Organizations and teams are built to move forward.

Decisions. Plans. Deadlines. Implementation. Results.

But sometimes continuing to push forward in the usual way is not enough.

People occupying different positions within the same organization may be seeing different parts of the same reality. Important assumptions may be operating beneath the conversation. A consequential question may have been discussed repeatedly without becoming clearer.

At such a point, an organization or team may benefit from temporarily changing the direction of movement itself.

That is a Collective Intelligence Lock Point.

A Lock Point is a professionally facilitated, 90-minute dialogue around one consequential organizational or team question.

It brings together people who occupy different positions—and therefore may see, know, experience, question, or imagine different parts of the same organizational reality.

For 90 minutes, the ordinary pressure to move forward is temporarily suspended so that another kind of movement can become possible.

A navigation lock exists because sometimes a vessel cannot simply continue forward. The water ahead is at a different elevation.

The vessel enters a protected chamber. The gates close.

For a time, forward progress stops.

But movement does not.

The water level changes, allowing the vessel to be raised or lowered while remaining essentially at the same point in its journey.

On the river, movement is measured in miles.

Inside the lock, movement is measured in feet.

Then the gate opens, and the vessel continues its journey.

Organizations and teams sometimes reach points like this too.

[WATCH LOCK POINT VIDEO ABOVE]

Developed within the Living Human Change framework, Lock Point attends not only to the change an organization can report, but also to the change its people are actually living—bringing Reported Event Change and Living Human Change into relationship to support organizational or team collective intelligence while honoring the experience and dignity of individual members.

Organizations often experience change first as something that can be reported.

A restructuring is announced. A leader changes. A new technology is introduced. A strategy is adopted. 

Teams are reorganized. A merger occurs. A decision is made.

These are Reported Event Changes. They matter. They describe what has happened—or what is intended to happen—in the organization.

But the people of the organization are simultaneously living something that cannot be fully captured by the reported event.

They are interpreting, remembering, questioning, adapting, relating, imagining, and becoming within what is happening.

That is Living Human Change.

The reported event and the lived human experience are not competing realities. They are different dimensions of the same organizational field—and they do not necessarily move at the same speed.

A Lock Point creates a protected place where Reported Event Change and Living Human Change can encounter one another.

People occupying different positions in the organization can bring into one shared dialogue what they see, know, experience, question, and imagine around one consequential question.

The purpose is not to stop the reported change or manage people's reactions to it.

It is to allow the human organization living within the change to become more visible to itself.

Sometimes what has moved forward organizationally requires another kind of movement humanly.

That is where a Lock Point can become useful.

Organizations and teams routinely engage in conversations that move the work forward and conversations that sustain the relationships around the work.

Business Conversation moves the work forward—decisions, priorities, performance, plans, deadlines, accountability, and action.

Social Conversation sustains human relationships around the work—connection, informal exchange, belonging, and trust.

Both are necessary.

A Lock Point Dialogue does not replace either one. It creates a protected conversational chamber in which, for 90 minutes, the ordinary pressure to move forward is suspended around one consequential question.

Inside the Lock Point, the conversation can move up or down as needed.

Up—toward greater context: patterns, relationships, assumptions, system effects, emerging possibilities, and a wider view of the whole.

Down—toward greater particularity: lived experience, individual perspectives, specific realities, concrete examples, and what is actually happening for people within the organization or team.

Up is not better than down. Down is not better than up.

Sometimes the conversation needs to rise toward the whole. Sometimes it needs to lower toward the lived particular. Sometimes it needs to move between both.

The direction of movement is not predetermined. It emerges through the consequential question and the people gathered around it.

Lock Point does not replace the conversations that move the organization forward. It creates a protected opportunity for conversation to move differently before forward movement resumes.
 

Before the session, one consequential question is developed with the organizational sponsor.

The people invited into the Lock Point are selected because they occupy positions from which something important about that question may be seen, known, experienced, questioned, or imagined.

Then they enter one shared conversation.

No breakout groups.

No predetermined answer.

No requirement to reach consensus.

No pressure to create an immediate action plan.

Instead, participants have an opportunity to encounter the question—and one another's ways of seeing it—differently.

Someone else's seeing may change what becomes available for you to see without requiring you to agree with them.

Your seeing may do the same for someone else.

That is one way collective intelligence may become more available.

The distinction matters.

James does not determine where the organization should go, steer participants toward a preferred answer, manufacture consensus, or propel the group toward an outcome.

His role is to create and protect the conditions for passage: the consequential question, the shared chamber, the quality of attention, and the opportunity for different ways of seeing to encounter one another.

The lock makes movement possible. The organization makes the journey.

A Lock Point does not replace strategy, leadership, change management, organizational development, human resources, or technical expertise.

Nor is it primarily designed to build teamwork, improve morale, overcome communication challenges, resolve departmental territory issues, conduct an investigation, mediate a grievance, or repair organizational relationships.

Those may be important needs. They may even be affected by what happens in the room.

But they are not the purpose of a Lock Point.

A Lock Point is not another name for a focus group, brainstorming session, retreat, strategic-planning meeting, training program, listening session, or conventional facilitated meeting.

Its distinguishing characteristic is this:

Ordinary horizontal progress is temporarily suspended so that vertical movement can become possible.

A Lock Point may be particularly useful when an organization or team is facing a consequential question involving significant change, uncertainty, different perspectives, or a situation that has been discussed repeatedly without being seen differently.

Examples might include organizational restructuring, leadership transition, AI and automation, workforce transformation, major implementation, persistent organizational questions, or the period immediately before a consequential decision.

A useful question for a leader or sponsor is:

Does this situation require more horizontal progress—or could it benefit from temporarily suspending horizontal progress so that vertical movement becomes possible?
 

At the end of 90 minutes, the gate opens.

There is no required after-action report.

No manufactured consensus.

No list of assignments simply because the group met.

No required dialogue about the dialogue.

People return to their work.

James does not declare that the organization has changed or tell participants what the Lock Point accomplished.

The proof of value is downstream.

Whatever became newly visible or newly possible in the chamber may become evident later—in conversations, assumptions, relationships, decisions, questions, and actions.

A vessel does not remain in a lock.

It enters when passage requires it.

When the gate opens, it continues its journey.

A Collective Intelligence Lock Point includes:

Preparation Meeting #1 — 30 minutes

A sponsor conversation to understand the organizational situation, context, challenge, opportunity, and potential consequential question.

Consequential Question Development

James develops a proposed question around which the Lock Point can be formed.

Preparation Meeting #2 — 30 minutes

James and the sponsor review, refine, and finalize the question and session considerations.

Participant Orientation

In advance of the event, participants receive a brief video introduction to what entering a Lock Point means and what will—and will not—be expected of them. There is no prework. Participants are not asked to prepare positions, presentations, questions, or answers in advance. 

The Collective Intelligence Lock Point Event — 90 minutes

One consequential question. One shared, professionally facilitated dialogue.

The Gate Opens

Participants return to their work.

Available in person or virtually.

Reasonable travel and lodging expenses are additional when required for an in-person engagement.

You may not need another meeting.

You may not need another presentation.

You may not need another answer.

You may have reached a point where the people who are your organization or team need an opportunity to encounter one consequential question differently—together.

James L. Egbert | Founder, Living Human Change 

Explore whether a Lock Point Event is right for your organization or team.

James@JamesEgbert.com

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