Reflectivity

During recent ruminations on our consulting project it became apparent that we must truly have the client’s well-being in mind and keep it front and center. Otherwise the myriad stresses that come to us as consultants will tempt us to violate the client in order to meet our own ends.

Case in point: we have a project with our client that must be completed by the end of Nov to complete my class assignments. But the client, despite our best planning, is dragging feet, and this threatens our graduate timetable. Time to force them to speed up, to compromise their concerns with getting board approval. Oops — but if I want to support their best interest, I will be more gentle and support THEIR way. While remaining vigilant for resistance, we indeed want their board to be in agreement, to avoid forcing our project on them, and to be sure that we maintain good will and stay helpful.

These are the times that try consultants’ souls — when the client’s needs clash with the consultant’s needs. Don’t I want to serve the client their way, after all? So, we have to retool our timetable, renegotiate our contract and deliverables, and see how the client’s needs and our needs can be meshed

This underscores a theme that has emerged in class discussions, that we need to be flexible. I have a friend who has served as a missionary overseas in various cultures for years. In meeting her various challenges she realized she needed to move beyond being flexible to being “liquid” and now to “vapor”. We all must continually adapt to remain helpful to others, to move beyond our often unconscious limitations.

As a postscript, I have recently realized that some counseling training I received some years ago was very much in the 50-50 process consultant mode. In 1994 I completed the counselor training program at the Christian Counseling and Training Center. As we worked with couples or individuals, we spent a good deal of time listening to understand the landscape of the counselee’s life so we could offer help that was actually needed. We required that the counselee actively work through issues, since they own the problem.  We resisted the quick fix, pushing on instead to building biblical problem-solving skills in the other (the process). Usually the presenting problem was but one layer of the onion that had to be peeled back to reveal the root issue. We shared with the counselee our expertise and experience — but also our failures. This leveled things out to more of a 50-50 relationship: we as counselors were not coming as one-up experts but as fellow strugglers in the life of faith. Many were the times when I learned as much from the counselees as they may have from me.

Some of our interactions with our consulting project client can be easily interpreted in light of our readings in Schein and Block.

The project with Virginia Heroes with partner Jonathan is going well so far. Our interactions are warm and cordial with the Executive Director, Joyce Johnson, and the president of the Board, Vanessa Womack. Joyce’s enthusiasm for the program in general and the students and mentors in particular is contagious. When I think of resistance, I decide that there is no resistance; our suggestions are thoughtfully considered and the phases of the project are being planned and embraced. Is there no resistance?

I flip through the Block and review his categories. The is no category that seems to fit the agreeableness of our interactions. Then there it is: the compliant client. Perhaps this is the resistance of compliance?

I guess time will tell. But for now we have access to the client and our plans are moving forward. We will have to revisit this in the future, but resistance does not ring true for me at this time.

The Johari Window has a bearing on our last client conversation. (Do Jonathan and I subscribe to the Jontim window? The JoTi window?)

At any rate, Jonathan, Joyce, and I met for lunch last Friday to review our working agreement and start planning data gathering. Jonathan suggested, gently at first, then more clearly later, that at our planned focus group meetings, Joyce should probably not come. We explained that there may be more freedom in data-gathering if she were not there. This is the territory of the Johari Window. Joyce agreed easily at first, then with a bit more anxiety later, but she still acquiesced.

The Johari Window comes in here to explain that there are two parts of us that we know: our open self (known to others) and our concealed self (unknown to others). But there are also two parts of us that we are not aware of: the blind self (unknown to self but known to others) and the unknown self (unknown to all). Joyce is reacting to the possibility of the focus group feedback revealing parts of her blind self, what others may know and observe, but of which she may not be aware.

And that is what the focus group feedback is partly designed to show: feedback to others, in this case Joyce, about things that are known to observers but may be unknown to her. Obtaining such feedback for myself certainly makes me pause, so I can certainly understand her double-take. But it is certainly a powerful way that we can all grow. May we have the confidence and caring helpers to do so!

The age-old command to “know thyself” is especially true for the process consultant.  As Schein describes in chapter 5, the chain of events that goes on in our head, leading to our actions, can be described using his ORJI cycle.  First we Observe, then use that data to React (emotions), then Judge (based on the previous two), then we Intervene (act).  His main point is that distortion can enter at any phase, leading to traps that cause us to respond inappropriately, although we consider that we are reasoning well all the way.

This ties in well with the Groups and Teams class where we learned the “ladder of inferences”.  The key to working well as a process consultant is to detect when we are making untested inferences and research their truth.  Easier said than done!  But with a background that includes some training in counseling, I know that unless we can truly see ourselves as we really are, and are willing to look at the truth about ourselves and our inferences, we cannot know ourselves — or anyone else.  This has far-reaching consequences for interacting with others as a process consultant (or in any relationship in general). 

I have a recent example of digging down to an inference.  Last week, as I walked down an MCV sidewalk, a parked car facing me on the sidewalk honked at me when I was directly in front.  Since there is a plethora of cars, people, honking, and general noise in the area, and I was late for a meeting, I kept going, not looking up.  When I got to my meeting, a colleague there said she had honked at me and I had not responded.  I was quite surprised, since I do not expect to encounter drivers downtown that I would know.  She had actually been turning around in a tight space and had gotten stuck, seeking help from me.  I told her I had just chosen not to respond to yet another sound in the congested area.  But I felt rueful that I had not been able to assist in her time of need (I am not sure what I could have done, but just being there for her may have been sufficient.)  But it got me to thinking about why I had not responded.

Did I hear her honk?  Yes (observation).  Did I choose not to respond?  Yes (intervention).  But why?  As I pondered this, I realized that I had instinctively shrunken from looking directly into the windshielf of a car, aimed at me, that had honked at such close quarters.  I felt intimidated, and also depersonalized (reaction).  I considered this to be offensive at best and bordering on abusive (judgment).  I trudged on with no response (intervention), invadverertantly forsaking a friend in need. 

(Looking back I ask, “Couldn’t she have rolled down her window and called me by name?”  But someone honking at me that way should at least draw a glance — or glare – from me. )

Aha — now I know more about what was going on in my head.  So with my misperception of why the honk came, I reacted to it, formed a false judgment based on it, and acted incorrectly on it.  I demonstrated a ”hardness” or inflexibility in the situation.  Based on my (mis-)perception I responded appropriately, since my continuing to walk removed me from the intimidating situation.  But my denial of alternative explanations prevented me from helping a friend.  Alas!

I have seen in other areas that when I plunge resolutely and single-mindedly ahead that I may be avoiding dealing with something or someone.  This is the cue that I need to practice observing and responding to, to challenge my thinking and actions.   My ability to face this truth about myself will open up new behaviors that can be more appropriate and useful for me and others.  My willingness to face this in myself brings greater self-knowledge and also allows deeper levels of relationship with others, valuable tools in process consulting.

This past week I had a revelation of how enmeshed consulting really is in my job structure.  I have up to this point considered this class in relation to the casual, small requests for help that I get at work.  But I suddenly realized that everything I do falls into that category!

I do not know why it was not more apparent to me earlier; I think it must be similar to fish not noticing that they are in water.  But in IT our main work is requested by business units (client) and developed by IT personnel (consultants), in a partnership governed by written contracts (contained in documents such as project scope, charter, requirements, schedule, etc.).  That is the life-blood of what we do.

This realization really hit me when I was reading Block on how the contract is more social than legal, that it is written for clear communication rather than enforcement, and that when the client needs to change it, you in fact change it, glad that the request was openly communicated.  This highlighted my attempts recently to gain “control” over a client who all-too-frequently changed our working agreements to expand the scope of the work.  I had been trying (with only modest success) to get him to freeze the work scope and let us deliver a functioning system so it could be delivering value; we could then later add gold-plating to it.  I need to let go of such attempts at total control — the work effort is truly 50/50.  Here is a valid consideration of needs:  I need the “success” of delivering a functioning system, and the client also needs to have certain functions included, not all of which can be anticipated.  After much discussion over months, the client and I have agreed to defer a set of functions to a Phase II, and we will deliver the rest soon, hopefully by the end of this month.

In general, our relationship would have progressed better on the project if I had set more clear ground rules up front for how we would proceed, as a partnership, and with clearer descriptions of the roles of each.  He was content to let me progress as an expert and take ownership of it all.  Block is emphatic that all rules and process needs to be revealed and determined early on the in the project; I found that it is hard to change once you are mid-stream. 

I in fact did not realize that this client had never actually participated on a project with IT and did not know how the partnership worked and what it demanded from him.  It goes to show that you cannot over-communicate, that you need to continually access your ignorance and ensure that your unspoken assumptions are tested.

This class has been a roller-coaster for me regarding my attitude toward the feasibility of organizational change.  The theories at first seemed abstract and disconnected from real organizational life.  But when I experienced the change interventions I gained hope.  Here were processes that would certainly have an impact on the organization.  Let me unpack these ideas a bit.

As I contemplated the theories recounted in the Burke text, it felt like analysis paralysis.  Was my head going to explode?  Concrete action did not seem related to this context.  Most theories seemed so abstract that particular action at particular organizations seemed disconnected and not meaningful.  Burke noted this as well, indicating the relative newness of this field and the ongoing search for the right kind of “science” for organizational change.

But getting a chance to work with the Burke model on the individual paper helped cement that model in my head.  His examples of how the model can be used were very enlightening.  Causality flowed from the transformational categories of external environment, mission and strategy, leadership, and organizational culture down to the remaining eight categories – and then causality flowed back as well.

So the nature of organizational change can be stated that it is hard, difficult to sustain, but if you persevere over the long haul with dedicated leadership, it can be done.  But it can often end up in a different place than you intended.  But the possibility that this will be a better place than you started makes it all worthwhile.

A comment concerning change in government is appropriate here, especially in relation to the need for consistent, dedicated leadership that will sustain change efforts over the long term.  When there is regular and predictable change at the top, change is difficult to sustain.  I currently work in state government, which in Virginia exists under a law that requires a new governor every four years.  When the whole administration is guaranteed to change at the top level that often, consistent, large-scale change efforts are stymied, since in four years a change effort is well on its way but still may need constant attention.  And that doesn’t even begin to take into account a culture that expects that “the more things change the more they stay the same.”  I have personally heard colleagues state that view, which amounts to a jaded resistance to new changes, given that the last ones have all passed away into nothingness.  Truly, as Burke observes, “without leadership, planned organizational change will never be realized” (p. 226).

The three organizational change strategies were eye openers.  They all involve a certain amount of letting go control.  In selling them to executives you can’t promise a bottom line.  Ultimately you can’t sell executives on their value or prove their results, you just have to let them come around on their own – hoping that they will.  But my confidence in the change strategies, personally, is that something good WILL happen.  You certainly need to address leaders’ practical objections and tailor the event to the culture of the particular organization.

As for the three organizational changes strategies, I was in the group that facilitated Future Search.  This strategy seems best when you have a general idea of where to go, you just don’t know how to get there.  It is especially useful when you need to find common ground among a divided group of people.  The processes and tasks then mesh people together in several groups to synthesize their ideas and experiences and dreams; the mixing is intentional.  Common ground and commitment to action are the outcomes.

Open Space seems the best when you have no idea where you want to go, or where you could go, and need to do further research before you decide on action.  This is the least structured of the three interventions.  Appreciative Inquiry seemed the most flexible to structure of the three, since it comes in a variety of forms.  It can be as structured as you want to make it.  The Appreciative Interview, in particular, has the ability to affect a whole organization as people interview each other, using positive questions.  This positive approach is something that can change an organizational culture all on its own.

These organizational change strategies and organizational change theory are techniques I hope to use in the context of Information Technology.  Since IT is a change agent, it can operate best if the anticipated changes are planned by someone with organizational change skills.  Or even better, conduct a change event first, and fold IT system changes into the big picture.  Unfortunately, IT like all other departments, too often takes a small view of change, and the organization suffers for it.

In the meantime I am looking forward to the upcoming consulting skills and Capstone classes.  Although the frequent groans I have heard emanating from my classmates in Capstone give me pause!

I have recently been tasked with bringing clarity to an implementation plan for a new IT system.  It has turned into an adventure where I am increasingly needing to get the whole system in the room.  This is on a small scale, but nonetheless instructive.

“Disconnect” seems to be the operative word as I have stepped into this, my next project.  It is a team of two dozen who were to have installed a new system last December – and it is still not operational.  I have been assigned to bring order out of chaos as we install a new version – hopefully one that will work.  I am not the new leader – just the organizer.  (I am not sure which is more scary!)

As I approached creating the implementation plan for the new system, I started interviewing several people one-on-one, building up the detail in the plan.  By the time I got to the third person, I started to note significant disconnects in what they were recommending for a strategy.  As I talked to still others, the disconnects grew, rather than shrank.  (This is for project team members that in some cases have been working together for several years.)  This became tedious quickly, and I called a meeting of about 12 for an hour, suspecting a two-hour ordeal was in store.

Three hours later, we finished.  Three major misunderstandings had been identified and resolved, along with countless minor ones.  I ended up calling in several more people at the last minute, since we did not have the whole system in the room.  Finally together, they could argue, challenge, and resolve issues.  I was not the content expert, as the new kid on the project, but those present could solve the issues.

What most amazed me were the silos that people lived in.  Also, some colleagues had the attitude that they knew how to do the work, they did not really need me to write up the implementation steps.  The problem was they did not know how their work impacted, or was impacted by, others on the same team.  First, everybody needed to see what everybody was doing.  The ultimate fact is that they DID NOT really know how to do the work.  The failed install from December spoke volumes of that fact.

But getting everyone together resolved many issues.  This was relatively simple.  But no one had done it in recent months.  Where organizational learning and systems theory come in is that the system knew how to fix itself.  The knowledge just had to be discovered, spread around, interpreted, and acted upon.

How did the implementation plan work?  Check back with me in two months!

Facilitation is a special interest of mine, whether it be for teaching, meetings, for events.  In the MEd program I have learned more and more to get out of the way and allow the adult learners to engage with the material and each other.  And I have been especially challenged by this while experiencing the whole-system interventions we have studied in class.  This characteristic was especially apparent to me while preparing for the Future Search event.  But I have also been struck with the similarity with the facilitation recommended for the Open Space event and gleaned a feel for it from Appreciative Inquiry.  All three interventions tend to place the facilitator in the background while elevating participant interaction, dialog, and decision-making to the foreground.

AI exhorts the Advisory Team in how to coach the change effort, keeping the overall focus on the affirmative.  This is the closest I can find to instruction for a facilitator in this intervention.  The emphasis is “giving away the power” rather than being the expert.  Participants are encouraged to “find their wisdom” so they can be equipped to succeed.  This is in keeping with large group intervention strategy that sees participants as empowered and capable to learn and decide.

Open Space uses a motto that intrigues me for the facilitator role:  be totally present and absolutedly invisible.  It is this large group intervention that carves out the smallest niche for the facilitator.  Once the facilitator has convened the session and primed the people, the marketplace is set up and the individual sessions start.  At this point the facilitator truly disappears into the background — ever present, ever vigilant, but ever inactive — at least on the outside, as long as the sessions are set up appropriately.

I have the most experience in Future Search, since it was my group’s intervention to present.  The nature of this event is several tasks occurring across three days.  Thus the role of the facilitator is to start and stop the tasks on time and remove any obstacles to the participants’ staying on task.  This overt role makes the Future Search facilitator more visible than in the other two interventions.  But the challenge here for me is to allow the group’s decisions and content creation to proceed unhindered by me, even when I can ease their pain or quickly guide them into greater insight.

And regarding the timing of the individual tasks, the temptation is always to allow just a bit more time on each task if the time is being spent productively.  But this inevitably cheats the remaining tasks of critical time and works against the success of the complete event.  Weisbord warns that this is a detrimental practice in general.

In summary, the small-to-invisible role that is envisioned for the facilitator in all three interventions is intriguing to me, since it goes so much against the grain.  My personal goal in facilitating groups is to empower them to act and decide on their own, not for me to take over.  All three techniques challenge me in that goal even further.  The difficulty for me, as with most people, is to remain still and vigilant while allowing others to walk throught the process, even when I could act more efficiently on their behalf.  After all, the goal is to build their capacity to act, not just get a series of decisions made.

I had a moment of Zen several weeks ago.  I was leading a meeting to resolve a problem.  I had called together a half dozen of our best technical people to fix a problem that critically affected our business partner, who was also there.  For our microcosm of the organization, this was the “whole system in the room”.

 

As a manager, I did not understand the depths of the technical problem, but the right people were there who did.  I summarized four possible solutions on the board with pros and cons.  People started weighing in on the options.  But I found that due to my being “behind the eight ball” on understanding the problem, I had to employ the Action Learning technique of prompting with questions.  I realized that all I could offer the meeting was through the use of probing questions to get out the expertise of others.  I had no choice!

 

And then an amazing thing happened.  I “lost control” of the meeting.

 

First, someone asked to run my laptop, which was hooked to the overhead projector.  She wanted to try running some scenarios for the group.  I moved readily out of the way (but felt “deposed”).  Someone else went to the white board and starting writing additional items.  Then other subgroups broke out as people started analyzing issues and comparing notes.  Finally another person went to fetch her laptop, and when she returned she too was busily engaged in research on our meeting topic.  I’ve been to meetings where many showed up with laptop in hand.  But I’ve never experienced a meeting where the proceedings depended on more than one person running laptop scenarios for research!

 

I looked around the room, humbled, knowing that I was no longer “in charge”.  I was not soliciting input, being answered, writing the results on the white board, or brokering a group decision.  But I was excited because the group’s problem-solving agenda was being advanced nevertheless, in fact, faster than if had been controlling the group in a single-threaded fashion.

 

And then it happened, the chortle of glee when someone realized that he had resolved the problem, quite neatly.  Intriguingly, he actually had resolved the issue earlier that afternoon on his own – but the crux was that he needed information from someone else (in the room) to realize that he had the solution.  What looked like it would take an hour and reach no conclusion was actually done successfully in 45 minutes.

 

According to Weisbord, the “whole system” knows how to heal itself, it just needs to be freed up to do so.  On this occasion, the “system” had already found the solution, it just needed to realize it.  I have bought and am reading through Weisbord’s “Don’t Just Do something — Stand there!” book on meeting facilitation.  His thesis:  the meeting facilitator operates optimally when he/she gets out of the way and empowers the attendees to take action. 

 

I saw that thesis in operation in this meeting.  And Weisbord’s book calls for another blog topic on its contents, some of which will make its way into our Future Search debrief.

The rest of that week I was more aware of the power of asking questions.  So I used it more in work meetings.  And to my delight one of the participants told me in response, “Good question!”  He became more engaged and gave a thoughtful answer to the question.  I was hooked!  The issue with me is remembering the value of questions and not falling back into my ways of declaring.  Asking questions helps engage the group, elicit their expertise, and communicates that their knowledge is valued.  Anything else is working too hard!