Welcome
Welcome to the latest issue of
Bringing Work to Life.
We explored the following topics
in the past twelve issues (all newsletters are available at
www.elsdon.com/newsletters.htm):
o
One to one (September/October 2006)
o
New horizons (July/August 2006)
o
Our greatest asset (May/June 2006)
o
Bringing development and performance home (March/April 2006)
o
Progressing in your organization (January/February 2006)
o
Bringing our best to work (December 2005)
o
The promise of affiliation (November 2005)
o
Nothing business, it’s just personal (October 2005)
o
Who are you? (September 2005)
o
Leadership roles (August 2005)
o
Leadership courage (July 2005)
o
The real scoop (June 2005)
In this issue we address
“Guiding Organizational Change.”
Guiding Organizational Change
Elting Morison, who was a historian of technology at M.I.T., tells some
fascinating stories about the challenges of change in his book Men,
Machines and Modern Times (Morison, 1966). They are directly relevant to
the challenges we face in adapting to the future environment and the
needs of the emerging workforce.
Let us look at one of Morison's examples that relates to adoption of
innovation. This is a military example from the end of the nineteenth
century. It concerns the adoption of a technique known as continuous-aim
firing. At the end of the nineteenth century firing from a ship was a
haphazard process. The ship moved with the motion of the sea so the gun
aimer had to guess when to fire during the ship's roll. Telescopic
sights on guns were rare and ineffective. They were fixed to the barrel
and would recoil into the gunner's eye should he choose to look through
it before firing. The rapidity of fire was controlled by the time of
the ship's roll and the accuracy limited by the gunner's ability to
estimate the optimum firing point.
A solution to this problem was first identified by an English officer,
Sir Percy Scott, when captain of the HMS Scylla in 1898. Scott had been
pondering the challenge of improving gunnery for several years. One
rough day he was walking the decks of his ship as it was engaged in
target practice. He noticed that one gunner was much more accurate than
the rest. The gunner did this by working the gun's elevating gear to
partially accommodate the ship's roll. Scott recognized the
significance of this and immediately made three changes to the guns on
his ship. First he changed the gear ratio on the guns so it was easy
for gunners to follow the target with the roll of the ship. Second he
put the sight on a sleeve around the barrel so it did not recoil into
the gunner's eye. Third he equipped the guns with a rifle and simulated
target so the gunners could practice with the new techniques. The result
was a dramatic improvement in accuracy. Later studies showed a 3,000%
improvement in accuracy. For example, five ships firing for five
minutes each using the then-conventional techniques managed, at a
typical range of 1,600 yards, two hits on the sails of a target vessel.
Using the new technique, one gunner made fifteen hits in one minute at
the same range on a much smaller target, half of them in a bull's eye
fifty inches square. This is a revolutionary improvement that addresses
the fundamental capability of this organization; in this case its
ability to hit an enemy target.
Scott was a colorful person, somewhat of a renegade, often railing
against the “inelastic intelligence of all constituted authority,
especially the British Admiralty.” His prior reflections on the subject
of gunnery and the serendipitous events on his ship enabled Scott to
weave together the threads of existing technology and create a massive
leap forward. So we come to the question of how this learning was
transferred to the American navy. Scott had been transferred to the
China station and there met with an American junior officer, William
Sims. Sims, like Scott, was a renegade who rebelled against what he
considered the bureaucratic inefficiency of his own navy. Sims learned
all there was to know about continuous-aim firing from Scott and
demonstrated precisely the same success with his ship's gunnery
capabilities.
Sure of his success Sims now set about educating his navy. He prepared
and submitted thirteen reports over two years with extensive factual
data that summarized the benefits of the new approach and the techniques
needed to implement it. The response came in three stages. In the
first stage the reports were ignored. They were simply filed away as
not credible. The second stage began with Sims adopting a more strident
tone in his communications and distributing his reports more broadly.
This led to the navy hierarchy meeting Sims’ proposals with logical,
rational rebuttal. Indeed the Bureau of Ordnance mounted experiments at
Washington Naval Yard that proved to their satisfaction that Sims’
proposals were impossible. This is because the tests were on dry land
and did not have the ship's motion to aid the gunner. This led rapidly
to the third stage, that of name-calling. Increasingly acrimonious
exchanges followed. Sims, a lieutenant, then took the extraordinary
step of writing to the president of the United States, Theodore
Roosevelt, to inform him of these remarkable new techniques that were
being ignored by the navy. Roosevelt brought Sims back from China in
1902 and installed him as Inspector of Target Practice. He stayed in
this post for the remaining six years of the administration, after which
he was universally acknowledged as “the man who taught us how to shoot.”
This example raises the question as to why there was such resistance to
a demonstrably major improvement that addressed the fundamental purpose
of the organization. Morison identifies reasons. First are those more
on the surface: an obscure junior officer proposed the idea; it
challenged the approaches developed earlier by those in command; and
improvements weren't needed. The Spanish-American War was recently won
without these new techniques, even if only 121 out of 9,500 shots from
other than close range found their mark. Morison goes on to explore a
more fundamental issue. He proposes that the resistance resulted from
the challenge these new approaches posed to the social structure of the
navy, for example they immediately elevated the importance of the
gunnery officer. He also identifies a central factor in this
resistance. Namely the identification of those people opposing change,
and to a lesser extent those people for change, with a limited purpose
that is only a subset of the overall organization's goal. For example
this limited identification may be to an existing narrow social
structure; to a technology product (the sight) without regard for its
application; or to the act of rebellion. It raises a question, posed by
Morison, whether an organization should undertake reform itself, or
whether it must seek guidance from the outside. Morison goes on to
suggest that two possible means to offset these limiting behaviors are
first to enlarge the sphere of identification from a part to the whole,
and second to consider identification with the processes of adaptation
and change rather than the product of this change. This means embracing
the opportunities that unfold from new perspectives and their impact on
our systems.
What is the relevance of experiences in military organizations more than
100 years ago to the situation in organizations today? This example is
about a social system, and that is precisely the arena of today's
organizational world. While the details of the changing world today are
different, the barriers to change are just as real as in the example. In
the Scott/Sims case the innovation survived due to the dogged
persistence of Sims. We might ask how many equally daring ideas surface
in organizations only to disappear from view, suppressed within
organizations that inoculate themselves against change. By identifying
with the part rather than the whole we compromise the growth and success
of our organizations. Some examples of this related to the workforce
are:
• Parochial behavior that restricts development of employees by limiting
internal movement
• Unwillingness
to invest in employee development
• Limiting the decision-making capability of employees
• Failing to identify and capitalize on workforce partnership options
• Unwillingness to embrace technology tools to aid in workforce
development
• Leadership insisting on rigid command-and-control hierarchies.
On a broader front, we see dramatically changing skill needs in the
workforce, with the growing importance of complex communication and
thinking skills and the diminishing importance of routine manual or
cognitive skills, as associated tasks are automated. This is
illustrated in the following figure from “How Computerized Work and
Globalization Shape Human Skill Demands by Levy and Murnane (2006).
So we need to adopt significant change within our organizations to
embrace these fundamental shifts. This brings us to the question of how
to guide needed organizational change in a turbulent external world,
overcoming the barriers that Morison showed are inherent in any change
initiative. Indeed Robert Eaton observed that “Any culture, by
definition, exists primarily to prevent change, to set in stone the
lessons of the past.” (Inscape Publishing). There are a number of
frameworks that have been developed to guide organizational change.
They are similar in nature. Let’s examine how we might apply one of
these frameworks developed by John Kotter and extended by Dan Cohen (The
Heart of Change Field Guide, Dan Cohen and John Kotter, Harvard Business
School Press, 2005).
We can begin by acknowledging two fundamental perspectives to
approaching change as shown in the following figure:
Analysis-Think-Change is how Sims addressed the continuous-aim firing
example, preparing thirteen reports detailing his observations and
techniques. The premise here is that facts are sufficient to sway
opinion and behavior. An example of See-Feel-Change is Rosa Parks
refusal to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955.
This visible act of courage and defiance became a symbol for the Civil
Rights movement.
Which of the two general approaches is likely to be most effective in
enabling change: the analysis-think-change approach or the
see-feel-change approach? Cohen finds that the see-feel-change
approach is most effective, which means helping people see a truth that
influences their feelings. This is more important than giving people
analysis to influence their thoughts. Frequently we miss the see-feel
component in an organizational setting so it is not surprising that
change efforts flounder. I have found in reviewing the results of exit
interview studies that a combination of both approaches is most powerful
in generating movement to action. So a central aspect of the
recommended approach to organizational change is to include both the
emotional and the analytical components. What might this mean in terms
of steps we can take to guide change? The following figure summarizes
the framework outlined by Cohen and Kotter:
There are three primary stages:
An example of an organization that has managed successfully to undergo
repeated, significant and radical change over its more than 200 year
history is the DuPont company. DuPont has evolved away from an
organization with roots in gunpowder manufacturing by embracing major
shifts in technology and commercial activities. Gunpowder is no longer
part of the DuPont business portfolio which is now that of a
multi-national chemicals and health care company.
It is important to ask before beginning a change initiative, whether the
right pieces of the jigsaw are assembled to begin the process. Michael
Watkins sheds some light on this question, proposing that the five items
shown in the following figure need to be in place before moving down the
plan then implement path that we just reviewed.
If we are confident that we have a critical mass of people who
acknowledged the need for change, we know what needs to be changed and
why, we have a compelling vision and solid strategy in place, we have
the expertise to create a detailed action plan and a sufficiently
powerful supportive coalition then we can proceed. If any of these key
elements are missing then an initial focus on collective learning may be
more appropriate to fill in the gaps.
In summary then it is important to recognize the challenges of
organizational change and plan accordingly. This means addressing both
logic and emotion, assessing readiness for change, creating the needed
climate, engaging the organization and implementing and sustaining the
approach. If we take these steps then we will do much to secure a
steady path through the stormy waters of our changing world.
Some of the material in this article is extracted from Affiliation in
the Workplace by Ron Elsdon, Praeger, 2003.
Health Care
Our son and daughter-in-law have friends whose young son has a serious
medical condition that has required several brain operations and will
likely require further operations in the future. They have exhausted
their funds and wonder how to pay for his continued care. If we
acknowledge that one measure of a civilized society is how it cares for
its weakest members, how is it that we place this young family in such a
distressing situation?
While many people enjoy excellent healthcare in the U.S., many others,
like this young family, are not so fortunate. The following figure
shows that in 2004 there were almost 46 million people without
healthcare insurance in the U.S., almost 16% of our population. As we
saw in our October 2005 newsletter, it is perhaps not surprising that
one state is particularly ineffective in health insurance coverage, that
state is Texas, where 25% of people do not have coverage, much worse
than any other state.
Lack of health insurance does not affect all groups equally. The
following figure shows that in 2005 for the first time in seven years,
the percentage of children covered by health insurance declined, since
coverage by both employer sponsored and State supported programs fell.
In 2005 this left 8.3 million children uninsured.
What does this mean for children? We see in the next figure that
uninsured children are much more likely to go without a doctor or
dentist visit, and to have unmet vision needs. We are putting our next
generation at risk.
We are also putting our most disadvantaged citizens at risk as shown in
the next figure for California. The percentage uninsured is shown in
the solid portion at the bottom of each bar. The bars are arranged by
income group expressed as a percentage of the Federal poverty level from
lower on the left to higher on the right. Over 40% of people with an
income level below the Federal poverty limit are uninsured, the far left
bar. It is doubly hard to break out of poverty when struggling with
sickness and lack of health care. What a credit it is to those
non-profit health care organizations that provide support to people who
would otherwise go without it. But this is a band-aid on an untenable
system.
Are we putting insufficient resources into healthcare? The next figure
would suggest that it is not a resource question. In the U.S. we spend
15% of our GDP on healthcare, almost 50% more than the next closest
country. For that investment only 25% of our population are covered by
public health care spending (the number in parentheses to the left of
the bars) whereas for all other developed nations except two, coverage
is universal (99% or above). The two exceptions are Germany, which
covers 91% of the population, and the Netherlands, which covers 76% of
the population, both well above U.S. levels.
What about outcomes? We are often told that out healthcare system
generates better outcomes. The following figure shows life expectancy
as a function of healthcare spending per capita in 2003. We see that
the U.S. has much higher per capita costs than other developed nations,
and significantly lower life expectancy.
Similarly when it comes to infant mortality, we see in the following
figure that the U.S. has the worst infant mortality rate of any of the
developed nations shown. Indeed the U.S. infant mortality rate is more
than twice as high as the four most effective nations.
Our healthcare system costs much more than systems in countries with
universal coverage and it delivers inferior results. Furthermore, we
are particularly compromising healthcare for vulnerable groups -
children and those who are economically disadvantaged. This problem is
worsening as employer coverage is declining and coverage through public
healthcare does not address the gap. We are compromising the health of
our next generation. Our responsibility and accountability is to create
a universal healthcare system that provides needed support for all of
our citizens, not just the wealthy, so the young boy needing an
operation, his parents and all of us, have the healthcare support we
need.
Quote
It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.
Billy Collins, On Turning Ten
Upcoming Elsdon Organizational Renewal (EOR) Events and Recent
Mentions
Upcoming
Events/Publications
·
Recorded webinar for Project
Management Institute
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“Becoming Career Fit in Turbulent Times”, now available at:
§
http://pmi-issig.org/Default.aspx?tabid=319
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Seminar for University of
California, Haas School of Business, Berkeley/Columbia MBA program
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November 9, 2006, “Building Interpersonal Skills to Guide and Coach
Others.”
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Webinar for Association of
Career Professionals
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December 6, 2006, “Adding Value in the New Organization.”
·
Chapter titled “How Can You Grow
Your Practice with Purpose?” for National Career Development Association
Monograph
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Likely publication date: late 2006/early 2007
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Coming in 2007
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Ventura
County – National
Human Resources Association, January 2007, “Building Affiliation.”
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UCLA Alumni Career Conference, January 2007, “Career Fitness in
Turbulent Times.”
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HR Week West Conference, Santa Clara, February 21, 2007, “Finally, a
Change Management Model that Works!”
§
http://www.hrweekwest.com/agenda.html#bpc1
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Article for National Career Development Association Career Convergence
magazine, likely publication March 2007, “Rising and Falling Tides.”
Recent Mentions
·
Reviews of “Affiliation in the
Workplace: Value Creation in the New Organization.” Ron Elsdon.
Praeger Publishers, Westport, CT (2003)
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Harvard
Business School
·
HBS Working Knowledge: Organizations
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Global Diversity Institute
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Global Diversity Institute - The Journal of Diversity Praxis
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Journal of Asian Economics
·
ScienceDirect - Journal of Asian Economics : Ron Elsdon, Affiliation in
the Workplace: Value Creation in the New Organization, Praeger
Publishers, Westport, CT (2003) 280 pp. (hardcover), ISBN 1-56720-436-8,
$49.95.
o
Greenwood Publishing Group
·
Affiliation in the Workplace — www.greenwood.com
·
“Building a Strong Workforce
Through Affiliation.” Chapter 26 in “On Staffing: Advice and
Perspectives from HR Leaders.” Eds. Nicholas Burkholder et al, John
Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken NJ (2004)
o
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0471410691,descCd-tableOfContents.html
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“Reaching for Our Deep Gladness”
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Article in May, 2005 NCDA Career Convergence Magazine
·
http://209.235.208.145/cgi-bin/WebSuite/tcsAssnWebSuite.pl?Action=DisplayNewsDetails&RecordID=625&Sections=6&IncludeDropped=&AssnID=NCDA&DBCode=130285
·
Mention in article on cost of
turnover
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East
Bay Business Times,
April 2005
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Turnover costs exceed employers' estimates - 2005-04-25
·
“Worklife Survival: Finding a
Fit”
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Article for HR West, February 2005 (Northern California Human Resource
Association)
·
http://www.nchra.org/StaticContent/Download/EXT0205007.pdf
·
Interview in the education field
“Affiliation as a Unifying Principle in Education”
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Career Pro News
·
Affiliation and Education
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MBTI Step II workshop
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CCDA News, April 2005
·
Local Chapter News
·
Review of ICDC Global Issues
Forum
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CCDA, January 2005
·
ICDC Global Issues Forum
About EOR: Our Value Contribution
We enhance your workforce,
leadership and organization by:
·
Using proprietary approaches to
understand workforce and leadership challenges
·
Creating tailored action plans
and solutions to strengthen workforce and leadership practices
·
Building individual capabilities
and contributions
We enable you to focus on
external results and building value, confident that your organization
and leadership are operating at peak effectiveness.
Our Mission
To support your organization by
enhancing performance, productivity and effectiveness through
revitalized workforce relationships and leadership practices.
Our Approach and Values
We tailor our engagements to the needs of each organization with a
process designed to surface critical issues, identify root causes, build
effective solutions, monitor progress and implement.
With a scope that ranges from system and organizational interventions to
work with individuals, our focus is on the heart of the relationship
among the individual, the organization and the community. We believe
that organizational and community prosperity are built on enabling each
person to fulfill his or her potential.
Our Services
We work with individuals and
groups in your organization to drive performance and development for
both the short and long term. As a result people will choose to work in
your organization and will prosper there.
We bring solutions when you need
to:
·
Reverse declining revenues and
performance
·
Revitalize your workforce
·
Stem the loss of key talent
·
Redirect your organization to
new areas
·
Stop losing customers or market
share
·
Penetrate new markets
·
Combat aggressive competitors
·
Handle major change
·
Break down communication
barriers
·
Energize your leadership team
·
Successfully build on an
acquisition or merger
Our proprietary services
include:
·
State-of-the-art tools to take
the pulse of your organization and then move to action
o
Web enabled systems
o
Experts to gather and analyze information, moving your organization to
action
·
Individual leadership coaching
to give you world class leadership capabilities
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Leaders who know themselves and their aspirations, build their
capabilities and become catalysts developing others
·
Workshops to build interpersonal
skills in your organization so that:
o
Communication is timely, concise, accurate and personal
o
People listen to each other
o
Negotiations are quick and effective
o
Differences create rather than destroy value
o
Teams move forward, get results and quickly commercialize new products
and services
o
People understand and link their motivations to your organizational
needs
o
Your teams understand what it takes to create a committed, energized
workforce
o
People use their time well
·
Systems that make it easy to
drive performance and build capabilities by:
o
Linking objectives throughout the organization
o
Strengthening key competencies
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Making sure you have the bench strength where and when you need it
o
Giving people tools to take charge of their own careers and development
and have a major long term influence on your organization
·
Proprietary simulation and
modeling techniques that let you explore how to maximize the value of
your workforce
o
Move from guessing what might happen to looking in depth at the
financial impact of different approaches
