It is common practice and very legitimate for potential clients to look at your track record as he/she accesses your potential candidacy to serve as an OD consultant.

Each and every one of us have failed. Certainly I have had some failures in my 38 year career. In this post I will relate to way and means of handling the question of past failures with prospective clients in initial interviews.

(If you have positioned yourself as a vendor of products and tools, you will not find this  post useful. Clearly, in such a case, you may need to relate to the mismatch between the tool/product and the client, defend/blame the tool itself or even the client, as do our confreres in software! 😉 )

This post relates to those of us who see OD as professional service of trusted advisor who supports change efforts.

Following are a few selected suggestions how to field questions about past failures.

1) A failed relationship

The professional relationship between an OD service provider and client is “a service delivered in the context of a relationship”. Like all relationships, client-OD relationships do not always succeed. And often, neither side knows this will be case at the initial stage on engagement.

2) Something  you cannot disclose so as not to compromise your former client

Clearly while you cannot discuss the nature of the failure and compromise your former clients integrity, you may encounter pressure to do so.

In that case, it is best to say, “if I do not succeed here with you, I imagine you will not want me to discuss this with potential clients in the future.”

3) Disagreement on Direction

It is common in our field to have irreconcilable differences even if the personal relationship with the client is trusting. In such a case, both the client and the OD consultant face hard decisions, and this was such a a case.

4) The intervention failed

The OD intervention failed. OD has not been boiled down to a set of algorithms whereby I  can promise success. In any OD intervention, there is a risk of failure. Sometimes we know the reason for failure, and sometimes we don’t.

One more point. I have found it very useful to prod a bit before answering. An example:

Client: Tell me about a recent failure.

Allon: What type of failure are you referring to?

Client: When the staff did not “believe” in consultants.

Allon: The way I work is that someone very senior owns me and it is not a question of “belief”. Do you plan to ask me to sell myself to your staff?

Client: I cannot decide on hiring you without the buy-in of my team!

Allon: Is this characteristic of your decision making?

In a recent post, I discussed  organizations that have a top-down, HR administered corporate religion and accoutrements which serve as a pseudo-sophisticated ideological veneer. This religious dogma inhibits, not enables, successive coping with a hostile environment. Three short case studies will illustrate.

Myname specializes in electronic signatures and ensuring the safety of financial transactions. Myname has just purchased Signit, which greatly enhances the user friendless of e-signatures in the mobile domain. The integration between the two companies is a failure. Myname, the dominant company, has a culture exhibited by 5 core values which are rammed downed peoples’ throat. The CEO decided to “re-examine the core values” in light of the integration difficulties. A major change was made. Instead of being a “People Company”, the value was changed to “We are All Family.” The integration failed.

Nowait is a mobile telephone company with a very strong top down cultural religion of “Responsiveness to our customers and our staff”. An overly zealous and under skilled HR department supervises the inculcation of this culture, almost by enema. Responsiveness is measured, over measured and measured again. The staff have learnt to beat the system, and the clients are leaving. The Head of HR and the Head of Training, OD and Telephony were recently replaced when an organizational survey had a response level of 12%. The CEO has just hired an HR goon from the military who “knows how to take a bunch of bums from the street and turn them into soldiers in six weeks.” The new HR’s managers key deliverable is to “get responsiveness back on the radar screen”.

Olam is a company with a religion of globalism. The world “global” is attached to everything done in the company. The dining halls serve “ethnic foods” in the company twice a week. Olam suffers lack of delegation to country managers, who feel they have no power over the corporate technical presales team. As a result, sales is falling because the initial pitch made by corporate is not tailored enough to local demands. The CEO has recently asked the HR manager to commission a webinar to “drive home the global message”. The CEO has never really defined “global” because “culture is HR’s domain”. And the HR manager, who ran a call center, also has a marketing background, and she wants the word “global” to capture employee “mindshare”.

These cases illustrate what can happen when the artefacts and accouterments of corporate culture are top-down/phoney as well as what happens when they are executed by HR managers who serve as mindless clergy.

Very often, circumstances change and managers need to be flexible and reverse decisions and actions. For example, cancellation of an order or loss of a client can change priorities big time.

In this post, I will present tips I have found useful in dealing with flip-flopping and inconsistent managers.

I am not referring  to the type described in the opening sentence of this post.

Nor am I referring to a manager to is trying to encompass dichotomies, like quality and release date.

Following are the characteristics of the type of manager I am referring to:

1. Makes ambiguous statements which can be understood in many ways
2. Contradicts himself, and denies it.
3. Decides but does not act
4. Acts in contradiction of a decision

Following are behavioural examples of the above:

1. Makes ambiguous statements which can be understood: “We need to be Diverse-at the switchboard”
2. Contradicts himself, and denies it. “I gave you leeway, but you should have asked before you promised this feature”.
3. Decides but does not act “I will speak to Joe” and it never happens, yet.
4. Acts in contradiction of a decision “I ok’ed business class travel just this one time”.

Here are a few tips I have found useful.

1)  Type down statements/assumptions made by the client and project them on a screen during a consultation. E.g., Jacques needs to be retained in 2014 because he is a key employee”. The client gets these statement typed out at the end of the session.

2)  Every decision has a written summary. (This is pretty obvious, but very important)

3)  When the client has made up his mind, ask: “Have you calculated all the risks? What can change? Are you ready to decide? Is this tentative?

4)  Bring  someone else to important meetings so that there is a witness to what was said.

5)  Try to use group interventions more than one on one interventions because a group will police a flip flopper well.

Note: The Chinese have an expression: like playing piano to the cow. 对牛弹琴 This is said in referring  to someone who just does not get what you are telling them. So, my final suggestion is not to confront the person that he is inconsistent time after time, because it is like “playing piano to the cow.”

There are managers who know everything, and they are undoubtedly very hard to deal with.

Managers who know everything may hire you because “they do not have time”, or need more data, or in order  to carry out change under the artillery coverage of an OD project.

The first task is to try and understand the reason for your service being commissioned.

I will share 3 things I have found somewhat useful in dealing with managers who know everything.

1) Try and focus on the future. No one really knows all that much about the future. Even the omnipotent know-it-all may show some humility when the discussion is future focused.

2) On certain limited issues, stand your ground and label differences as “disagreements”. You will get push back, which is the time to then focus on the issue: “do I need to agree with you on everything”, here and now.

3) Where possible,  don’t get involved trying to prevent a fire; wait till  things get really bad. Even managers who know it all are more flexible when massive dysfunction heads their way.

Brief Introduction:

In this  post I want to characterize a type of client who should, by the look of things, be user friendly to OD, but is not! Quite the opposite-this type of client is often among the hardest to work with.  I am referring to clients which have what I shall call  pseudo-sophisticated ideological veneer.

Characteristics:

On this type of client’s website/hallway/elevator, there will be a mission statement, core values, and/or other accoutrements which lead us to believe the client is domain savvy. The values, mission or whatever are more likely than not almost religious tenets, serviced by HR and Training, who “teach” this religion, more often than not during initiation and management training, which tends to be “ideological”.

There may be a history of many OD consultants, who have come and gone. These consultants have been called in to provide expert knowledge, not in the domain of the HR/Training “ Corporate Curia” which peddle the ideology.

The issues encountered with such clients are:

1) The slogans, values, mission and other statements are top down religious beliefs which are “administered” by HR-Training-Glorias; thus the veneer.

2) The critical gap between the religion and reality is generally out-of-bounds for discussion

.3) This type of client often does not know that he does not know.The religion has provided him with a false sense of certainty. External OD consultants will be scrutinized  by gatekeepers to ensure they do not bring in pragmatic and counter-culture ideas.

4) This type of client will treat you as a vendor of OD products, telling you exactly what he needs. Often you work to SOW, rendering the OD effort useless.(statement of work)

In a recent post, I suggested a few ways of managing pessimist people and managing in pessimistic cultures.

As mentioned in that post, there is a plethora of tools which exist to promote optimism, wow wowism, and getting people “on board” and highly engaged. Often these tools are used wisely; often however,the creation of optimism is a manipulation to get people to sign up for busting their ass against all odds at a huge personal sacrifice.

However, many employees have learnt to beat the system of “overdosing on wow wowism”. A short case will suffice.

Tony manages a software team composed of Russians, Israelis and Americans. Tony has given his software team a “somewhat demanding commitment which I am sure you guys can make, if we do our best. I believe if anyone can do it-it’s you”. (This means work on weekends for the next 6 months and monthly trips to Lagos. (That ain’t fun).)

Tony has convened a meeting to get “input” on obstacles to meeting the “aggressive” schedule. His team in the past has been cynical and pessimistic.

Russian Igor, Israeli Sivan and American John had lunch before the meeting with Tony and built a strategy to deal with the expected pressure. Two years ago, they had faced the same  scenario. At the time, when they raised a whole list of obstacles, Tony made them work 18 hours a day for nine months. in today’s meeting, the plan to go with the flow.

The meeting with Tony just ended. Tony was surprised as how well it went. Igor said he will do his best and sees “nothing substantial” to cause delays. Sivan simply said: “can do, boss; looks good”. John said he has a plan to make it work. All three said told Tony he can “sleep well”.

This strategy will appease Tony, and delay the bad news for a few months. In a few months, the three will surprise Tony with huge delays; Tony will need to surprise the customer.

In the first few months, the three do not even plan to work hard at all, so that Tony will need to “slap” a huge delay on the customer.

The customer will then demand more realistic deadlines and proper negotiation will occur internally.

There are pessimist people and there are pessimistic cultures as an article on France in the Economist points out.

Management techniques wrongly suggest that pessimism is something to be “turned around”; pessimistic attitudes are “”a “challenge” for managers, who are well equipped with a whole set of tools to create and foster optimism: vision, mission, wow-wowing, pep talking, motivational techniques, AI, and what have you.

Pessimistic culture are pessimist for a reason. The first thing we need to do is accept the pessimism.

No one (well almost no one) comes to Japan and tries to re engineer the national psyche to create individualists. No one goes to Asia and tells people to “put face aside” and be more “open”. Similarly, attempts to re-engineer the pessimist genetic code are doomed to fail.

Pessimist people have a very strong defence mechanism that has formed that attitude. People do not give up defence mechanisms easily, especially when the alternative is exactly what they are protecting themselves from, that is a rosy boy-scout yes we can attitude that sounds greats in a Tweet or coaching session with a gung-ho coach, but makes no sense.

I will propose 5 key points which may assist managing in pessimistic cultures and when dealing with pessimistic people.

1) Accept the pessimism;  do not try and change it.

2) Give low key messages, rich in facts,  analysis and critique and go easy/avoid hope, belief and wow wowism.

3) Identify the pessimistic statement that irritate you, and ignore them as much as you can.

4) Humour may work well to make a point if the pessimism is excessive.

5) Examine why pessimism rubs you the wrong way. When you really come to terms with this key question, managing pessimistic people and managing in pessimistic cultures will be far more intuitive.

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Allon