For Action Pact's Choreography of Culture Change workshop, 15 participants took over a bed-and-breakfast in Oconomowoc, WI where they stayed and worked for a week. While this may sound a bit like a reality TV show, no one was voted out and there was no competition. Instead, these folks from across the U.S. and Australia spent February 26th through March 4th growing their organizational change assessment and facilitation skills. They experienced a great side benefit as well - strong bonds and support for each other as they committed to spreading culture change back home.

Session topics included organizational design, self-led team building, conflict resolution, personal and leadership transformation, just to name a few. While Action Pact trainers LaVrene Norton and Megan Hannan presented the core curriculum, the participants also taught each other, broadening everyone's knowledge of culture change. Lorna Gartzke, Administrator at Lutheran Homes of Oconomowoc in Oconomowoc, WI said, "Once you [facilitate and teach others], it makes it so much easier because you're going to go right back to your facility and do it for them. So, it causes you to have deep learning." Lorna's facility moved into the household model in August of 2005 and their residents invited participants to come for lunch in the households.

Through exercises, storytelling, presentations and spontaneous conversation with this small group, the members were able to experience personalized learning, each taking what they needed to enhance their varying circumstances and their roles in them. Participants ranged from CEO's to nurses, to administrators, to independent consultants. " People really need to be committed to the learning experience to come to a week-long training. I was amazed at the level of expertise in the room. Everybody brought something to the table," said Alice Truluck, a consultant from Columbia, SC. The small learning group atmosphere combined with the cozy bed-and-breakfast helped underline the themes of home and self-led teams.

By the end of the week, you could see in the participants' faces that they had worked hard and had fun, but most of all that they were ready to get back and use what they learned. For Alice, the map of the culture change journey had been laid out and many of her questions as a consultant had been addressed, "Where do you start? How do you help your clients to get where they want to go? What are the pitfalls? What are the systems and processes we need to use? That is one of the hardest things those of us guiding culture change have been dealing with."

It's hard work, but something these participants are really looking forward to. Brian Foster, an independent consultant from New York City who does a lot of international culture change facilitation for the United Nations and other global organizations, and finds his work in long-term care particularly meaninful, said, "I want to work with these people and the work is not just worthwhile, it is desperately needed. And it is deeply satisfying for me."