During Disengage, you will be helping your stakeholders let go of the current situation and believe that things can be done in a different and better way. You have probably helped some of your stakeholders to start disengaging as part of the questions and exercises you have carried out during Joint Diagnosis. You may have established that some people are already disengaged with the current situation and excited about the prospect of change. Alternatively, they may be disillusioned and struggling to believe anything will happen. Others will be anxious about losing a strong or safe position or concerned they will be blamed for problems.

In this stage, you will use the evidence you have gathered in Joint Diagnosis to present the case for change – or, in some circumstances, to highlight that there is no need for change. Encourage people to think about the consequences if they don’t change. Having done the research into people’s views and how they like to find things out in the previous stages, you will also know the best way to present this information back to individuals and to groups. The tools in this section will give you strategies to help convince these different stakeholders.

The Disengage stage is critical to get people to own the change. Without a conviction that the current situation can improve dramatically, people will not feel motivated to go through the upheaval and effort involved in a change. You will find that people resist and continually try to go back to the old ways of doing things. People may raise questions about the point of making a change rather than focussing their energies on delivering it. In extreme cases, you might come across people who try to sabotage the change.