Mandating a pilot group

The mandate is the task given to the pilot group. The primary client, i.e. the top decision-maker level, gives part of the leadership to the organization. The meaning of the word „mandate“, from the Latin noun manus „hand“ and the verb dare „to give“, sums it up. The management hands over part of the leadership.

A mandate provides orientation for all parties involved: 1. the commissioning leadership, 2. the pilot group, 3. the entire relevant system, 4. and the accompanying facilitators.
A mandate provides a pilot group with a maximum degree of autonomy: as long as a pilot group in which the „authority“ is represented according to the ARE IN formula adheres to the contents of an agreed and accepted mandate, it no longer needs to ask permission or request approval for decisions from a higher management level. They alone are able to act and make decisions within their mandate. With this understanding, facilitators fulfill their mandate to accompany and advise.
How is a mandate created? The initial preparatory group, in which the primary client is also represented, formulates the mandate and unalterable framework conditions in a joint, dialogical process. The following template helps with the formulation and shows what is important.

Design and support
The wording „The pilot group contains the mandate to design and accompany a path …“ was chosen deliberately. It is based on the realization that, although a pilot group will delve into the content and find possible solutions („piloting“), it will only do so in order to obtain pointers for the path that people from the entire relevant system have to take themselves. It is not about finding a solution that everyone else in the entire relevant system should then adopt. That would be a pattern of action based on the sender-receiver or roll-out logic. It is about using the content-related discussion and your own experience to develop a coherent process design for the people involved and affected in your own organization. If the process design is available, iteratively for the next step, then a kind of „learning and experience field“ is made possible, in which all relevant stakeholders are invited to make their own experiences and allow their own insights (emergent) to arise. The shared experience, learning and witnessing of how creative breakthroughs and decisions arise in the moment is one of the key advantages compared to conventional top-down approaches and change cascades.