Ten days ago, I related to a lack of systematic initiation into organizational politics, resulting in talented and motivated people losing out to folks with more political acumen.

To put this issue in focus,I began a series of five short posts illustrating how to initiate managers for more political awareness in the organizational zoo.

The goal of these posts is not to prescribe behaviour, rather to illustrate a gamut of frequently observed political behaviours, both positive and negative. It is my belief that in the same way that young kids should not learn sex from watching porn stars, neither should young managers learn organizational politics by being screwed, or by listening to some idealistic consultant or coach describe organizational life as it “should” be.

This is my 4th post (of 5) in the series, and I will relate to the issue of Performance Evaluation. (PE)

1) Overtly, performance evaluation is a tool to provide feedback to staff, create a dialogue about strengths, weakness, set goals. as well as provide a context for rewards or the lack thereof. Nevertheless, market forces ant not NOT PE set the context for rewards.

2) The entire PE process has a political dimension which has little to do with its overt goals.

3) The PE process is generally controlled by HR; it is one of the very few processes which they control end to end, and thus, PE is administered with orthodoxy. The degree to which performance evaluation is administered is often seen as a sign of loyalty to HR (and the regime).

4) There are 3 versions to each Performance Evaluation. The first is what you write down on the PE form; the second is what you say to the employee; the third is what you think to yourself. There is not a lot in common between the 3 versions.

Example: you have a lazy employee with knowledge in a legacy product that no one understands anymore. If he leaves, there is a huge gap. If he stays, you need to put up with a lot of crap. So, you think to yourself “I’m trapped”. How to exit the the trap? Write a glowing  and stellar review, and tell the employee that he is fine, with a few minor “buts.” …and think to yourself what a comedy the PE process is.

5) Each organization plays games around PE.

• Some merely fill out the form and make nothing of it.
• Others use it as a platform to kowtow to HR.
• Yet others subvert the system.

Before doing PE, learn what game is played and how to play it. It can be a benign game when played well, and dangerous when you do not understand the rules.

6) Never ever take PE at face value nor too seriously. There is no set of relationships, at work, with kids, or with friends, which can weather a “full review” of the state of the relationship in 30 minutes. The world of relationships is not made that way.

When assessing an organization, two skills which seem to be ignored are ignoring input from interviewees and overweighting input from interviewees.

1) Ignoring Input

One example will suffice.

I worked with a collective community in the north of Israel as it migrated from a 100% purist form of collectivism to a model whereby “members” of the community could accrue personal wealth.

In my initial analysis, I spoke with 50 interviewees. 48 of the 50 interviewees told me that the economic situation of the community is “better than good” and registered  severe resentment to the planned change. Only two interviewees stressed the dire straights of the community, and the need for change. One was the treasurer, who dealt with the banks daily; the other was the CEO of the industrial plan which belonged to the community, who could no longer get funding or pay his suppliers. The other interviewees were living in ” lala” land.

As the project moved forward and the community evolved in what was considered a huge success, an important counter-intuitive skill that I learnt was the ability to filter frequent yet useless input which would have preserved the status quo and destroyed the community.

Overweighting Input

Sometimes in the course of working with an organization, you encounter people who just “get it” and can provide very important information in very limited time, information which must be over weighted when putting together the organizational assessment.

Example one: I worked with a development center in England for 5 years. The organizational climate was appalling. People were overworked, the technology was out-dated and pay was mediocre. Yet turnover was almost 0 in a hot job market. My mission was to make it a better place to work but management was telling me “what’s wrong Shevat, turnover is 0.  One day, I interviewed a Thai engineer with poor English. She told me that “this is the only place we immigrants have encountered where you leave your accent and language skills  at the door and you  are judged by other criteria. The organization is a horrendous place to work but overcompensates  by being totally not bigoted.” I remember how shocked I was after we have talked….I had been there 2 years and has not picked it up. Once I got that,  I managed to leverage that insight to push for change.

Example two: I do a lot of work in highly  technical organizations, and I have learnt that some people are indeed so talented that you need to give them the stage over others and listen to what they say however unbalanced they may be. They have it right. I remember working with an engineer who was always yelling and screaming at others….and he told me that what folks were doing in two years can be done in a week by a different method-and he was spot on.

Summary

Overweighting and underweighting input may be difference between preparing an opinion poll or writing a professional organizational  diagnosis.

This is a brief illustration about the limitations of teamwork in a global organizing. My claim is that at a certain level of global complexity, teamwork is impossible to achieve because the value of teamwork runs too counterculture to much of the world.

The team I will describe is the “Global Presales Team”  headed by Paul Sinclair.

The mission of this Presales team is to prepare material for potential clients world wide, coordinate with marketing on “one message to the install base”, set the stage for Sales and client to be aligned around a product road map, and support the sales teams on technical matters.

The 4 presales members of the Global Presales Team function in a matrix: Paul is the corporate boss in HQ, and each presales person reports to a different area boss: Manfred is the boss in Europe and FSU; Gilad in the Middle East and Africa, Jimmy in Asia/Australia and Fred in North America.

The 4 team members of the Presale team are violently pushed and pulled in different directions by their area bosses who want  more customer visits  and Paul Sinclair, who wants the team to create presales material of global value.  (The corporate culture states “one team/one company” as a major value).

Paul Sinclair believes that the Presales is failing  because there is simply too little teamwork and synergy to meet shared global priorities. Well,  Paul may be right about the failure, but he is wrong about the diagnosis. Paul, Gilad, Manfred, Fred and Jimmy disagree on how to integrate conflicting priorities.

Jimmy, the Head of Sales in Asia has told his presales representative that he expects 100% loyalty. Jimmy  has told his presales manager that if there are clashes of interest between what Jimmy wants and what Paul  wants, Jimmy will solve these issues.

Fred, the Head of Sales in North America, has told his presales representative to “solve priority conflicts on your own, using your best judgement””.

Manfred, the Head of Sales in Europe+FSU is pushing for a “system” to coordinate conflicting priorities between Sales and Presales, because “we cannot push the priority management down, only up, to align with the master plan.”

Gilad, the Head of Sales for Mid East and Africa, has created his own presales team “under the radar” to serve his needs, allowing “Paul’s lackey to do what he wants”.

Summary:

The basic assumptions about how to regulate conflicting priorities is meeting with too many conflicting basic cultural assumptions. Gilad is a cowboy and “works around a broken system like matrix management”. Manfred wants a system to regulate  a perfect reality, Fred wants empowered individuals to work out complexity and Jimmy wants a serf, because Jimmy does not care about anyone’s goals except his own.

So Paul ‘s pursuit of teamwork seems a bit futile.

Paul has asked VP HR for help, and she has recommended that the presales team do some outdoor training to “work out their issues to support our value of “one team/one company.”

In my long career, I have dealt organizational due diligence pre- merger & post-merger integration; I help organizations bridge enormous cultural diversity (not just colour/race). I have done an enormous amount of work on new product introduction, together with research, development, engineering and operation departments. For years I consulted chefs in 3  international hotel chains, and with captains in the merchant marines. I have done OD in the military, police organizations and government. I have vast experience consulting to financial services and legal firms. Yeanu, (which means in Arabic, in other words), I have been around the block.

OD has hundreds of tool kits and products. Some of them I know well, some of them I master and there is probably not a tool around I have not read about.

In all my consulting work, in all professional domains and situations, I never found one of these tools useful. I always felt they hindered me. When I was younger, I used to throw lots of tools in to the back seat of my car, or travel half way around the world, lugging them with me. I rarely used anything. When I used them, I felt unnatural and cumbersome.

For me, OD is not about tools or pre packaged procedures. OD is an art of applying a breadth of experience, eclecticism, working bottom up to tailor make a solution in every single situation. Like a snow flake, every organization and every managerial situation is very different. OD when well practiced, is not scalable.

I believe that all these tools kits and pre defined procedures  (which are, in essence, so called knowledge management of OD) have been extremely negatively disruptive to our art. These tools have created what used to be called door-to-door brush salesmen, totally incognizant of what the profession is all about.

At any given time, I supervise about 6 consultants world wide. I never teach tools. In all my supervision, I rarely refer my students to tools. I encourage my students to read, to acquire content domain savvy, and to practice being eclectic.

When hiring a consultant to work with your organization on issues such as accelerating a major change, post merger integration, labour relations or creation of increasing scalability, beware of these 5 things.

1) Beware of optimistic, cheery consultants exuding “wow-wow we can do it”.

There are times when optimism is useful, yet a good organizational diagnosis and a solid implementation plan must factor in a lot of not-so-optimistic assumptions about human nature.

Wearing “a smile you can see a mile” sells well, but implementing complex change is not a tea party or walk in the park. Change consulting and OD entails proper risk management, not the empty headedness of positive motivational tweets.

2) Beware of change models and fads, of which there are so many.

Model and fads distort the view of what needs to be fixed. Models and fads are designed for the scalability of the consulting business. Yet, each organization is one of a kind, sui generis because of the people.

An organizational consultant must be smart and eclectic,not a operational model implementer.

3) Beware of a consultant who emphasizes how much he/she knows.

What is most important is how well can the consultant learn.

A lot of stuff consultants know is already out dated.

4) Beware of consultants whom you send to negotiate with procurement and they readily agree.

This may indicate a junior positioning, although there are some organizations where this is a mandatory step.

Good consultants are often too expensive to be ok’ed by procurement who are equipped with pricing models from the world of training or IT and are not willing to pay big bucks for top people.

5) Beware of consultants with whom you feel uncomfortable.

The appointment of a consultant is a matter of trust.

There are organizations which commission OD interventions, and as the process unfolds, the consultant gets the message “don’t be so negative!” or, “try and be more positive”.

At face value this appears to be legitimate criticism. However, I suggest to be extra careful on understanding what lies behind this message.

If the message comes from HR, it may be because the boat is starting to rock.No one fears their job and positioning more than HR, and thus their  anxiety is often projected on the vendor. “These OD consultants/“vendors” were commissioned to make things better! If things are not getting better fast, perhaps MY “vendor choice” was wrong”. In such a case, it is important to be fully aligned with the direct client so that he or she can manage HR’s fear.

If the message comes from the client system with whom you work, I suggest the following:

1) Ask yourself if you have  managed expectations properly? If you were forced to be optimistic when commissioned, it is time to reset expectations. If you have not stated that things get worse before they get better, I suggest repeating this statement several times to yourself-and then to the client.

2) I suggest reframing what  being negative and positive are all about. The client needs to start to understand that negativity may be realism and positive may be hallucinatory. This may be the critical path of success or failure of the project.

3) There may be an unseen political issue. For example, in the case that a particularly hard intervention is carried out when board members from abroad are visiting, this may be the motive behind asking for things to be cooled down. In this case, it is best to be prudent.

4) The clients of today may not have a clue that you need to break eggs to make an omelette. They expect ready made solutions without pain. If this is what they really want, it is best to back off, allow a magician to fail and then re-approach the client in a few years.

5) Post corona, problems have arisen which are beyond the scope of OD to cope with. Mass resignations for example are a societal trend and there is  little that OD can do. I do know that some magicians think that people leave organizations mainly because of bad managers, but post corona this is nonsense.

6) Many problems cannot be solved by an OD consultant. If there are no software engineers, OD won’t pull them of a hat. And if Sales is pushing a non existing product that crashes on arrival, it is best to focus efforts on getting the product to work, and less on improving communication between sales and development.

Follow me on twitter @AllonShevat

1) Start with the conclusion. The Israelis are not a patient bunch. Start with the end, and explain how you got there.

2) Be as brief as possible; Israelis constantly are on their cell phones, and long winded explanations lead to loss of attention to a second screen.

3) Set specific times for questions. Do not allow questions all the time because many questions will be asked and time will run out.

4) Do not be overly patient with questioners who try to “teach you”, because this will be seen as weakness and control of the audience will be lost.

5)  Don’t expect compliments. “Not bad” maybe  as good as it gets with a crowd over 45.