<cmhere>Organizational Development at DEQ
Part I Organizational Health at DEQ
Definition of Organizational Health
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A 10 Step Process to Organizational Improvement
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Part II: Outline of Benefits of Strategic Thinking and
Organizational Development
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Part III The Root of Management Issues at DEQ
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Appendix: The Words of Others
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List of References
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René-Marc Mangin, PhD
September 26, 2007
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Part I Organizational Health at DEQ
The Department of Environmental Quality executives in the summer of 2007
expressed an interest in addressing organizational health, although the term remains
undefined. The term “healthy company” has been defined in a book, The Healthy
Company, as a company “that embodies people and practices that combine and
coordinate to produce an exceptional performance.” Of thirty listed symptoms of an
unhealthy company, my observations suggest that at least twelve are apparent in
DEQ. There is great variation in the distribution of these symptoms, but no area
(functional or regional) seems to be free of all of the following symptoms: job
dissatisfaction, poor morale, decreased commitment, disciplinary actions,
indecisiveness, unnecessary turnover, decreased motivation, burnout, grievances,
tense work relations, career stagnation, and poor communication. A systematic
organizational assessment is necessary to ascertain the distribution and severity of these
and other symptoms.
The approach to addressing organizational health expressed by EMT (Who is
EMT?) emphasized structural fixes. That is, they want to develop hiring policies,
procedure manuals, new employee orientation programs, work plans and put emphasis on
performance management. All of these actions are of value, but do not directly address
the fundamental forces that work against organizational health. The symptoms of the
lack of health in DEQ is expressed in many ways: fearfulness, in-group and out-group
dynamics, low morale, an exodus of many of its most valuable employees, high levels
of stress, and a union whose concerns seem to revolve around expressions of concern
for worker safety, and a lack of participation in decision making regarding areas of
their expertise, as well as, the social aspects of work conditions.
The authors of, The Healthy Company, assert that healthy companies hold values that
promote organizational health. Those values are: a commitment to self knowledge and
development, a firm belief in decency, respect for individual differences, a spirit of
partnership, a high priority for health and well-being, an appreciation for flexibility and
resilience, and a passion for products and processes. The following are excerpts from
The Healthy Company.
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1. Commitment to self-knowledge and Development.
This value is a commitment to one’s own personal growth and understanding. On
a personal level, people with this value are introspective, principle-driven, and
constantly learning about themselves. Managers translate this learning into
leadership that inspires both personal and professional development in employees.
Organizations dedicated to self-knowledge are learning institutions... Through a
broad, caring human-capital investment strategy, executives make large
investments in training, managers cultivate employee effectiveness and their
successors, and employees learn to innovate and take risks...
2. Firm Belief in Decency
The basic precept here is decency: instinctively treating others as would any
feeling, thinking human being and as one would like to be treated oneself. This
value is founded on the conviction that people work best when they are
respected—when they are genuinely appreciated for what they bring to a
company.
In healthy companies, actions speak louder than words, promises are kept,
discrepancies between what managers say and what they do rarely surface, and
half-truths, prevarications, or deceptions are not tolerated. Managers are honest
with employees, sharing their knowledge and even feelings; and they are fair,
apportioning rewards and criticism according to accomplishments and deeds.
Openness is a ground rule for all relationships. Regardless of the forum, the
feedback is always candid, helpful, fair, and constant.
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3. Respect for Individual Differences
People who respect individual differences know that an office is populated by
individuals who look different, act different, and grew up in different cultures but
who are equally capable and worthwhile. Rather than insisting that everyone
conform to a white, middle-class norm, employees and managers value the
richness of diversity, and imaginative ideas dissimilar people bring to their jobs.
Companies show their respect by not promoting policies or tacit standards that
imply a homogeneous work force. For example, promotions are equally available
to women and minorities; work schedules are flexible enough to accommodate all
kinds of families; and employees are encouraged to express their personal
differences. There are no second-class citizens, only human beings of equal
worth with special roles and responsibilities.
4. Spirit of Partnership
This value us a strong belief in community, in the strength of shared effort, the
value of teamwork, and the satisfaction of partnership. Though personally
capable, both manager and employees truly believe that two minds are better than
one and that many minds are best...
Together, responsible employees and empowering managers form a special
team—an entrepreneurial partnership of adults dedicated to mobilizing each
other’s talents and producing results. This group is not a collection of so-called
“Indians and one chief” but a collaboration of co-equals, with individuals stepping
forward to take the lead when they have more experience, specialized knowledge,
or unique creative talents in a given area than others. This partnership’s motto is
“Everyone Is a Leader, Everyone is a Follower.”
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5. High Priority for Health and Well-Being
Healthy employees are a company’s most valuable asset. Like a well-crafted
piece of precision equipment, employees must be maintained and polished...
At the company level, health and well-being are emphasized through adequate
health and disability coverage, wellness and employee-assistance programs,
flexible scheduling, family leave policies, competitive and equitable pay, and
profit sharing. Safety too is a concern, and healthy companies do more than tout
its importance—they institute practical, vital safeguards in every corner of the
workplace.
6. Appreciation for Flexibility and Resilience
This value is founded on the inevitability of change and the necessity of taking
charge of any natural evolution, be it financial, technological, or personal.
Resilient employees exhibit this value in their attitude toward new situations and
obstacles. They ask plenty of questions and are not easily discouraged. Rich with
capability, not conformity, they don’t avoid tough jobs or duck responsibility...
Managers with this value know that regardless of what a employee actually does
every day, whether it is mundane or unique, manual or mental, people need
variety, flexibility, and a sense of completion and ownership. The healthy
company reinforces this value through a variety of offerings: they give
employees the tools to cope with change; they provide advance notice of layoffs
and relocations; and they make transitions as smooth as possible.
7. Passion for Products and Process
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With a clear mission and plan of action, people with a passion for products are
active, effective doers. They set goals, benchmarks, and timetables and know
where they are going and why...
However, their passion for outcome does not interfere with their respect for
process. Although persistent and competitive, they care as much about how they
produce something as the product itself; as driven as they are, they know they
must take into account the interests and needs all of their constituents.
That is why patience and persistence are essential—a natural outcome of their
strong belief in people, their respect for relationships, and their commitment to the
company’s long-term mission. Experience has shown these people that even if
they achieve quick results, these results are often transitory and often undermine
personal and economic success.
Ultimately, the healthy company views products and profits not as its immediate
goal, but rather as the result of doing everything else right. It economic success,
improved quality, better service, and competitive advantage are the by-products of
shared values and collective effort.
Organizational health at DEQ would be fostered by the endorsement and actualization
of the values cited above. The commitment to self-knowledge and development was
raised an issue in the last labor contract negotiations. The union strongly pushed for
investment in human capital, particularly with regard to professional growth and career
development, and career transitioning, specifically concerning the interests of VIP
employees.
The importance of this value is normal in an organization composed primarily of
technical experts. Maccoby surveyed organizations and found that government
workforces were composed primarily of social character types he labeled experts,
helpers, self-developers, and institutional helpers. From my vantage point I would argue
that DEQ has fewer helpers than institutional helpers (a reflection of being a regulatory
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agency), but that Maccoby’s overall characterization fits DEQ. These social character
types exhibit very different values and motivations in the workplace. Some employees
actually represent a mixture of types, but it is not necessary to discuss mixtures here. The
expert is primarily driven by mastery, control, and autonomy. Many of DEQ’s scientists
and engineers fit this profile. Their need for mastery makes them very interested in
professional development and personal growth. Many of DEQ’s other professionals
clearly fit into the self-developer—a category whose members are driven by balancing
mastery and play, or knowledge and fun. These employees are conspicuous in DEQ and
there interest in self-development, camaraderie and community is evident.
A high proportion of DEQ employees tend to exhibit the traits of defenders,
innovators, and institutional helpers. While they may be interested in self-knowledge and
development, they do not represent their main drivers in the workplace.
A firm belief in decency is probably not a value people would argue with, at least not
on the surface, but a form of this value also was an issue in the recent labor negotiations.
The union sees a clear class structure divided into employees and managers and they
frequently complained of a double standard—one for managers and one for staff, with the
implication that it was unfair.
Many employees at DEQ (and at various levels in the agency) have spoken of
feeling disrespected, about not getting honest feedback from people, and about the
distribution of rewards and benefits in the agency in terms of promotional
assignments and opportunities. The latter was also an issue in negotiations, but
individuals throughout the system have intimated concern about disrespect, honest
feedback and fair-haired boys and girls.
The issue of respect for individual differences is a major issue at DEQ. Respect for
individual differences may not have been major issue in the past because the agency was
fairly homogeneous. Diversity is becoming an issue as it seeks to recruit new people to
replace people who have left the agency for philosophical reasons, burnout, and
having reached retirement age.
The need for conformity that seems prevalent in the agency probably made sense
when divisions acted autonomously and the organization was adrift a few years ago.
Now it seems to be an impediment to strategic thinking, recruitment, and organizational
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health. Of course, this issue is directly related to diversity in terms of ethnicity and age,
but the major complication around diversity seems to be associated with differences of
professional opinion.
Some of the most significant current tension in the agency has to do with the
apparent displacement of people with dissenting views about regulatory
enforcement and environmental management. There seems to be a real intolerance
for differing views--not even dissenting in DEQ. There is a “with us or against us”
dynamic in many interactions concerning management. Decisions about management
including environmental management are where the defender, institutional helper,
innovators, and expert social character types clash in a major way. For defenders service
means policing and protection according to Maccoby. In regulatory environmental
agencies this often means strict enforcement of environmental regulations. These
employees entered DEQ because of a strong environmental ethic, which in their
minds means that they support a strong role of environmental stewardship and
regulation. Some of these employees sympathize with the environmental interest
groups who think that DEQ has been too accommodating of business. Some
defenders have left the agency, others have become disaffected and unhappy as they
have seen DEQ subscribe to what they consider a more business and industryfriendly orientation at the expense of the environment. Those who have stayed in
the agency have also felt career opportunities elude them in favor of people who do
not share their environmental ethos—people Maccoby would call innovators and
institutional helpers.
The innovators are problematic for the defenders because they are willing to make
changes that move the agency away from the traditional regulatory role. Additionally,
the type of innovator that has risen to management positions in the agency tends to
enjoy teamwork with a homogeneous team (one that thinks like them, talks like
them, and works like them), and is more focused on the survival of the agency than
the environmental ethos of the defenders or the people in the agency. These
innovators are focused on a viable machine and are predisposed to replacing and
disposing of parts that do not subscribe to their methods and aims.
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The traditionalist experts and defenders, the new innovators, and the rare but salient
institutional helpers are clashing at DEQ. The defenders and experts represent the old
guard and they dislike what the innovators have done in the last seven years in
terms of the diminution of the power of the expert and the compromises that have
been made environmentally. The union has attracted institutional helpers and
disgruntled experts and they are now pressing the innovators for changes that address the
human needs of members of the organization. Helpers typically do not like experts
because of their focus on hierarchy, status, and measurable performance, but some of
them have formed an uneasy alliance with them as they feel the human aspects of work
being neglected. Experts are becoming more appreciative of the institutional helpers’
need to enable the institution to survive and their interest in promoting positive social
relationships.
DEQ does score well on two of three of the major structural aspects of respect for
individual differences. It does offer promotional opportunities to women—the number of
minorities in management is still small, and it certainly offers flexible work schedules
that accommodate all kinds of families. DEQ falls down on the social aspects of respect
for individual differences by sometimes directly demanding conformity via messages to
behave like others (or indirectly by sending less than subtle messages by moving people
out of positions), and by discouraging the expression of personal differences of
opinion.
The spirit of partnership seems be in opposition to the values of hierarchy that are
clearly evident in DEQ. There is a clear demarcation between staff, managers, and
executives. This is expressed innocuously by the attention executives place on the need
to improve the plight of managers, but their tendency to overlook or discount information
about the plight of employees coming from the union. There seems to be little
appreciation of the fact that the union is the one source of information about the views of
employees that is not intimidated by management, for whatever reason.
The union has complained that information is not shared with it in a timely fashion.
It also complains that individual employees who going to be personally affected by
management decisions do not receive information in a timely fashion. This was another
major issue in recent contract negotiations. The union expressed frustration with not
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getting timely information about health and safety matters (like the Bend fire and sick
building reports in the Dalles, etc.), and they wanted current statistics about recruitment
and retention. The union felt that the lack of up-to-date information and candor on the
part of management excluded employees from participating in a meaningful way in
decisions that had impacts on them.
Employees of DEQ care as much about how they produce something as the product
itself. They are also concerned with how management solves problems and makes
decisions, especially when those decisions affect the way they do work or their selfidentity. The means can be as important as the ends when the means gives people an
impression of how much they are valued. This is at the core of the controversy about the
“glidepath”—an issue raised repeatedly by the union in negotiations, but also by
individual employees in unsolicited conversations. Objection about the outcome were
rarely voiced; objections were primarily about how things were done. Employees felt
that their notification about problem was late, that they did not have a chance to
participate in the exploration of the problem and alternatives, and that their options were
unnecessarily constrained by a flawed problem solving process. Management on the
basis of the quality of the outcome resists this view and argues that it did not want to
create unnecessary alarm and conflict. The point is not whether management was right or
wrong, just that the process created bad feelings and still generates conflict.
Satisfaction with how things are done (procedural satisfaction) is a real issue for
employees regarding management issues. It is the value associated with a passion for
products and process. How management treats employees gives them a clear signal about
how much management values them. Procedural satisfaction is a critical factor in
psychological or emotional satisfaction, although it does not guarantee it.
Dissatisfaction with a lack of participation in decisions that affect the production
of work seems to be a major issue at DEQ. Union representatives have complained
about their inability to understand how management actions are consistent with
stated goals and policies. Employees have spoken of feeling patronized and treated
like children, and technical experts have been so offended by their lack of
meaningful participation in technical problem solving that they have made an issue
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of professional differences of opinion as a means of forcing management to attend to
their views.
Lack of satisfaction with decision making processes has led to a great deal of stress
and internal conflict in DEQ. The union’s proposals in contract negotiations reflected
many of the emotional issues commonly associated with procedural dissatisfaction.
Issues revolving around power (or control) and its use are prevalent in situations where
people feel disrespected or excluded from decision making. It tried to use the contract
as a means of gaining access to decision making around safety and health issues, as well
as recruitment and training and development issues. It also tried to include language in
the contract that would stipulate how to discipline managers because of another
emotional issue—fairness. The union believed, as do many people at DEQ, that there is a
class system that results in differential treatment. It asserted that members of the rank
and file are punished severely for some infractions, particularly around
communications and bullying, and that managers seem to get a free pass for even
more egregious transgressions.
The last and most prevalent emotional issue generated by procedural dissatisfaction at
DEQ is associated with issues of identity. Psychologist Daniel Dana, an expert on
workplace conflicts, explains that issues of identity derive from individual needs for
autonomy, self-esteem, positive self-image, self-determination and affirmation of
personal values. Many of the issues that fall under the category of professional
differences of opinion, controversy about the “glidepath,” and many of the customer
service issues in the Management Services Division are fundamentally issues of identity.
Experts do not like to feel that their expertise is being disregarded or that lesser
qualified people are making decisions that they have been trained to make. Many
scientific experts have been socialized to believe that framing problems and generating
the range of viable solutions for management to choose from is one of the rights and
privileges associated with their diplomas and certifications. They are deeply offended
by non-technical people usurping their authority. Experts do not see themselves as
interchangeable parts that can be moved around at the whim of management. The issue
of self-image and self-worth is also relevant to conflicts about the allocation of resources,
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timeliness of response, and access to timely information in the cross-agency dealings of
BSD, budgeting, procurement, and accounting.
Emotional issues spawned by procedural dissatisfaction predispose employees to
generate what some mediators call pseudo-substantive disputes. A pseudo-substantive
dispute is an emotional issues disguised as a substantive dispute. Since these disputes are
not really about the stated issue, they are almost impossible to resolve as advanced. The
mold issue at the Dalles field office, the toxic files issue in Bend, and the air issues at
the Eugene office all had features of pseudo-substantive disputes, or disputes
generated by negative perceptions of managements regard for employees.
Research in public involvement has revealed several important facts about processes
that affect the implementation of policies and programs. These have led to the following
principles:
If the public (employees) feels that a major project decision was made in a
manner that is not appropriate or legitimate—even though they might like
the decision itself—they will not accept the decision.
Most lay citizens (employees) will not participate in a project’s planning
process unless:
- they are tangible issues
- they consider the issues significant
- they consider themselves capable of making a contribution to the
project
When there is a clear, concrete issue that is important to a people, virtually
any community can and will organize so their concerns in the issue will be
represented.
Lay interests—as well as professionals—base their actions not on “reality”
but on their perception of “reality.”
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Appreciating these principles should help managers at DEQ understand some
of the conflicts they have encountered surrounding their actions. Understanding
their import should make them think about the means as well as the ends in their
problem solving and decision making.
A Ten Step Process to Organizational Improvement
The following ten step process designed to produce organizational health at DEQ. It is a
process that will accomplish more than a management change, but a cultural change. It
also addresses the need for a shared vision and facilitates its development by helping
employees learn to relate to each other in new ways that are both more intelligent and
more humane.
Step 1. Assess the Culture
Step 2. Promote the Positive
Step 3. Make the Workplace Safe for Thinking
Step 4. Reward Risk-Taking
Step 5. Help People Become Resources for Each Other
Step 6. Put Learning Power to Work
Step 7. Map Out the Vision
Step 8. Bring the Vision to Life
Step 9. Connect the Systems
Step 10. Get the Show on the Road
STEP ONE Assess the Culture
There is a need to do a comprehensive assessment of the organization. There has
not been an employee survey in the past couple of years and the previous survey
does not foster much employee interest or enthusiasm. Employees lack confidence
in the surveys that have been conducted in recent years because, from their
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perspective, the surveys do not identify real issues and management has not
followed-up on those issues that have been identified.
A survey that addresses organizational health and organizational thinking and
learning is available. Issues that such a survey would report on have to do with people’s
willingness to:
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Speak their minds
Learn from mistakes
See better ways to do things
Encouraged different points of view
Encourage experimentation
See mistakes as opportunities
Try new ways
Improving Work life
Learn from each other
Learn from all levels
Develop awareness beyond specialty
Replace obsolete practices
Expect improvement
Emphasize employee training
Get relevant training
Pursue cross-functional learning
Acknowledge the key role of middle managers
Learn from the unexpected
Employ flexible systems
Manage stress
Make improvements not just talk
Foster self-directed learners
Middle managers prepared
Recognize learning styles
Respected differences in learning
Seek resource for learning
Reward teams
Enable managers to cope with change
Enable staff to improve
It is important to assess the culture on two levels. At the institutional level, the focus
is to find out what people think is going on. At the individual level, the objective is to
start taking responsibility for what you think and what you do.
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Knowing what people think is the first step. This process will most likely uncover a
lot of denial and fear. You can’t just appoint a team and ask them to transform the
culture, as if you are asking them to repair the walls. The first step is an honest and
fearless assessment of the climate and culture within the organization. Unfortunately, we
are all pretty much blind to our own cultures.
The early part of the report is based on an informal, ethnographic assessment of DEQ.
I talked with union representatives, marginalized individuals, a variety of employees,
executives, and managers to create a general picture of the state of DEQ. The focus of
the process was on looking at symptoms and doing root cause analysis.
My initial assessment was that the three most salient issues were: a lack of
emotional safety, boundary management problems, and poor communications. The
observed symptoms were:
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An inability to complete actions (fully implement policies, etc.)
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Crisis-oriented living
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Manager burnout (multiple iterations of tasks, unspecified stopping points,
inability to delegate)
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Mental exhaustion
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Feeling of disrespect
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Exclusion and disapproval
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Paternalism; feeling manipulated or patronized
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Feeling left out of decisions that affect their personal welfare
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Feeling like professional opinions are being disregarded
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The “walking wounded”
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Pervasive fear
Outside Assessors
People outside of the organization can be very useful in efforts to assess situations.
They are in a position to observe three behaviors known to strongly affect change:
responsibility, blaming others, and justifying one’s own position. Responsibility suggests
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that you’re taking an active role in making things work the way they should. Having the
BSD manager and the primary staff people associated with a specific project talk directly
with the executive and relevant managers or staff in the customer organization about the
issue of customer service with the assistance of a customer service guru was one way to
make both parties responsible for their part of the customer service relationship. They
would have to arrive at a common definition of the term and negotiate responsibilities, as
well as, discuss priorities. The facilitated discussion would naturally lead to an
assignment of accountability. The customer service consultant would facilitate
accountability by injecting reality into the situation based on expertise in service delivery,
by challenging the assumptions of both sides, and by making explicit the problems with
the current state of affairs. Accountability in this context would be a willingness to say
exactly what happened and what can be done about it.
Negotiating new expectations and a new service delivery arrangement should address
the issue of customer satisfaction, while improving the morale of service deliverers if for
no other reason than the fact that they have clear expectations tempered by the reality of
their resource limitations. They are also likely to be motivated by the fact that the
customer will be doing everything reasonable to facilitate the successful management of
projects. Responsibility and accountability have to be experienced by both the customer
and service provider to ensure success.
Start The Assessment
The organizational assessment tool is designed to provide an overview of the
organization and stimulate discussion about the organization’s ability to learn and adapt
to changing situations and external forces. First, it will surface the major issues which
must be addressed by any group on its way to becoming a healthy organization. Its focus
is on the agency’s capacity to learn and adapt. Second, it shows which of ten steps
applies to issues identified in the assessment. While it is tempting to approach the change
process by focusing on a single aspect of the results, organizational change requires
action on all identified steps because all steps are interdependent.
The Assessment can answer some questions and raise new ones:
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What is the spread of attitude throughout all members of the organization on each
issue in the questionnaire?
How does that spread shift as we move from top management to middle management
to white collar and blue collar workers, and ultimately to the customer? Also, how does
it differ among the various divisions, regions, and functions of the organization? What
are the points of greatest differences between these groups, and what can we learn from
these differences?
What To Do With the Results
The results of the assessment can be used to powerful effect even before consensus is
reached on all issues arising from it. For example, if there’s a widespread belief that the
current culture does not support risk-taking, then a report could be published dealing with
this issue head on, committing the new learning culture to make risk-taking easier at
every level of the enterprise. Focusing on areas of agreement and taking action
immediately, while suspending discussion of disagreement, may help to bring together
towards common goals.
STEP 2 Promote the Positive
The next step is changing the attitudes of people in the organization so that they learn
to think positively. The objective is to move people from seeing the proverbial glass as
half empty to seeing the glass as half full. This does not require a denial of reality, quite
the contrary, the effect is to foster hope and create the conditions for cooperative
behavior toward group goals. Becoming more positive and supportive towards each
other and the outside world facilitates change.
Where’s the Message?
The message is not always found in changes in procedure manuals. Some of the most
significant changes are subtle. Small gestures are often the most effective because they
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recognizable and easily copied. What are the kinds of changes that people can enjoy and
are most willing to make?
The Art of Reframing
Reframing is an essential skill and prerequisite for creating a learning culture. For
most decisions, organizations already have a frame. It knows that it wants to hire new
employees, it knows that it wants them to perform well, and it knows that it wants to
invest resources in certain ways.
One of the most important skills in problem solving is the ability to recognize when
an issue needs to be reframed. It is also an important skill in facilitating organizational
improvement as it increases the potential for change by allowing a situation to be seen in
a new light. It allows people to sort out facts and ideas so the positive ones emerge with
greater clarity and the more negative ones can recede—not to be forgotten, but to be
addressed at the right time.
Reframing does not change a situation as much as adjusting your thinking. Step One
surfaced areas that need to be addressed for effective change. Reframing is the
opportunity to initiate the change process by reframing the negatives found in the
assessment. A positive attitude is critical to reframing in service to effective
organizational improvement.
The Management Services Division recently was able to do two significant reframes.
The first opportunity came as it received the results of the 2007 DAS audit. Management
knew that there were problems in the fall of 2006. Two newer employees in the section
had reported significant deficiencies and discrepancies. However, difficulty securing
resources and managing day-to-day operational issues prevented efforts at adequately
addressing issues. An unfortunate series of events eventually led to a DAS audit of the
human resources section. The section could have become discouraged by the audit, but
instead chose to see it as a learning opportunity and solicit the assistance of a DAS
consultant. As a consequence, HR was able to make significant strides toward improving
record keeping, the processing of requests, and identify specific issues that had to be
resolved.
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The second opportunity came about accidentally while trying to address some
management issues in the Business Systems Development section. The group was
unaware of management issues and misinterpreted a conversation that the administrator
had about organizational performance. The ensuing controversy and conflict was
converted into an opportunity to make people BSD staff aware of managerial and
customer service problems. It took some time to reframe the situation from one in which
they felt that they (the staff) were being thought of as defective, to understanding that
there was a need for a change in the way they interacted with customers and the way they
conducted internal operations. .
Manipulating the Prevailing Climate
Managers responsible for implementing new projects and services are the ones who
can effectively introduce a new, more positive prevailing climate into the daily work
activity. A prevailing climate is a group mindset, a collection of beliefs so deeply
imbued by the majority of people that it is their reality.
The prevailing climate in DEQ is less than positive. There is growing
dissatisfaction with the workplace climate. Many people have voted with their feet
by leaving and finding more rewarding and lucrative positions. A malaise is
spreading among those that remain. Many managers, in the senior and middle
ranks, feel overwhelmed and unable to exercise control over their situations, while
many in the rank and file feel demoralized and disrespected.
Escaping the crippling effects of these beliefs will require a change in attitude and
perspective. The basic premise of this reality should be that we are all capable of making
significant changes in a situation and that any situation can be improved. It’s an attitude
of respect for people and what they can do, and it challenges all members in the
organization to become the very best they can be.
STEP 3 Making the Workplace Safe for Thinking
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The most pressing problem confronting DEQ is the need to improve its problem
solving throughout the organization. Operationally, this means improving thinking in
a knowledge work organization. DEQ has been grappling with this problem for a
long time. It manifests itself in many different ways. For example, a well-respected
administrator, a few months ago openly asked why people couldn’t see problems and
address them. Last year, the former deputy director asked why the EMT couldn’t
implement policies and decisions effectively. Staff members complain that they do
not know where the organization is going, and they that they feel disconnected from
many decisions or fail to see how the decisions will lead to stated objectives.
Ineffective problem solving is often a matter of faulty framing, and faulty framing in
DEQ is based on a lack of emotional safety and job security. A lack of safety debilitates
capacities and skills necessary for grappling with challenging problems. Employees do
not actively participate in framing problems either because they are not invited to, or they
don’t feel safe contributing their ideas and feelings. In the former situation, top
management frames the problems according to what makes sense to them without regard
for how staff and managers might see the issues, thus leading to people to not understand
the logic of decisions and make “local” decisions that suboptimize major decisions. In
the latter situation, people do not contribute to framing decisions because they do not
want to expose themselves to criticism or demotion. Instead, they “muddle
through” while feeling disrespected and demoralized by their impotence. Both of
these conditions tend to activate unions.
The DEQ executive management team demonstrated its tendency toward
groupthink and nonstrategic thinking at its summer retreat. The challenge is not to
develop strategic thinking among them, as much as it is to develop problem solving
skills. The lack of EMT expertise in addressing strategic thinking comes from the
fact that the strategic thinking is generally done elsewhere (in Salem or the
director’s office). In other words, the problem is framed in operational terms by the time
it gets to EMT, or EMT frames it in tactical terms to avoid pain.
One of the main issues identified by an outside consultant during the retreat was a
lack of diversity in thinking. This is a problem at DEQ, but hiring or consulting with
people who present different ways of looking at problems is not the answer to the
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challenge of effective problem solving. These people will bring little to problem solving
if they feel unsafe and unsupported.
It is important to look at individual thinking styles before considering the group
thinking processes because group strategies are actually a composite of individual styles.
Understanding the individual’s thinking style can be done most efficiently by using the
Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI), although there are simpler, less
revealing tools available for such purposes.
EMT has to rethink the way it operates. Four interrelated types of thinking that
should be considered are: strategic thinking, power thinking, creative thinking, and
analytical thinking. Strategic thinking is the thinking skill used when thinking about
planning for the future. It connects today with tomorrow in an organized way and sets a
course of action. It is disabled by denial, conflict avoidance and defense mechanisms that
distort real assessments of current conditions or real future ambitions (addressed in steps
4 and 5).
Power thinking concentrates on the positive aspects of any situation and enables
people to get around barriers to planning for the future and making correct decisions.
DEQ is currently experiencing a deficit in this area (addressed in step 2).
Creative thinking provides a way to look at the future and solutions from a fresh
angle. It is a thinking skill that opens up possibilities and gets people out of traditional
thinking. You can’t get creative thinking in the midst of hostility and fear.
Analytical thinking is necessary for maintaining organization while looking for
answers that will promote success. DEQ has a proclivity for this type of thinking, but
political correctness has somewhat compromised it. These thinking styles work together
to enable people to make the “right” decisions. Consequently, it is important to be aware
of them no matter what problem we are trying to solve. DEQ needs to improve all four
styles of thinking at all levels of the agency.
For example, developing a long-range plan requires strategic thinking skills, but
power thinking skills are needed to help people overcome negative roadblocks. And
creative thinking skills facilitate the generation of many possible solutions, while
analytical skills help people come up with the best possible plan.
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“Strategic thinking” is about planning for the future. When you know where you’re
going, why you’re going and how you’re going to get there, you’ll get there
successfully—and strategic thinking tools give you the where, why and how.
Safety is the Key to Thinking
The most essential resource in any knowledge work organization is the thinking
capacity of everyone in the organization. A fundamental challenge is to create a climate
where everyone will look for ways to do their jobs better, where the attitude behind
quality control and continuous improvement is built into everyone’s behavior and
expectations.
Learning and thinking are intertwined when grappling with wicked, ill-structured, or
even just complex problems. Learning well requires an environment where there is
no fear of consequences of what might be discovered. Thinking requires the same
condition, as well as, and the opportunity to work within one’s capabilities and with just
enough stress to focus attention and energy, but not so much as to create high levels of
anxiety.
One of the most dangerous and liberating activities in life is walking. We don’t think
of it that way as adults, but as small children it was both. It was dangerous because it
involved losing one’s balance and falling. Were it not for a horde of people trying to
encourage walking and providing a safe environment for it, we would all probably still be
crawling. Thinking, like walking, is best developed through practice, and again like
walking, it is best practiced in a supportive environment.
Stupidity and bad problem solving are also examples of disabling learned behaviors.
Not providing information critical to effective decision making results in faulty decision
making, and so does attacking ideas before they have had a chance to be fully developed.
These behaviors encourage weak problem solving abilities.
Improving Organizations
Encouraging the asking of questions is one of the most effective ways to improve
thinking and initiate organizational improvement. Reframing generates new questions,
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new things to explore. Any behaviors that stifle efforts to ask questions and discover new
ways to do things, disable learning.
Another way that management can lead the way to organizational improvement is by
rewarding thinking and creativity wherever they are found. Overcoming the tendency to
respond to other people’s ideas with a knee-jerk negative response is a skill that has to be
learned. Being able to endure the confusion, ambiguity, and conflict that is inherent to
efforts to grapple with complex problems is also a learned skill.
A Learning Environment Depends on Safety
Safety is a basic human need and it is a precondition for a healthy organization. A
healthy organization provides continual permission and incentive for everyone in the
organization to think well and benefit from the thinking of others. This does not mean
that the organization takes affirmative action on all the thoughts expressed, but that
people in the organization participate in meaningful discussions about the nature of
problems and that their concerns are addressed.
Participating in productive and meaningful relationships with others, in which both
giving and receiving information are valued, generates safety. This type of relationship
facilitates professional growth and job satisfaction, especially among knowledge workers.
Feeling safe also fosters the ability to discover and experiment—critical behaviors
when dealing with ill-structured or wicked problems. Feeling safe also makes it possible
to experience learning from “mistakes without guilt and shame. Feeling safe leads to
knowing how to enjoy the possibilities of creative action, both individual and collective.
Much of what is needed to create an effective, adaptable team has to be understood
and confirmed through guided experience (the assistance of a skilled facilitator). It has to
be learned kinesthetically or experientially, and preferably with the assistance of someone
who can provide a nurturing environment until the team matures fully. At that point, its
internal resources will provide safety for team members. It has to be learned
experientially.
The perception of emotional safety is primarily nonverbal. It is mostly experienced
through gestures, postures, tone of voice, and signals our actions are constantly sending.
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One of the EMT members expressed a lack of safety from observing the current deputy
director roll his eyes an EMT member was talking. Although, the target was someone
else, the action diminished this person’s sense of safety. Discounting the speech of
others, knee jerk negative responses to suggestions, immediate segues without a pause to
indicate consideration, and the denial of items previously acknowledged are all behaviors
experienced kinesthetically. They produce a gut reaction.
Until a healthy group has formed, the onus for fostering safety in the group is on the
leader(s) of the group. Oftentimes in naturally evolving groups, the group naturally
follows the person who provides safety. In knowledge worker groups, leaders are often
subject matter experts who exhibit calm, assertive leadership. Administrators Kerri
Nelson and Andy Ginsburg exhibit these traits to a certain extent. Congruence, that is,
nonverbal behavior that is consistent with verbal behavior is one of the greatest sources
of safety in groups. Additionally, having the ability to participate in decisions that affect
important aspects of professional life is also perceived to promote safety for most
workers. The higher the level of personal control someone has in a difficult situation, the
lower the risk they perceive in a given decision.
Safe does not imply freedom from challenge or accountability. Safety implies
support for the learning process itself. It is associated with honoring errors and everyone
pitching in to limit their adverse consequences without exposing the person who commits
it to humiliation or abuse.
Fairness also promotes safety. Safety in a group means knowing the consequences of
actions, knowing when they will be applied, and knowing that those consequences will be
applied universally. An unsafe environment is often one in which people are susceptible
to being blindsided, or their actions lead to unexpected (and often never explained)
negative consequences. Such occurrences diminish the sense of safety in co-workers
because of their lack of understanding of what brought about the punishment.
Everyone will benefit from answering the question, what does safety mean to me? In
practical terms the question could be translated to: What specific actions or changes
would prove that it’s actually safe for me to think around here?
Managing Conflict is Critical to Successful Matrix Management
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Inherent to the concept of a matrixed organization is conflict. There is a real need for
effective conflict management strategies at DEQ. Managers and staff need to become
comfortable with the notion of productive confrontation. Two conditions are normally
necessary for productive confrontation: 1) mutual positive motivation; and 2) power
parity between combatants. Mutual positive motivation is the desire of both parties to
resolve, better utilize or control the conflict rather than have it continue. If one party
stands to gain from continuing the conflict, the use of confrontation tactics is likely to
escalate the conflict.
In addition to similar motivation, effective confrontation requires that both parties
have roughly equal power over each other and the situation in which they find
themselves. Typically, asymmetrical power relationships tend to encourage the underdog
to take whatever actions are necessary to develop power parity. This often means
recruiting alternate sources of power.
STEP 4 Rewarding Risk Taking
A variety of opposing forces clashing around issues of regulation, monitoring, and
resources are creating a great deal of turmoil in environmental agencies. While taking
risk is always challenging, it is even more difficult in the midst of uncertainty and tumult.
It is impossible to effectively address the complex, interconnected problems
confronting agencies today without being willing to take meaningful, reasonable,
moderate risks. Wicked and complex ill-structured problems present decision makers
with high levels of uncertainty, but decisions must be made. Risk-taking is now a
prerequisite for survival. A successful and sustainable organization has socialized all
levels of management to effectively engage in risk-taking.
A study in the 1960s by David McClelland, a Harvard psychologist, revealed that the
type of motivation that virtually guarantees success in business is achievement
motivation. And one of the most significant components of achievement motivation
turns out to be moderate risk-taking. His results also indicated that a moderate risk is one
in which you have a 60 percent to 90 percent chance of being successful. Above 90
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percent and there is little risk, and below 60 percent and it is probably not prudent to take
the risk.
In situations where there is a clear in-group (people who have access to
important information and are conspicuously favored by the leaders of the
organization), there is a huge disparity in risk-taking capacity. People in the ingroup tend to be empowered to take risk, but few others are. This is the case at
DEQ. In fact, one comment made to me was very telling, “here, people don’t get
fired for not doing things; taking action is what is risky.”
Building a Culture that Supports Risk-Taking
Risk-taking for people on a team, or even in a large organization, requires that their
team or their management protect them until they’ve had a chance to prove themselves.
They also must be ready and well positioned to succeed. Putting people that lack the
knowledge or experience into positions without the resources to enable them to succeed
is a recipe for eroding trust and safety in an organization. Leaders should ensure the
capability of members of teams by either developing their individual skills or providing
access to all the skills required to meet upcoming challenges. Finally, they need
managerial permission to take the anticipated risk. Sometimes there will be failures with
real consequences, but these should not be catastrophic for the individuals involved.
It is important to assess DEQ’s willingness to encourage risk-taking by answering the
following questions:
1. What’s the general attitude toward risk-taking among employees?
2. What efforts have you seen the organization make to increase risk-taking?
3. How many instances can you think of in which it was discouraged?
4. What forces in the culture encourage risk-taking?
5. What forces discourage it?
6. What are the three best steps the organization might take to encourage more risk
taking?
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A large part of becoming effective at risk taking is the ability to anticipate situations
so that you can be in the right place and the right time. You have to know where you are
going and have a large reservoir of knowledge to predict the next step. Understanding
probabilities requires having accurate current information and enough knowledge to see
patterns. The conditions are difficult to achieve in a culture with a big gap between
managers and executives, and where information is concentrated at the top of the
organization.
Risk-Taking Requires Tolerance for Ambiguity
Rigidity impedes risk-taking. It makes people inclined to frame issues in
dichotomous terms, thus reducing options to right or wrong, or good or bad. Dealing
with uncertainty requires an ability to consider that not everything can be assessed in
dichotomous terms; uncertainty means that there is gray in many situations. Achieving a
certain amount of comfort with gray areas makes reasonable risk-taking possible.
Intuition is also important for dealing with uncertainty. Intuition, however, requires
flexibility and a willingness to explore situations while postponing judgments. Creative
people seem to specialize in putting off closure when they are trying to solve problems.
STEP 5 Help People Become Resources for Each Other
People tend not to see each other as resources when they are intolerant of ambiguity
and the differences among them. There seems to be a tradeoff associated with many
skills. The HBDI makes this tradeoff evident. For example, the ability to be tolerant of
ambiguity is potentially in opposition with the ability to quickly reach closure. People
with a strong preference for either of these goals can overlook the strengths (and
emphasize the weaknesses) of others with opposing preferences or aptitudes.
Interestingly, people tend to know more about their coworkers’ limitations than their
strengths. Seeing other people’s strengths and potential often requires getting beyond the
self-fulfilling prophecy of negative perceptions.
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Knowledge of other people’s talents increases the potential contributions to an
enterprise. It increases the effectiveness of group by making it more possible to harness
the tools and talents available to it. The better you perceive the value of your co-workers,
the more you can enhance your own effectiveness.
The Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument is one of the most effective tools for
creating an awareness of individual strengths and weaknesses, as well as, fostering
teamwork. It provides unique information including:
1. How you perceive the thinking styles most accessed in your work environment.
2. Values and preferred approaches to thinking and problem solving, as well as,
ways you approach work.
3. Preferences related to how you communicate and want others to communicate
with you.
4. The values, preferred approaches to problem solving, and approach to work you
prefer under stress.
The HBDI preference codes are simple because they are composed of a set of
numerical designations associated with each of four quadrants, but the instrument’s
power comes from sub-categorical designations. These designations discriminate
between, for example, two people whose results indicate that they are primarily rational,
but one is factual and quantitative, and the other is logical and analytical; or two people
who have preferences for administrative functions but one is risk averse and detailed and
the other is controlling and sequential. In each of these cases, people who share a high
numerical designation in a quadrant will have an affinity for each other, but they are
likely to encounter difficulties working together because they will exhibit different
strengths and interests.
The HBDI also provides important information about problem solving and thinking
strategies. Coupled with knowledge of the implications of learning styles in the
workplace, it is very informative about the types of issues that may need to be addressed
in team building and group performance.
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The debriefing is the most powerful aspect of the HBDI assessment process. It is
conducted in two rounds—a private, individual debrief in which the results are explained
based on the confidential packet individuals receive; and a group debrief in which
composite scores are presented. The individual debrief is an opportunity for people to
discuss what they’ve learned and gain insights about themselves. It often leads to
discoveries about work style preferences and interests that either support their
effectiveness or detract from it. People often feel validated and they learn something
about their responses to stress.
The group debrief provides distribution patterns related to sub-categorical (within
quadrant) values, skills, and interests. It also provides information about group thinking
and decision making specific to the composition of the group, as well as, group dynamics
under stress. As in individuals, stress can drastically affect problem solving and
communication style preferences.
The group results are very powerful for team building because they directly apply to
team behaviors—thinking strategies, problem solving, and communication styles. It is in
this debrief, that issues of diversity (re: these parameters) can be discussed openly. Many
people find these interactions to be very valuable, and in a few cases, have requested
follow-up sessions to address specific issues. The group debriefs often raise issues of
concern around work style or communication conflicts, or prompt discussions about how
team members can organize work to compliment each other’s strengths or compensate for
weaknesses.
The last two times I have administered the HBDI, group debriefs have focused
attention on intragroup conflicts, some of which had created opposing alliances within
the groups. In many cases, individuals have “aha” moments when they find themselves
candidly talking about interpersonal issues. What is achieved in the discussions has a
great deal to do with the ability of the consultant to foster and maintain a safe
environment, and provide meaningful information about the effects of differing
preferences and aptitudes.
To those concerned for the efficiency and survival of the organization, this attention
to individual differences may seem threatening, an invitation to chaos. However, a closer
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look at how complex living systems adapt and flourish should provide a clearer view of
the kind structure that organizations need.
This new perception of order and disorder represents an inversion of traditional
scientific views. According to the classical view, for which physics was the principal
source of concepts and metaphors, order is associated with equilibrium, as, for example,
in crystals and other static structures, and disorder with non-equilibrium situations, such
as turbulence. In the new science of complexity, which takes its inspiration from the web
of life, we learn that non-equilibrium is a source of order...Throughout the living world,
chaos is transformed into order (see Wheatley article in appendix).
The Possibility of Conflict
As we open ourselves to deeper understandings and appreciation of each other, we
may also be setting the stage for serious conflict when misunderstandings do occur. For
when we’ve invested our trust in another and it seems to be violated, the hurt may run
deep. In groups whose members suddenly start deepening their feeling for one another,
trust and bonding may come too easily at first, without being fully earned, and without
taking into account the genuine differences in values and perception that are bound to be
present in any group.
The acceptance of conflict and resolution as a normal part of the group process helps
develop flexibility in dealing with each other, and also with other kinds of ambiguities
that normally arise in modern organizations.
The Resource Inventory
A Team Resource Inventory can help teams know each other’s talents. The following
might act as a guide to help EMT improve its learning and thinking capabilities.
1. Administer the individual and team HBDI to EMT members.
2. Conduct a team session where a dialogue takes place on the team profile.
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3. Have each person look at the similarities and differences between their individual
results and the team picture.
4. Have the whole team evaluate the learning and thinking Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities, and Threats of the team as they relate to the team’s learning and
thinking capabilities.
5. What information does the HBDI team picture provide about how to maximize
the learning and thinking potential of the team?
6. What insights arise from the picture that can help prevent trouble between the
team members? To what extent have the team members assisted each other in
developing their individual potential?
7.
Have team members negotiate contracts with each other about how they will
support each other in their work. In these contracts, they will specify their
learning goals and the means for reaching them. In each pair or group of three
that engages in this process, it will be the responsibility of one member to review
at regular intervals how the other is doing in reaching the goals.
8. Have team members develop a list of individual traits, characteristics or talents
that are under-represented in the team assessment because of an assumption they
aren’t valuable to the enterprise. Talents should be things that they do well and
enjoy.
9. Have individual team members share and discuss each person’s list of talents and
traits.
10. Have them then explore how the team can use these in their daily efforts or their
team learning process.
When you have completed these activities, members can then take a new look at their
job descriptions, to determine how these might be changed or modified in light of new
information. In addition, each member of the organization might keep a list of the
resources provided by the others. The list makes it more likely that people make an effort
to use resources. It is a way to prompt usage.
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STEP 6 Put Learning and Thinking Power to Work
A knowledge worker organization well-suited to the demands of today’s challenges
strives for learning for the improvement of the organization at all levels—not just in
formal ways, but anywhere at any time, without specific instructions from managers or
instructors. Innovation and continuous improvement occur spontaneously, in ways that
serve and improve the whole organization and its collective purposes.
The first five steps in the process presented here expose and reverse attitudes that
reinforce barriers. Performing a clear-eyed, fearless assessment of where the
organization is and where it is going, supporting positive interactions among individuals,
encouraging thinking, risk-taking, and mutual interdependence are worthy endeavors;
and each step is inherently valuable. These steps taken together will greatly improve the
organizational health of the organization. But the deeper purpose of the first five steps is
to remove barriers to learning and thinking.
Barriers and Pitfalls that Limit Learning and Thinking
Three barriers to learning are common: logical, ethical, and feeling barriers. Logical
barriers arise when a crucial piece of information is missing from something we want to
learn leaving us no logical way to understand it. This is an inherent quality of wicked
problems—the most significant environmental problems confronting DEQ.
The mix of politics and complex, interdisciplinary science makes it impossible to
avoid logical barriers. A logical barrier arises when we cannot see the relevance of new
information. It is hard to learn things when we don’t know why we are learning them.
This seems to be a factor in some of the most controversial actions made by the upper
echelons of DEQ.
There is a wide range of tacit knowledge and behavior that people are assumed to
have acquired in their careers, which may not ever have been learned. Gaps in this body
of knowledge should not be viewed as reflecting on an individual’s capacity to learn or
perform any task, but as potential opportunities for growth and development
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Ethical barriers are limits to learning imposed by a person’s ethical standards. If
people are expected to learn something it must be consistent with their ethical standards.
The environmental ethos of some employees may at times, be in conflict with the
pragmatic recommendations of high-level managers. Ethical barriers seem to underlie
the professional difference of opinion disputes that have occurred at DEQ.
The third barrier evident at DEQ is the feeling barrier. Employees seem to be having
difficulty learning, in part because of the displeasure they have experienced leading to the
need for learning. There are many complaints about not seeing how decisions made
are in support of stated policies, or that the rank and file does not understand the
organization’s goals and objectives because they cannot discern them based on
actions being taken.
The greatest barrier to learning is fear. W. Edwards Deming, the famed guru of
quality improvement, believes that the top priority in the quality business is driving out
fear. The antidote to the feeling barrier is the cultural mindset that the previous steps have
been aimed at, chiefly embracing principles that promote emotional safety.
The pitfalls associated with developing thinking skills are time, attitude, the effects of
results, and frame or paradigm blindness. Time is a problem because when people have
little of it and are in high-stress situations, they tend to rely on tried-and-tested tools and
techniques to get fast results. Managers at DEQ readily admit their tendency to go
form one crisis to another—the result of a deficit in strategic thinking—but also a
tendency that forces people to habitually employ the same tools and problem solving. It
is important to anticipate situations so that there is time to use new tools and techniques
with enough time to correct mistakes that may occur while learning something new.
DEQ exhibits two very problematic traits that stifle thinking.. One is “NIH” or “not
invented here” and the other is “It always worked in the past.” A native of Oregon and a
seasoned veteran in organizational development in Oregon state government asserted that
“NIH” is an integral part of Oregon culture. In any case, the DEQ version limits thinking
and innovation. It is so ingrained into the culture that it quickly becomes apparent to
outsiders that discussions of approaches to problem solving and decision making from
outside of the organization are frowned upon, or regarded as some form of allegiance to
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another organization. The effect discouraging ideas from outside of DEQ is the
tendency to either be stuck doing what has always been done or reinventing the wheel.
There is also a tendency toward “it’s always worked here” thinking, even though
there is often little evidence to support the conclusion that it has worked well. In fact, it
is unlikely that there has ever been a serious review of problem solving outcomes at
DEQ because of the system’s self-admitted tendency to go from one crisis to
another. People engaged in this pattern of activity do not have time for reflection, let
alone a rigorous examination of past practices. Additionally, the lack of documented
processes throughout the organization, its longterm lack of effective record keeping (one
of the chief complaints of the Water Quality administrator and a major finding in the
DAS audit of HR) make it impossible to reasonably conclude that any formal effort at
assessment has every been undertaken. The presumption that things have worked in the
past debilitates effective thinking about current situations, and is dangerous.
The tendency toward crisis-oriented management makes it difficult to pursue
effective learning. It is important to use new tools and techniques on low impact
problems as skills are being learned. Going from crisis to crisis makes this impossible as
resources are necessarily focused on making it through the current crisis. Furthermore,
the perfectionistic and perceived punitive aspects of management action militate
against anyone trying to employ new thinking. Rather than do so, the current mode
of operation is to push decisions upward with the expectation that the director’s
office will provide the “right” answer. Learning new tools and techniques is facilitated
by the knowledge that the stakes for making an error are not devastating, and that there is
time for recovery.
Traditional training does not promote the type of learning necessary for survival for a
variety of reasons. First, it typically does not tie in with the strategic business needs of
the company. It is rarely flexible enough to account for crucial differences among
learners and simply does not work for many learners. Additionally, managers often resist
training and then sabotage its implementation. Resistance to training can be minimized
when it is introduced through a process of internal marketing that sells the training to
those who want it, or at least see its value. This is what was accomplished in BSD with
regard to training in communications, team building, and to lesser extent project
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management. People often find it dispiriting as they try to apply classroom learning to
the work environment. All training should include practice in its application to enhance
the prospects of success in the workplace. If there isn’t any follow-up on what was
learned in the classroom, who’s to know the difference. Training programs need to be
evaluated, and that means resources have to be allocated to do it. Managers often do not
get support for off-site training once they return to the job because the rationale for it
wasn’t well established. Such a rationale can be created when a brief sample of the
training and its objectives is offered to all those who have a need to know about it, just as
was done with regard to HBDI among MSD employees.
Over the past year, human resources specialists and OD consultants in MSD have
identified training needs and worked to build interest in specific training. Identified
topics include: professional differences of opinion; training about the recently negotiated
contract (for managers and staff) with focus on safety and health; manager training for
communicating with staff (difficult conversations, dealing with emotions in the
workplace, receiving staff complaints, giving feedback and recognition); new manager
development (supervisory training, introduction to management; general facilitation for
managers and staff group and mediation; diversity—cultural competencies, attracting and
recruiting staff for all managers; HR policies training for managers (performance
reviews, discipline and discharge, FMLA/OLMA/ADA, mobbying and bullying policy,
ethics, diversity, new employee orientation for management and staff); tribal relations;
customer service (internal focus); project management for managers and staff; and
decision making processes (participation, accountability) and resilience to
change/management for managers. These training needs have been prioritized tentatively
and await prioritization discussions with managers and staff. HR has also explored
options for training delivery. We have identified several potential vendors and DAS.
Last year, a couple of staff members and I interviewed Ernie McDonald, a veteran
trainer in the area of group problem solving and facilitation, as well as, Jon Townsend a
diversity and conflict resolution trainer. Both have existing contracts with the
Washington Department of Ecology and are highly regarded trainers. I have over a
decade of experience with each of them, and they have both expressed willingness to
custom design training for DEQ. Additionally, they are both local trainers and their rates
35
are lower than most of their competitors. Jon Townsend is a Native American trainer
who has already started to design training that would integrate key concepts from
diversity, conflict resolution, and communications.
There is still a need to prioritize training needs with the assistance of informed
managers. I suspect that many of the problems they confront are due to systemic, deeper
problems associated with organizational health and identified earlier. Issues generated by
a lack of participation in problem solving and decision making, the perception of a
double standard for managers and staff, the lack of clarity of assignments and lack of
standards of quality when assignments are made, poor boundaries regarding
responsibility and accountability, and poor communications are at the core of almost all
managerial problems that lead to training needs. Improving organizational health will
alleviate many managerial problems and reduce middle management stress.
Step 7 Map Out the Vision
The Lowest Common Denominator
The problem with poor communications, inappropriate boundary management,
conflict avoidance, and a lack of emotional safety when it comes to problem solving or
mapping a vision is that their interplay virtually guarantees that outcomes of group
problem solving will represent the lowest common denominator solution. People water
down their requests, minimize their objections, and seek compromise, often with the
result of producing a tepid agreement that no one fully endorses. Since people are not
fully committed to the agreement, it is abandoned when the next “fire” occurs, or when a
modicum of resistance is encountered.
The Abilene Paradox
The executive retreat of the summer of 2007 provided an excellent example of the
problem with false consensus at DEQ. The EMT was asked to illustrate the driving
forces that affect DEQ. Just as in the famous story entitled, The Abilene Paradox, the
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EMT made a framing decision without much forethought, and although some members
had reservations, persevered until reaching a point where it became evident that the
strategy being used was not likely to achieve the intended result. At that point, it became
apparent that no one had fully endorsed the group’s actions. Worse yet, people actually
had been mildly resistant to the group’s actions, but did not want to “rock the boat” or
appear as less than team players. The story, The Abilene Paradox, illustrates this
problem. In the Abilene Paradox, a family leaves home and drives 53 miles on a 104
degree day in a car without air conditioning to get ice cream. They purchase it but on the
brutal trip back they discover that no one really wanted to go to Abilene in the first place.
Everyone had gone along to get along. .
Many organizations suffer from both the tendency to generate the lowest common
denominator answer and the Abilene Paradox. On the surface, the lowest common
denominator and the Abilene Paradox appear to contradict each other. In one case,
people are doing what no one wants to do, and in the other, nothing gets done until
everyone agrees. Actually, they are both born of the same cause: When people
communicate only about formal transactions without reference to their feelings, there’s
no way of knowing what the group really wants, or might be capable of achieving.
Pseudo-consensus
Consensus has got a bad name in management consulting circles, in part, because
what clients call consensus is really settling for the lowest common denominator. This is
the only result available when problem solving occurs in an unsafe environment or when
people are not challenged to really explore the true nature of the problems they are
confronting, or in circumstances where parties fail to use their imaginations to generate a
variety of potential alternatives.
Effective consensus must be the result of consensus building. Consensus is
agreement by all parties involved, but often with varying levels of commitment and
enthusiasm by the various individual team members or subteams. Most of the problems
with consensus, as it is practiced at DEQ, emanate from the fact that employees do
not invest the time and effort necessary to achieve consensus, or they fear expressing
37
any thought that may be deemed unacceptable by the director’s office. As a
consequence, bogus consensus is achieved and coercive energy has to be applied to
secure necessary resources and ensure critical actions are undertaken. The result:
something that is everyone’s task becomes nobody’s task.
Real consensus is often laborious and time-consuming as people discover each
other’s real interests and motivations. People in fear do not develop consensus; in fact,
they develop pseudo-commitment, which is why they do not implement plans effectively.
Solving problems by achieving unanimity about questionable or undesirable goals is a
recipe for managerial impotence—something DEQ’s managers and executives have
been accused of.
When people who have interests in potential solutions are left out of discussions, they
can hardly be expected to wholeheartedly pursue plans that they neither understand nor
endorse. This may strike some managers as heretical because they expect allegiance to
decisions based on chain of command, but such an expectation reflects a lack of
understanding of the characteristics of knowledge workers with an environmental ethos.
While knowledge workers appreciate hierarchy, they tend to appreciate hierarchies
built on experiential or expertise power, not positional power per se. If they feel that they
have meaningful information or expertise to contribute to the resolution of a problem,
they will feel slighted and are not apt to be as proactive in implementing managerial
decisions as cognizant managers might want.
Their lack of participation in problem solving creates exasperation for another reason.
Even if they are supportive of the goals and objectives of a plan, the types of problems
they are confronting demand that they take small individual actions, often without the
opportunity to obtain prior approval. When they do not understand the context in which
they are making these decisions, they are apt to make the wrong decisions with the best
of intentions.
Consensus building is essential for achieving internal team unity. The advantages far
outweigh the disadvantages. First and foremost, each member of the team can realize a
sense of equity and ownership. Team member achieves equity when each feels
permitted, and actually encouraged, to participate in discussions on an equal basis with
other participants. This equality transcends status, values, and even the prevailing
38
thinking on issues. Each team member is respected as a person and as an important
member of the team.
Arguments are listened to attentively. Both the reasoning and the emotional aspects
of arguments are given attention. This is not benevolence. It is a recognition that
commitment and ownership operate at an emotional level and, consequently must be
addressed at that level. Opinions are sought from even the most reluctant or disgruntled
team members. Ideas are fully discussed in terms of compatibility with team values,
interests, goals, and realities.
The focus is on the good of the team (which hopefully represents the organization),
but at a level where members of the team can be supportive albeit with different degrees
of commitment. At the lowest level of commitment, the parties agree not to do anything
that blocks, impedes, or delays the implementation of an agreed upon solution.
When equity is realized, ownership naturally follows. Each member has a strong
sense of group identity and group membership to the degree that each shares collective
ownership of the problem, the decision making, and the dispute resolution.
The Synergistic Power of a Shared Vision
Positive attitudes, safety for thinking, readiness to risk, a desire to learn and
continuously improve, and the capacity to see others as resources sets the stage for
synergistic actions. When self-esteem is established in each person in the group,
everyone will have learned to think in terms of a personal future that is related to the
future of the organization. Such a condition promotes the natural evolution of the group
through the achievement of a shared vision.
In autocratic organizations, the vision is not shared throughout the organization and
the thrill of success is restricted to an inner circle. There is no natural evolution because
the system is controlled through force.
The evolution of shared vision cannot be a mechanical process. It must involve the
subjective needs of each member of the group; without strong convictions synergy is not
possible. When emotional satisfaction is taken into account and negotiated, achieving a
level of synergy that meets and exceeds people’s needs is possible.
39
Evolution is also not a linear or easily directed process. It is a natural response to
pressures and challenges that evolve out of individual action toward a collective goal. In
nature that goal is survival. Patience and the recognition that it is not possible to direct
evolution is important. It can be influenced, but not managed in the formal sense of the
term. Setting the conditions for change and bringing together resources that enable
effective action among capable, self-confident people possessing a commitment to a
shared vision influences evolution in a positive manner.
A sustainable high performance organization composed of knowledge workers can
exist only to the extent that creative minds come together in a common enterprise and
give it their best—not by watering down or compromising their talents, insights, ideas, or
skills, but by integrating them into a whole that exceeds the capabilities of any individual.
A truly shared vision engages the commitment and unique resources of disparate
individuals. Duplicating each other’s efforts is not effective teamwork, nor is becoming
an undifferentiated mass in pursuit of nebulous, externally imposed goals. Powerful
teams are composed of members who have retained their individuality, while recognizing
the need to work toward a common purpose. When a group of people is committed to
personal mastery and to the purposes of the organization itself, synergy occurs naturally.
As the vision of the whole comes into focus, it will be clearer how individuals or
groups are interdependent and must work together for the good of the organization.
Members of groups must come to this realization on their own. Efforts to coerce or use
guilt to get them to act as a team can only produce short term results. As each division
and each individual understands the impacts of their behaviors on others (what the
customer service intervention was to accomplish, as well as the process improvement
initiative headed by John Reel), and brings the whole company’s values and mission
more clearly into focus, s/he will coordinate their efforts so the best interests of all are
served.
Group Mind Mapping
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One of the most powerful graphic tools for achieving a shared vision is group mind
mapping. It derives its strength from its rootedness in visual thinking, and from the
cooperative process that produces it.
This is a particularly useful tool for EMT because the majority of its members are
highly visual. Visual thinkers need to see the relationships among the ideas they are
learning and thinking about. They need clear pictures to be able to understand the subject
under discussion, and thus assimilate it and use it as motivation for their work. One of
the major limitations of EMT meetings is that they are verbally oriented, but talk is a
relatively weak tool for building a shared vision and developing a shared purpose. Words
can be interpreted in many different ways. Additionally, even if we have unanimous
agreement about the meaning of words (very unlikely), people’s memories of speech
dissipate quickly, thus immeasurably reducing its capacity to motivate and energize
people.
A Mind Map represents through visual symbolism, the relationships between ideas,
projects, goals, and resources in much the same way that a map shows geographical
relationships. It is a graphical reflection of the connections people have made and the
relationships that they understand. It is also a record of real thinking.
Step 8 Bring the Vision to Life
Step 8 is a unique extension of Step 7’s mind mapping. Mind mapping is a way of
visualizing, displaying, and manipulating information that is more dynamic and flexible
than traditional linear, logical/analytical thinking. Step 8 clarifies activities, processes,
and relationships discovered in mind mapping by adding motion to it.
Seeing a process is better than talking about it, but seeing and experiencing a process
is the most powerful for learning. The chance to walk through a process makes it clearer
than any explanation ever can.
The Kinesthetic Modeling activity forces people to pin down definitions and
underlying concepts that can create confusion when they are not fully understood and
agreed to. This is one reason why these models can save enormous amounts of time in a
strategic planning process.
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DEQ has many divisions with different functions and responsibilities. As in many
organizations, each division has established its own typical procedures and processes of
communication. And also typical, is the fact that few people fully understand what all
the divisions do, or how the communication processes work. Kinesthetic Modeling is a
process by which employees can discover how everyone involved in a process act out
their relationships.
Kinesthetic Modeling is a very powerful tool for stimulating process improvement. It
is potentially very useful as a means of exploring possible changes in the processes,
structures and systems that make up an organization, many of which have been taken for
granted as long as they are virtually invisible. These modeling processes can either be a
static representation of relationships or a dynamic ballet of ongoing interactions.
Acting out processes can be revelatory. Participants who have actively walked
through processes get an understanding of how processes actually work. They also get an
understanding of the attitudes of people associated with parts of the process.
Team Building Tools
Kinesthetic Modeling is a valuable tool for developing structure around which a team
can be built. It helps members escape ceaseless talking and move toward getting things
done. Ideas are explored by modeling them, enabling people to be more innovative,
creative, flexible, and responsive. It is a form of learning that helps people step into roles
and relationships with deeper understanding of their consequences, implications and
effects.
Kinesthetic Modeling exploits the fact the majority of group dynamics is nonverbal.
The process exposes nonverbal behaviors that reflect attitudes toward issues and interests.
Nonverbal communication is more revealing than speech, especially with regard to the
emotional aspects of communication within a system. The emotional dimensions of
communication within a system are often subtle and below a person’s conscious
awareness. They are generally outside of the awareness of the sender, but not the
receiver. Receivers respond to nonverbal behavior. When the attitudes, values, words,
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and judgments of a person are not congruent with their behavior, that person inspires
distrust and a lack of confidence.
Over time organizations develop a wide range of signals and symbols that express a
great deal of unspoken information. These involve the space that people occupy, the way
they approach each other when meeting, the way they position themselves to talk to one
another, organizational rituals small and large, and a multitude of variables. These
behaviors signify a great deal about the nature of relationships and convey information
and attitudes that people may not be thinking about, but need to be taken seriously. They
become apparent in Kinesthetic Modeling.
Step 9 Connect the Systems
Step Nine is devoted to systems thinking. Steps 7 and 8 involve the exploration and
enactment of a system and Step 9 connects the thought processes behind those activities
so that the organization becomes fully aware of the relevance of systems thinking.
Many people tend to approach systems problems ineffectively because of a lack of
appreciation of some of the most important qualities of systems. A system is an entity
that maintains its existence and functions as a whole through the interaction of its parts.
Systems thinking looks at the whole, and the relationships between components of a
system. It requires studying the whole in order to understand the parts. Systems thinking
is the opposite of reductionism which is based on the presumption that something is
simply the sum of its parts. Reductionism provides the raw materials for linear
approaches to dealing with systems problem. It treats systems as though they were a
collection of sequentially connected parts. Unfortunately, systems are highly
interconnected networks and therefore do not operate according to linear principles. The
most important cause and effect relationships in a system are not linear. The effects of
DDT on eagles were not linear, nor are the interactions of forces contributing to global
warming.
Business process reengineering, a linear approach to organizational change was billed
as a revolutionary was to increase productivity in the early 1990s. It basically failed to
yield the promised results because of two inherent flaws. First, the presumption that a
43
company is a collection of parts like a transmission that can be adjusted piece by piece
and then reassembled; and second, because of a fundamental assumption that the pieces
and processes were more important than the people who preformed the processes. The
authors of BPR tried to salvage their work by writing a follow-up book about what they
had overlooked: human motivations, values, and behaviors but by then companies had
experienced inexplicable declines in productivity—that is, until they examined the human
aspects of the instituted changes.
Some problems are best solved through the use of linear, sequential processes. Fixing
a production chain, proofreading a paper, and writing a manual are well-served by linear
processes; but not systems problems. Linear approaches to dealing with highly
interconnected systems often compound problems, or are counterproductive. Jim Roys’
effort to employ a “scoping document” to define the scope of BSD projects was
theoretically a good idea, but it only exacerbated systemic problems in the agency
because it surfaced systems problems. Defining the scope of a software development
project raised issues about the use of the software in the regions, compatibility with other
systems like DAS’s, concerns about who was going to cover operation and maintenance
costs, scalability and user-friendliness. These issues are important to defining the scope a
BSD project and required difficult conversations before a meaningful scoping document
could be produced. The nonlinearity of the issue of scope definition, because of the
interconnectedness of systems and processes at DEQ, made scope management difficult.
The scoping document was a linear fix for a non-linear problem. Its true utility could
only be realized after addressing systemic issues—something we were starting to do in
early summer.
Linear processes are more controllable, which is one of the reasons people apply them
inappropriately. From an academic perspective, it seems that the best way to operate is
to check everything carefully and arrange tasks in the “right”sequential order, because
another other way seems sloppy, inconsistent and undisciplined by comparison. But the
reality is complex human problems cannot be solved linearly. Most of the time we are
forced to make decisions based on incomplete information, because situations are so
complex that it is impossible to work with complete information. Linear thinking can get
people into trouble because moving step by step without taking into account the whole
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scope of the interactive properties of a situation typically leads to failures often
associated with unintended consequences.
Interconnecting parts functioning as a whole in a system. By definition, a system is
intrinsically changed by taking away, adding, or modifying aspects of it. The essential
properties of a collection of parts (a heap) are unchanged regardless of whether pieces are
added to it, removed, or it is halved. Systems are also sensitive to the arrangement of
parts; heaps of parts are not. Organizations are systems as are cultures. They are
resistant to change, but well focused and well-timed changes can have significant
impacts.
The major problems being experienced in DEQ appear to be the unintended
consequences of highly task-oriented, directive behaviors. For example, being
highly prescriptive and critical disables thinking and learning processes, which
ultimately leads to a deficit in problem solving and innovation. Interestingly, many of
the “remedies” recently proposed by EMT involve more task-focused behavior. More
prescription, more detailed workplans, and more structured recruitment strategies. The
problems that confront DEQ are less about a lack of clarity about task as much as a lack
of clarity about meaning and the effects of eroded relationships. The recent contract
negotiations seemed to highlight these issues. They were remarkable in that most of
what the unions wanted most could not be put into a contract because they had to
do with relationship issues. The union talked incessantly about how employees are
treated, concerns about how and when managers communicate with employees,
respect for employees as symbolized by prompt and complete access to information,
employee participation in problem solving and decision making, et cetera. Their
concerns illustrate an important point, systems are about relationships; machines
are about parts and measurements.
The conclusions of a summer of 2007 article in the MIT Sloan Management Review
titled “Bridging Faultlines in Diverse Teams” are relevant here. Although the article
reported on the performance of internationally diverse teams, the knowledge acquired is
applicable to DEQ. International diversity should represent much greater differences
than what DEQ would encounter, but the authors noted that moderate levels of diversity
are more difficult to manage than large levels of diversity. It reported that task-
45
orientation early in the life of a diverse unit was effective. They cited examples of task
behaviors being the detailing of expectations about realistic performance, focusing on
resource identification, and setting up schedules for coordinating efforts as being
effective early in the formation of an organization. But continuing to focus on taskoriented behavior once the group has started to form proved detrimental to performance.
It advised managers to learn when to switch to relationship building. They explained that
“if the team is to effective in the longer term, then the leader has to switch styles from
task to relationship orientation. If the leader fails to make this switch, the team will
slowly become less effective...”
Systems thinking requires thinking in terms of relationships, feedback loops, and
networks. It requires mapping relationships and appreciating the principle of leverage, as
well as, the power of timing. Systems are remarkably resilient, but well-timed
interventions at key points of leverage can shift them radically. The concept of a “tipping
point” comes from a knowledge of systems.
Creating systems that are capable of learning and transformation requires several
conditions be met. 1. Memory: good systems keep track of themselves. This was one of
the first things I noticed was wrong with DEQ systems. They suffered from
undocumented processes and a lack of recordkeeping. This is not surprising in a system
that is constantly putting out fires, since there is little time to record what had to be done
to address the fires. And there is little time for reflection and learning as you go off to the
next fire. 2. Purpose: the purpose of each system must be defined. Parts of DEQ have
expressed deep differences of opinion about the purpose of the agency. Some
managers think it is to enforce regulations as interpreted by prevailing political
forces, others believe that it is to be the regulatory might behind stewardship of the
environment; and there are probably many views between these positions. Members
of divisions, being human, also have a tendency to maximize their divisional interests at
the expense of the whole organization—something that was evident in the demands
placed upon MSD by other divisions. Each division demands resources and interacts
with MSD in ways that meet its needs, but that limit the resources available to other
divisions. 3. Rules: the rules that the system operates from must be articulated. There is
an ad hoc quality to many of DEQ’s functions. Again, this is probably the legacy of
46
crisis-oriented management. Under emergency conditions, whatever has to be done to
make it through, is done. Rules are secondary to accomplishing the mission. This was
clearly evident in past personnel practices. Rules have to be devised with the full scope
of the system in mind. This includes knowledge of the total web of relationships within
the system. It means having the capacity to predict the consequences of various
changes—and that comes from candid discussion and keen, unbiased observation. It also
means knowing which points should be informed with feedback, when and where t
provide it, and what and where checks and balances should be introduced. 4. Continuous
improvement: keep revising the rules of the system to continuously improve operations.
5. Feedback: systems may need monitoring and regulating. Each system should have
sources of feedback that let members know whether the system is meeting its goals.
Right now, the primary sources of feedback at DEQ come from its labor union and
outside legislators. 6. Human behavior is part of the system: good systems encourage
people to act in the most positive and effective ways. Systems that fail to do so are
squandering their greatest and most vital resource.
Step 10 Get the Show on the Road
Step 10 involves the actualization of the values underlying the steps in the
organizational improvement process and the internalization of learning. It is the
culmination of all the steps and is where the excitement of involvement and the
commitment to success are manifested, if all the previous steps were done well. People
should understand and support the vision, be actively transforming their culture, and
helping build systems that meet their needs.
The details of their roles are not as important as helping them understand and support
the picture of where the organization is going, ensuring that all members have directly or
indirectly contributed to the plan for change, creating an inclusive and flexible change
process, and inspiring members of the organization to play a meaningful part in the
process of organizational improvement. If all of these conditions are met, the
organization will exhibit vitality and innovation; and as a consequence, be sustainable. If
47
any of the conditions do not exist, the longterm prospects of the organization functioning
at a high level of performance will be in jeopardy.
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Part II: Outline of Benefits of Strategic Thinking and Organizational
Development
Benefits of Strategic Thinking
Facilitates


proactive behavior
Makes it possible to set the DEQ agenda internally
Enables boundary setting


Clearer objectives
Clearer understanding of resource limitations
Enables
strategic discussion with EQC
Creates
potential for organizational change


Reveals organizational needs
Facilitates strategic planning and positioning
Addresses Burning Issues
Strategic thinking necessarily addresses:
Manager burnout
 More effective use of EMT
 Strategic information management
 Low employee morale
 Labor-management issues
 Continuous crisis-management

The Current Situation
Reacting to ill-structured problems
Problems brought to attention of agency by powerful
stakeholders or legislators
 Understanding of pressing problems


Primarily from director and legislative liaison
– Understand frame—real issues
– Constituencies’ interests and sensitivities


Effect: Short circuits strategic thinking since it depends on critical
analysis of situations
Effect: stakeholders frame issues and shape problem solving
49
– Problem solving assigned in DEQ to politically saavy or with knowledge of
prevailing frame
– Sometimes clash between scientific frame and political?
 When yes, professional difference of opinion
 Staffers: feeling of disrespect, lack of control

Effect: Forces managers to work on problems because know the frame
or political sensitivities
– Leads to manager burnout
– Leads to knowledge worker dissatisfaction
Strategic Thinking & Management
Traditional Management

2 objectives
Integrating goals of individual with goals of organization
 Creating conditions where goal attainment can be efficiently and
effectively achieved


Strategic thinking leads to effective strategic planning thus
providing context for effective management
Strategic Thinking Sets the Stage for:

Longterm (LT) planning


Setting goals and determining how to achieve over 5 –20 years
Organizing
Acquiring resources—human, financial, and technical to accomplish LT
goals
 Arranging tasks, delegating responsibility and allocating resources

Leading

Inspiring and empowering others
Controlling
Identifying gap between plan and performance
 Measuring and evaluating output

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Part III The Root of Management Issues at DEQ
The state of organizational health at DEQ is the product of the interaction of three
major conditions: a lack of emotional safety, a lack of communication, and a lack of
clear boundaries. The lack of emotional safety in DEQ is directly related to the lack of
synchrony between its predominant management style, the characteristics of its
workforce, and the nature of the problems that confront it.
All of these conditions seem to be systematic effects from efforts to give the agency
direction and realign its staff. At the end of the 1990s, the problems that the agency
confronted were perplexing. The consensus around environmental problems was falling
apart as these problems became more complex and less conspicuous, thereby raising
issues about the balance between environmental activism and individual and collective
prerogatives. About the time, political forces allied with industry mobilized, partially
in response to a poor economy, and started to assert their demands for regulatory
restraint and a customer service orientation in state agencies through legislative
action. Other special interest groups also pressured government to act, according to their
interests. Environmental groups continued to use public opinion and the courts, while
their adversaries continued to gain political strength. The effects of external forces
pressing DEQ for acquiescence to their agendas and the appearance of an unfocused
agenda as divisions operated according to the dictates of their professional training,
seems to have been the appearance of a lack of coherence from a “lack of leadership.”
The current director was able to use her knowledge of the legislative process,
personal connections, and political skills to establish a regulatory agenda and
priorities that was politically feasible. This approach, however, was a top–down
approach to management in which the director and legislative leaders framed issues
and the range of acceptable responses, and the director directed executives to direct
the next tier of managers to find solutions within those boundaries. Information
about the frame was often not readily available, even to executives, and subordinate
managers often found themselves in a “wrong rock” exercise. More problematic than
experiencing burnout from constantly revising “solutions” in which their staffs may not
have felt ownership (partially because they were not privy to critical information that
51
might have been persuasive), was the fear of punishment for not pursing the right
management goals or proposals. As administrators and senior managers were
removed from salient positions without meaningful communication about the causes
for such actions, the emotional safety of the organization plummeted. Only those
people with political connections were in a place to be able to understand the context that
was shaping decisions, and most technical specialists and middle managers were
insulated from those types of contacts.
While the top-down, autocratic style of management made sense in the early years of
the millennium, as environmental professionals acclimated to the political and regulatory
environment in which they were operating, it became more corrosive with time. Initially
it gave the organization a sense of direction, and allowed the staff to acquire an
understanding of the nature of the problems they were confronting as well as the interests
and positions of key stakeholders. But as staff improved its understanding of the issues
and concerns, it expected to regain its position as the framers of problems and the
generators of solutions. These functions are customary among knowledge workers.
When this did not occur, and efforts to assert professional expertise were rebuffed, job
satisfaction began to decline. Eventually, a perceived lack of respect became an issue
that fueled arguments about the “glidepath,” participation in problem solving and
decision making ultimately evolved into disputes about professional differences of
opinion and a host of union issues with the same recurring theme—a belief that
management is not concerned about the plight of nonmanagement employees and that
this is reflected in a lack of participation in things that matter (physical work
environment, work climate, and professional decision making) to the staff.
Effective communication is critical to the health of an organization confronted with
complex, ill-structured problems. Communication is the means by which people learn
about problems and it is critical when working on problems that are by definition defined
by stakeholders. It is also the way that people learn, both in terms of problem solving
and in terms of professional growth. In problem solving, it takes the form of
participation to help frame issues, to gather information and hear concerns, to evaluate
standards, and to monitor the effects of actions taken.
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Communication with regard to professional growth takes the form of communication
about the nature of problems and feedback about the individual’s specific actions from
managers and colleagues. DEQ seems to provide feedback in one of two ways—both of
which diminish safety and reduce the prospects for reflection. The first is knee-jerk,
blistering feedback without serious consideration of a proposal; and the second, is
indirect feedback, often negative, that precedes an ambush of some sort. The
ambush could be a sudden removal from a project or job, or a dressing down that
leaves a person in the proverbial doghouse. Both of these forms of feedback
diminish emotional safety and job satisfaction.
A lack of effective communications necessarily leads to conflict. This is particularly
important in dealing with the uncertainty inherent in dealing with wicked or ill-structured
problems. Matrixed organizations can manifest a tremendous amount of lateral and
vertical conflict because of the intertwining of vertical and lateral relationships. Of the
possible coping strategies for dealing with conflict, DEQ seems to practice conflict
avoidance the most commonly. People complain, but not directly.
Managers at DEQ tend to employ administrative change strategies. These strategies
rearrange authority relationships or redefine responsibilities toward the goal of
eliminating or controlling destructive conflict. Managers present conflicts to the
executives, in part, because of their lack of information and safety. This provides the
“winner” with the opportunity to suppress the conflict. In this situation, managers
commonly point to “communication” problems or unfortunate misunderstandings that
should not be allowed to disrupt friendly relations. The problem here is that smoothing
over the real conflict will not work. Task performance will suffer or the conflict will
increase or both.
Inherent to both the administrative or conflict avoidance change strategies is a view
of conflict as unhealthy and all efforts are directed at suppression, elimination or
containment. This view of conflict seems to permeate the highest levels of
management at DEQ.
Boundary management is a huge issue at DEQ. It is a matrixed organization, an
arrangement first developed in the aerospace industry when projects required both
diverse state-of-the-art expertise and focused efforts on each project. In a matrix, people
53
have tow or more formal location on an organizational chart. This organizational model
is intended to provide maximum flexibility as it can expand or shrink with need. When
operating effectively, it also provides multiple career paths, rewarding both specialized
and integrative skills. The tradeoff for this flexibility, in even the best of matrixed
organizations, is what is sometimes referred to as “human limitation.” It requires
enhanced communication and conflict management skills. Both of these activities are
time consuming, since an effective matrixed organization requires two budget lines,
contracts with two bosses, dual reward systems, etc. These mechanisms are very
expensive to maintain as they impose high transaction costs. There has to be a great deal
of communication to coordinate the actions of people in a matrix. Autocratic leadership,
in the form of highly prescriptive instructions and constrained information flows,
counteract the major advantages offered by a matrixed organization—flexibility and
innovation.
Traditionally, in matrixed organizations, people must discover or invent new
procedures and norms. This is difficult and seems justified when the stakes are high.
The advantages of a matrixed organization are local innovation and discover within the
context of the overall goals of the organization. The structure is sabotaged by a lack of
safety—a condition that stifles learning and innovation, and is inhibited by a lack of
candid and real-time communication.
Interestingly, one of the most problematic aspects of DEQ management is its focus on
the group as opposed to the individual. This focus is normally associated with militaristic
or industrial organizations, or organizations under siege. Under these conditions, it is
natural to place the mission over the individual. This perspective is atypical in most
modern knowledge work organizations such as DEQ. Knowledge work organizations
tend to place emphasis on individuals out of respect for their specialized knowledge and
skills. Many of the complaints articulated by the union, have at their core, resentment for
the lack of appreciation of the individual at DEQ.
Organizational development at DEQ focuses on groups and tasks. Consequently,
fixes tend to be technostructural changes, survey feedback, team-building sessions, and
intergroup activities. There is, however, growing pressure for attention to group
processes. A lack of resources to accomplish critical tasks, the need for succession or
54
transition planning, and recognized deficits in current processes and procedures are
highlighting the need for process improvement. These efforts will, however, reduce
managerial discretion and potentially put more power in the hands of specialists once
again.
DEQ management may have to consciously confront an important fact about sciencebased professional work. It cannot be managed like product-based work. It is critical for
managers to learn to exercise situational leadership. This form of leadership considers
the individual’s readiness to accomplish a task in terms of ability and willingness to
determine the type of task and relationship behaviors s/he needs to employ with that
employee.
Science-based professionals learn a rigorous scientific discipline as the “content” of
their training. The “process”—not explicit—inculcates a value for autonomous decision
making, personal achievement, and the importance of improving their own performance,
rather than that of nay institution.
As a consequence, most technical specialists identify much less with a specific
institution and more with the culture of their profession. Their cultures constitute a set of
values, skills, and knowledge quite independent of any work setting. The rewards of
major significance to them—respect, reputation--may come more from this larger arena
than from their institutional affiliation. At DEQ, congruence with the environmental
ethos seemingly measured by environmental results is a primary reward.
DEQ manifests two types of major boundary problems. It displays either enmeshed
or walled boundaries. Enmeshment is the term used to describe the violation of ego
boundaries. When managers interfere with specialists’ efforts to do problem solving in
their areas of expertise and within the scope of their work, what is often happening is a
form of enmeshment. The perception that management is overrunning the boundaries of
the specialist diminishes the specialist’s notion of personal safety and self-worth. Such
actions are perceived to deny professionals the rights and privileges supposedly granted
to them by their credentials. When autonomy is low and accountability is high in a
punitive work environment, job satisfaction and morale decline precipitously. Selfesteem also declines as people feel that the intervention of management (in this case)
undermines their competence and denies them the opportunity to achieve mastery.
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Enmeshment often takes the form of the subordination of personal needs to those of
the group. There are times, especially during emergencies, when this is a reasonable
strategy. It, however, is not a sustainable strategy, especially among knowledge workers.
DEQ employees have given up pay increases, control of technical issues that they felt
were within their scope of duties, and, in some cases, their professional identities to
continue to work for DEQ, but many have found the price too great to pay. The
cumulative effects of all these perceived assaults on their welfare were too much to
endure for many of the best performers. These have moved on to lucrative work in
consulting firms or other governmental agencies. Many have cited politically
palatable reasons for their departure—low pay or managerial impotence, but indepth interviews with some of them have revealed the constellation of issues cited
above and the subsequent decline in job satisfaction.
Another aspect of poor boundary management tied to enmeshment at DEQ has to do
with diffused responsibility. The lines of demarcation within the matrixed organization
that is DEQ are not clear. When parts of the matrix are not in harmony, problems are
pushed up to the executive level. Few members of the executive team feel free to
assert their individual opinions for fear of not being in agreement with the director,
so they try hard to avoid conflict. Ultimately, this leaves the director in the position
of telling the executives the answer, which annoys her. But she seems oblivious of
her influence on the way they engage conflict.
Managers use the lack of clarity regarding boundaries to avoid responsibility and
accountability. It is the excuse for meddling in others’ domains, and is often used as a
means to diffuse accountability.
The other extreme of boundary problems is walled boundaries. In parts of DEQ, the
boundaries are so thick that they diminish critical social interaction (one of the primary
ways that a system learns how to deal with complexity) and the distribution of
information. These boundaries can be seen in hierarchy of the system, but also in some
dealings among members of teams. There are executives who have admonished staff
members for talking about issues with others before telling them about them, or have
imposed barrier to communication among workers and with stakeholders.
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Universal Damaging Effects of Fear
The single root cause for all confusion and lack of commitment found in most
companies is fear. And where there’s fear of repercussions, there almost certainly has to
be crippling fear of accountability. Fear also exacerbates conflict and produces high
levels of stress and anxiety.
Fear carries a very high price tag. Quality guru, W. Edwards Deming, used to say,
“The first principle is to drive out fear.” When people are dominated by fear, they don’t
think well, their decisions are poor, and they certainly don’t have a valid picture of where
the company is headed—or should be headed.
Don’t Leave Out the Human Factor
Knowledge worker organizations are not machines. Organizations might have been
able to ignore the human factor in a factory environment, but they can’t in a knowledge
worker environment. When people were “hired hands,” what they thought was not
important. Managers could see the product of their work and they could easily evaluate
and manage the output. In knowledge work agencies, managers do not necessarily know
more than the worker—in fact, they rarely do. The problems that their staffs are
confronting are typically qualitatively different that the ones they worked on because of
technological advances, rising levels of sophistication and power among interest groups,
and the overall complexity of environmental problems.
Traditional project management presumes knowledge pre-existing knowledge of the
product, which is not the case in complex knowledge work. There are no established or
generally agreed upon standards, half the time establishing standards is the main issue.
Second, costs are hard to characterize. Third, the timeframe for resolving the problem is
difficult to set, if it is possible to do so at all. Consequently, the two primary means of
structuring work using project management —defining schedules and budget, are not
available to the project manager. The main activity of the project manager, controlling, is
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also very difficult to do. Controlling is essentially closing gaps identified through gap
analysis. But how do you do a gap analysis when there is no agreement about the
planned performance and it is extraordinarily difficult to determine current performance?
The people who do the work are the most important people in the Knowledge Work
system. They get the work done. In the old system, it was the manager. The challenge is
to recognize that work gets done better, in a more timely fashion, and more efficiently, if
you care about the people who do it.
When Fear is Justified
When an organization is grappling with high uncertainty and people are fearless,
there is a need to impose discipline and orient and coordinate efforts. This can be
accomplished by increasing the level of accountability in the system. But that
accountability needs to include clear communication and the setting of known standards.
Meeting this criterion is difficult when the drive for change is coming from outside of the
organization and is political in origin. The evaluation criteria, from the perspective of the
front line, seem to change capriciously.
Accountability without clarity of requirements coupled with poor feedback is
perceived as unfair by employees. But perhaps more important, they are a recipe for
producing fear and eroding trust. The immediate effect of this is the “turtle syndrome”
(people don’t stick their necks out), which is associated with a lack of innovative thinking
and communication. Eventually, a lack of trust starts to permeate the workforce and
morale plummets.
Some People Just Hate to Change
People operating in fear don’t change. They may know what they have to do, but
they are too terrified to move. Sometimes they are afraid to change because they are not
sure that they will be able to adjust to the new order, or they fear that they will have to
work harder. Whatever the case, they are motivated to resist real progress, while seeming
all the while to promote it. They sometimes do not realize that to enforcing current
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modes of behavior can only result in reinforcing the current state of affairs. This seems
to be the case at DEQ.
Habits bred from fear are very hard to break, even when they want to break them.
These habits have ensured survival and people are loathe to abandon strategies that
maintain their existence. Just as people who have been starved must be fed a
carefully supervised diet in order to recover, so people who feel that they have
always been manipulated will take a long time to trust a management that’s decided
to change 180 degrees.
The Insidious Effect of Denial
Management insists things are fine (except of course, that the workers aren’t any
good and you can’t hire effective labor anymore). The answer is, you’ve got to care about
your job before you can be persuaded to make positive changes. Until then, your mind
will be focused almost entirely on the time card you’re punching.
While managers are deprecating their employee’s efforts, workers privately complain
and sometimes even express their discontent to outsiders or union activists. Until the
executives read the handwriting on the wall and decide it’s time to develop a clear picture
of how employees feel and how current management is affecting them, there’s almost no
hope of diverting the organization’s collision course with disaster.
Management typically keeps moving along. Thinking that measuring and enforcing
will improve productivity without regard for the workers. They deliver selfcongratulatory pep talks, do employee surveys without following through on the results,
and generate empty corporate vision and mission statements. These half measures only
worsen the situation, underscoring as they do the disparity between what should be and
what is.
What Shall We Do About management
If you’re in charge, assume what you are currently doing may have been what was
needed to set the ship on the right course in an emergency situation, but that it is not
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sustainable. The crew cannot continue to indefinitely take orders without an
understanding of the ship’s bearing, continuously put out fires, and working selflessly in
the face of dwindling job satisfaction from a perceived loss of autonomy and mastery..
The people in charge must now take measure of the state of the crew. They may have
to realize that the exodus of highly skilled and desirable employees, the decline in the
performance of some at one-time “high fliers,” and the general malaise in the
organization may be the price for running the people at full throttle indefinitely. It is
important to realize that current management strategies may be stifling or intimidating the
people working for you. This realization can be difficult because a great many workers
choose to take offense at things managers do without ever airing their grievances.
Instead they either “vote with their feet,” or carry a chip on their shoulder that may last
for months and years. This chip can motivate them to make mountains out of mole hills
or become highly agitated over problems that they perceive to be legitimate such as “sick
building syndrome,” questionable new security practices initiated unilaterally by
management, or the consequences of fires, et cetera.
The water quality program seems to have come to this realization, but not without a
great deal of turmoil and threatened union action. At some point managers have to move
from task-oriented behaviors to relationship-oriented behaviors to prevent a decline in
performance. This is one of the main findings in an article in the summer 2007 edition of
the MIT Sloan Management journal.
In cases like this, people are afraid to tell executives and managers what they have
done to offend them. This may mean that it may be necessary to hire a consultant to
discover what is really going on. It is important to pick someone who will help the
executive group learn what is necessary to communicate skills to tell each other how they
feel about what is happening. To initiate real communication, you’re going to have to get
rid of hidden agendas—and even the perception that there might be hidden agendas.
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Taking Responsibility
Improvement itself is never the real difficulty. Once individuals recognize and agree
on their position, it is never difficult to improve. The unfortunate part is that very few of
us own up.
Habits of blame and self-justification only increase the paranoia within organizations.
Together they become a negative force that can undermine the whole working
environment.
Organizational Accountability
True accountability takes commitment. It is the result of a long series of experiences
in which you learn to accept reality and come to understand clearly what role you play in
its creation.
Accountability of this sort is often not possible without some record keeping, because
you don’t really notice what you’re doing otherwise. A clever physician was able to
change a person’s dietary habits without ever giving them direct instructions. All he
asked the person to do was to keep a record of what he ate for a week. The patient
carried a notebook and wrote down what he ate. He recorded every snack; every cookie,
handful of potato chips, and pieces of candy he had during the week. At the end of the
week he had formed a completely different picture of his eating habits than the one he’d
had before. He started to think about what he could do to change his eating habits. The
experience of record keeping was, in this case, enough to get across what the physician
had been trying to tell him.
Keeping track of what really goes on will reveal that good intentions are simply not
good enough. In order to get the job done properly, you have to notice every aspect of
the process. This is the reason why organizational development starts with good process
and systems analysis. The Management Services Division (MSD) recently hired a
business analyst to ensure that a serious assessment of the work processes in Human
Resources and Business Systems Development would occur. Additionally, the customer
service approach to working with Business Systems Development (BSD) could not only
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make the expectations of customers more realistic, but also create impetus for the
customer to improve their own level of satisfaction by doing things that facilitate
effective service delivery. The ensuing agreements should also provide impetus for
changes in the configuration of service delivery within BSD.
People need to start to ask questions like, “what am I doing to limit the success of the
organization?” But most people would prefer to pretend that the whole thing is the fault
of some individual in control, the whole group, or the system itself.
Orchestras and Soccer Teams
An orchestra or sports team must depend on the performance of the entire group, not
just isolated individuals to succeed. Individuals, in order to succeed, must share and
preserve the mindset, knowledge, skills, and attitudes (culture) of the organization even
as other individuals come and go. As individuals become functioning participants in a
group, they internalize the culture and give it life.
Right now, at DEQ, there appear to be two distinct cultures. At the top, there is an
understanding of the policies, goals, and objectives of the organization that the rest of the
organization is not fully aware of, as attested to by the comments of the union that
represents the employees. It sees policies but has stated that it does not see the
connection between espoused values and the actions being taken.
The second culture is that of rank and file. It is primarily composed of technical
people that try to uphold interests in environmental stewardship and regulatory processes.
Among them are also employees a substantial group of silent employees who get along
by going along.
This situation seems to be the natural result of the legislature-focused model of
management that has existed at DEQ for the past seven years. The top of the
organization understands the political context that a policy is operating in, and thus how
to frame a decision and what actions are preferred. The rank and file technicians
operating without the benefit of these insights make sense of the situation according to a
limited body of knowledge and their environmental ethos. Using these factors to assess
situations and make decisions about actions tends to put them at odds with the prevailing
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power structure and leads to confusion, generate feelings of impotence, and ultimately
leads to professional differences of opinion in some cases.
We Might Be Looking in the Wrong Place
If change is to occur in DEQ, individuals must change. A winning team starts with
the behavior of the CEO. Roger Milliken, the CEO of Roger Milliken & Co. Inc. at the
company’s annual quality meeting, raised his right hand, asked his 30 managers to raise
theirs, and said, “Repeat after me: I will listen. I will not shoot the messenger. I
recognize that management is the problem.”
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Appendix: The Words of Others
Good Managers are All Different and All Alike
So a good manager need not make things happen, and probably shouldn’t. What a good
manager should do is what a good mother does: Be there, listen, advise, coach, teach,
and believe very deeply that your people are capable of excellence.... Believe in the high
quality of your people, and believe in the brilliance of the result they can achieve. Let
them know you believe it. Then they will give it to you.
The commitment of top management to change everything for the better is necessary in
order that a new kind of management can set the standard for change in everyone else.
Only if top management sets the example of change will everyone else be inspired to
follow. In addition, the change from the top must be real and believable, or the entire
organization will dismiss it as hollow and superficial.
The old style of management, with its pyramid of power ascending to a single, allpowerful CEO, is yielding to the new dynamics of shared power, teamwork, flattened
organizations, and peer review.
If you’re running a sweatshop or an old style production line, it may not be good
manners, but it is good business to push people around and make them conform.
However, as high tech industries develop, such attitudes get in the way and greatly
diminish the effectiveness of business.
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The Power of Chaos
Excerpts from a conversation with
Meg Wheatley
by Joe Flower
Introduction
About one lifetime ago, astronomer and physicist J.B.S. Haldane remarked,
"The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, it is queerer than we can
suppose."
In recent years, science has begun to turn itself inside out in fascinating investigations of
that basic strangeness of the universe. Since its very beginnings, one of the basic
assumptions of science has been a deterministic, clockwork-like model of the universe.
Nature was obviously more complex than the straight lines and simple forces of Euclid's
geometry and Newton's physics -- but eventually (it was assumed), if we got enough
information together, and got down to the right level of detail, we would find that
everything was predictable.
In the first half of this century, quantum mechanics (which held, among other things, that
whether light is made of particles or waves depends on what question you ask), Kurt
Gödel's principle of incompleteness (which demonstrated that every mathematical system
contains theorems that are true -- but unprovable without enlarging the system), and
Werner Heisenberg's theory of uncertainty (which held that you can discover the speed of
an atomic particle, or its location -- but not both at once), began to chip away at this
deterministic assumption.
Systems thinking, which arose out of studies of communication in World War II, greatly
increased our ability to think about how complex, active, interactive systems work, but it
remained weakest in dealing with "mess," turbulence, and traumatic change.
How do things fall apart?
And then what happens?
How do things fall apart? And then what happens?
Some of the people working on communications theory focused not on the message, but
on the garbage in between -- the static. Others began thinking about dripping faucets,
clouds, coastlines, and the formation of bubbles in water that was about to boil. Just as
systems theory, born in communications theory, proved helpful in dealing with all sorts
of things, from organizations and family interactions to economic problems and the
design of lawnmowers, perhaps a study of turbulance and chaos would be relevant to
such messy things as landslides, rush-hour traffic, epileptic seizures, and organizations
going through traumatic change.
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The resulting "chaos theory" has hit its stride only in the past decade -- and only now is it
beginning to leak into other applications, as theorists begin to apply its insights to
discontinuous, transforming change in a great many fields. At the United States Naval
Academy at Annapolis, historian Robert Artigiani has even applied it to analyses of the
the U.S. Constitution, the rise and fall of Greek civilization, and the success of Horatio
Nelson at Trafalgar.
Meg Wheatley, Ed.D., has begun to try chaos theory in a field that has intimate
experience with the realities of chaos: the management of organizations. With a doctorate
from Harvard and a masters from New York University, Wheatley began her consulting
career as a founding member of Rosabeth Moss Kanter's firm, Goodmeasure, Inc.
Wheatley is now an associate professor of management at Brigham Young University,
and a principal in KRW, Inc. Industry Week named her book, Leadership and the New
Science: Learning About Organization from an Orderly Universe "Best Management
Book of 1992." She is founder and president of the Berkana Institute, which sponsors an
ongoing series of dialogues about the "new science," and how it applies to re-thinking the
life of organizations.
Our conversation with her took a shape much like the organizational changes that so
fascinate her: nonlinear, surprising, and self-organizing.
Wheatley:
There is a simpler way to lead organizations.
In order to find that simpler way we need to look for very different lenses by which to see
into the organization. Until now, our predominant lens has been the lens that sees
organizations as machines, and human beings as machines or parts of machines -- which
is all good 17th century Newtonian imagery.
When you switch to thinking about organizations as complex living systems, you get to
see a lot of processes that could work in your behalf, as a leader. We can take our
management metaphor, not from machines, but from the ways living systems organize
and reorganize and manage themselves.
At one level we are already switching our focus to a deeper understanding of
organizations as living systems. If you look at the language by which we are now trying
to describe organizations, a lot of it describes living systems. We talk about "learning
organizations." We are looking for resiliency, for dynamic qualities. We are looking more
at relationships and how relationships work in organizations.
Chaos
Once we make that switch then we have to start looking at the processes by which living
systems grow and thrive. And one of those is a periodic plunge into the darker forces of
chaos. Chaos seems to be a critical part of the process by which living systems constantly
re-create themselves in their environment.
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We have been afraid. As managers and leaders, and as consultants, we have been terrified
of chaos. Whenever a group is confused, whenever people are really uncomfortable not
knowing what to do, most of us take that as a signal that we have failed them somehow.
The model we have is that organizations should work smoothly, that we as leaders should
feel in control all the time. Chaos, of course, is a loss of control. So the minute chaos
erupts, we back off from it. We rush in to save the group from confusion.
We tend to think that is our job. But that's only true if you think of your organization as a
machine, because machines cannot tolerate great variance. Machines are established to
run in certain environments. They have no flexibility or resiliency to deal with
extraordinary levels of change. If you think of an organization as a living system then
hopefully you can structure it so that it has the capacity for great flexibility and
resiliency, and the ability to adapt, to change, and to grow.
Patience:
We can't get out of the messes we are in without developing a much longer time
parameter, without having a new kind of patience for the development of order. Strange
attractors reveal the order that is inherent in certain kinds of chaotic systems. You can't
see that order until you are able to watch the system evolve over a good period of time.
When you look moment to moment at a system in chaos, all you see is chaos, total
unpredictability. When you are able to watch the system develop over time, you can see
the order that emerges out of the chaos.
T.J. Cartwright, a planning expert, has given a definition of chaos that I love: "order
without predictability." This is a very enticing paradox for us.
Yet in today's organizations we are seeking more and more control as things get more and
more crazy. You can ask any top leader or administrator that you know and they will tell
you that they are barely hanging on. It is a sign of health for a leader now to admit that he
or she does not know what works. In admitting that the old approaches don't work, they
are opening themselves up to the possiblity of radically different ways of thinking about
their organizations.
No cookie cutters:
I got in trouble with my academic colleagues recently when I was quoted as saying, "The
idea that expertise can be transmitted needs to be abandoned." They said "Then why have
graduate programs?" I was trying to say that the belief that any particular model or any
particular body of knowledge transfers whole from one system to another is erroneous.
Knowledge, models, and expertise are co-created by thinking people working in and with
their environment. Since that environment is different for every organization, it doesn't
work to take something that has been developed in one place and just transfer it
wholesale to another place.
We have tried that. We have tried it with program after program, and we have generated a
well-earned cynicism among our work force as they watch these programs come and go
without creating the desired change. We have to do something different. We have to
engage the whole system of the organization in figuring out what makes sense for that
particular system.
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The answers, the expertise, need to be created by the system that needs the expertise.
Certainly, some people have expert knowledge, but the way to use that knowledge, these
days, is to give people particular frameworks and ideas to play with -- realizing that as
they play with them they are creating new knowledge. They are not taking something
that's tried and true and just applying it in cookie-cutter fashion. If they are making it
work, they are creating new knowledge.
Information
I use the word "chaos" to describe those times in an organization when people are
confused, don't know what to do, and feel overwhelmed by information that they can't
make sense of. If we recognize chaos as a potentially generative force in our
organization, then the first task, when chaos erupts, is not to shut it down, not to reach for
early closure, not to immediately move back to our past comfort level. At those moments,
what people do not need is for someone else to come in and make sense of it all for them.
Nor do they need the other normal strategy, which is to back away from all of this
information and just work a piece of it. What they need instead are processes by which
they can stay with the discomfort of that information long enough that they get knocked
off their certainty, long enough for them to reach the clarity that they no longer know
what works, that their model, their frame for organizing this problem or this organization
doesn't work any more.
That's what I call chaos, when people move into such deep confusion that they let go of
their present conceptions of how to solve a problem. When they move into that place of
not knowing, and stay there for a while, what happens is that the process of "self
organization" kicks in.
Living systems, when confronted with change, have the capacity to fall apart so that they
can reorganize themselves to be better adapted to their current environment. We always
knew that things fell apart, we didn't know that organisms have the capacity to
reorganize, to self-organize. We didn't know this until the Noble-Prize-winning work of
Ilya Prigogine in the late 1970's.
You can't self-organize,
you can't transform,
you can't get to bold new answers
unless you are willing
to move into that place
of confusion and not-knowing
which I call chaos.
But you can't self-organize, you can't transform, you can't get to bold new answers unless
you are willing to move into that place of confusion and not-knowing which I call chaos.
In my work I find that you can create intentional chaos by overloading people with
important and relevant information that they can't make sense of.
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We help people generate information that finally overwhelms them. The information has
to be relevant, and it has to be important. It has to deal with big questions.
People get scared and frustrated, and they want to problem-solve their way out of the
chaos. But we don't let them. We keep them generating even more information. Finally
they let go. Once they let go, they have the capacity to come up with bold solutions that
integrate all of the information. At the other side of chaos you get a new kind of order, an
order that is adaptive, that is transforming, that is all the things we want in an
organization to be.
That is an intentional use of chaos. The chaos that seems rampant in our organizations
today needs to be resolved in the same way. When people are feeling confused and
overwhelmed, instead of shutting down information, we need to create more processes
for looking at the information, and even generating even more information.
Information, in organizations, is usually handled with an attitude of control and
parsimony. But when we do that, we are taking information, which is the vital organizing
force of the universe, and using it in a way that creates more loss of control.
We need organizations in which information is open and abundant, in which information
that is relevant to the life of the organization is just there for people to use as they require.
You get order through creating information and making it available. That is an
enormously paradoxical concept for managers who have been trained to see information
as power, as something that has to be carefully controlled and conserved and fed to
people in little doses.
The science of self organizing systems says that if you want order you need a free flow of
information, because information is what living systems use to transform themselves.
"Who are we?"
In order to make sense of this information, an organization needs a strong core identity
that is clear to everyone involved. It needs filters that help people recognize information
that is critical for the organization. We have not attended seriously enough, yet, to issues
of the identity and purpose of organizations. We talk about values, visions, and missions.
I am starting to talk about the core identity.
"Why does this organization exist? What is its purpose? What is it trying to achieve?
Why do we bother working together?" These questions need to be answered. The answers
need to come out of the whole organization.
We need to have processes in which the whole organization is engaged in weaving its
story.
An organization needs to know who it is in order to make sense of a chaotic environment.
Otherwise you are just buffeted in all different directions. We need to do much more
work in organizations in making a really vibrant core, the core values.
One of the lessons we can learn from the new science is that once you have formed a
strong core identity you can then trust people to organize their own behavior around that
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identity, instead of organizing by policies and procedures. The behavior will look very
different from person to person. And that will be okay, because (and this is one of the
great lessons of chaos) you then stand back and look, not at those individual behaviors
but at the pattern. Then you will be able to see the true pattern of the organization.
Scary
This can be very scary for managers. It asks them to act like adults, and to believe that
they have adults working for them. Not everyone will be able to do this. Some American
managers will be able to behave like adults and change their life posture. Some of them
won't.
Those who don't, who are already leading lives of increasing stress, will simply not be
able to survive, either professionally or in their personal lives.
I don't think we have a choice. And I don't believe that we will find a simpler way to lead
complex organizations just by doing the old approaches faster and better.
There is a simpler way to manage, and it feels very strange, even foreign to us. But time
and stress are on the side of change. We simply can't keep doing it the way we have been
doing it.
Motivation
As managers and as consultants, we have always been interested in that big question:
how do you motivate people. But the real answer is simple -- you don't. Instead, you trust
that they are self organizing systems who come with their own desire to thrive. They will
make adjustments and do what is necessary for them to flourish. In an organization, you
don't have to "incentify" anybody. You have to create the conditions under which they
can thrive.
Among the things that human beings naturally seek are the ability to contribute and to
make a difference, and to be ability to be involved in satisfying social relationships.
Those criteria show up at the top of every study I have ever looked at on why people
work. If you design your organization around these criteria, it will have to be one in
which people are not boxed into roles, in which they feel that they can continue to grow,
learn, and develop, and in which a variety of relationships are available to them.
When you box people in, when you see only a few of their attributes, you kill them.
Then, in order to make them work, you start adding on all of these incentive programs
and other external motivators. The pay and incentive system could be much simpler.
People do not need these intricate structures. The reason they need them now is that we
don't allow them to work in an environment which satisfies them. We need to be more
creative than that.
Once we've created organizations which really support people's contributions, then I don't
think people are looking for complex rewards. I think they are looking for straightforward
pay that feels fair. They are looking for pay that reflects their contribution (or their team's
contribution) to the whole.
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Just as this is scary for managers to use the energy of chaos, and to survive without so
much structure, it's also scary for the people being managed, until they experience it. It's
a little less scary the second time. By the third, fourth, or fifth time that you have been
through a process which includes chaos and letting go, you realize that this works and
that it has enormous potential.
I recently completed work with an organization that decided to engage all 900 of its
employees in creating a vision. The process was messy and ambiguous. It was a process
that did not allow anyone to nail down a vision for anybody else. We finally got to a
place where a lot of people in the organization understood that even vision is a process.
That they don't need to have something clearly written down. That, having gone through
the process of working together, and illuminating what they wanted the vision to be, the
vision is in their guts, in their hearts. They don't need it up on a wall.
To get to that point of clarity -- that vision itself is a process -- they went through a series
of very large conferences which included moments of deep, intentional chaos, and ongoing periods in which we simply would not let people become concrete. They didn't like
it at all. But they liked what they got. They liked where it ended up. Now they have a
little faith in this very different process.
Play and laughter
People have to be more playful. Once we accept the fact that we can't just import
solutions that will work for our own organization, that we have to make it up, then we
have to ask, "What are the circumstances that help people be thoughtful and creative, that
help them come up with answers that work?"
What helps people be creative is experimentation -- seeing what works by doing it. We
need to create an atmosphere in which experimentation is welcome, and that means an
atmosphere in which we don't take everything so incredibly seriously. We need to be
much more forgiving, we need to be much more compassionate, we need to be in deeper
relationships with one another.
Play is a quality that leads to good experimentation. Sometimes that means not having the
answer right away. We need to realize that it's okay to say "That's interesting, I don't
know the answer, let's just think about it. Let's play with it for awhile."
One plays by not killing people for making mistakes, and by going back to some vague
memory that work should be fun, that when work is fun, it can still be very hard, but it
has a whole different quality to it.
We need more laughter in management. Lewis Thomas explains that he could tell
something important was going on in an experimental laboratory by the laughter. He
says, "Whenever you can hear laughter, and somebody saying, `But that's preposterous' -you can tell things are going well and that something probably worth looking at has
begun to happen in the lab."
Contrast that to the sort of quintessential management maxim, which is, "Don't surprise
me. I want to know ahead of time, I can't be caught looking like I didn't know what was
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going on everywhere in the organization." That's an incredibly restrictive maxim. It
insures that you will stay exactly where you are.
All this process
People ask how we can possibly do all this process at the very time that we are trying to
be more nimble. But how can we possibly be more nimble if we are not willing to engage
all the time -- thinking together, figuring things out, coming up with solutions that work
for a while, that are temporarily adaptive?
We tend to think of process as a "touchy feely" thing. In fact, quantum physics says that
process is the basic building block of the whole universe. The universe is energy fields
coming into relationship with one another, forming something temporarily.
Planning
Information only has value when it is in relationship to the current need. And the current
need is forever changing.
This notion of life as a fluid, as a changing process, needs to get imbedded in our
organizational thinking. We have failed in things like quality in this country by failing to
see that what makes the quality process work is the attention to process itself, to the fact
of people being in new relationships in which they are generating new and useful
information. Instead we have thought of quality management as a technique or a tool.
That is why so many of these processes have failed -- we see them as a technique to get
to a particular outcome, rather than a way of building a quality of relationships that
generates critical information continually.
Of course, this greatly affects the way you do your planning. You can't do simple cause
and effect linear projections anymore. But you can set a very clear direction in which you
intend to go. You can set a clear intention about the kinds of markets in which you
believe your core skills work best.
You probably will not get there exactly, but the process of trying to create probabilities
about what the organization and its environment can achieve together is very important.
We need to create, as part of the planning function, much better information-sensing
devices, generating information that then gets fed to all parts of the organization, so that
the organization can continuously adapt and change as that information requires. That's
different from saying, "This our five-year plan."
You can still say, "In five years, this is who we want to be, who we want to be serving,
what markets we'll be in, what will characterize us and what will make us different."
Focusing on a strategy is critical. But the question is: Who gets to do it? If the 12 top
managers come up with a brilliant strategy, the rest of the organization is going to say,
"So what? We already know this."
All of us who have worked with this know from our experience that we get a lot of "So
whats" if people are not involved. Even things like the strategy of the organization should
come from the organization. You can't "self-organize" from the outside. You can't have
12 people decide how a whole group of a thousand or 20 thousand should self-organize.
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Creating meaning
We need to find processes by which we can engage the whole system in developing its
future, creating meaning, creating purpose, creating clarity about what it is that we are
capable of accomplishing as an entity.
The guys who sweep the halls will have something to say about it, and so will the
customers and the suppliers -- all of the stakeholders. There is a great deal of talent and
expertise available both within our organizations and in those outside stakeholders, that
we just need to start using.
I don't work with any processes now that start with the assumption that a few people can
design something that will be of benefit for the rest of the organization. Only the
organization itself can design the processes and outcomes of which it is capable. So the
real challenge is creating these processes that engage greater and greater numbers of the
organization. That is a real challenge, it is a fundamental rethinking of leadership, but I
think it is the right challenge to be involved with.
People are open to the challenge because of their own loss of confidence in what they
have done in the past. And, at some deeper level, they know that this stuff makes sense,
because we are all of us self-organizing systems. People recognize it from their own
experience of life.
We already have a lot of examples of the principles that come from this new science at
work in successful organizations. We just haven't had the language to talk about, and the
lens to look at, what was making sense.
They have seemed to be the exceptions, the sort of odd things that shouldn't work. But
now, instead of being the exceptions or the oddballs, we can see that they are the
forerunners of a whole new way of working.
Words
Strange attractor: Think of a planet's orbit. The dynamics of the solar system -- the
interaction of the planet's mass and speed with the mass of the sun -- cause the planet to
act as though it is "attracted" to a particular line in space, which we call its orbit. In this
simple, mechanical, deterministic system, it's not hard to plot where the planet will be
tomorrow or 15 years from now. On the other hand, think of the movement of clouds, the
growth of trees, the swirling motion of a liquid. These systems seem "chaotic," without
any predictability. But in fact, theorists of chaotic systems have discovered that they also
have "attractors" akin to a planet's orbit; that is, their movements have an internal
structure. When various measurements of their movements are plotted onto two- or threedimensional "phase space" graphs, they do not fall into random glops, nor into simple
orbits, but into strange and beautiful shapes reminiscent of taffy in a pulling machine,
filigrees of coral, or the rings of Saturn. These shapes of probability showing the
complex, self-organizing structures of chaotic systems, have been dubbed "strange
attractors."
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Chaos: We think we know chaos. It's a "mess," a pile of rubble, a condition without form
or meaning. But as Nobelist Ilya Prigogine showed in his book, Order Out of Chaos,
there are, in fact, two kinds of chaos. One is low-energy randomness, like a shuffled deck
of cards. Without the addition of more energy (like some poker players), such a system is
not going to organize itself. But high-energy, turbulent chaos is quite something else -- its
disorder contains the seeds of order.
As Wheatley puts it, chaos is "the final state in a system's move away from order. Not all
systems move into chaos, but if a system is dislodged from its stable state, it moves first
into a period of oscillation, swinging back and forth between different states. If it moves
from this oscillation, the next state is full chaos, a period of total unpredictability. But in
the realm of chaos, where everything should fall apart, the strange attractor comes into
play" -- and a new kind of order emerges from the chaos.
Resources
For further reading on the "new science:"
Bateson, Gregory. Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York: Bantam Books,
1980.
Briggs, John, and F. David Peat. Turbulent Mirror: An Illustrated Guide To Chaos
Theory and the Science of Wholeness. New York: Harper and Row, 1989. The easiest
layman's guide.
Capra, Fritjof. The Tao of Physics. New York: Bantam Books, 1976. Also, The Turning
Point: Science, Society and the Rising Culture. New York: Harper and Row, 1989.
Gleick, James. Chaos: Making a New Science. New York: Viking, 1987.
Jantsch, Erich. The Self-Organizing Universe. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980.
Peters, Tom. Thriving on Chaos. New York: Knopf, 1987.
Prigogine, Ilya, and Isabelle Stengers. Order Out of Chaos. New York: Bantam Books,
1984.
Zukav, Gary. The Dancing Wu Li Masters. New York: Bantam Books, 1979.
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References
Bleiker, Hans and Annemarie Bleiker. 1986. The Citizen Participation Handbook.
Laramie, WY: Institute for Participatory Management and Planning.
Capra, Fritjof. 1996. The Web of Life. New York: Bantam Doubleday Dell publishing
Group, Inc.
Daniel Dana. 1989. Managing Differences. Wolcott, CT: MTI Publications.
Gatton, et al. 2007. Bridging Faultlines in Diverse Teams. Summer 2007. MIT Sloan
Management Review.
Herrmann, Ned. 1995. The Creative Brain. Lake Lure, NC: The Ned Herrmann Group.
Lincoln, William F., Robert J, O’Donnell, Leroy Tornquist, and L. Randolph Lowry.
1986. The Course in Collaborative Negotiation Participant’s Workbook. Salem, OR:
National Center Associates and Willamette University College of Law.
Maccoby, Michael. 1988. Why Work. New York: Simon and Schuster.
O’Connor Joseph and Ian McDermott. 1997. The Art of Systems Thinking. San
Francisco, CA: Thorsons.
Ohmae, Kenichi. 1982. The Mind of a Strategist. Penguin Books: McGraw-Hill.
Patterson, Kerry, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler. 2005. Crucial
Confrontations. New York: McGraw-Hill.
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Rosen, Robert H. 1991. The Healthy Company. New York: The Putnam Publishing
Group.
The Essentials of Situational Leadership. 1980. Escondido, CA: Leadership Study
Productions.
Wheeler, Jim. 1995. The Power of Innovative Thinking. Shawnee Mission, KS:
National Press Publications.
Weisbord, Marvin. 1987. Organizational Diagnosis. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley
Publishing Company.
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