Practicing Organization Development (A guide for Consultants) - Part 50 pptx

work to achieve the goals; (3) processes for communicating information, con- ducting meetings, solving problems, making decisions, managing conflict; and (4) the relationships between the members (Nadler, Spencer, & Associates, 1998). Focus was also given to relationships and work flow issues with other teams. For some teams these meetings were the first time they had been afforded the opportunity to take time offsite to discuss and review company and team- based issues. In the initial stages of the team-building sessions, the teams tended to generate engineering hit lists—that is, engineering issues they had to resolve, and slipped easily into discussing these. Through the interventions of the OD consultant, they began to learn how to review process issues and develop a sense of teamwork. They reviewed procedures for problem identifi- cation and resolution and set up processes whereby procedures and roles could be reviewed. They examined their perceptions of their roles as team members and as managers of others. They began to realize that, as managers, they needed to initiate building a sense of teamwork with their own shifts by rethinking their roles. Between team-building sessions with the consultant, some teams set goals that they did not keep and so, in reviewing, learned to examine how it was that some things did not happen. In these team meetings, several key areas of learning were identified. First, the team discussion and review of process issues provided those team members who hitherto had little prior exposure to an emphasis on process or a learning experience of working on a team. Second, members could apply learning how to work with their managers and peers on management teams to working with their subordinates on their own teams. Third, the single-loop learning of apply- ing a team model to their own working situation led to double-loop learning about the nature of the front-line manager’s role. In one session a front-line man- ager asked, “Does this mean I have to ask my people how they are? I have never done that before”—a question that sprang out of his realization that his assump- tions about his role were being transformed before his eyes. His manager replied that he himself had never done it either until a few months previously when he had brought that front-line manager into his office, sat him down, and asked him how he was. What was happening here was that the individual front-line man- ager’s assumptions about his role were changing through his participation in the team process. The front-line manager, and others like him, then enacted his newly understood role with his own subordinates in his own production team. This change and learning did not happen easily or in any single session. Over an extended time period, through the approach and actions of senior manage- ment and reinforced by the team-building meetings, many of the front-line man- agers began to understand the need for a cultural change in the organization and its implications for their own roles and operating assumptions. The team dynamics affected individual assumptions and opened up the possibility of double-loop learning. OD THROUGH INTERLEVEL DYNAMICS 461 26_962384 ch19.qxd 2/3/05 12:22 AM Page 461 Toward the end of the eighteen-month period, the plant manager casually com- mented how contented he was that the change process was now well-established. He said that a year ago he had given a great deal of time and energy to the change process—coming in early and leaving late. Now he considered that he didn’t have to do that any more; in his view the change agenda was well-embedded and there was no going back. Spontaneously, his team turned on him and retorted that now they were coming in early and leaving late, putting a great deal of energy into the change process, and were uncertain about the outcome. The plant manager’s comments showed that he had switched from doing to sustaining, while his team was at the doing stage. The front-line manager who found his role changing was expressing denial through his incredulity about what he was now being asked to do. In viewing this case from the perspective of how change moved through that organization, we can see that the change was initiated by the plant manager (individual level). He initially brought assumptions of what needed to be done, both attitudinal and behavioral, to achieve the desired productivity and survival outcomes to his management team (team level). In time the members of the management team understood what it was all about and took it to their respec- tive teams (interdepartmental group level). Within the production teams the team process influenced the front-line supervisors to understand what was being asked of them (individual level), which in turn reinforced the team processes of these teams and the senior management team (team level). In this manner, the change agenda, which involved a significant changing of assumptions, moved through the hierarchy, from senior individual to management team to middle manager to middle-level teams and so on. At the same time, in terms of levels of complexity, the change process moved to and fro, from individual to team, reinforced by team and back to individual, so that the progress of orga- nizational change was a complex iteration of individual and team learning and change, with each being a cause and effect of the other. CONCLUSIONS In this chapter, I have taken the traditional construct of levels of analysis beyond its usual application to focus on levels of aggregation as the systemic interde- pendence and interrelationship of the individual, the team, the interdepartmen- tal group, and the organization. The Thoul plant case illustrates the important role of interlevel dynamics in the process of learning and change. The interlevel dynamics from individual to team and back, and from team to team and back, brought out both the current mental models in individuals and the groups with which they identified (front-line managers, senior managers, and so on) and helped shape changes that were required in the thinking. Individual change took 462 PRACTICING ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT, 2ND EDITION 26_962384 ch19.qxd 2/3/05 12:22 AM Page 462 place through the teams of which individuals were members. Team change came about through a focus on team process and reinforced individual change. The change moved in an iterative manner from individual to team, team to individ- ual, and team to team. Levels of aggregation and interlevel dynamics form recur- sive systems at the core of systemic learning and change processes. Such interlevel processes do not receive explicit attention in the change and learning literature. My aim has been to share some OD work so that the systemic nature of interlevel dynamics may be further explored. References Burke, W.W. (2002). Organization change: Theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Coghlan, D. (1996). Mapping the progress of change through organizational levels: The example of a religious order. In R. Woodman & W. Pasmore (Eds.), Research in organizational change and development (Vol. 9, 123–150). Greenwich, CT: JAI. Coghlan, D. (1997). Organizational learning as a dynamic interlevel process. In R.A. Rahim, R.T. Golembiewski, & L.E. Pate (Eds.), Current topics in management (Vol. 2, pp. 27–44). Greenwich, CT: JAI. Nadler, D.A. (1998). Champions of change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Nadler, D.A., Spencer, J., & Associates (1998). Executive teams. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Rashford, N.S., & Coghlan, D. (1994). The dynamics of organizational levels: A change framework for managers and consultants. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Schein, E.H. (1999). The corporate culture survival guide. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline. New York: Doubleday OD THROUGH INTERLEVEL DYNAMICS 463 26_962384 ch19.qxd 2/3/05 12:22 AM Page 463 26_962384 ch19.qxd 2/3/05 12:22 AM Page 464 PART FOUR SPECIAL ISSUES IN OD P art Four focuses on special issues in OD. It consists of the following chapters: Chapter Twenty Global Organization Development, by Gary N. McLean, Karen J. Davis, Mila N. Baker, and Juana Anguita Chapter Twenty-One Values, Ethics, and Practice in the Field of Organization Development, by Terri Egan and William Gellermann Chapter Twenty-Two Bringing Every Mind into the Game to Realize the Positive Revolution in Strategy: The Appreciative Inquiry Summit, by Frank J. Barrett, David L. Cooperrider, and Ronald E. Fry Chapter Twenty-Three Human Systems Dynamics: Competencies in a Complex World, by Glenda H. Eoyang Chapter Twenty-Four Technology and Organization Development, by Soren Kaplan Chapter Twenty-Five The Personhood of the Consultant: The OD Practitioner as Human Being, by Robert Tannenbaum with Saul Eisen ∂ ∂ 27_962384 pt04.qxd 2/3/05 12:25 AM Page 465 Chapter Twenty-Six Adding to the Complexity of Personal Change, by Kristine Quade Chapter Twenty-Seven Practicing Internal OD, by Allan Foss, David Lipsky, Allen Orr, Beverly Scott, Terrence Seamon, Julie Smendzuik-O’Brien, Anna Tavis, Dale Wissman, and Catherine Woods Chapter Twenty-Eight Our Work for the Times in Which We Live, by Margaret Wheatley 466 PRACTICING ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT, 2ND EDITION 27_962384 pt04.qxd 2/3/05 12:25 AM Page 466 CHAPTER TWENTY Global Organization Development Gary N. McLean, Karen J. Davis, Mila N. Baker, and Juana Anguita C onsider this story about working with change in a global world: A team of consultants was subcontracted by a multinational telecommunications company headquartered in the United States to assist with the implementation of an employee suggestion program and to manage the change process. The company had sales offices in several countries, but their employee base was concentrated in manufacturing facilities located in the U.S., Mexico, England, and Thailand. Believing that business benefit and potential cost savings would be gained, an employee suggestion plan was to be instituted globally, awarding incentives based on an individual’s level of compensation. This would be a major change for the company. As the consulting team began its work, the members raised a number of concerns: • That there were issues related to the change in the company that would have to be addressed for successful implementation. • That the program allowed for suggestion incentives only by individuals, not for team-based suggestions. The consultants believed that this deci- sion would likely present a problem. While U.S. companies are tradition- ally viewed as being individualistic and often have great success with individual incentive-based programs, this company’s manufacturing plants 467 ∂ ∂ 28_962384 ch20.qxd 2/3/05 12:24 AM Page 467 were located in countries with highly collectivist views and would proba- bly not be as responsive or supportive of such an individualized plan. • That the incentive program was based solely on material items as sugges- tion motivators versus training supervisors to encourage suggestions from workers. Even in the United States, there have been significant amounts of research supporting the findings of Herzberg that workers are more moti- vated by intrinsic rewards, such as achievement or recognition, than by extrinsic rewards of money or material goods. • That differential incentives were based on compensation. For example, the maximum “prize” that could be won in Texas was a pick-up truck. Whereas, just a few miles away across the Mexican border, the highest prize an employee could win was a jacket. In spite of the concerns raised, the company decided to move forward with the original plan. They were reluctant to take the necessary time to address the changes and the system implications. Soon after, each concern was manifested. This case illustrates the complexity of working in many different cultures and also serves as a reminder that interventions that might have been successful in the past may not be as successful in today’s multicultural, multi-contextual envi- ronments. It is also a reminder that the OD practitioner/consultant does not set policy or make decisions in client organizations. Rather, the best that consul- tants can do is to build awareness of culture and context issues, facilitate processes, and raise difficult questions that they hope client organizations will take seriously. Finally, this example illustrates how difficult it is to address fun- damental change issues and barriers to success when the solution or process changes are perceived as the most critical task at hand. In this chapter, we first outline a vision for global OD work. Next, we explore the context for global OD—why and why now? Then we discuss theories and the need for methodologies that will influence how an OD practitioner must think about work in a culture different from his or her primary culture. Next we consider factors influencing the success of an OD practitioner working in a different culture and ways that OD processes differ in different parts of the world. We conclude with competencies needed to perform effective OD in another culture. One of the distinctive characteristics of practicing OD is the art of asking questions—knowing the right question and knowing when to ask the question. That is one of the core competencies that differentiates us from others (Beckhard, 1999). So we begin by asking: What questions, about doing global OD work, do we need to ask ourselves, our colleagues, our organizations, and our world at this time? 468 PRACTICING ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT, 2ND EDITION 28_962384 ch20.qxd 2/3/05 12:24 AM Page 468 As you read this chapter, consider the significant change throughout the world that has occurred since the first edition of this book was published. For example, for years sub-Saharan African countries had only unilateral trade. They did not conduct trade within the continent. They exported many raw materials, but all their finished goods were imported from outside Africa. Today, those same countries, through SACU (South African Customs Union), are developing trade routes and trading between countries, a remarkable advance and one with dramatic impact on the communities, people, governments, and organizations in Africa. This is an example of positive change. Unfortunately, many changes have not been positive for our world society. Such changes, however, have led to a new world order and worldview—a world order that until recently was reflected only in written form but has now been realized in behavior change. This new worldview presents an enormous opportunity and need to reshape our fundamental ways of thinking and understanding how we live together. If OD practitioners wish to have an impact on this new and emerging world, then our thinking and comprehending about our values and purpose will have to shift and evolve as well. OUR VISION: A GLOBAL WISDOM SOCIETY To focus our thinking and address a new world order and worldview, we pro- vide a definition and share a vision of OD as a foundation for building a “global wisdom society.” An early definition of this evolving concept is a society that values all cultures and traditions and skillfully utilizes multiple ways of know- ing for the greater benefit of all life (Institute of Noetic Sciences, 2002). We define global OD as a way of thinking, understanding, and acting/being in the world consistent with the ideals, values, and competencies of a global wisdom society. Richard Beckhard (1997), one of the originators of the term “organization development,” stated, “There is no longer organization development; there is only global organization development.” In recent years, the focus has been on adapting our current OD practices to global settings; however, we suggest that the time is now for global wisdom to guide our global OD practices. Regardless of where in the world we are practicing OD, it has to be within a global frame of reference. Whatever we do at a local level impacts and has a relationship with the larger world. As OD practitioners we have the choice to do this consciously, intentionally, and responsibly. Our mindset dictates our actions. When we ensure this occurs we become global OD practitioners, whether we practice in our home culture or worldwide in a culture other than our own. The credo for organization and human systems development has stated that “our ultimate client is the global community” (Gellermann, Frankel, & Ladenson, 1990). GLOBAL ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT 469 28_962384 ch20.qxd 2/3/05 12:24 AM Page 469 Senge (2003) suggests, “Realizing desired results in a global society requires both learning and leadership, and above all it involves creating/imaging a vision of the future, which also evokes the implicit difference from what currently exists” (p. 1). With the vision of a global wisdom society and one world, our practice of global OD should strive to co-create global wisdom organizations that embrace the following: • Holding a systemic perspective and always looking at the wholeness, the interrelatedness, and the harmony and balance of living systems and the universe. This includes nurturing the wholeness (health, integrity, full wholesome life, spiritual/psychosocial development) of the organi- zation and all its stakeholders. The “self”—the individual—is a system; for every “outside” there is an “interior,” and there are “outsides” and “insides” for groups (the collective) and individuals (Owen, 2004; Wilbur, 2000). A systemic perspective also encompasses twin citizenship (Handy, 1994), the capacity to hold views of local and broader context and take action in spite of seeming paradoxes. • Operating out of a deep understanding of and respect for natural systems and cycles, earth wisdom (WindEagle & RainbowHawk, 2003), human needs, and future generations. As noted by Mitchell (1996), living sys- tems are self-organizing, intelligent, creative, learning, trial/error, inter- connected, participatory, interactive, and evolutionary. There are multiple ways of knowing (means to wisdom and right action) (IONS, 2002), and there must be an integration of linear and non-linear ways of operating. Some say that we have all the wisdom of the universe within us. • Trusting the dynamics of self-organizing and collective consciousness as well as co-intelligence, the capacity to evoke creative responses and initiatives that integrate the diverse gifts of all for the benefit of all (Atlee, 2003). This includes building an internal human and organizational capacity to create structures that fit the moment and can evolve sponta- neously. In our everchanging/evolving world, learning, inquiry, and openness are important, as are a sense of awe and wonder, curiosity, and a deeper appreciation for all life and for each other and the universe. • Applying our learnings from the new sciences. This encompasses cre- ative chaos, strange attractors, complexity, and quantum theory’s proba- bilities of interconnections/relationships rather than probabilities of “things” (Capra, 1996; Wheatley, 1999). We live in a quantum world. • Being in the business of ethically serving society and earth in life-affirming and sustainable ways, including being in harmony with natural ecological and global environmental systems. There is stewardship of the whole. It embraces operating with a portfolio of human capital knowing that the 470 PRACTICING ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT, 2ND EDITION 28_962384 ch20.qxd 2/3/05 12:24 AM Page 470 . manage- ment and reinforced by the team-building meetings, many of the front-line man- agers began to understand the need for a cultural change in the organization and its implications for their. single-loop learning of apply- ing a team model to their own working situation led to double-loop learning about the nature of the front-line manager’s role. In one session a front-line man- ager. Julie Smendzuik-O’Brien, Anna Tavis, Dale Wissman, and Catherine Woods Chapter Twenty-Eight Our Work for the Times in Which We Live, by Margaret Wheatley 466 PRACTICING ORGANIZATION DEVELOPMENT,