..it was the winter of despair.

Charles Dickens- a Tale of Two Cities

This is probably one of the most difficult times to manage effectively in recent history. Supply chains are chaotic, much of the work force is in quarantined or about to be quarantined; there are more resignations and loss of knowledge than in the past and doing even easy tasks is much much harder than ever.

I have been very lucky to be blessed with more work than ever. It appears that expertise and experience now count for something.

Over the past year, I have focused my work with managers on a very few  and focused messages-and I want to share them with my readers.

1) Frequent changes of direction are often necessary… yet the more changes in the message, the less the folks will trust you or your messages. So ensure that messages are over-communicated. 

2) “I don’t know” is a real answer, a legitimate answer and probably the fairest answer you can provide in many situations.

3) Manage your managers aggressively, so that they don’t force you to drive your people into the ground with unachievable goals in tough times.  Show appreciation when people do what they can, even if it is not enough.

4) Avoid sloganeering at all costs. Slogans don’t make much sense in regular times, but in difficult times, use of slogans (like “develop customer intimacy)  make you look absurd.

5) Don’t idealize tragedies. Working from home is a bitter necessity; not a religion. There is very little positive that comes from #wfh with 4 kids at home, lack of infrastructure, and Zoom fatigue. Tell it like it is, and don’t perfume  the pig. (Thanks Sherry)

There are cultures that get most things done by leveraging personal relationships (and even by trading so-called favours)  to speed up or by-pass process, get things done now, clean up later and solve routine as well as stubborn, irritating problems.

Example-Simon needs an electrician to check out  wiring at station 3 after a repair. He calls Vlad, who is about to go home, to “do me a favour and check out station 3 now because I don’t want to come in early tomorrow morning for your scheduled inspection.” Vlad agrees; deal done. And Simon owns Vlad a favour.

Another example: Todd from Engineering and Chava  from Purchasing  take part in face to face management offsite for next-generation managers. Todd’s requests gets preferential treatment from Chava whilst Chava never gets push-back from Todd when she prefers a certain vendor with whom the firm has a special relationship, albeit their poor level of customer service.

And then came covid. Offsite done by Teams.  Todd and Chava’s relationship has cooled. Simon and Vlad have not had breakfast and lunch together in over a year due to “covid capsules”. Relationships have cooled. No favours exchanged. No short cuts. Nada.

Zoom calls, Whatsapp groups and other “colder” avenues of communication have taken the “warmth” away from the task. The task is a cold thing that needs to be done. No one needs to be cajoled or appreciated. Work needs to be done.

All cultures find this transition somewhat difficult. Other cultures find it crippling.

To be more exact, in cultures where relationships formed from doing tasks, the transition to the covid and semi-post covid mode is a minor and unpleasant challenge.

In cultures where good relationships served as a platform for getting tasks done, the “carpet” has been swept away and getting things done is a nightmare.

Symptoms of the “carpet being swept away” include  a slow down in getting issues resolved, mutual blaming, far more cover-my-ass-communication and lots of things stuck in the pipeline waiting for escalation.

So-what are the solutions? To be honest, I have none that bring us close to what the situation was before covid.  On-line happy hours, sharing personal experiences remotely and a million other tricks I have read about don’t cut the chase. 

(Or maybe I am too old? After all, I preferred standing in line to order movie tickets outside the theatre rather than ordering tickets on-line.)

However if you are finding it hard to do get along well with people who come from relationship-driven business culture, I suggest: travelling to meet them as soon as possible, talking about things other than “work”, sharing mutual interests, small talk before and after meetings, coordinating strategies before meetings, and trying to avoid trust-busting escalations.

Whether or not there is a long-term trend to “mass resignation” has yet to be clearly established, simply because the world is still in the throes of Covid.

What is clear however, is that the initial response to undeniable increased resignations is very misled. Recently, I have read posts and articles peddling the same “retention strategies” of the past, but simply now with a double dose and some added steroids like “do it now or die”. The most annoying thing that keeps being regurgitated is that people leave bad bosses, not bad organizations. Yes-people die in bed, but beds are not necessarily dangerous places. At present, it is fair to say that people are leaving good and bad bosses, as well as good and shitty organizations.

I want to briefly share how I view increased resignations as well as  what I propose in order to deal with increased resignations.

1) Increased resignations are a societal trend, so even if you do everything right, you will face increased resignations. Yes! Even if your managers are superb and you pay well.

2) Look at your organization’s vulnerability to resignations.

• Do you have champions upon who you are highly dependant?
• Is there a lot of oral history that one needs to learn to be effective?
• Are there jobs structured so that it takes years to master them?
• Are too many key relationships held by too few people?

Once you have mapped out vulnerability, focus, focus, focus. Do NOT apply an across the board simplistic solutions.

3) Here are a few avenues of pursuit which lessen the blow of increased resignations at your vulnerable points.

• No more lean and mean-hire reserves and/back ups.
• Outsource functions which take too  long time a time to learn to reputable firms. So called “core competencies” need to be re-examined.
• Appoint second drivers for key functions-perhaps even third drivers.
• Any job which takes more than 6 months to learn should be restructured if possible so as to mitigate the damage from churn to enable a rapid recovery time. This may be extremely difficult yet absolutely necessary.
• Abolish total ownership of key relationships. Smith owns the relationship with GE? Not any more. No more full exposure Smith’s loyalty to the firm. Because whatever you do, long term loyalty is either dead or in a coma-and you cannot change that. It is a societal trend.

Update

This post was written at the end of last year. In the mean time, I have augered more experience in dealing with so-called mass resignations.

1. It’s real, but it is not so mass.
2. In many professions, it is caused by a shortage of manpower which enables employees to jump ship and get 40% higher wage. Isn’t it better just to pay attractive salaries, for heaven sake?
3. Effective approaches are not necessarily strategic, but more targeted on roles with harder to find skills.
4. Turnover has a positive effect. Fear not. Outsourcing is not the end of the world, even for key competencies.

Bob Small (Iowa) , who has been running the Integration Team for two years, informed his staff that he has accepted a new role with a competitor and is leaving in a month. Bob is unaware that his move is seen as self-serving whoring by several of his staff-because he puts his individual needs before those of his team.

Manfred (Munich) has just learned that his direct report Emma (Italy) invited Selene from presales agreed to attend a design review meeting. Manfred sent Emma an angry text message; Emma spoke to HR to get a transfer away from “Manfred’s control obsessiveness”. Manfred cannot understand why Emma did not run this decision by him first.

Shauli (Israel) asked Sanjay (Hyderabad) to suspend a certain safety routine for 5 minutes to allow him to fix a bug on site at a customer. Sanjay told Shauli that he will do so “after I tell my boss”. Sanjay thinks Shauli is overly pushy.

Sanjay (Hyderabad) told the same Shauli  that he has indeed taken care of the purchase order for new CAD tools. Shauli has got the same answer for six months and he thinks Sanjay is a liar. The truth is that Sanjay has asked for budget, but has not “yet” received an answer. 

True, Sanjay, Shauli, Manfred, Emma, Bob and Selene should learn about the cultural values of those people with whom they work. However, my belief is that the precursor to any cultural awareness learning is a thorough knowledge of how others’ see your very own culture.

This self awareness is often hardest for those who believe that other cultures are “less developed” than their own, i.e.- commonly Anglo cultures and Japan. Dutch, Scandinavians, Germans, Israeli and Russians have an easier time learning about themselves because they tend to be less defensive about how “right” they are. 

When faced with complex issues in a global organizational context, many practitioners fall back on the  traditional values of the OD profession. These values, western in their etiology, are built into the type of input OD professionals provide, as are the tools that the OD practitioner administers.

When traditional OD  tools and interventions are aimed at a Miami water utility or a Houston department store chain, that’s one thing.

In a global environment, a less value driven approach is more appropriate. There is no use of asking a Thai engineering team to be more “open” with their Taipei based boss.

I have found that bringing  people to “mutually adapt” to one another is an extraordinarily useful approach.

It is not a value-neutral approach,  but it is not ramming my values as a consultant down the client throat-and subsequently failing, to boot.

Leveraging “Mutual Adaptation” rather than naïve value imposition,  does drive behavioural change in organizations with acute diversity.

Mutual adaptation basically provides the client with the following platform: you all are both very different. You have a common task, but you probably understand it differently. The way to get it done is in your hands. Find a way to work together. If you hold onto your own way of doing things, it may/may not work, but there are prices to pay. Try to adapt to one another. Assume your partner will do the same. Or he/she may not. That needs to be worked out.

Case:-

Sherman Whitehead is an American executive who likes to shoot straight, make decisions expediently and delegate. Sherman is New Product Introduction VP.

His colleague Nathan Ramos from the Philippines prefers to concentrate authority, delays decision making until he can try to please most of the stakeholders, and sees each and every decision as a matter of principle. Nathan is Key Greater Manilla Area Account Manager.

Sherman is driving the introduction of  a new product into Nathan’s territory. Until now, it has been a massive failure.

Sherman and Nathan have a great difficulty working together. Sherman has his foot on the gas; Nathan has his foot on the brakes. Sherman takes risks; Nathan plays it safe. Sherman makes decisions; Nathan says yes and then sabotages. No client is willing to meet with Sherman and Nathan’s sales may plunge within a year, or may not. But the heat between them reached HQ.

A traditional OD consultant was called in to “jump start” their relationship. The consultant, armed with the corporate values of “focus on implementation” and his own preference for openness/transparency and “meeting in the middle”, soon lost Nathan’s trust by force-feeding transparency. In parallel, the consultant lost Sherman’s trust for slowing things down and sloganeering.

Elan is yet another consultant who was hired after the first consultant failed. Elan  sat with both parties separately and then together; he explained that they need to find a way to mutually adapt to one another. This may mean compromise; overpowering one another; cutting a deal, backstabbing, helping one another look good. Whatever. But the consultant says he has no preference. “Find a way to adapt; I can work with each of you together, or separately, or you can figure it out on your own.”

Then Elan sat with both parties separately, and explained the world view of the other party is his own words, removing nuances which could aggravate mutual adaptation.

Nathan called Elan to have supper and explained to him that he, Nathan, was fearful of losing a key government account if he took too many risks. Sherman had a drink with Elan at midnight and asked Elan to “tell me what I need to do to move this thing forward”.

Elan’s approach was to pressure each side to assume ownership of adapting to the other. At times, but rarely, he offered a compromise when both sides agreed up front to accept it because they were stuck.

Since the prognosis for mutual adaptation is hampered when one party is more powerful than the other in role, power, or the way power is used, the use of “mutual adaptation” must be modified given a gap in power differential. Elan either sets ground-rules up front  and/or abandons the technique and reverts to a more executive type of  OD intervention. And thanks to Peter Altschul for pointing out the need to clarify the impact of power differential on the dynamic.

You have been offered an OD project to improve the information flow between management and employees in an unionized shop. The entire shop is unionized except for customer service reps which is an outsourced service. The union opposes the project. What are your alternatives?

This post includes a short article clarifying the relationship between OD in a unionized shop as well as a quiz!

By OD, I am not referring to training, outdoor training, personal coaching or anything else that masquerades as an OD effort, but rather to OD as a system intervention aimed to remove non tangible barriers to change.

The relationship is not all complex, as long as we keep our thinking straight and don’t inhale our own smoke. Let’s look a few axioms.

• Management pays for OD efforts. That says a lot, does it not!?
• Unions are legitimate, elected representatives of the employees. The unions represent the interests of the employees, and if the employees do not feel represented, they vote the Union out of office.
• OD practitioners may feel that the Union should/could/must be represented or not be represented in OD activities. Yet, this is not for the OD practitioner  to comment on, because it gets him, or even her, involved in political intrigues between management and union, with management paying the bills.
• OD as a profession is neither pro nor anti -Union. It is agnostic on this issue, however it is not perceived as such because our bills are paid by management, and we try to build trust and direct communication between management and employee, which may not be in the Union’s interest.

Now that I have put forward my axioms, here are a few tips.

• Avoid becoming a player/mediator in any interaction between management and union.
• Avoid commenting/addressing any controversy or disputes whose etiology is a political struggle.
• Answer all questions that you may be asked with by a union representative with full honesty.
• Think of each and every intervention you do as something which may have political ramifications, and then reconsider if you want to risk an entire project for one naïve move.
• Introduction of technology, systems, AI and whatever are not agnostic in the power balance between union and management. Again, do not be naïve.
• Now a comment to my American brethren: Since OD’s “traditional” values are so much aligned with democracy, remember that Union representatives are elected and management are appointed.

Quiz

Management is revamping the performance evaluation system and the union steward from the IT department calls you to ask how much “weight” be given to seniority. He asks to meet you. My answer: Meet with him/her along with a manager and provide your honest assessment.

You have been asked to lecture the software team on “Critical Success Factors of Team Work when working from Home”. Of the 50 team members, only 6 show up because the union has boycotted all OD and Training  due to management’s decision to cut benefits of staff who work from home. My answer: I would not give the lecture if it’s being boycotted, or girl-cotted.

You witnessed an incident where one employee cursed another using an ethic slur. There is pre-dismissal hearing and since you were the only witness, you have been asked to state what you heard. The curser was a member of the union. My answer: Of course I would not. I’m not internal. But I would informally leak what I heard, and leaked that I’ve leaked.

As organizations have changed beyond recognition since OD was founded, the profession has not shown much resilience. OD practioners cling to outdated values, irrelevant tools, and outdated assumptions.  There are many reasons for this rigidity and in this short post, I want to point out what I believe to be the major barriers to change.

• OD was a revolution. Revolutions become institutionalized. Prophets are replaced by priests; rebels are replaced by bureaucrats. The bureaucrats and the priests auger power and sanctify the revolution as “over”.
• Many people who teach OD do not practice OD, except for lectures and guest appearances. Some have never had a long term client in their life. As opposed to a great legal mind who knows the law but has never been in court, or a philosopher whose very detachment from the everyday enables new perspectives, OD professors who have not spent years in the field are worse than useless; they promulgate an understanding of organizations as they existed more than half a century ago.
• There have been very few innovators in the field of OD. The innovative brains of OD are in the field doing OD, practising OD, but not renewing it from positions of power from within the profession.
• As organizations changed faster than OD, OD became more fundamentalist, much like the Amish, Hassidic Jewry or the Bible Bashers of the South. Believers blind themselves to a world that they do not accept, and sanctify the past. Maybe this is what religion is about, but not OD.

What needs to be done to expand the awareness and derivative skills of the OD professional? I have a few concrete suggestions:

1. Work experience of 5 years in a real organization with a global configuration is a pre-requisite to studying OD. 
2. Understanding the western bias of OD must be compulsory.
3. Skills for practicing OD in hierarchal and face-valuing societies must be obligatory.
4. Proficiency in a foreign language, my assumption being that that learning another language always expands cultural awareness.

“The answer is easy if you take it logically” Paul Simon

How has OD adapted itself to the changes in organizational configurations? Let’s take a look.

First I will spell out just a few ways that organizations have changed in the last few decades.

1. Organizations sell things that do not exist, install half-cooked crap, and fix it constantly, until it works-and then sell an upgrade which is managed the same way.
2. Most communication is not face to face.
3. People who work together do not work in the same building; as a matter of fact, they work in different time zones and-lo and behold, may not share common values.
4. Business travel is dead due to a plague impacting the globe.
5. Nothing is predictable, most of all supply chain, stability of order flow, and relevancy of existing products.
6. Service provision has been digitalized.
7. ERP’s have produced brainlessness and the near death of personal ownership.

I would be very interested in knowing if and how OD has adapted to these changes?

Imho, it hasn’t-which is why there is so much standing on the shoulders of the tired and very dead founders. If you are interested in what needs to be done, most of the posts in this blog provide an answer. Start here. Then here. Now this.

After which, you can plough through my blog-and most of the changes that OD needs to adopt are spelt out.

It is about a five minute drive from my home to the clinic where I will get my third corona vaccine tomorrow. It’s scheduled for 17:52 ( 5.52 pm). Now that’s Israel for you-some things work (health services) and some things don’t; it will take me about an hour to find parking once I get to the clinic. There is no parking to be found-legal or illegal.

Of course I know that I am a guinea pig and I don’t give a shit. I would much rather risk a few side effects than risk choking to death. I know of very few people my age who will not get the shot. Except of course for those who have already died of something else.

Masks have now returned to style, albeit often worn on the chin. Wearing a mask in the summer heat is not at all comfortable, to say the very least. But as delta rips across the country, imported by cretins  who took  summer vacations in unsafe places, the mask is making a comeback. How much of a comeback? I’d say as frequent as is condom use.

Every night there is a short programming-spot (on channel 11) which tries to “make sense” of the corona data. After each broadcast, I am more convinced than ever that the experts remind me of the various specialists who treat back pain: “live with it”; “exercise less”, “exercise more”, “you have a curvature of the spine”; “try acupuncture”; “I can operate”, “look, you are 71, what do you expect?”. And of course “it’s in your mind”.

Consistency is lacking not only in corona data, but in public policy. The country club mandates that all people coming into the club have been vaccinated twice. But this does not apply to the staff. Or the kids. Or the contractors. Actually, it applies to no one. Or perhaps it applies to the specific person at the entrance. Alexi is on his cell phone and doesn’t care who comes in; Fatima is typing her thesis and doesn’t even look at who comes in. Perla does care, but she caves in to people who “will get vaccinated next week”. How did we ever win a war? 

Well, at least we have a saner government now. Except perhaps for the corona-is-not-a-danger Minister of Education who is a PhD and a woman, so criticism seems to be mild. After all, gender trumps competence in today’s dialogue. She also hails from a city way north on the Lebanese border, so she can’t be wrong. After all, she is not from Tel Aviv. 

Thankfully, we do have a very vibrant society and Israelis know how to suffer danger and live at the same time. That truly is an advantage we have over the Americans who have discovered that their society is not so great, and over the more smug European nations who are surprised that such a small country as Israel is coping far better than most places on the globe. Why? Because almost every Israeli has a post doctorate in “grin and bear it”.