $250000, provided

3. Anil and his team agreed to teach the process to all academics and consultants (including competitors) in India.

Anil and his team were intrigued by the conditions and when they asked Kathie about the same, she shared “I owe my life to Dr. Deepak Chopra, the well-known spiritual teacher & healer who saved my life from certain death and I owe a debt to the people of India from where Deepak gained his wisdom.”

Kathie and her team worked with ECS to train more than 300 consultants, trainers and academics in the process, and they helped in running the first pilot at Eicher Motors. Since then, ECS, Grow Talent and now SOIL, (co-founded by Anil) have used the powerful methodology to assist hundreds of organizations to transform.

On the day Anil & his team were facilitating an LSIP for 1200 people, the news came that Kathie had passed away! The entire group stood in “silence” to honour this wonderful spirit who shared in a meeting with Anil a few months earlier “In India, I learnt - one heart and one mind can be made even more powerful with the addition of one SOUL”

In 2013, SOIL hosted the Kathie Memorial 'Train the Trainer' for 300 leaders with the help of Paul Tochinsky, a colleague of Kathie who had worked with us in the nineties with another client.All the revenues from this were donated to support the work of Dr Kshma Metre and her amazing colleagues at the Chinmaya Organization of Rural Development serving the poorest of the poor.

Just last week, we in SOIL helped two of India's best known companies to use this wonderful technology and knew that Kathie is smiling from up there, just like she was when he held the Memorial Event five years back!!