I cannot count the number of times that clients have contacted me because “we have a problem of ownership”. Typically a crisis with clients or suppliers triggers a compelling event which launches an OD project to enhance ownership.
Just last month, a CEO called me in because a very strategic supplier had refused a huge contract because “it takes 6 months and 200 emails to get paid, and no one seems to own paying us”.
Dealing with ownership issues effectively necessitates a very accurate diagnosis, in order to prevent the solution from turning into just another engagement plan.
In this short post, I want to share what I have found to be the root cause of “lack of ownership”.

1) ERP has been implemented brainlessly, eliminating common sense and closing all by-passes. This is by far the most common reason behind lack of ownership.
2) Irrational and non-achievable commitments have been made, and as a result, no one wants to be stuck with the dirty end of the stick, guilty of non-delivery.
3) There is an overemphasis (NOT an under-emphasis) on role clarity. Many problems need to be jointly owned (eg by Development and Customer Service) and not arbitrarily pinned on someone who is powerless.
4) Recent downsizing almost always drives a collapse of ownership. This is almost always incurable in the short term.
5) Too much data can cause a lack of ownership! For each slide and for every chart showing lack of ownership and poor responsiveness, employees learn to hide even better to make the charts look betters. (Eg, call centers which answer the phone within 2 seconds and cut off the call).

Enhancing ownership means addressing these issues at their core. It is root canal work, not a mere filling. Here are 3 tips on how to be effective in such projects.
1) Make sure that your project has a clear owner, because often the ownership of the OD project replicates the ownership problem of the organization.
2) Work from the micro to the macro. Start with delving into cases, not studying charts.
3) Get lots of input from the front line. Speak to the soldiers much more than the generals.
4) Learn the IT system and its constraints.

For many reasons which are beyond the scope of this post, Israel and Israelis tend to have a survivor mind set which manifests itself in various domains such as internal politics, policy making and external affairs.

In this post, I will relate to the ways that the survivor mentality manifests itself in organizational behaviour, which is the domain of this blog.

Since there is a lot of deviation within any given population vis a vis specific behaviours, not every Israeli or Israeli organization will display these characteristics.

However I am dealing here with generalizations which are frequent enough to merit mention.

• Emotional (life is a struggle)
• Insider-outsider dynamic,or us or against us (friend or enemy?)
• Paranoid about other’s hidden agendas (can you be trusted?)
• Fast and responsive (matter of life and death)
• Lots of argument about minute points; trees are as important as forests; not expedient (it is all about principle, not priority)
• High level of involvement and commitment (it’s a war)
• Very pragmatic and action oriented– do anything that works; hands on (shoot, don’t talk)
• Extremely adverse to planning, preference to improvisation (hush hush about intentions)
• Points of agreement constantly re-opened and negotiated (win, not win win)
• Entertainment of parallel strategies all the time; not consistent (one upsmanship)
• Speed as strategy ; build first and scale later, sloppy (slow and steady looses)
• Challenge authority constantly but highly loyal in the crunch (commando)

So, what are the keys to being effective when you work with Israelis? The answer is a post in and of itself so I will leave you with 5 tips in the meantime.

1. Talking on the phone is more effective than email.
2. Be strong and negotiate all the time.
3. Avoid expediency which is seen as a near fatal weakness.
4. Don’t try to buy performance (Your bonus depends on this.)
5. Discuss underlying trust issues openly. Israel ain’t Japan and the more open you are, the better.

This post is dedicated to my 4^th grand daughter Rona, a 5^th generation Israeli, born at 9 am this morning after a prolonged 8 minute labour! Speed as strategy.

Organizational changing involves periods of ambiguity, during which it may not be clear what needs to be done and/or how to implement the changing.

When consultants are brought in, they often bring along process, trust-enhancement between divergent functions, and tools for bottom up involvement. Sometimes they work tailor made, and too often they use pre-packaged crappy tools with apparent effectiveness only.

In my consulting experience, I have found that I have created the most value for my clients by focusing on their basic assumptions about the ambiguity and the anxiety encountered in the changing process.

Here are several issues that my clients and I discuss. Introspecting working through these issues, they have reported a feeling of more competence in dealing with changing.

• Which parameters are ambiguous? Which are not? Do we need a reality check?
• What threat does the ambiguity create for me as a leader? What is my knee jerk reaction to ambiguity and anxiety? How effective has this been?
• How does my anxiety about the ambiguity impact my assumptions about what is expected from me as well as what I expect from others?
• How much tolerance for ambiguity is needed? How much is expected from me? How do I bridge the gap?

Here are five examples of how leaders have benefited from these discussions.

• Ed’s level of anxiety is very low. And he has a huge tolerance for prolonged ambiguity. Often his troops believe he is lost, albeit that this is not the case at all.
• Smadar is very practical and fast moving. She has little tolerance for “too much definition”. At first, she saw her style as very adaptive to changing but ex post facto, lots of change she has led have failed.
• Vlad assumed that ambiguity needs to be as short as possible and anxiety can be mitigated by appearing to be strong. He has often been pushed aside by senior management during complex changes.
• Ngai Lam’s belief is that a leader needs to protect her team from the unknown. She is very much respected by local employees but her remote staff believes she lacks the credibility to manage change.

OD’s major value is not extricating leadership from the unknown. The bang for the buck from OD is exploring with clients the parameters of the unknown and its implication on anxiety and leadership.

See http://www.blog.gr2010.com/what-makes-od-projects-easy/

Mohammed is a 2nd generation American whose family comes from Egypt. He heads the Middle East and Asia Sales for a Dutch-French conglomerate.

Mohammed has convened a meeting of his staff in Cyprus and has just conveyed bad news…..there is an 30% drop in revenue in 2015, and this will have massive impact on the region. Using a lot of emotion by slightly raising his voice, Mohammed asked all his managers to provide input to “make this problem go away”.

Hans, a German who heads sales in Indonesia, gave a very, very detailed blow by blow description of what was causing delay in revenue, product by product and client by client.   Mohammed, never known for his patience, told Hans to “focus on the woods and not the trees.”

Anat, an Israeli, (Israel, Cyprus, Turkey Region) argued that the way corporate recognizes revenue “makes no sense”. “Anat”, Mohammed  said, “I am also a Middle Easterner, but sometimes bargaining and positioning need to end”.

Watanabe, a Japanese managing Japan and Korea, sat and was silent. Mohammed told Watanabe that “silence is unacceptable”. Watanabe looked at him in shock. “I am thinking, Mohammed-san”. Do you want me to act with haste on such a serious issue”?

John  the American finance guru of the group suggested that no one go home before there is a detailed plan.

Mohammed pondered how to get all his team on the same page. Anat said “let’s start doing something”; Wantanabe was astonished.

Following a merger or acquisition, leadership often has wet dreams about leveraging the merger/acquisition to maintain the best cultural components of both company via the forging of a new culture, enhanced by the stronger points of each component.

Yet, there is no such thing as creating a new culture in a merger, based on the best of both companies. Following an acquisition or merger, there is an inevitable Darwinist struggle between weaker and stronger cultures.

In this short post, i shall relate to driving a culture change in a post-merger/acquisition environment.

One culture (generally the acquiring company) asserts its culture on the other and dominates it. There is very little that can be done to prevent this, although the degree subtlety may appear different. I am not even sure that this Darwinism is bad, because companies need one dominant culture  to enable integration.

Over time, the acquired company’s culture may have some minor impact, but this will be in the context of the dominant culture.

There are three areas of focus which can create some cultural change in the year or so after merger/acquisition period.

1 The acquiring company will need to focus on the creation of scalability in order to get value from the acquisition. This need can drive massive change.

        2. The acquiring company will need to create a loyal power structure in the        acquired      company,which does not try to preserve autonomy.

2 The acquired company needs to go thru a period of mourning, to accept the new regime and to eventually join the acquiring company as individuals, not as a group.

Final comment:

Beyond the consultants role in enabling,  planning, execution and monitoring of mergers, a consultant would be wise to see his/her role as a midwife, not trying to fight some of the natural course of post merger events.

This having been said, there is a lucrative  market for pre-packaged crap (protocols)  that merge 2 or 3 cultures into one in a few easy steps.