Tag Archives: organizations

When Organizations turn into Jungles, what can be done? (revised)

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There are several components that can turn organizations into political jungles and cesspools of intrigue.

  • Feigned commitments to the market used to “blame” people who do not meet numbers/release dates
  • Dysfunctional boards which manage various parallel “shadow organizations”
  • Competition between competing geographies for control of strategic products/roadmaps
  • Contradicting demands without top-down integration, such as “make the deal and be fully compliant”.
  • Overpaid, detached leadership while employees are policed by process and over fertilized with “engagement programs”.
  • Severe leadership gaps in “walking the talk”
  • HQ-field dynamics based on too much control or confusion

The behavioural aspects of this dysfunction manifest themselves as:

  •  Squabbling about roles and responsibilities
  • Obsessive redefining of process
  • Lack of trust
  • Partial transparency
  • Deteriorating teamwork
  • Blame-shifting email threads and finger-pointing as long as the equator

When the organization is so “zoo-ish”, pathological forms of HR tend to wow-wow and rah-rah employees and managers around slogans which obfuscate the challenges that the organization needs to address. For example, the lack of a long term commitment of employers to their employees is often coupled with engagement sloganeering. 

Overly commercial OD can add damage by developing OD packages that deal with the symptoms of the political zoo, (such as engagement packages) while what the root causes are left alone. In such cases, OD kicks itself in the ass by becoming a hand maiden of the system pathology.

However, there is good news. OD can dry up organizational political swamps, not via OD products, but rather by an OD process that focus on:

  • Identifying the reasons why basic survival instincts drive behaviour at all levels.
  • Classify what/is not in controllable to work on lessening the level of fear and anxiety that leads to reliance on such basic survivor instincts.
  • Gradual lessening of perceived threats to survival, basic on real change, not sloganeering.

Sounds hard?-you bet it is. But that is what professional OD brings to the table. Mais oui! 🙂 

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On organizational leniency

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Case One: Einat comes to work late 15 minutes a day; her lunch break lasts longer than anyone else’s. No one has ever said a word.

Case Two: This month, Ori ordered a $40000 spare part circumventing Supply Chain. He does this from time to time. His boss emails him to “try to avoid” this type of behaviour.

Case Three: Zeev always waits till the very last minute to order his plane tickets, so that he will have a more expensive ticket and thus be eligible for an upgrade. Since Zeev travels a lots, nothing is said.

This post is a short case study on organizational leniency, IE, showing more tolerance than expected when things do not go well.

All government agencies are very lenient towards their employees; unionized shops can breed a type of leniency which leads to decay, and crony capitalism breeds a great deal of leniency which leads to economic catastrophes. In this post, I am NOT referring to the above types of examples.

Rather, I am referring to organizations in the private sector which are not unionized and where there is no crony capitalism, yet nevertheless leniency is displayed in the face of gross malfunction.

The case I will describe is the unique leniency of Israeli organizations.

A-What does this leniency look like?

1-The reticence to fire people unless absolutely necessary. Although this norm has changed since 2008, Israelis hang on to excess people much longer than North American organizations would.
2-“We are all guilty” syndrome. In other words, individual accountability is downplayed and to use an Americanism, it is very rare to “hold someone’s feet to the fire” due to an error. The ownership of malfunctions is very obtuse.
3) Working around a problem instead of fixing it.

B-Reasons for leniency

1) Having been the victim of aggression for so many centuries, there is a tendency internally not to “pin” anything on anyone and scapegoat.
2) There is a deep belief that if an organization is not lenient, creativity and commitment will wane.
3) Because life in Israel is very challenging, there is an expectation not to “throw people to dogs” just because of a work related error.
4) For many centuries while scattered all over the world, we learnt how to learn the system and “work it”. It was not our system. There is still lingering unwillingness to “be the system”.

C-Value of the leniency

1) More risk taking at work
2) Better team work
3) Lots of creativity

D-Damage of the leniency

1) Due to lack of consequence, there is corrosion of responsibility and accountability
2) The development of a “so what” attitude in the case of inappropriate staffing
3) Corrective action takes a long time because things need to get very bad to end the lenience.

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When creativity is applied inappropriately.

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I live in a country with a very high level of creativity; there are thousands of start-ups in Israel. Many have performed exits and probably no one reading this post has not been exposed to Israeli technology (Waze, Viber, eg.)

The starts ups are fuelled by massive creativity, lack of discipline, lack of process, all of which enables looking at problems differently. Anyone who has ever worked or visited corporate Israel knows that meetings go on and on, with endless digression and associative thought, often resulting in either great solutions or total chaos.

The value of the creativity is innovation; the price of the innovative mindset is the lack of scalability, and the inability to solve simple problems, because simple problems requires routine. In other words, there are severe  limits to innovation if inappropriately applied.

In the last few days, there is an illustrative example of the inappropriate application of creativity.  Israel suffers from a horrendous housing shortage. Many politicians have attempted to solve this issue, but  very few politicians have ever suggested building more houses. The assumption is that via changes in taxation, this housing problem can be “outsmarted”. And of course, it cannot be. There is a SIMPLE supply and demand issue. But that’s too simple!

In the end, more houses will need to be built, yet this very obvious solution will be implemented only when every other alternative has been applied.

This  small example illustrates innovation, inappropriately applied. The housing shortage will continue due to a refusal to do the obvious. When inappropriately applied in business, poor use of innovation means loss of control, due to inability to scale via doing the obvious.

While I do follow politics, I have no personal political involvement whatsoever, and this post should not be misunderstood as taking a political stance.

You can follow me @AllonShevat

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Organizational Development in Special Situations. #3 “Support Centre” for Organizational Life

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Posted on March 8, 2014

This is the third of 3 posts to illustrate that OD is not passé.

While others have cannibalized some of what OD used to do, and organizations do not value people as much as before thus weakening OD’s value proposition, there are special situations where the added value of OD is outstanding.

The first situation I described was  New Product Introduction. The second  post related  to use of OD to relay intent in cases where cultural obstacles prevent dialogue.

This post will examine in brief OD practitioners greatest added value: as a “support centre” helping people think and act in organizational life.

The essence of this support is working with managers on their understanding of their cognitive/emotional organizational assumptions, serve as a reality check for  perceptions of organizational  meaning and context, “think through”  alternatives of action,examine the management of risk/opportunities and work on issues stemming from organizational politics.

Here are some of the reasons why many Organization Development practitioners do not provide  this service.

  • OD practitioners have not all been trained to do so.
  • The misplaced focus of OD practitioners  on OD products has detracted from the ability to focus on less structured  support for  “thinking”.
  • It is very hard (impossible) to market  this service.
  • Providing this type support does not create scalable revenue. Senior OD people cannot delegate this type of work to new college graduates and clip a coupon. It simply cannot be done. So this type of work means that the senior OD practitioner need to continue to consult, not manage.
  • The results of this type of work cannot be measured, thus creating a battle between the OD consultant with the organization’s procurement  department and the Gloria’s of the world.

Nevertheless I believe that is where the value of OD is.

On a personal note, when I look at the types of people I work with well, they are/have been highly intelligent people who seek out “someone smart” with whom to talk. I have never worked well with someone who wants a product. For the life of me, I do not even know what an OD product is, although I see all the “brush salespeople” peddling them all over the place.

To conclude this series….is OD passé? In Hebrew we use a double negative: לא ולא which means absolutely not (no and no). While the use of OD is less universal than it was, OD is highly applicable in special situations with the right clients.

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Organizational Development in Special Situations. #2 Relay of Intent

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This the second of 3 posts to illustrate that OD is not passé.

While others have cannibalized some of what OD used to do, and people are not as valued as they used to, there are special situations where the added value of OD is outstanding. The first situation I described was  New Product Introduction.

This post relates to use of OD to relay intent in cases where cultural obstacles prevent dialogue.

Due to globalization and speed as strategy, people from extraordinary different cultural assumptions need to work together. Use of the English language has enabled people to understand the words (as it were), but they  certainly do not understand the intent of one another in many cases. Many of the obstacles faced in the global workplace are insurmountable without a 3rd party who helps each side “relay intent”.

While culture training purports to educate people to one another’s sensitivities, relay of intent is an on-line translation service, yet the translation is the translation of intent.

Here is an example, with intent  in red. The 3 parties are:  American Fred (Head of Sales), Thai Som (Regional Head of Sales) and Israeli Moshe (Regional Head of Sales)

Fred: Hi guys. Can we discuss what Q2 looks like until now?  I am getting some mixed signals. What’s really going on with Q2? Don’t surprise me.

Moshe: We are waiting for technical pre sales material. Fred, can you update us? Fred, you do your job and I will do mine.

Som: There are several important client visits planned, even though our market is driven by costs. The product is too expensive; nothing is happening.

In order to do translation of intent, the OD consultant must

  • understand all cultures s/he deal with, so that the message can be relayed in a way which relays maximum intent and.does minimal damage 
  • have business domain knowledge
  • build trust with all sides to do this grisly work Smile
  • understand when direct dialogue is possible and when a 3rd party is necessary.

Unlike most consultants, I believe direct dialogue in some cases hurts business, especially when speed is strategy. Direct dialogue  has too many obstacles when the speed of  business is mission critical.

 

 

 

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Organizational Development in Special Situations. #1 New Product Introduction

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There is an constant and frankly non constructive dialogue that goes on about whether or not OD is passé. 

The answer is that OD is definitely not passé although it is not as widely commissioned as it used to be. While others have cannibalized some of what OD used to do, and people are not as valued as they used to, there are special situations where the added value of OD is outstanding.

In the next three posts, I shall outline 3 special situations where the added value of OD is overwhelming.

The first special situation is New Product Introduction.

1) Typically, a new product goes from R&D to Engineering and then to Process Engineering and Production Engineering, which are in Operations. (There can be lots of variance to this, clearly.)

2) The more complex the product  is, and the faster the organization is moving, the transition as described above is anything but smooth. Operations wants a plug and play product kit, while  R&D wants to wash their hands of the dog food and move onto the next invention, with Operations left to fill in the blanks.

Add to this that  products do not flow smoothly along; they often move one step backs and then two steps forwards etc.,  until problems are defined and solved.

3) Add complexity of different geographies and cultures, this is a perfect cess pool for OD. Smile

4) The most frequently made mistakes that managers and change managers make is to try to define the process more clearly. This attempt to `define away complexity`is what my late Dad used to call pissing into the wind. And I grew up in Quebec where the wind is mighty strong. Mais oui! There is no way that this process can be perfectly defined.

5) Another frequently made mistake is to put too much focus on Gating and Handshakes in the process. It is simply more complicated than setting up a Customs-Douane at every `station“ on the way, especially given the time to market pressure.

6) New Product Introduction is enabled by teamwork, sharing of risks and overlapping responsibility. This is a classic domain where nothing beats the effectiveness of OD. Not even outdoor training or a motivational speaker. Smile

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The inability of Israeli organizations to scale innovation

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There are endless examples of Israel based companies that innovate and yet fail to leverage and scale their innovation.

As a result, these innovative companies are sold, most often to US based firms who scale the innovations and make the big bucks, leaving only R&D center in Israel, which may  become downgraded to a continuous engineering site.

This short post looks at the reason that this happens.

1) Innovative people tell customers what they need.

I cannot count the number of times I have seen real creative guys kicking themselves in the ass by explaining to the potential customer how wrong they are in what they asking for, followed by an very detailed explanation of “real needs”. Routinely these companies overplay technical presales and underplay the importance of building communication based on respect for the client.

2) Innovative people misuse creativity because they cannot follow routine

Once an innovation has been cranked out, leveraging this innovation needs lots of rigour and disciplined routine to create scalability. Often, an organization that has used its creativity to develop a breakthrough will misuse this creativity to try and “reinvent” the routine necessary to scale the innovation.

It is not unfair to say that Israeli have no problem doing the impossible but have a horrible time of carrying out routine tasks. Scalability is based on disciplined repeated routine.

3) Innovative people are often very arrogant, and very hard to deal with.

And this arrogance and lack of acceptance of the limits of the human endeavour is exactly what enables the innovative mindset. Over the years I have seen some of my brightest clients wiped off the map because they knew not only  how to invent, but they also knew how to do everyone’s job better, which clearly backfires at  the stage when innovation needs to be linked to a growth platform by leveraging on someone else’s capabilities.

4) Israelis have invented great technology, yet the type of organizations which have been created is Israel not a scalable platform to leverage success. In other word, the Israelis developed technology which can be scaled, but Israeli organizational life cannot be scaled. This topic is too elaborate for this post, so I will just illustrate briefly.

  1. Israeli organizations tend to commit aggressively, yet are overly tolerant and  non-punitive, causing frequent sudden system crashes. (The implosion of the Israeli police force and IDB are good examples.)
  2. Structure, rules and processes are ignored, and in lieu of these, a “network” of relationships serves as the motor of getting things done, very similar to Chinese organizations.
  3. Israelis talk all at once, argue all the time, and the level of apparent conflict is very high….. except it is not seen as such IF you are an insider.

Thus, it is very hard for Israeli organization to go global and all so often, even after they have moved their corporate HQ address to the States, they get acquired because while the technology can be scaled,  the organization cannot be scaled as run.

Follow me @AllonShevat

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Developing Political Intelligence about an organization (revised)

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In January 2014,  past year, I began a series of short posts illustrating how to get executives to  develop  better political awareness.

In a widely read post in this series, 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.

The goal of these posts has not been 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 final post series. In this post, I will relate to 5 question that should be addressed upon entering a new organization and/or a new role.

The answers to these 5 questions provide a  guide for a street-smart “initiation” into the inevitable political web that will encountered  in all organizations post 2008.

1) Who comprises the “power elite”?  This elite may be managers, board members, assistants,  wives, mistresses, technical heroes,etc.

2) What is the dominant way that executives really get things done? It may be lobbying, looking good, overpromising, being exact, being vague, serving someone’s agenda etc..

3) What does the organization really award? It may be ass-licking, innovation, blind loyalty, conservatism, heroism, not standing out etc.

4) What is the main gap between what the organization says it does, and what it really does? For example, it says it values service, but it really emphasis low cost of service and “slogan-ism”. This is probably the most important question of all.

5)To what extent are budgeting and planning exercises real and transparent ? Many very political organizations go thru budgeting and planning as ceremonies to please stakeholders, but in reality, the plans are not real and budgeting is an anthropological ceremony.

In the political coaching that I do with my clients, I tend to focus on 5 and 2.

You can follow me @AllonShevat

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Why some cultures do not value conflict resolution

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Many change agents, OD consultants and coaches roam the corporate world peddling wares to solve conflicts expediently, as in : we all need to see the “value” both in conflict and its ready resolution.

Yet many folks come from cultures which do not place as high a value on expedient conflict resolution.

Following is a list of attitudes which characterizes cultures which do not seek to “move ahead, move on, compromise, and put the conflict all behind us”.

1) These cultures tend to have more principles and less preferences. These principles are non negotiable, for the very reason that they are principles.

2) These cultures are not in a hurry. They believe that time is on their side, and if the conflict can wait for a year, a decade or a thousand years, they will get a better deal.

3) Compromise equals a loss of dignity. Better to die standing up than remain alive crawling like insect, goes the argument.

4) Meeting somewhere is the middle is a perceived disgrace to both sides. In a compromise/solution mode, “both sides look bad”.

5) There is an expectation from leadership/management that they be strong, not “solve” issues with other parties.” That makes followers “look good”.

6) Leadership perceives that solving a crisis will weaken them and set up an alternative power structure. There is no perception of “ we all get a bigger piece of a larger pie”.

Change agents who work with such populations need to

a-understand the basic assumptions of the protagonists

b-set realistic expectations about what can/cannot be achieved

c-use “temporary” resolution instead of final status resolution

d-avoid having protagonists meet, preferring an imposed solution.

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