Quality & Equality

A few weeks ago, I attended the launch of Demos’s research on the change process in the RSC, during which I acted as consultant support. Demos have done a great job documenting the journey, for which I congratulate them. If you would like to download the full publication, the reference would be: Hewison, R., Holden, J., and Jones, S., All Together: A Creative Approach to Organisational Change, (London: Demos, 2010), available for download at http://www.demos.co.uk/publications/all-together.

This blog is to capture a few thoughts on OD and change to encourage practitioners that effective change is doable and there are results that demonstrate that.

I. Applying Organisational Development to the RSC

There are many OD principles affecting our change approach. For the RSC case, there are three which were particularly important.

1. Identifying the correct type of change and focusing on the ‘end game’

The ensemble-change at the RSC is an internally initiated change with the intention of spreading what works from the theatre to the rest of the organisation. The objective is to bed down the ensemble culture in people’s day-to-day behaviour. The change is hence primarily a cultural alignment and a behavioural exercise but with a clear strategic intention.

In OD methodology, once the nature of change has been worked out, the next job is to focus on the ‘end game’. At the RSC, the ‘end game’ was to align individual paradigms and behaviour with the organisation’s ensemble culture. This required at least three levels of system intervention: the individual level, the group (inter-group) level and the level of the total organisation. This entailed:

• providing specific, individual experiences (mainly through dialogue) so that people can examine their own paradigm and modify behaviour themselves;
• creating a ‘cultural island’ experience for groups so that in those change interventions, old norms can be challenged and new norms can be experimented with, without risk;
• and aligning the organisation’s systems and processes to reinforce and support the change paradigm and behaviour.

At the RSC, we involved people in identifying the collective desired outcomes of change. This gave people the opportunity to contribute to creating the conditions by which the RSC could achieve those outcomes.

2. Securing the engagement of key people

Successful change depends upon identifying and securing the engagement of key individuals and groups. I worked with Vikki Heywood and Michael Boyd to identify:

• the key individuals and groups on whom change would depend;
• those who held data that we, as the change team, did not have;
• those whose perspectives were needed to provide a more robust way of thinking about change.

We paid a lot of attention to human dynamics because the RSC is full of political complexity and staffed with individuals who have high aspirations for the organisation and their art. We knew most people in the RSC would like to take part in determining the change processes. The principle that governed our thinking was that ‘people will support what they help to create’ (Weisbord, 1987).

Our first step was to engage the Steering Committee, the Steering Group and middle management before making the change agenda public within the rest of the organisation. Without endorsement at this level, the project would have been vulnerable, so an intervention was designed to help people to personalise the reasons as to why taking an ensemble approach to change might be good, and to encourage people to discuss their doubts and hesitations openly. My job was to support Heywood and Boyd in considering what type of processes would help to acknowledge and work with any conflict and resistance encountered in these top groups. Interventions were designed to enroll the help of these key groups in supporting the implementation of solutions with the rest of the organisation in phase II.

3. Using ‘High Leverage’ change methodology

High Leverage methodologies ‘create high energy and yield extraordinary sustainable results’ (Holman and Devane 1999). Such methodologies have been proven to reduce implementation time over more directive methods by half (Bunker & Alban 1998, Wheatley 1999). There are a number of key elements to ‘High Leverage’ methods.

•  They are dialogue based – Any change that challenges people’s personal ‘worldview’ or paradigm cannot rely on the ‘tell and sell’ approach: a structured dialogue and inquiry approach is much more effective. In any culture-change process, people need the freedom to have a voice, to be heard, to dream, to be passionate, to co-construct, to participate and to contribute. Positive psychological approaches such as Appreciative Inquiry work best. We used this at the RSC, especially in the intervention that took the form of a staff conference, where we started the process with a pair interview: using the themes of the interview, we invited people to co-construct how change should be approached and what conditions would support it.
•  They are whole system based, surface-diverse perspectives – Change, particularly culture-change processes, must encourage the various parts of a system to connect with each other. People support change more if they have opportunities to share understanding of the need to change, analyse current reality, identify what needs to change, generate ideas on how to change and map out an implementation plan. It is important to engage multiple perspectives, and give different stakeholders the opportunity to influence each other. This strengthens debate and helps people find common ground. From my experience, common ground will only emerge after the diverse views held within an organisation have been properly debated. At the RSC, a number of conflicting perspectives did emerge, and Heywood and Boyd listened to those voices and adjusted the speed and content of the change programme accordingly, hence creating a safe atmosphere in which change could happen.
•  Emotions matters and are crucial data – All changes arouse emotions, positive as well as negative. If these are not properly managed, the change outcome will be at risk. OD recognises people’s desire to shape their own destinies; if people understand why and where change is needed, they can work out the implementation and are more likely to support change than if they are simply told what will happen. All the change processes we designed at the RSC aimed to encourage people to share not just their view but also their emotions – this is especially important for a creative organisation where emotions are a core part of their creative resources. Heywood, Boyd and the change team did a great job in managing individuals’ emotions. Through their commitment to the change process, they provided what I call an ‘emotional anchor’ for the staff.
•  Managing psychological transition – OD focuses on the transition process rather just the outcome to which it aspires. It is not the change outcome that trips people up – it is the transition journey that does the damage (Bridges 2003). OD must therefore manage people’s experiences of transition, delivering change in such a way as to ensure there is a ‘safe arrival’. By involving the RSC staff as early as possible, I relied on their ‘native instinct’ in identifying how best to manage the different concerns that emerged from the change journey.
•  Leverage the covert processes to deliver results – Most people tend to use the rational and logical ‘business cases’ to mobilise people in change. However, out of the six dimensions of change, five are covert. Bob Marshak has shown that change needs to work beyond the level of reason (rationality, analysis and logic) and extend to addressing organisational politics (individual and group interests), inspirations (values-based and visionary aspirations), emotions (affective and reactive feelings), mindsets (guiding beliefs and assumptions); psychodynamics (anxiety-based and unconscious defences) (Marshak 2006). For an arts organisation, leveraging the key covert processes are critical in securing change outcomes, particularly as the staff will likely hold great visionary aspirations for the art form and impact of the organisation. By leveraging these aspirations, it is possible to mobilise change faster than by just relying on logic and analysis.

II. Lessons from the RSC experience

As I look back over the three years that I have spent with the RSC, I know that the various participatory processes led by key stakeholders (Heywood and Boyd) have mobilised the change journey and have unleashed energy within the organisation. By focusing on the principles of distributed leadership, multiplying imagination, engagement and participation, we employed a methodology more suitable to the RSC than an expert-led, formula-led methodology.

The experience also confirmed once again that when a change process puts people’s engagement at the heart of it, using High Leverage change methodologies, connecting different parts of the organisation together, working through multiple perspectives, and keeping the whole system together, the change effort sticks. What is more, the process we used enabled most people to voice their doubts and scepticism, which the change leaders could then use as part of the data to adjust the pace and the approach to change.

Finally, by using concrete and defined roles to include more individuals within the organisation into the change project early on, we encouraged people to share their passion and dreams about the organisation. This helped to make the transformation more sustainable. The direct involvement of both top management and some key middle managers and senior leaders in the major interventions provided visible support.

To close, I want to highlight the prime reflections from my work with the RSC.

Three conditions that help to make culture-change easier

My work with the RSC has reminded me that, while culture-change can be complex, it can also be made easier if three conditions exist:

•  visible and active role-modelling by key leaders;
•  an appropriate amount of group reconfiguration, and
•  systemic alignment to bed down the behavioural changes in the cultural fabric of the organisation.

Visible Leadership – Leaders, especially if they are liked and respected (which Heywood and Boyd are), are critical role models in the change journey. People will want to move in the direction their leader signposts for them, especially when there is a psychological bond between those leaders and the staff. However, personal liking will not alone suffice to make a culture-change stick, there have to be processes that help turn initial compliance into commitment. The example of the RSC shows one way in which this can be achieved: through respected leaders demonstrating personally how, in this case by embracing ensemble behaviour, they achieve successful outcomes. By associating successful outcomes with ensemble behaviour, staff were helped to see that the new behaviour was a ‘good’ way to work and how, through practice, the behaviour gradually became part of the new cultural DNA.

Both Boyd and Heywood held the culture-change process together by living it, talking about it, using it and demonstrating it. There is no doubt that their visible leadership has helped to shift the culture during the past three years.

Reconfiguration of groups – Culture is a dynamic phenomenon that, as well as being shaped by leadership behaviour, is constantly enacted and created by interactions between individuals and groups. In this sense, culture constantly evolves and is shaped through interaction between people. One way to shift culture is therefore by reconfiguring groups within the organisation, mixing up different communities and helping them to interact with each other, creating opportunities for paradigm and reality be reshaped as different groups influence each other’s approach to work. As Edgar Schein of MIT Sloan School of Management puts it, culture happens not so much ‘in’ people but ‘in between’ people (Schein 1999). Therefore by modifying the interaction, we modified the texture of group thinking.

System (Organisational) alignment to reinforce the behavioural change – At the RSC, the great work that the HR and Communications Departments did helped to embed the behavioural changes. Adele Cope (HR) and Liz Thompson (Communications) aligned many RSC systems and processes to ensure there was a ‘systemic’ platform to support the ensemble culture. Many of their impressive efforts have started to pay dividends; I am sure there will be more to come if the RSC continues to work in an ensemble way.

III. Last word

Working across borders with ease and elegance – an ‘ensemble’ way of working – is what most organisations should be aiming for. The exchange of perspectives enables organisations to adapt with greater ease. Leaders instinctively know that paradigm agility and seamless collaboration will lead to agile products (productions in the case of RSC) as well as customer service agility. In the tough economic environment currently prevailing, people need to learn how to behave as entrepreneurs by going across borders to secure resources to deliver results that matter to the organisation.

Initially, the process of becoming an ‘ensemble organisation’ was a value alignment exercise for the RSC. However, I hope the rest of the RSC’s leaders will soon come to see the ensemble approach as a way of becoming agile and flexible, to help the RSC thrive in a turbulent environment with diminishing resources. I hope the RSC case encourages many other organisations to take a bold and innovative approach to preparing their organisation for the future.

Bibliography

Bridges, W. (2003) Managing transitions: making the most of change. New York: Da Capo Press
Bunker, B.B. & Alban, B.T. (1996) Large group interventions: engaging the whole system for rapid change. San Francisco: Jossey Bass

• Economist Intelligence Unit (2008) Securing the value of business process change. A study commissioned by Logica Management Consulting
• Holman, P. & Devane, T. (1999) The change handbook: group methods for shaping the future. San Francisco: Berrett Koehler
• Marshak, R.J. (2006) Covert processes at work. San Francisco, Berrett Koehle
• Schein, E.H. (1999) The Corporate Culture Survival Guide, Jossey-Bass
• Weisbord, M. (1978) Organisational diagnosis: a workbook of theory and practice. Reading, Massachusetts, Basic Books

What is our practice trademark – our consultancy approach?

“Tell me what your consultancy approach is?” or “Tell me how you would describe your OD practice characteristics?”  – I do not know how often you are being asked these questions by clients or by colleagues, nor do I know what your answers would be. If you are like most OD practitioners, you would be more into ‘doing’ the work than articulating your practice ‘brand’ because you may not have given too much time to think about the following questions:

• Why did I get into this field? What is my calling?
• What is the purpose of my work? What is my passion and idealism for the world of organisation and people?
• What values do I hold dear that at the very least I am willing to work hard at in order to translate them into actual practice?

I think most of us intuitively know the answers to these questions but find formalising them a bit too much work. In writing the chapter on ‘What is an OD practitioner?’ in my co-authored book, I have tried to encourage practitioners to know their ‘practice trademark’. Somehow I believe the Gestalt theory that ‘labelling’ (giving something a name, a description) is a first step to help us mobilise our energy towards ‘it’ – our practice. So if you and I know what we do and why, then we can share the knowledge accumulated through practice with others. We can devote energy to develop and stretch those practice areas that we need to work on, and strengthen our intentional use of self – “self as instrument”.  In this blog I’d like to share briefly with you on what I think the OD practice trademark is. Let me know whether I am on the right track.

The intended outcome of OD is a critical frame to shape our practice trademark

Before I start on my six areas, it is important to anchor our practice in the purpose of OD – what does the field intend to achieve for the world of work? French and Bell, who wrote the first OD text book, define OD as an organisation improvement strategy (French and Bell, 1978) and at the heart of this strategy, there are two goals:

 a)           To improve the functioning of individuals, teams and the total organisation.

 b)           To teach organisation members how to continuously improve their own function without depending on external support. 

While there are a lot of consultancy approaches out there also aiming to improve the functioning of organisations, two things are glaringly missing from their work. Things which make OD work unique – (1) build sustainability of change implementation, (2) intentionally increase the client system’s ability to engage in self-renewal or self-determination effort. In order to achieve those two goals of OD, our practice needs to start with the following six characteristics:

(1)    The Focus on the Human Enterprise

 While OD practitioners can fix systems, can align processes, do organisation design, sort out conflict, help change culture, and help to manage complex change, the ultimate focus of what we do is in the human enterprise side of the organisation. We believe that organisation is a ‘living system’ – has a life of its own. Therefore, unlike the machinery focus, we take the human dimension within each of the jobs assigned to us seriously. We build our expertise in human dynamics, group dynamics, and system dynamics and it is this knowledge base that gives us the know-how to build the capability of those who live within the system to fix and improve itself. If we are asked to help an organisation to restructure their organisation without figuring out how to support the people through the transitional journey, then we will not be practicing good OD. Yet so many consultancy firms do exactly that.

Tichy (1974:169) sums up the nature of our work clearly – 

“I work on the human side of the enterprise. That is, I help people, mostly top executives, work out their problems of interpersonal relationships and communications, conflict of interest. I get involved in planning and implementing procedures of goal setting, decision making, conflict resolution, and the delegation of authority.  In this way I help an organisation develop and modify its governance and problem-solving mechanisms”. 

So organisations can always rely on OD professionals to help their leaders to deliver greater health through our expertise in human dynamics.

 (2)    Collaborative and development approach

 Since the aim of OD is not to do the work of the client but to facilitate processes to enable the client not only to do their own work, but learn how to sustain the momentum of such work, therefore our approach is a collaborative one. We seize every opportunity to turn our clients to be collaborators, co-investigators, diagnosticians, joint planners, helpers in executing the interventions, and co-evaluators. We do this because we want to get the client system engaged in their own issues, and to pick up the capability to carry on with the OD phases on their own, and eventually OWN the change processes. This way, we know we are building momentum for implementation – which is what sustainability is all about. The collaborative approach requires us practitioners to work harder to build a mutually trusting relationship which we, in the beginning of our contact, have to aim for intentionally. 

 (3)    The importance of relationship building in our work

In order to provide support to the clients in the way we have just described, we need to turn our attention to building a trusting relationship with our clients – from the beginning. We know without establishing effective helping relationships with and among individuals and groups within the client system well, we will not have a solid platform to deliver the ‘content’ and ‘process’ help. This central focus on effective relationship building and maintenance remain the same regardless of what the consultancy assignment is.  

This is why Weisbord (1977:108) is so adamant that a successful contract would need to address both the task and relationship issues during the process of consultancy. He said:

 “What do I mean by contract?  I mean an explicit exchange of expectations, part dialogue, part written document, which clarifies for consultant and client three critical areas:

1.       What each expects to get from the relationship.
2.       How much time each will invest, when, and at what cost.
3.       The ground rules under which the parties will operate. 

That is why we will always aim to have a strong OD contract with our clients that covers both task and relationship issues.

(4)    Focus on ‘process’ more than ‘task’.  

Another practice trademark is our concern for ‘processes’ and not just tasks. When clients ask us to address any task issues –we know our job has to focus beyond what the task is about, we need to be intentional in how the task is being done. In practice this means we need to set up processes to help the client to define and clarify what the system really needs and wants in terms of change agenda. That is done to help them to decide what type of data they will need in order to make those decisions.  What is the best way to obtain such data and who else needs to join the team to analyse the data – to be involved in the final decision making for ownership reasons so that, at the end, the system can work together to deliver what it wants? We know the various processes that define the ‘how’ is not just to get things done, but to pass whatever skills we use during the journey to the client.  

(5)    Process-Facilitator-Educator versus Expert-Advice-Giver Approach 

The focus on process rather than just on task defines the OD practitioners’ approach which is more as a facilitator-educator than an advice-giver, as illustrated by the following quote:

“We believe it is possible and desirable, for the OD consultant to be an expert in the sense of being competent to present a range of options open to the client, but any extensive reliance on the traditional mode of consulting, that is, giving substantive advice, will tend to negate the OD consultant’s effectiveness.” (French and Bell, 1999:257)

Schein has also been very explicit about why the expert role does not fit into what OD is about (1988:5-11).  

• Expert role builds dependency – To help the client system to develop its own resources, we need to support continuous internal skill development. Our expert role will not do that instead, it will help to build a level of dependency.
• Expert role is not conducive to collaboration – The expert role will automatically lead to a “selling role” and a “defending role” when we present our recommendations. This style will cut short the joint exploration process and negate a collaborative and development approach to improve organisational effectiveness. 
• Expert role can lead to an adversary position – The expert role, particular when played out mainly among the senior leaders will lead to us losing credibility with the people below because they know that we did not have all the data to base our recommendation on since those who have the answers were not included in the decision making process.
• Expert role will induce unrealistic expectations – If we continue with giving substantive advice, it will increase the expectations from our clients that we are able to give more and more advice – this reliance on us would prevent us from achieving our central mission which is to help them to be self-sufficient in capability and resources with the change processes.

(6)    The Use of Self – the Big “I” Intervention.

Finally, OD founders make a major distinction between the many tools and techniques the practitioners employ to support clients from the use of oneself to effect changes. One of our practice trademarks is that we will deploy our ‘self’ constantly to intervene in the client system.  From the moment we make contact, we use our ‘self’ to facilitate the multi parties to come to agreement as to what type of future or outcomes they want for their organisation, we work with the various concerns different groups have before we can finalise the contract. We also use our intuition and judgement to guide the clients through every phase in the OD cycle and to personally model some of the ethics and values that we expound. All those processes are held together by our conscious intention to use ourselves for results and that is what Tschudy (2006) calls the “big I” intervention which speaks to the “intentional use of self to create the impact” and “the artful interaction with the client system in which the organisation moves from its current state to some desired state.” (Tschudy, 2006:166)

Final word
So, here are my thoughts about our practice trademark – I am sure I have missed out some key points?  As I write this chapter, it struck me how hard it is to do OD work because this approach to help actually goes against our human need to be needed, to be recognised and to be esteemed for our expertise and the value we can bring into the system. As Schein said our greatest work is to resist the seduction to be an expert demonstrating our special gifts to the clients, instead we should be acting more like a shadow consultant to stay in the background and work ourselves out of a job.  This approach will require us to be very grounded about our self worth. I am not there yet, are you?

So based on the above, do you think I can be bold enough to do in the book something most of us avoid– to define who is doing OD and who is not?

Happy new year to all of you. May 2010 bring greater growth and greater impact in all that we do. I want to start the year by looking at Professor Lynda Gratton‘s work. 

In 2009, Professor Lynda Gratton from London Business School published an interesting book – –‘GLOW: HOW YOU CAN RADIATE ENERGEY, INNOVATION AND SUCCESS’ (Financial Times Prentice Hall, 2009.) She defines a glowing person as “someone [who can]….radiate positive energy that has the effect of inspiring others, attracting interesting work, and creating amazing relationships and networks” (2009:2). She was convinced that there are three factors that are responsible to make people glow. They are;

• A Cooperative mindset – glowing people have built deeply trusting and cooperative relationships with others. According to her, someone who has a cooperative mindset will;
  a) develop habits and skills of cooperation; b) master the art of great conversations; c) know how to act on the “smell of the place”.
• Jumping across worlds – glowing people have extended their networks beyond the obvious to encompass the unusual. These are the type of people who always look out to increase the value of their networks as well as jumping out of the boundaries that constrain them, finding and moving to ‘boundary less’ places.
• Ignite latent energy – glowing people are on the inner quest that ignites their own energy and that of others by asking questions that spark energy, by creating visions that compel, and by crafting meaningful and exciting work.

She based these primary premises from what she called her “deep” research as well as her own coaching experiences – both gave her substantial data on what energized and innovative people actually do. This book is an individual sequel to her earlier book on glowing organisations – ‘HOT SPOTS: Why Some Companies Buzz with Energy and Innovation – and Others Don’t’ (FT Prentice Hall, 2007)     which she published in 2007 (if you have not read ‘HOT SPOTS’ – I highly recommend this book to you). In fact, the concept of Hot spot vs. Big freeze is so significant to the future of organisations because its impact on innovation is what helps to keep an organisation to be always leading rather than following. The significance of her work was proven when the state of Singapore hired Professor Gratton to help the nation create hot spots in their industry so that they could be the leader in innovation.   

Her work made me think quite hard about us leaders/consultants/helpers/practitioners and our ability to create energy in the system we lead and work. When leaders know how to create HOT  SPOTS, the climate of the organisation will be much more buzzing than those who don’t. It is by their behaviour and their latent energy, they will lead their organisation to collaborative innovation.  As for us consultants, often clients do not hire us just because of our intellect or our experiences alone, they hire us because we have something different to offer to the system. This ‘something different’ can always be linked to the positive energy we radiate and bring to the people we work with. If we look back to those jobs that we have done well, often it could be traced back to some of the three factors Professor Gratton pointed to – we collaborate with our clients, or we facilitate collaboration between clients, we are able to be masterful in the way we conduct conversation – from scoping the project, to carrying out diagnostic work, to helping the client to understand the data, to supporting them to make informed choices. Our ability to smell the place (what I call contextual savvy) gives us insights about how best to work with them without imposing specific protocol we are familiar with.   

She turned these three things into a simple diagnostic profile (the Glow Checklist). You can download a copy from www.hotspotsmovement.com

I trust that as you read her book, you will also come full circle back to the sources of personal referent power – something that is crucial for us as OD helpers.

I grew up in Asia, was educated in the United States, worked in more than 15 countries (including the Middle East) and now live in Great Britain – wherever I am, I have always been amazed about how important Christmas is regardless of religious faith.   In the couple of years I worked in the Emirates, Christmas is celebrated with just as much enthusiasm as in the West despite the fact that a majority of its residents are Muslim. So why? Other than pure commercialism (which is a big part), I think there are some features of Christmas that reflect the fundamental nature of us, our relationship and our needs.

Gifts – Someone defined a gift as the “undeserved grace” that we receive. Giving and receiving gifts can be a very affirming gesture for us – we use the shortcut of gifts to convey our sense of significance from one to another.  This week I received a bouquet of beautiful and festive flowers from someone whom I do not know well and who should have no reason to send me a gift; I was truly touched.

Hospitality – In spite of the trial for introverts (yes, I am one), Christmas is a time when people invite each other to their homes and celebrate. It is an important exchange of warmth and friendship, re-enacting the importance of mutuality and relationships.

Christmas cards/family letters – I am still excited about getting Christmas cards and family newsletters from those who are far away.  I get involved with the stories of pain and joy from our friends and in sharing their stories our friendships and relationships are kept alive.  When I was 17, I was loved by an American couple whose daughter I worked with in Washington D.C.  I am now 57 and “Pop and Mom” Brigham still send me their newsletter to let me know how they are coping in their old age in Arizona.  Every time I get their news, I count my blessings for the role they have played in my life.

Positive rituals – There are many rituals in our family, but two stand out – stockings, and the Christmas Eve gathering.  Something started as a surprise for our two daughters when they were toddlers is being held tightly by them even though they are now 24 and 15.  So, gathering onto the bed to open stockings on Christmas morning is still an important ritual for us.  

Twelve years ago, we started inviting a couple of families whose children went to school with ours for Christmas eve – little did we know this gathering would become a ritual for these families. It is so institutionalized that even one year when I broke my leg, I had friends who decided to push me through the supermarket to purchase food, friends who came and prepared the food, and friends who came to set up – because the ritual is so important to us – the community.   

So what can OD practitioners learn from Christmas?

I guess something simple but profound –

Gifts (services) – What are our gifts to the people, team and organisation that we work with and for? I know they pay us for our service, but what do we give them beyond our skills and tools?  What is our attitude towards service above and beyond what they pay for?  What is that extra human touch that we bring to those with whom we work?  Or have we ever thought about their gifts to us when they ask us to support them in projects?

Hospitality (connection) – There has been a lot written about boundary maintenance and role clarity in our practice.  These are all very important and indeed, for some of us, they are the stretch area for our development.  But having kept that in mind, we also need to work with the fact that we are in a helping profession, in which affirmative relationships are an important platform to launch the help.  So how do we demonstrate warmth and cultivate positive relationships?   How much do we also share about ourselves that helps to re-enact a sense of mutuality with them without messing up the boundary issues?

Christmas card and family newsletter (communication)  –   This is about keeping an important link with those who matter to us.  When we work with people, it is important to drop them a card, an e-mail, a message to let them know they and their welfare matter to us.  I have found myself getting into a habit of jotting down the news shared with me and make sure I follow up later on with them about how these events and situation turn out – often the inquiry are met with delight as someone remembered what they shared. Keeping in touch and conveying significance to them are important gestures to build effective partnerships.

Positive rituals – I think rituals are so important to us as human beings. I often look for the positive rituals in those organisations I work with (many have them but they do not realise) and/or help them create some so that they can have a way to mark the significance of finishing a task, winning a contract, meeting an impossible deadline, successfully living out their desired value, etc.  Sometimes, I purposely plan a visit or meeting at a time when I know it’s the right time to mark a key milestone so that they have an external eyewitness for their positive rituals.

So…….I may have stretched this “CHRISTMAS” lesson a bit too much, but what I want to convey is that Christmas reveals to us some of the basic needs of human beings (us included) – to be loved, to be recognised, to be significant, to be affirmed, to be the recipient of warm interaction, to live large, and to be generous, etc.  To be effective practitioners, we need not just to understand how these needs play out in human organisation, but to become more committed to help organisations to grow a culture that will convey the connectivity that most people crave. Knowing that, I guess we can all do better in taking the positive aspects of Christmas into the world of work.  

Have a great festive season, no matter what your religious faith.  

May 2010 bring new opportunities, growth, joy and peace.    Mee-Yan

Continuing from last weeks post concerning the self as an impactful and powerful instrument.

Presence means the persona that we carry and involves having an attractive aura without necessarily being charismatic. This type of radiating aura is not something we can put on and off like a piece of clothing, it is something that radiates out from within. It is very much the dividend from our persistent inner work and our cumulative life experiences, not to mention the mental models we carry about the world and people. We know someone has presence when they walk into a room, not only do people notice them but they also feel safer and encouraged – something in these people make others feel the world is a better place – it is so intangible but real.

If someone is integrated, then their boundary maintenance work will be an outcome, because they won’t “merge” themselves to those whom they want approval from and lose who they are; neither would they “split” and fragment themselves from others disproportionally just to define who they are. They do not need to do that, they will respect others as they respect themselves for who they are. Their ability to differentiate themselves from others without being judgemental is a key sign of their mature way of managing boundaries between themselves and others.
Having done sufficient work on self, they will not be “hooked” easily by others nor will they be reactive to issues that others throw at them. This is the meaning of “centering” because they will exercise the choice they have in their reaction day by day to people or things that they work with.

Finally, these people do guard against overload and ‘burn out’ as they take “self care” seriously. They will be the people who monitor their fuel tank – are they running half full or are they running on empty? In fact, they will not allow themselves to ever get to the point of running on empty. They are the type of individual who professor Gratton describes as able to “ignite their latent energy” and glow consistently.

When I finally understood the implication of cultivating personal referent power many years ago, I was hit very hard between the eyes. I realised three things if I want to be impactful and powerful; (1) It is really up to me, not up to anyone else. I will need to start doing “self work” seriously. I crave all those six things I mentioned above and know without working through some of the unresolved issues in my life, I would not be impactful, no matter how watchful and intentional I am about my behaviour and my action. (2) I have to start my relationships with people with a critical level of respect that will enable me to be influential. I will need to own which parts of any relationship are my responsibility. What makes people attracte to me or distanced from me is really down to who I am and not so much who they are. (3) The quality of my relationship with people is very much down to whether I know who I am and how I go about the world viewing people from my perceptual lens which is very much shaped by what I want, what I need, what I fear, what I have lost…etc. All of a sudden power play is not a shallow game that people play, it is a significant personal stretch (life work) if I want to play power “constructively”.

I wish I could tell you that after working on all the above for over 25 years I have achieved these things. No I have not. Only two days ago, my husband said to me “oh dear, you have allowed your neurosis to triumph over your rationality once again.” That is a raw reminder about how much further I still need to go. The only thing I can say is that I have started the journey, in the beginning not intentionally to pursue power and influence in my work. It was the combination of personal pain and critical circumstance that got me going in this journey because I knew back then if I did not start working with this instrument, sorting out all the messy stuff within me, and start taking care of myself through these circumstances, I will not be able to survive and offer my family and those people whom I work with and for any value.
Through time, I have stopped pursuing more tools and techniques even though I am still fascinated by the various tools that other OD practitioners offer. However, ultimately I know that to be effective in our trade, it is the self work that holds the key and in going deep within – we end up going deep without.  So power and politics are really the by product of self work……interesting thoughts.

Last week when Bob Marshak and I were running the ‘Diagnosis with Impact’ Module of the NTL OD certificate programme, we found there was a lot of interest in the “impact” aspect of that module title. Being or becoming a competent diagnostician – I guess – is not a big issue for most delegates as many of them know what constitutes effective diagnoses, plus they are comfortable about the various techniques in collecting data. I think the issue that many of us are concerned with is more along our ability to influence clients to take the data we have collected seriously and therefore own the data in such a way that the client will act on it.

So the concern therefore is having a personal impact on the client system as we go about scoping out the project, diagnosing the system, and weighing out the options that are presented to the clients for action. Bob and I were very encouraged by this concern because we are both from the school of thought that believes; without being interested in power and politics, OD practitioners will not be effective.

What is power and what is politic? Both terms are needed to help us know how to go about being impactful. You will notice that I use the terms power, powerful, impactful, influential interchangeably – that is because they are all pointing to the same outcome – so whichever terms are more comfortable to you, use them.
Power is the potential ability to influence behaviour, to change the course of events, to manage resistance, and to get people to do things that they would not otherwise do. The word “potential” is the key word because not many of us, by ourselves, feel powerful and influential. This is because the arena for power and influence most of the time takes place in the relationship arena (other than the extreme form of power eg. dictatorial and terrorist situations). Therefore the word ‘politic’ offers this second half of the puzzle. Politics means the channel through which power can be exercised to achieve results. This will include the processes, actions, and the behaviour we use to achieve the influence we desire.

So once we understand that, we need to move on to ask two questions; “What is in my goodies bag that could give me my power base?” and “What are the processes and power strategies that I need to deploy to channel that power base for results?” In this week’s blog, I will mainly focus on the first question of power base and pick up the power strategies question later on.

Power bases are composed of unique resources over which we have control. The amazing thing is that our power bases are dynamic. They can be developed, expanded or eroded depending on what is going on in our lives. When I do not take care of myself and run on empty, my power base will be diminished. Grief, physical illness, unresolved issues in our lives….can all erode our power base. This gives a new meaning to those of us who are not very good about self-care. Without adequate self-care, our power base can be diminished overnight.
What are some of the common power bases we have as consultants? They are our; areas of expertise, knowledge of human dynamics, credibility in designing processes that help the client achieve what they want to achieve with their team, department and their organisation. Also our reputation in the market place based on our professional credibility is crucial as it will often be the basis on which we are invited into the organisation.

There are other forms of power base such as; attractive personality, charisma, empathy, political access etc. However, for me, none of the above are as critical as the highest form of power base which is “personal referent power” – i.e. by being who we are we attract others and we become their “referent others”. For OD practitioners, I think “Personal referent power” is the highest form of power base because of the critical concept of “self as an instrument” and therefore pursuing it should be one of our life long goals. When being who we are – we become the source of intervention – with or without using other methodology or techniques – to create impact and results in our helping relationship. That is where the magic of OD happens. For most of us, this will not happen overnight – it will happen only when we invest in developing this instrument (self) through intentional development. That is why OD is a different field from any other technical consultancy field.

While the expert model of consultancy can be achieved through our competency and our techniques, OD cannot. Operating purely from acquired and intellectual levels will only get us so far in a field that focuses on human dynamics and system dynamics. We need to learn and then practice operating from a deeper, more instinctive level within ourselves . This is the basic difference between DOING versus BEING.

In order to move towards having ‘personal referent power’ in our development journey we must pay attention to six areas – which are by no means exhaustive, but they are critical.
1. Achieving levels of congruence

2. Developing a strong presence

3. The ability to stay centered

4. Managing boundaries

5. Working on living a “choiceful” life

6. Paying attention to self care

These six are huge areas and I do not want to give the impression that I will cover them all, but I want to raise them as headlines for you to explore further yourself:
Congruence basically means having all aspects of our lives snap together and working well for us. This will require us having a clear sense of ‘who I am’ as well as being in touch with ‘how I feel and act’. Congruence also means achieving integration.

So for me, I must understand what it means to be born an Asian woman, birth order number eight, from a strong Germanic Basel tradition, mission-minded religious background, gaining a PhD, setting up business, losing two children, and currently being chronically ill. From the interaction of all the above, what happens to my dreams, my motivation, my desire? How does all the above shape my mindset, my paradigm, my approach to life, people, suffering and career? While perfect congruence is impossible, our sense of well being is very much based upon our ability to accept who we are and work with it in an integrated fashion. This way we won’t be yearning for what we think we are missing.

Continued next week….

I belonged to a consultants’ action learning group for over 5 years. Two years ago during one of our meetings, the subject of the role of OD practitioners came up. I then said, “the OD practitioner’s role is one of a helper” – along the lines that Warner Burke (1982:345) and Ed Schein put it

• “the primary though not exclusive function of OD consultants is to help clients learn how to help themselves more effectively.” Burke (1982:345)

• “it is of prime importance that the process consultant be expert in how to diagnose and how to establish effective helping relationships with clients. Effective (process consultation) involves the passing on both of these skills.” Schein (1969:8)

Upon hearing what I said, one of the action learning set members spoke with contempt, “Helper – what a ridiculous role!! A role trapped with danger.” At the time, I was both annoyed and hurt – annoyed because I thought he was too cynical and irreverent to our profession, and hurt because he touched on one of the key motivational levers of why I and many entered the field.

This week we are fortunate to have Professor Ed Schein with us in London – spending time with the NTL OD certificate graduates as well as talking to 280 people in a public lecture. His public lecture topic is “Why leaders need to be a humble inquirer” which is based on the key concepts from his most recent book, HELPING. Having read the book, I was taken straight back to that conversation two years ago – especially the “trapped with danger in helping” utterance. So in this first blog I’d like to share with you about the importance of caring and helping in our profession, while reflecting on how to improve doing the helping by paying attention to those areas that do pose dangers.

Many of us went into HR or OD for different reasons, but if you talk to enough of us, somehow our motivation will always end up including: to make an impact, to be of value to others, to support people and organisations through change, to help people and organisations to become all that they can be, etc. It always comes back to being a “helper”. I am now even more convinced that our role is that of a helper, but I have also become wiser to accept some of the dangers that are inherent in the helping relationship are real and we should do better in managing them. I want to share 5 specific dangers that are personal to me. You may want to create your own “danger” list as we are all different in how we approach the helping relationship.

The first danger is the possibility that we engage in the act of helping in order to satisfy our own needs – to feel “significant”, to make us a “worthy” object, an object to be valued and appreciated by clients, fulfilling our own needs to be needed. These reasons are important and they are an inherent part of our own humanity, however; if we are not aware of and not managing how these dynamics lurk behind our actions, then we will be less effective in controlling what we do and why we do it – and therefore less clear about whether we are acting in ways that are truly of value to clients or to ourselves. During my early training as an OD practitioner, I was always warned of the possibility of working out my own needs through clients’ work, and this question has stuck with me till now. I think this first danger is very real for all of us.

Second, there is danger in the imbalance (therefore precarious) dynamics in the helping relationship. As Schein pointed out (2009:31), “…helping situations are intrinsically unbalanced and role-ambiguous.” Those who ask for help are putting themselves “one down”. On the other hand, in the role of helper, one gains power and status – hence achieves the “one up-ness”. This imbalance often creates interesting dynamics that consultants are required to manage. In order to support the client not to feel the “downness” we often need to work hard to equalise that with our “upness” to prevent the client from slipping into defensive mode when diagnostic data are presented. The clients should also pay attention and resist doing all sort of things to stop themselves feeling the vulnerability of being one down. In this sense, the dynamics are full of danger and need us to pay detailed attention and develop strategies to manage it. It is worthwhile to point out also that in this context, the expert model of consulting is much more “problematic” than the OD process of consulting. In OD, we believe that the clients often have the wisdom to solve their own problems and therefore our role is to provide support to help set up processes for them to achieve exactly that. In that way, they will own not only their diagnosis, but also the implementation, thus making the solution much more sustainable – not to mention emerging from the helping relationship with a real “levelling” experience.

Another trap for consultants in the helping relationship is for us to move too quickly to solutions, or to provide advice and help prematurely because the seduction of having the clients look up to us to solve their problems is often too great to resist. When we do that, we bypass robust inquiry and diagnosis and hence lose the opportunity to learn what the real problem might be. When we swing into the mode of dispensing wisdom prematurely, we will end up in a lose-lose situation – clients lose because their real problem doesn’t get investigated; helpers lose because once we fall into this trap, we tend to dig our heels in further by insisting that we are right and the clients have not got the guts to own what we have discovered. This danger is very real for us, especially when we are low in self care and self awareness, which leaves us less “centered” and unfocused.

Fourth, it is very hard for client to see the helper in a neutral way. The helping relationship is often fertile ground for projection and transference of perception (positive and negative). The danger (as Schein indicated) is that the client may then calibrate everything the helper does against their expectations around their projection. If the helper is not aware, we can also reinforce this by counter transference – locking the relationship into some sort of quasi dependence state.

Fifth, by wanting to give help and support – especially in the form of giving assurance to clients, we might miss the opportunity to challenge a client to venture to places that they need to reach but may not automatically want to go. I have never forgotten the feedback I had from Weisbord: “Mee-yan, one of your greatest liabilities is your empathy!” I was stunned – how could that be true? He explained, “By being indiscriminately empathetic, you rob the chance of your client group to stick through tough situations and work things out for themselves.” In Schein’s terms, we lock ourselves out from “confrontational inquiry” or even robust diagnostic inquiry. Also, our excessive care and support may contribute to create conditions in which the client develops over dependence on the helpers as we become the key source of warmth and support for them in a fast-changing environment.

There are other traps in the helping relationship that may be uniquely yours that you want to add to this list. By paying attention to these dangers, we will work to keep the helping relationship pure and not “polluted”.
So what are some of the things we can do to start to keep the helping relationship effective? Here are some of the things I can think of and I am sure you will have some other approaches; if so, please share your thoughts on the community forum or in comments below:

a) Aim to stay clear about why we want to help and how we go about providing support that will genuinely benefit the client community rather than meeting our personal and ego needs. Whatever we want to do, stop for a moment and ask “Will this benefit the client system or just make me feel better?”

b) Stay aware of our own motives and our own emotional make up when entering into a longer-term helping relationship – so to maintain healthy boundaries. Find someone (shadow consultant or coach) who will help us to discern whether we are merging into the client system, or undergoing too much fragmentation from certain clients, and to reflect whether our current relationships with key stakeholders within the client system are healthy and robust?

c) Remain a “humble inquirer” – instead of covering up our ignorance, access our ignorance through genuine inquiry so that we don’t fall into the trap of being an expert diagnostician stereotyping every situation prematurely.

d) Continue to develop our skills as effective inquirer and diagnostician. To be helpful, we need to know what real issues the client systems are struggling with. In order to support them to own and work through those issues, we need to work together with the client to jointly inquire and identify the real reasons for change. This bring us back to the key theme of Schein’s new book – if we want to be an effective inquirer we will need to engage in as much pure inquiry as possible. The goal of pure inquiry is not to structure how the client tells the story, but to encourage full disclosure of their perspective.

I still firmly believe that the OD practitioner’s role is that of a helper and many of us have wonderful experiences in providing genuine, effective, and high quality help to client systems. May we continue to do that, and by paying attention to some of the potential dangers I am sure we will create even greater impact. I have been reminded not to dismiss comments and reactions which are hurtful – the fact it hurts probably means they have touched an important nerve which is worth exploring.