Articles

Improving Organizations in the Real World

by Dr. Larry E. Webb Managers and Consultants often share a similar fault. That fault is the idea that most organizational problems are simple and the solutions are short and swift. This is sometimes referred to as the “seagull school of consulting” or management, as the case may be. In this “school” the consultant does a quick circle from a distance, drops a solution, and flies off. Managers succumb to the same behavior when they avoid adequate analysis, do not involve the people experiencing the problem in the development of the solution, and believe their job is to have expertise in everything under their direction. Increasingly such managers are finding themselves in organizations where they are asked to manage people who are the subject experts. Even in traditional manufacturing environments, the people on the line often hold specific information crucial to the best company solutions. Making a company cost effective, highly competitive, and capable of superb quality at every level is the job of every person in the company. Concerns about job security, promotions, appropriate pay, and morale are most effectively addressed by making the company unbeatable in its market. Everyone has a personal stake in that task and its successful outcome. Without a cohesive strategy for continuous improvement, organizations can flounder, jumping from one part of the organizational puzzle to another. A cohesive view of organizational growth and change can help both leaders and their employees pull together to achieve common goals. Successful organizations understand they are complex systems. Each part of the organization has an effect on each other part. Therefore strategic leadership uses a planning and implementation process that moves all parts of the organization in a sequence that develops the capabilities of the whole company. Research by Dr. Ralph H. Kilmann, Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh, and successful change efforts in numerous organizations has proven the necessity of attending to five critical areas in any organization. These five areas, which must be addressed in a specific sequence and in over-lapping efforts, are: Organizational Culture - clarity of the company’s mission, its communicated vision, and its core operative values. These must be observed as congruent with leadership behavior, business processes, and reward systems.   Management Skills - all levels of management must have the skills to communicate, plan, solve problems, build teams, resolve conflict, and inspire quality work. Managers have often been promoted from the ranks of line workers as a reward for their personal competency. As formerly successful engineers, metal workers, production supervisors, or other areas of expertise, they are now asked to exhibit similar competence in achieving excellence through others. Lack of preparation for this assignment may lead them to manage more like a stern parent than good developer of people. No plan can succeed without the skills to implement it.   Team-Building - most companies can no longer afford the inefficiencies of work being done by people in isolation from one another. When sales, marketing, design, engineering, production and accounting do not work together they usually spend wasteful time working against one another. When Union and Management see each other only as adversaries, they are both vulnerable to hurting the company as competitors who are more collaborative gain the competitive edge. Many workers and their managers have had very little experience in developing, growing, and participating in team efforts. Most have had no formal training in team dynamics and productive processes. Team members must have personal skills to use the resources of a team before they are ready to address the companies needs.   Strategy-Structure - Developing strategy requires market and assumption analysis. Creating structure involves aligning objectives, tasks and people in sub-units within the organization. Units are designed to minimize task flows and create direct lines to the desired outputs. Operational structure and collateral structures are clarified. Collateral units are cross functional and are used to define problems in complex systems and create potential solutions. Possible solutions are passed back to the operational structure for decisions and implementation.   Reward Systems - organizations offer rewards and individuals offer performance. The challenge is to tie the measurement of performance to the meaning of rewards. It is not enough to pay for a person’s presence, even perpetual presence. Companies must make reward systems clear and congruent with the corporate mission, values, and strategies. Individual accomplishment, team collaboration, identification of problems and the effective solutions, contribution to continuous improvement of quality, are but some of the elements a company would want to reward. These five organizational areas are obvious in their importance and subtle in their complexity. Traditional “command and control” style organizations will experience major work in shifting their organizational culture. They will also reap major benefits through gains in work flow, waste control, quality improvement, improved solutions to problems, and a more collaborative work environment. It is not uncommon for some managers to resist or refuse to implement change so some conflict may increase in the early stages of organizational improvement. Therefore major attention must be paid to managing change and a thorough plan for implementing changes is required. A consultant’s value to an organization comes in several forms: an external perspective on present organizational issues. a dispassionate analyst for organizational re-engineering. a facilitator of planning processes and team-building. a coach during implementation phases. a coordinator of external and internal resource people. The Kilgore Group offers experience and talent through its senior consultants to address any and all of the issues mentioned in this article.   «Back