This one is the mad, sad, glad exercise. And it's one of my favorites. The idea of the Mad sad, glad exercise is to get people's emotions out so that we can understand what their emotions are. And we can start to examine them and address them. So how does it work? It starts with getting people onto tables into groups, and putting large numbers of sticky notes onto the table, and pens for everyone.

Around the room will be three types of board or charts. They're all empty except for a label at the top, which will either be mad, sad, or glad. I like to add comic faces as well just to emphasize the mood. And then we ask people in a fixed amount of time, one idea post it notes. So write down anything that makes them mad about the current situation angry riled up, or anything that makes them upset or sad or miserable or frustrated about the current situation. Of course, anything that makes them glad happy, please proud about the current situation.

You could also apply it not to the current situation, but the anticipated changes, so that you can find out how people feel about the changes. And then, when people have completed the task of writing as many sticky notes as they can, for each of the three, we asked them to go and place their sticky notes onto the charts. Step three is then to invite everybody to examine all the charts in silence. And maybe to make a note a mental note or to write down any notes that they think are that really resonates with me that that's really important to me. Now, why do we get people to examine all of this carefully. And by the way, we get people to make a note, just to make sure that they do examine them.

And don't just chat with one another. We get into examine these carefully, because it's really important, at times of high emotion when the organization is going downhill, and it needs to change or people that is spirited or frustrated by the changes that are happening. It's very important that we understand that it's not just me, that's going through all these powerful emotions. It's my colleagues to and it's also important to get people to acknowledge I might be angry, I might be upset by what's going on, but there is also something to be glad about. So bounces things up. And then I'll usually do a round of asking people to comment on what they noticed about the patterns and what they see.

Someone will usually say oh, there's a lot of people think the same way as I do. And I invite people to tell me which ideas resonate with the most. And I can use all of this information to design the next step in my change process. If I've done this as a way of reflecting on the status quo, I can use this to help me design the changes that need to happen and how to implement them. If I do it in the early stages of a change program, where we know what the changes are going to need to be, I can use it to help me to design the communications program and how we're going to engage with stakeholders and support users and stakeholders through the process. The Mad sad glide process, very, very easy to run.

Very, very powerful. And of course, you can vary it to suit your needs. For example, you could have a fourth type of chart add, what would you add to what we're doing or what would you add to The organization you can change the words you can have. Stop, start, continue. You can have stop, start, continue, add. You can vary this any way you choose.

But it's a fantastic tool for Change Management