Seven Critical Interventions in Times of Major Organizational Transition
Seven Critical Interventions in Times of Major Organizational TransitionThese strategic plans and action steps include:
1. Promoting Truth in Reorganizing
2. Getting Initial Buy-in
3. Structuring Systemic Grief Work
4. Working with an EAP/Outside Consultant
5. Experimenting with Team Meetings
6. Increasing Management Visibility
7. Following the Way of the Acronyms
1. Promoting Truth in Reorganizing. In this murky and anxious period, when communicating with employees key decision-makers must be as straightforward as possible about the transitional process. In the long run your workforce will prefer hard realities than to be misled or blind-sided. The former, at least, allows for future planning. And sometimes management's most honest and affirming message is, "At this time, I (or we) don't know fully what's going on or what these events really mean for the future." Providing false hope invariable fuels the mistrust and helps crank up the rumor mill. People who are feeling like pawns will likely seek some form of active control. And when feeling helpless and enraged some employees will act out passive-aggressively (e.g., theft or sabotage) if not "go postal." Rest assured, survivors of a restructuring won't just be grateful. People will remember the credibility of your communication. Truth in reorganizing should not be as dubious as truth in advertising!
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2. Getting Initial Buy-in. To intervene effectively with an organization in transition you must design a strategic organizational development/team building process having broad-based input. For example, a planning committee would consist of representatives of management and the unions or management and line staff. Participation should be driven by a variety of diversity measures including different departments or divisions, supervisors and front-line staff, range of years of employee experience, race and gender, etc. This breadth of perspective increases the chance of both generating new problem-solving paths and of envisioning an achievable "big picture." And while achieving complex consensus may take more time, in the long run you will have troops more committed to the post-restructuring campaign to rebuild productivity and morale.
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3. Structuring Systemic Grief Work. Just as individuals need to process a range of emotions during periods of loss and change, so too do organizations in transition. Whether a merger of two entities or a company downsizing, for the "survivors" of this reality show there are definite themes around loss:
a) a losing team locker room atmosphere, i.e., staff thinking, "Why wasn't our work or our contribution sufficiently valued?"; or there may be anger at management's less than stellar leadership,
b) loss of friends and respected colleagues as well as the loss of institutional knowledge or an exodus of informal company historians,
c) loss of familiar roles and responsibilities; there are new performance pressures,
d) a generalized feeling of loss of control, perhaps a sense of helplessness and hopelessness in the face of an imposed and uncertain work environment. Letting people know they are fortunate to have a job or prematurely trying to get staff to grasp the opportunities in a changing climate misses the point big time. An effective starting point is running a workshop that allows departments or division staff (or even multiple systems) to safely express the emotion stirred by a major restructuring.
Common early reactions to significant loss and change include shock and denial, sadness and fear, and abandonment, helplessness and rage. An exemplary workshop program enables participants to safely vent and to transform some of this grief energy into purposeful and playful problem identification and creative team problem solving. Then objectives and goals are preliminarily prioritized. And upon completion of this transition survival workshop, form a "Save the Retreat" Committee. The charge of this cross-sectional and diverse matrix team is to develop action plans and time lines while appropriately assigning implementation responsibility for the aforementioned problem-solving strategies and priorities.
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4. Working with an EAP/Outside Consultant. Having an outside and objective workshop leader (not a management mouthpiece) trained in organizational change, interpersonal conflict and team building is critical for the success of step #3. Dealing with grief invariably proves to be a psychologically and communicationally charged intervention step. Consider the following two resources:
a) EAP Intervention. Both for objectivity, complexity and confidentiality reasons, if Employee Assistance Program services are available you may want to contact the EAP Counselor. This professional can:
1) work with individual employees exhibiting patterns of dysfunctional or disruptive behavior in the face of change,
2) help supervisors manage their own transitional emotions and
3) provide supervisors techniques and tools for more effectively managing and holding accountable the troubled individual as well as assisting the supervisor to better support all employees during this turbulent transition. The best supervisors are those who seek out the EAP Counselor (or an EAP- or HR-referred consultant) for approaches in handling a difficult employee or complex team issue. The worst response by a supervisor is denying or downplaying the adverse effects of a slacker or aggressive disrupter on his or her colleagues. Simply encouraging or expecting others to ignore a "stress carrier" heightens team members' anger and anxiety. Such concerns include, "Will this carrier explode or implode? Will I be hurt by the fallout?" As once discovered by Dr. Gorkin first hand, "Will a borderline employee pull a knife on a new supervisor partly because the supervisor's boss downplayed the violence potential of the employee?" is not an abstract question. In this scenario, both dysfunctional employee and dysfunctional supervisor are tumors, inevitably eroding department or division safety, morale and productivity.
b) Call an OD Consultant. Sometimes Human Resources or, even, the EAP (often for confidentiality reasons) will recommend an outside consultant/facilitator. Especially when large systems are involved, you want someone trained in Organizational Development and Team Building processes during periods of transition. Most EAP Counselors specialize in clinical and substance abuse matters. A team-building consultant can be a facilitator/role model for the first two or three non-traditional team meetings when a team is grappling with balancing task focus and group process. Dr. Gorkin gave an example of one of his experiences with a consultation with an IT supervisor and her staff in which all were unsure about running a more "participatory" team meeting. Dr. Gorkin was not surprised that the group overly focused on his direction (and, he mused, his approval). The analogy he used was a lesson in learning to ride a two-wheeler. At first, they didn't want him to let go of the bike seat. In fact, he wound up playfully hiding under the conference table so that the participants could not make eye contact with him, only surfacing if he thought they were wildly off course. Gradually, and more steadily, the group process began to cruise, this time hardly noticing his presence when he resurfaced.
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5. Experimenting with Team Meetings. Transforming a typical supervisor-driven team meeting into a gradual team building process doesn't require the group going on some touchy-feely retreat or participating in some formulaic or chaotic (that is, leaderless) TQM-like training program. With a little advanced coaching and group training along with some operational shifts, a team can become a catalyst for improved coordination, morale and productivity. Consider these hands on strategies:
a) Staff Facilitation. Have staff members replace the supervisor as meeting facilitator every 4-8 weeks (assuming the team meets once or twice/week).
b) Two Hats Phenomenon. Staff facilitation means the supervisor or department head wears two hats: as much as possible, in the meeting this individual is team player first and management representative second. Surely, letting up on the authority reins may be a challenge for some managers. However, this shift can be initially uncomfortable for other team members as well. Employees who are used to deferring to authority or who don't want to risk being open with ideas and beliefs will have a steeper learning curve. Also, across the organizational hierarchy, there are individuals reluctant to assume responsibility for making decisions and being held responsible for outcomes. Such a perceptual and procedural shift requires trust and, depending on the quality and integrity of the communication, this trust will evolve or erode over time.
c) Build In a Wavelength Segment. In a "lean-and-MEAN" climate, not surprisingly, most meetings, from team and department to branch and division, are short fused if not "T & T" - "Time and Task"-driven. The content is often still exclusively focused on goals and objectives, timelines and deadlines and outcomes and return on investment issues. Which makes sense; there's a business or organization to run. Dr. Gorkin has recommended carving out ten or fifteen minutes at the end of the meeting - the "Wavelength Segment." A group member comfortable with group process initially facilitates the meeting. Then, as noted above, as experience and trust builds the role of facilitator can be rotated. And, of course, this can be initiated as an experiment, that is, a time-limited pilot project often allows various parties, especially the authority figure, a sense of some control when implementing a new or uncertain change process.
Three purposes of the "Wavelength" are:
1) Relationship Check - this closing segment focuses on any barriers to communication and cooperation bypassed in the "T n T" section of the meeting, e.g., regarding operational coordination, how are team members relating with each other or with other departments? Appropriate emotional venting is encouraged.
2) Peer Recognition - in addition, "the wavelength" is also a time and place for recognizing individual and group efforts that have heightened morale and/or productivity.
3) Restore Trust - finally, perhaps most important, the wavelength is designed to restore trust, especially between a supervisor or manager and team members. Based on my broad organizational experience, there is often a fear of speaking up (the chain of command). This fear is fueled by the prospect of being judged negatively, being retaliated against in a performance evaluation or being blocked from fulfilling one's career path. Such a restricted, if not repressive, environment does as much to stifle morale and induce burnout while undermining initiative and innovation as any other toxic elements or hazardous workplace conditions.
d) Plan Informal Gatherings. In a "do more with less" environment, some organizations practically dispense with meetings; others have employees feeling "meetinged to death." Either extreme is self-defeating in terms of optimal team coordination and individual productivity.
Consider these alternatives:
1) Morning Huddle - briefly get as many team members together in the morning or just before the shift starts. Identify any looming surprises or crises and areas of unfinished business, or whether a team member may need extra support or backup coverage. This is a 5-10 minute "heads up," "all on the same page" gathering. And if you add some humor -- "joke of the morning" -- it can get the team off to a lively and cohesive start.
2) Communal Lunch - each Friday, one federal government branch would have lunch together. Especially if employee hours are staggered, having more than one opportunity to gather informally makes sense. For other units, Friday afternoon pizza parties serve a similar function - informal "food for thought" and laughs.
3) Chief's Cookout - twice a year the above head of the aforementioned branch, invited team members to her house for a half-day "visionary" cookout. (The food was real.) This mini-retreat setting helped the group maintain the currency of their branch vision while creatively massaging vital "big picture" goals and action plans.
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6. Increasing Management Visibility. At some regular interval the teams and/or departments of the division, center or entire organization need to congregate.
The purposes include:
a) Installing Windows In the Silos. To develop a sense of "we-are-all-in-this-together," management must share "big picture" information to help employees and units see their give-and-take involvement with the whole, including the larger or "outside" environment. For example, this is especially salient for preventing a dysfunctional disconnect between HQ and field operations.
b) Interdepartmental Clarification and Collaboration. Create a forum that allows teams and departments to clarify roles and responsibilities in areas of overlap, identify potential joint venture areas, and announce hot projects that may have larger appeal or impact thereby motivating interdepartmental collaboration. And, of course, this venue will broadcast inter-team coordination successes.
c) Matrix Teaming. From parts to whole, there must not simply be top-down information flow unless in a state of urgency. (Remember, the urgent must get done now, the important is negotiated and prioritized.) If time constraints or meeting size prove unwieldy, then a matrix team comprised of a small sample of department managers, supervisors and employees across varying units should convene for task and process problem solving as outlined in the above "Wavelength Segment."
d) Conflict, Not Greed, Is Good. Competing perspectives, if not conflict, among top management or between the Executive Committee and the Board of Directors is to be expected. Actually, it's probably needed to avoid the greed and groupthink that has been fostering "irrationally exuberant," deceptive and criminal actions. Too often, however, executives deny or cover-up their own and/or colleagues' performance inadequacies; or long-standing dysfunctional relating lead to communicational and problem solving inertia. Now the status quo is triumphant. No one risks the conflict necessary to change and rejuvenate a tired and outmoded operating system or leadership.
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7. Following the Way of the Acronyms. Consider these two acronyms to bolster survival capacity during these trying transitional times:
a) Balancing the Triple "A". To affirm an employee's sense of professionalism and sense of responsibility, blend "The Triple 'A': Authority, Autonomy and Accountability." Management must recognize and support an employee's utilization of skills and knowledge, and the desire to have input in relevant decision-making ("Authority"). Workers also want some control of their turf, time frames, tools and operating procedures ("Autonomy"). At the same time, employees must accept the objective and timely review of their work performance (Accountability).
b) Investing in Organizational IRAs. When people are chronically doing more with less, don't assume they will be (or should be) grateful just having a job in a tight economy. A management team that's concerned about motivation and loyalty or, at least, about the longevity of workplace survivors, makes sure people can earn those IRAs: Incentives, Recognition & Rewards and Advancement Opportunities, including opportunity for needed and desired training.
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posted by diversityworking @ 10:36 AM
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