Category Archives: Global OD Stories

Creating Value and large scale change via being Eclectic

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The dumbing of OD has led to use of tinned OD solutions, superimposed on complex organizational situations. Management via IT process and the need of managers  to look great as soon as as possible has led to massive use of these tinned solutions. When these tinned solutions fail, the vendor can be blamed and another “vendor” hired.

There is another much better of doing things however, as this post illustrates. I will illustrate a complex project based on a totally eclectic approach.

A large corporation hired me to work on a prolonged crisis between the central HQ-based Technical Presales Team and the various RSTs, i.e., Regional Sales Teams in South East Asia, Japan, China, Europe and the Americas.

There had been turf wars between the HQ-based function and each of RSTs, yet the reasons for the turf wars were different. Ideally it would have made sense to decentralize Technical Presales, but due to the lack of product experts, it was impossible.

A well-known consulting firm had just failed in this very endeavour, leaving behind a bible filled with process flow, roles and responsibilities, and what have you. My mandate was to `create uniformity“ so that everyone `works to processes”. I turned this mandate down, and suggested a more eclectic approach.

My point of contact was a very competent HR manager, very unlike my Gloria character. The HR manager and I agreed that the solution may not be uniform, and the starting point will not be the bible of processes, rather, we will do whatever works, with a very eclectic approach.

Quickly I discovered that there was huge variance in the HQ Technical Presales –RST interface between regions.

·      In some countries, the sales force was equipped only with `connections“ and after clients’ doors were opened, the RST expected that technical pre sales do everything else, including signing the deal and legal work.

·      In other countries, the RST was highly technical and all they wanted from Technical Presales was promotional marketing material!

·      In another set of countries, the Technical Presales Team was seen as “bunch of spies for corporate“ serving as an unneeded gate to prevent selling of customization of the products to local needs. Thus, the RST did everything alone, bypassing Technical Presales; however corporate could not build the customizations that the RSTs sold.

My work did not focus on all RSTs at once. First, I did a show case project with one area (Europe) and the change was very positive. The CEO and senior executives bragged about the `turn-round“ between Europe RST-HQ Technical Presales in several senior forums. Eventually, my project expanded to each RST and a 3 year effort was crowned as a major success.

The solution in each RST looks very different. In some RST`s, we worked on trust and communications, in other RST`s, we worked on mutual expectations. In yet other RST`s, we needed to replace managers with negative political agenda. In the Technical Presales team, there was a 10% increase in headcount and a massive investment in travel and personal effectiveness coaching.

The procurement department in this company had recommended not hiring me. There was no scope of work I was willing to commit to a priori, I could not estimate budget, and my travel expenses were high.

Three months into the second year of the project, the Head of Procurement told me that he heard that `the results are worth the investment, even though you (Allon) did not handle the initial  negotiation “appropriately”. And he has a point.

All thru the project, HR provided me with air cover, promoting the eclectic approach of tinkering, seeing what works and solving the problem.

No workshops or OD pre-packaged modules were used.

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Listening is a guessing game in many cultures

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Some cultures are relatively blunt and to the point. One rarely needs to guess what a Dutch, German, French or Israeli means when they express themselves in business. True, nuances and cultural clues may be be missing, but after some exposure, getting the point is pretty straight forward.

In other cultures, corporate communication is much more difficult to decipher. In some cultures, this  difficulty comes from face saving (e.g. Thailand, Philippines) ; in other cultures the difficulty comes from a cultural uniformity which negates the need to be explicit , like Japan. In the USA, the difficulty in figuring out what something means is negatively impacted by political correctness, which obfuscates clarity.

In cross cultural communication, a key skill that one needs to acquire is how to understand corporate communication when a lot is “unsaid”.

Example: A senior manager asks the Japan Office if he can visit the first week of August. The answer he gets is yes. Then, the senior manager asks how many people will be on vacation that same week. When he learns that 70% of the people will be on vacation that same week, he asks if the first week of September is better, and gets a “yes”, only to learn later on that this date is also unsuitable.

Here are a few suggested ways to get around this impediment of implicitness:

1) Don’t try to get people to be explicit. While it can be done, it is very humiliating for the other side.

2) Ask many people the same question and compare answers.

3) Learn to provide alternatives, as opposed to asking questions the answers to which are yes or no. (Do you prefer I come on this date or that date).

4) Listen very closely to what is not said. Watch eye content, pay attention, putting  all communication in (age, role, situational) context.

5) Watch for purposeful ambiguity. E.g, Is this a good time to meet? “Yes, it may be”.

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Focus on what needs to be changed, not what you have been hired to change

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Companies use OD to drive difficult change in line with structure and values of the corporate, which are usually highly impacted by Western values.

Often the proposed changes may be the wrong changes, not do-able in  some of the local cultures where the company operates. The role of the OD consultant tasked with facilitating the change should be to raise a flag and prevent the change from happening, or at least do risk mitigation. In order to understand the issues in advance, the consultant needs to be aware of the cultural barriers to change.

The OD consultant  however is often in denial about his/her own cultural  bias, which stem from OD’s core concepts and tools.These cultural biases may lead to the ineffective imposition of an ill planned changed.

For example, let us assume that  headquarters dictates that two managers (two in a box) will co-manage a certain organizational sub-unit and share power. One manager is to focus on engineering, and the other is to focus on development and product architecture. The two are to “cohabit” in the “leadership space”.

Let’s assume that the local culture where these 2 managers are to co-manage  is characterized by “One hill is not for 2 tigers ”, i.e, power cannot be shared, and power is exercised autocratically. In such a case, there is no chance that two managers will share a management role if they hail from such a culture. Instead of two-in-a-box, we will have two in a boxing ring! Smile

An OD consultant with Western values who is asked to facilitate the change may take the 2 managers and  try to define clarity of decision making processes, build trust, or build various mechanisms to minimize conflict and power games. But the two managers want another type of clarity-who the f-ck is the boss?-and constantly battle, like two tigers on a hill.

And the more that the western consultant tries to push his values on the local culture, he may find himself looking like an American politician trying to organize a cease fire between intense enemies who want to knock the crap out of one another, and prefer death to compromise.

What can an OD consultant do to prevent using OD to implement change the wrong way?

  • Look at the cultural alignment of each change.
  • Understand what can change, and what cannot change.
  • Put your OD values on hold.
  • Focus on what needs to be changed, behaviour in the field or corporate policy.  Focus the OD effort in the right direction.(If you have been hired by someone junior or a possessed by looking good, this will be hard.)

In the above case in China, it is best to focus on not implementing two in a box policy.

Here is another example.

Corporate asked me to work with senior management on “the value of transparency”. One key manager in this process believed everyone is lying to him all the time by padding effort estimates. This manager hated the word “transparency” and thought it was “western propaganda”. The focus of my  work with him centred on building a group of people whom he could trust, and avoiding “religious” statement like “the value of transparency” which challenged his belief system. We totally avoided the use of the word “transparency” to the chagrin of the internal team “measuring OD’s effectiveness”.

It is important that OD work of this nature is commissioned by someone internally who is not obsessed with looking good, but rather someone who wants to get it right.

Follow me @AllonShevat

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Friday Mideast Diary-and thoughts about organizational slogans

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The present mid east conflict touches my life because I live and work in areas under fire. My dog Georges gets upset when, with a mighty boom,  Iron Dome intercepts missiles headed our way.

One of the more unfortunate aspects of this conflict is my exposure to mass media. In order to know when to go the shelter, I am forced to keep on the TV. Curiosity gets the better of me and I watch Gaza TV as well as Israeli TV.

Mass media plays a pivotal role perpetuating mutually exclusive narratives that “enable” the mid east conflict. The media dumbs the audience via creating tribal camaraderie by “servicing” the narrative.

Gazan media is Der Stumer in style as well as being radical religious crap. On the other hand,  the Israeli media is misleading and self righteous ad absurdum, apparently taking marching orders from patriotism more than journalism.

While one of the enemy  missile may kill me if my luck does not continue, the media makes me ill. Every news update that I hear brings my IQ one notch downward.

I feel like a software engineer being pressed to work weekends for a year to release buggy software that customers will hate, while on the walls around me are posters telling me to love my customer, and ensuring me that I work for a people company.

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How my age impacts the way I practise OD

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I am 68 years old. I swim 40 laps (one km) 5 days a week. Few people (except my dentist) “give me” my age, but alas, facts are facts.

To be honest, there are events that remind me of my age; I do not recover from periodic ailments as fast as I used to, I love my routines more than ever, and I find myself talking about health from time to time. And my back has seen happier days.

I have reflected as of late about my age and my profession. This post is about how the way I practise OD is impacted by my age.

Sharing with you all these random reflections:

–I am still not used to people or groups sitting with me and sending texts messages simultaneously. Heavens knows that I have tried to adapt, yet I find this practice infuriating. In the past, I refused to accept when it happens, and slowly I gave up.

-Coming from an age when most teams were not virtual, it is my belief that virtual teams are chronically prone to acute trust issues, which plague communication and transparency. I tend to work with my clients on setting proper expectations about virtual teams and “pain management” rather than rah-rahing folks to achieve the impossible in virtual teams. This belief is no doubt tinted by my age.

-Until about 15 years ago, a lot of my work had been commissioned and enabled by very professional HR managers, who understood OD as well as I did (and at times better). They provided me with air cover and used their power at the senior level to remove obstacles which allowed me to succeed. I had always viewed HR as a partner. This past experience has made me  wary of the HR profession as currently practiced: my present stereotype of HR is of a survival-driven sycophant, who wow wows and promotes mindless slogans “in line with core values”. I am very lucky to have found exceptions to this stereotype, but my stereotype is based on a bitter reality, based on my remembering another and better era.

-Having seen so many OD fads come and go, my age has made me weary and wary of OD models; having seen so many solutions de jours, I am religiously eclectic. In this sad age of OD productization, I am a very firm believer that OD is a service, not a product. No doubt age driven!

-At the very of my belief is that “customer satisfaction” is not something OD even strives to provide. OD does not define a scope of work and deliverables, and work to plan. This is not what we do.To use a metaphor, if water is a river, we are in the water and swimming against the current. OD challenges authority, asks questions, rocks the boat. To use a political metaphor, OD is loyal opposition. These beliefs of mine come from another era, when OD did not sell products which reek of snake oil. When I need to change to start “pleasing clients”, I will leave the profession.

–I am not in the elearning or webinar space not only because I do not think it is very effective, but because I am not good at it. But probe me deep enough, I do not think it works well. Clearly an age related liability.

To sum things up, I am technologically capable, an OD innovator as well as very relevant in my practice. I am not a nostalgic relic; my age has given me a firm set of beliefs which serve me well, yet these beliefs need to be checked all the time.

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Trust in global companies

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The way to achieve trust varies from culture to culture.

  • In some cultures, people trust one another because they know that no feedback will be given which leads to loss of face.
  • In some cultures, trust is augmented after an “argument” because then each side knows that the other truly cares.
  • In some cultures, “following the process” builds trust whist in other, process can only be followed once trust is established.

Because of this cultural divide around trust, I suggest less use of the word “trust”. There needs to be a list of behaviours around which people rally, not a word that means something very different to everyone on the block.

For example, we could start with:

  • The appropriate people are consulted before a decision is made.
  • We assume positive intent.
  • People assist one another above and beyond formal roles and responsibilities
  • Communication styles factor in both face needs as well as need for directness.

One may claim, trust means different things to different people, but we all need to show trust! I claim that the word creates undue complexity, as if “fast” and “eat” were the same word.

Continued use of the term “trust”, as is, serves the interests of the power elite in OD, which promulgates this ambiguous term as a platform for force feeding the western interpretation of trust.

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Aligning the Feedback Loop to Global Organizations

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Feedback consists of information about an organization, a group and an individual which is “recycled” to provide a basis for assessment, reflection and as a basis for corrective action.Feedback is one of the  building blocks that OD introduced into organizations.

This posts related to how can feedback be integrated into organizations given the many cultural constraints that the global organization faces, for example:-

  1. In some cultures, it is easy to talk about the future, but if the past is discussed, there is/may be a  loss of face.
  2. In some cultures, corrective action may be more effective if positioned as adaptive change,without use of explicit lessons learned from the past.
  3. In some cultures, direct and authentic feedback of any kind is seen as extraordinarily rude.
  4. In some cultures, the essence of leadership is to “protect employees by assuming responsibility for their errors” and keeping it all hush hush.

The feedback loop must retooled for the global organization.

As we align organizational design and development to a global configuration, here are a few emphasis worth changing.

1. Develop and legitimize opaque communication tools that allude to the past in order to plan corrective action.

2. Develop and legitimize indirect and “back door” feedback so as not to cause any perceived discomfort whatsoever, yet enable change.

3.Develop a contingency feedback model that allows a legitimate trade off between the feedback and the perceived harmony of relationships.

4. Budget much longer time cycles for giving feedback so as to allow face saving.

OD consultants who want to remain relevant would be wise to  stop drinking academia’s warmed over cool aid, check their western biases, step away from force feeding western values when inappropriate, and get real.

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OD need not straggle behind

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Almost every aspect of organizational life has changed beyond recognition in the past decade.

  • People who share neither values, culture or language work together. (new diversity)
  • Global organizational politics is riddled with complex, survival site agendas. (new conflicts)
  • People “message”/ email more than they talk, because teams are mainly virtual. (new communication)
  • Management is all about task promotion and self-survival. Employees are far less engaged. (new values)
  • The human resource is seen as dispensable. (new motivations)

What has changed in the way OD is practiced?

In my opinion, very little. OD is tap dancing and dithering on the stage, with lots of internal focus and debate about side issues as organization life is reconfigured.

This is happening because the gatekeepers of OD are holding back. As OD lost  ground,  OD guidelines became an orthodox religion.

This is why the battle for globalizing OD is an uphill run. The hill is steep and the wind is blowing in our face.

My advice to OD people who want to remain in shape and relevant is to learn about Global OD instead about how to market yesterday’s produce.

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Corporate culture cannot bridge acute cultural differences (revised)

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It may appear well defined corporate culture can serve as a bridge over the stormy waters of acutely different cultures in the global organization. This is not necessarily the case.

Now let’s get this straight. There is a lot to be said for providing a shared context, shared values and a common set of behavioural guidelines. However, in order to ensure that this culture is not administered inappropriately, it is critical to ensure that the limitations of the culture are acknowledged. Paradoxically, it is only when these limitations are recognized that the corporate culture is most effective.

Here are some examples of behaviours which cannot be changed by one shared culture.

  • When a culture prefers discretion to transparency, discretion will reign.
  • When age dictates seniority, younger managers will not be respected.
  • When delegation is seen as abdication, managers will be centralistic.
  • Where loyalty to boss reigns supreme, teamwork in the western sense will falter.
  • When people prefer relationships to process, process will remain “on paper”

Even if elevators, screen savers, bulletin boards, management training sessions, and other “enablers” push and promulgate such artifacts as transparency, teamwork, delegation,  process adherence, the impact of these efforts may be negative, because the culture quickly becomes a theocratic dictate. How does this happen?

Instead of acknowledging the limitations  of corporate culture, the corporate culture is often positioned like tenets of a religious creed by over-zealous HR managers and training staff, and then shoved down (or up) the appropriate body orifice of the staff with the passion of a CFO making budget cuts. This breeds deep scepticism and cynicism.

I work in the most acute diversity one can imagine and come from a very diverse personal background. My experience has taught me that deep relationships, cultural humility and a global mindset are as important if not more, than a set of artifacts in addressing the cultural differences in global organizing.

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What is a Global Literacy? (updated)

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In the spirit or brevity, I have put together a very short list of components which constitute “global literacy”, i.e., the ability to be fluent and effective in the acutely diverse global workplace. This list is based on my observations of highly effective managers in the global work place.

  1. Understand where other attitudes and behaviour different from your own come from due to an awareness of the limitations of your own culture
  2. Non-judgmental about how things get done
  3. Ability to build personal trust to transcend differences
  4. Ability to mitigate the imposition of your own cultural preferences. (like: be open)
  5. Behavioural and attitudinal flexibility to work with people and teams whose major shared domain is that they are different
  6. Ability to shelter global staff from corporate absurdities whilst inculcating central values and behaviours which cannot be compromised/

This is the focus of ALL the coaching/consulting that I do with teams and individuals who need to acquire global literacy. My experience is that very little falls outside this list.

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