What to Change? What to Change Into? How Do We Decide?--Proactive vs Reactive Change

Organizations are faced with important decisions.  What needs to be changed?  What do we need to change into?  How do we decide about the change?

There are many processes involved with change.  I have developed some tools that can help organizations explore the answers to these questions.  They are available for purchase on eBay.  The first is the Business Snapshot and the second is the Business Improvement Survey.  (Find them both--including links for eBay searches--on the Services page for DrM-Resources.)

How do we decide about the change?  Shared vision is important.  If people and organizations do not move through the trust-building steps required to come to a shared vision (slide 11), planned change will be hard (if not impossible) to implement.  When more than one person is involved, people need to move through the Organizational Change Curve (slide 9).

While these tools and concepts can help organizations facilitate change, the basic ideas raised initially need to be dealt with and a shared vision formed about the change for planned change to make progress.  We can sometimes see change happening around us and react to it--positively, negatively, or neutrally.  It is usually more effective to be proactive about change and to develop a plan to make the continuous process improvements needed to make organizations more effective.

Diagnostic Tools for Organizations Available on eBay

In order to make diagnostic tools more readily available to organizations, DrM-Resources has put three survey instruments on auction at eBay.  Multiple copies of the surveys are available.  See the photo below for the names of the surveys. 

(Double-click on the image to see it completely and separately.)

These surveys are sold under the category Specialty Services, Other Services on eBay.

While designed as self-help instruments, each can be supported by optional services from DrM-Resources.

Why would organizations want to make use of such tools?  These tools can inform an organization regarding important business indicators and can help decision-makers in the organizations make more informed decisions.  They are relatively inexpensive and, if someone who purchases an instrument on eBay chooses to receive additional services from DrM-Resources, that person is qualified for preferred pricing.

Learning and Change--Action Steps for Teams and Organizations

Teams and organizations are created for different purposes.  In general, they have goals and intend to work together somehow to achieve these goals.    This post is a continuation of yesterday's post on Learning and Change.  There is a follow-up post focusing on individual learning and change.

Sometimes teams are more successful than at other times in achieving their goals.  Over time meta-models have been created that help explain what is going on in the groups and teams that make some more successful that others.

The Team Tracking Tool (see slide 12) is reproduced below.  Notice the "Do Not Enter" sign at the top.  Many teams and organizations think they can go immediately from inputs to outputs without moving through the process steps required.  Almost 100% of the time this spells disaster and the team or organization has to undo or redo everything--as well as recover the lost trust that failure promotes.  Note the trust building elements of the tool.  Blake and Mouton developed a Managerial Grid explaining the different focuses of people and production in teams.  (A variation of that grid is reproduced below the Team Tracking Tool and a link to Blake and Mouton's model is also provided here.)

(Click on the picture to see it separately and completely.)

Blake and Mouton created a management grid to explain the relationship of people (maintenance) focus and production (task) focus.  The grid is reproduced on Wikipedia.

(Click on the picture to view it separately and completely.)

 Both task and maintenance functions are critical to the successful progress of teams and organizations.  Over emphasis on one or the other delays the development of trust and the effectiveness of teams.  In my early career in Change Management, I learned to make people my task--thus ensuring that both task and maintenance functions were completed.  Trust is the bonding that allows teams to function well and is a critical maintenance function.

(Click on the picture to see it separately and completely.) (See slide 11.)

 If trust is not allowed to develop, synergy--the energy that allows the output to be greater than what could be produced by the sum of its parts (people) will be missing.  As new people are added to a team, group, or organization and as the vision changes, building blocks of trust need to be revisited to allow for the group energy to move freely to the next area.

Collaboration Project--Practice for 21st Century Collaboration

In this first year of the second decade of the new millennium, collaboration is a key word.  How do we develop synergy and do more with less?  Collaborate.  What is an essential ingredient for collaboration?  Trust (slide 12). 

Social Networking is another buzzword for this new millennium.  Wikispaces is one of the tools which enables Web 2 interactive collaboration and communication.  Wikispaces has been recognized for its efforts on the part of collaboration for education.

In the past, many businesses were organized to reward individual effort and to downplay the benefit of true group collaboration.  Meetings were sometimes the only group activity and often produced  less than stellar outcomes considering the time invested in meetings.  For this reason, many companies have explored the use of Webinars--meetings held to share information with people working from their desks.

Wiki-style interactive collaboration is a different approach that has many potential benefits for business, education, and government. 

To offer an example of how to work with Wikis on a collaborative project, I've created a Collaboration-Project page on the DrM-Resources.wikispaces.com website.  I have started one sample project for a business and will be happy to create more for other businesses or for education.  These are examples of how collaboration can be helped by Wikis and there is no fee for participating in these example projects.

As people recognize the value of this type of collaboration, I am hopeful that more organizations will become clients of DrM-Resources.  We'll see how it goes.

Organization DNA?

Organizations have a DNA. It's sometimes hard to see and it can be identified when you know what you are looking for. One of the clearest examples from my memory was in a global manufacturer who was a consulting client several years ago. My team was conducting a change management survey for the client and we quickly saw that the DNA of the organization included a true valuing of the entrepreneural ("cowboy") spirit. The organization grew by finding successful entrepreneural smaller companies and adding them to their corporate structure. Each of the parts of the now large organization still had a recognizable culture and values and ways to manage power and information. The company's executive team had decided to implement a new computer system that would centralize all of the information and would keep many of the entrepreneural employees away from the information that had been their power base. What that could mean is that the computer system intended to help the organization make more timely and effective decisions and to communicate with all of its components would actually be destroying the trust of its leaders and be undermining the effectiveness of the subordinate units.

What is the DNA of your organization? How can you find it?
You can begin by tracking what you see in electronic folders. If you see a problem, put it in an electronic folder and keep on with your day. After a while, look at the problems you have captured and look for any common elements. Those common elements may point you toward your Organizational DNA.

Why is it important to recognize Organizational DNA?
If you want to keep your organization healthy, dynamic, and growing, you need to understand its DNA and to work with it. If you decide to do a "transplant" of something opposed to your DNA, the organization will "reject it" (the way tissue transplants are sometimes rejected by the human body). You need to work with your Organizationial DNA and your proposed changes to make sure that there is a good fit and blend if you intend to remain healthy and dynamic.

Let me know when you begin to look for your Organization's DNA.