Organizations are constantly subject to the onslaught of their context (Burns & Stalker - 1961; James D. Thompson - 1968; Charles Perrow - 1969) and this requires changes and modifications to be made both in their structure and processes, which in turn, it impacts the different organizational participants.
Possibly one of the most important responsibilities that organizational leaders have is to be attentive to these changing situations in context. Having the sensitivity to feel, perceive, understand and modify these situations as a result of a state of alert is vital for the survival of companies and entities. Many times the changes can force changes in the technology or in the production and delivery processes of the services based on quality requirements and in other opportunities these may be due to growth needs. In the latter case, companies may be forced to change because they need to reach a different volume in their sales because the principle of economy of scale begins to operate.
Companies are also subject to the "financial business" that puts their interest in dividends and "cash" above the product or service.
Thus, many entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs may find themselves at some point in need to decide whether to grow or remain at a lower volume level of operations. This last option has been defined by Eric Gaynor Butterfield as “operating on propeller instead of jet” (Workshop “Entrepreneurs. Is it better to grow in size and volume?
We now begin to explore other different Modes of intervention that are available to consultants. In the first part we have taken into account all those counseling interventions that were linked to the first and second units of analysis (the individual and the group, respectively).
We want to make it clear that as we move from the first units of analysis to the third and fourth of them - intergroup relations and the Organization - this does not mean that we stop taking the former into account. As Larry Greiner (1969) stated many years ago, any variable that was manipulated at the level of organizational change surely must provoke and promote changes in other components.
During the debate that we had during the first part, we have observed that there are very few Modes of intervention that have been applied in the different companies and organizations within the countries that are part of Latin American cultures.
And in the event that some of them were taken into account, generally only the subsidiaries of multinational corporations dedicated significant efforts, energy and resources to mobilize and actuate some of the different Modes of intervention.
The question that hangs in our heads is the following: Why is it that the entrepreneurs who own local businesses in Latin America do not apply or make use of all the available modes of intervention? Is it possible that these entrepreneurs do not have a genuine interest in learning and changing their businesses? Is it possible that they do not want to mobilize their companies from the scenario that they are today towards a new and preferred scenario?
And some answers from you as participants can be very useful to us. They may not know they have all of these options available to enjoy a new perspective on their own business. They may not know the real implications of each of these Intervention Modes. And it is possible that not having experimented with them, you also do not know what are the results that you can expect.
For now, we are going to leave some of these questions “up in the air” and we are going to tackle the task of the other Modes of intervention used by businessmen in the most economically developed countries.
Following the scheme of the authors Schmuck and Miles we have to deal in the first instance with those Modes of intervention that are linked to the “intergroup level”. One of the main Modes is the one that has to do with “Work Flow Planning” and that deserves special consideration.
This precursor mode has practically not been taken into account within Latin American cultures. Of course, a significant number of consultants - and also consulting firms - have to debate this issue saying "that they have worked planning the work flow" for others.
And here it is worth going back to a well-known character: the Engineer Frederick Taylor. This man developed a dissertation in the United States of America for the Professional Association of Engineers - the vast majority of all of them graduates and graduates from very good Universities - where he stressed the importance of the "method of shoveling". What does this mean? F.
Taylor "showed" that the different shoveling method adopted by different people results in differential productivity between them that can be as high as 100%. And after proving it, he was also able to go further by showing that even the shovel itself could make an important difference.
And he did not finish his work but finally exhibited how the "shovel had to accommodate the physicality of each of the people." Henry Ford could not have implemented his assembly line if he had not had the correct conception regarding "Workflow planning". The Gilbreth brothers came showing how a work could be subdivided into many components and those components into other additional parts.
And when organizations try to improve procedures, do not create in the more economically developed countries a "Department of Organization and Methods"; it is simply called "Methods and Procedures". The organization is handled by others who are usually those closest to the top.
And all the named characters have been necessary so that what is known as computer technology could be generated through the binary system and that it was advantageously applied in one of the electoral processes of the United States of America more than 50 years ago.
And Bill Gates would not have been able to develop his famous software if he was not clear about what “Work Flow Planning” means and is in practice. Or perhaps we don't see the similarities between the Henry Ford assembly line and the "virtual assembly line" of software. Can we skip and modify the sequence of what is done with software?
A field work by Eric Gaynor Butterfield (Organizational Development Congress; Argentina - 1997) shows that in many companies within Latin American cultures, the start of activities each day in the morning is the moment when the superior decides " who does what". Often there are not certain positions with the activities that they must develop. It is as if a football Technical Director decided who should occupy the position of goalkeeper or striker - among others - a few moments before the start of the game. So I ask that you please do not take too light a look at this important Mode of Intervention as we can learn a lot from it.
The Work Flow Planning seeks to develop a design where the work flow is planned between two or more vital components of the company, which are usually represented in the first instance by the sales and production or purchasing circuits. As we have previously stated, this Mode of intervention has practically not been developed by consultants in company-Clients within Latin American cultures. And, of course, it is possible that one of the negative consequences in terms of productivity, has to do - even partially - with its lack of application.
Another Mode of intervention is that known under the name of "Scheduling Review" or Program Review. This type of intervention is designed with the purpose of being able to appreciate and evaluate how the work has been programmed in terms of the relationship between tasks and time. You already know that time and movement studies have been present in North American and European organizations for about 100 years, and that this practice is not common within companies operating in different Latin American cultures. Some of the comments of the above Mode of intervention are also valid for this circumstance.
Nor have we found much work from consultants in Latin America related to the Intervention Mode known as "Interorganizational Development" with perhaps the only exception of those foreign organizations where mergers / acquisitions / purchases occur as a result of integrating: different cultures, different businesses, different products and services in a single unit. In this type of intervention, the consultants carry out a design of the two groups or of the two organizations so that they work together to establish and maintain relationships that are more effective and efficient.
“Managing intergroup conflicts” turns out to be a Mode of intervention that has been applied punctually in only some situations within companies in Latin America. In this type of intervention - which in its original version is known as “Intergroup Conflict Management” - the intervention is designed in such a way that it can deal with destructive conflicts that arise between two or more units. Many of the work of consultants and professionals in Organizational Development within the United States of America have had to do with this intervention.
Another Mode of Intervention that is common in the United States of America is "Third-Party Intervention" which is designed by the advisor to improve relationships that are hampered by previous conflicts. Further reading on this matter can be taken from the work of Richard Beckhard as well as in the case of the mode of intervention mentioned in the previous paragraph (“Intergroup Conflict Management”).
To show the enormous distance covered by what organizations - and their leaders - do in the most economically developed countries with respect to how it operates within the different Latin American cultures, it is worth noting that there is more than a generation of difference between the two conceptions. The delay we have in mind in our Latin American continent is further dramatized by the fact that the "Best Practice" implemented several decades later is not very similar to that of "Third-Party Intervention". There has been more talk of "Negotiation" to deal with this situation, which turns out to be an important and necessary approach, but which is not always sufficient for better and greater business development.
The type of training “Through different functions” known in the USA under the name of “Cross-Functional Training” has not been common in Latin American organizations, but on the contrary, it has been effectively applied in the USA. The basic hypothesis for this type of intervention mode is based on the fact that individuals and groups do not always have the knowledge, practices and competencies to be able to link effectively with each other. Therefore, the design of the consultant for this type of intervention is aimed at giving new competences to people and groups that go beyond what they need within their natural radius of action.
As we can see, many of the Intervention Modes that are part of the Organizational Development Profession have not been widely applied within companies in Latin America, saving those circumstances when it has been a question of subsidiaries of multinational companies. Even within multinational companies themselves, this practice of business change and development has not been very common. We can almost conclude that as we grow in the unit of analysis, we experience fewer and fewer applications and new modes of intervention, which are used by consultants in Latin America.
And we can almost make an additional hypothesis: almost all the changes - or at least the vast majority - are made within what is known as the "hard" sciences, giving little importance to the "soft" sciences and in particular to behavioral science. So we do not want to stop wondering at the moment: How do Latin American consultants expect to change companies and organizations, if they make so little use of behavioral sciences? And the paradox is that those who pay for the services of these same consultants, that is, the managers and directors, also do not seem to have much interest in having the contributions of the behavioral sciences applied to the organizational world.
Let us now go on to explore the different Modes of intervention to which consultants have access with the “largest” unit of analysis that we have explored so far: the organizational level. Before beginning I would like to share a reflection that I have heard from Dr. Donald W. Cole when - from a less economically developed country - they ask him if Organizational Development can be implemented within that less economically evolved culture. And to this question Dr. Cole re-asks: When did the Industrial Revolution take place in your country? The fact that is known to all is that the industrial revolution took place in the most industrialized countries around the middle of the 19th century, and that about 50 years later the first management book was written in the United States of America.,to which some 20 years later we must add that it was learned within the USA regarding how the social element influences organizational results.
Some twenty years later - and always within the USA - a type of organizational arrangement was learned and put into effect that has been known as a matrix arrangement where people begin to respond to two people who have different objectives, different needs, different resources and different orientations.. And this is not easy for the human being when the same biblical passage makes us respond to one. And to deal with this conflictive situation caused by the matrix organization, the Organizational Development Profession emerges, which finds its sustenance in the behavioral sciences within organizations. So those communities that have not yet had the Industrial Revolution are "behind schedule" to say the least,with respect to innovating through what is known as the profession of organizational development.
And another important point to keep in mind - and one that should not escape the attention of consultants and also organizational leaders - is that learning is "cumulative" and not substitute.
The famous philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau stressed that "every generation tends to accumulate the knowledge of previous generations", a fact that seems almost universal with the exception of the few countries that have been characterized by going backwards in the last generation (as in the case of Argentina).
It is quite common within the business and organizational world as well as in the political-social sphere that leaders tend to radically change the previous approach "within the same dimension"; that is, always moving within the same dimension from one pole or end to the other. Moving to the practice of "empowerment" without having applied some of the principles of scientific administration can result in some dysfunctional results. And the same can happen for those organizations that want to move towards the virtual organization without having successfully completed the stage of matrix organization.
There are no children who can enter the University directly at 5 years regardless of the fact that they have a higher level of intelligence than a teenager.
Let us now explore one of the most common Intervention Modes at the level of the organization as a whole, such as "Strategic Planning". What is really sought in the face of this type of intervention by consultants?
Here the advisors make an intervention design oriented to improve the development of the long-term objectives and goals as well as clearly define the direction that the company must take. What has happened with this Mode of Intervention is that most of the organizations in Latin American cultures have not been prepared to compete in a globalized world technologically, commercially and financially.
Many of the national companies with local owners had different types of protection to operate within their own regions and, when borders were opened, they have been subject to the effectiveness of other organizations characterized by their greater flexibility and ability to learn.
So strategic planning has been applied very strongly in the United States of America, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and some countries in Europe mainly. Hence, these countries have taken for themselves the motto that says: “It is thought globally (these more economically developed countries really do it) and it is executed (or rather, it is not thought so much) locally as is the case of the lesser countries. economically developed.
The “Confrontation Meetings” (we suggest to see Richard Beckhard again) represent a new Mode of Intervention that the consultants in organizational development have designed with the purpose of working together and in coordination with two or more different groups in order to resolve those conflicts that they are characterized by being destructive. It is not common for this type of Intervention Mode to be carried out within the different Latin American companies.
The prevailing organizational model is the one known under the name of “hierarchical pyramid organization” where, in general, the participants define it as a type of arrangement where those “from above” think and dictate what “those from below must do”. And for this the "above" hire personnel in the middle. Dysfunction appears when in many communities those "in the middle" begin to respond "socially," that is, more downward. On the other hand, in the most economically developed countries and especially in the United States of America, senior managers are much clearer "that the most economical thing to do is to listen to the points of view of others without having to pay them fees" (as is in the case of consultants).But it is not easy for companies to incorporate this perspective in Latin America when, within the years corresponding to family education (about 5 years) and the subsequent years dedicated to formal education (about 7 to 12 years on average before starting work) the learning model has been of the “hierarchical type that responds to a rather authoritarian role or role”.
Cases where the Mode of intervention known under the name “Culture Transformation” has been used is quite common in the USA and professionals in organizational development have learned a lot from this type of situation. Cultural Transformation is characterized by being a type of intervention that consultants have designed with the purpose of changing the assumptions regarding whether things are being done "well" or if they are being done in the "wrong" way.
The few opportunities in which this type of intervention mode is carried out within companies with Latin American owners, turns out to be under the “forced method”. In general, the results have to be dramatically bad to force this type of approach.
Re-engineering has gained a lot of notoriety in Latin America, especially since the 90s of the last century. This particular mode of intervention differs from what the consultants and experts on the other hand that make up the Organization and Methods Department usually did, in that the latter focus on "simplifying" what is being done while re-engineering is further suggesting everything that should be removed. Latin American consultants have not found it easy to work under this new conception, especially in what has had to do with people (compared to technology).Lack of expertise in behavioral science has possibly been one of the main reasons why consultants have been delayed in their projects to implement new methodologies and technologies often based on truly innovative software.
Consultants were used to "placing particular emphasis on things that are being done wrong or wrong." Eric Gaynor Butterfield points out that it has been personally difficult for him to change this perspective of the consultants towards a different one (and that turns out to be complementary) when they are involved in re-engineering in the Clients. Gaynor suggests (Organizational Development Congress; 1999 - Buenos Aires) that it is also important that they explore "everything that people in the company are doing correctly but that is not useful". Hence his phrase: "There is nothing more useless than efficiently doing everything that is NOT necessary." Re-engineering is strongly linked to an innovation in process material and is oriented towards the redesign of the core processes (core process redesign).These are radical changes that have a strong impact on the organization, since in one way or another it "forces" the implantation - even for a time - of the matrix organization as opposed to the vertical organization. The experiences in Latin American organizations regarding this Mode of intervention have been varied, many of them close to success and also to failure, especially in relation to the times and resources originally foreseen.The experiences in Latin American organizations regarding this Mode of intervention have been varied, many of them close to success and also to failure, especially in relation to the times and resources originally foreseen.The experiences in Latin American organizations regarding this Mode of intervention have been varied, many of them close to success and also to failure, especially in relation to the times and resources originally foreseen.
The “Redesign of Work” (Work redesign) is a Mode of intervention that aims to modify the work itself that is being carried out and we have not found it with certain frequency, within Latin American cultures.
There are not many requirements of Clients who have privileged this type of work, often based on highly analytical work regarding how the work is carried out and which can often be linked to the study of times and movements.
Quality and Productivity Systems are Intervention Modes designed by consultants to improve quality and also productivity throughout the organization. This type of modality arises as a result of needing organizations to enjoy - or defend themselves - of competitive advantages. Technological, commercial and also financial globalization eliminated or at least made the differences with respect to the products and services placed on the market by different companies within the same sector very diffuse. Therefore, the best way to differentiate is through "quality" in the product or service, from the point of view of added value.Even financial organizations such as banks have adopted these quality / product differentiation practices and those entities, whether industrial, commercial or service that have not, have found themselves vulnerable with respect to their competitors and competitors.
Survey Feedback represents a Mode of consulting intervention and is also in a sense a phase of the stages of organizational development consulting work. This type of intervention mode is particularly used by Organizational Development Professionals and, in the few cases in which it turns out to be used by large consulting companies, it is common that it is not developed under the conception that Organizational Development professionals cover. The intervention is designed with the purpose of collecting information from the different organizational participants, which must be returned communicating the results. Results are usually used as the starting point of the "action planning" phase of the business improvement process.It is not common to make use of this Mode of intervention in the different Latin American cultures.
The Mode of intervention known as “Structural Change” implies a design by the advisers that is oriented to modify the “reporting - informative” relationships between the different parts that make up the organization. It is also designed to modify the purposes and objectives of the different components. This practice is used under the hypothesis that assumes that "formalized written" changes must produce modifications in people's behavior. It is used within companies in Latin American cultures and is often complemented by the development of "new organizational charts" and the development of "Organization Manuals, Procedures Manuals, and Functions and Responsibilities Manuals".
The possibly dysfunctional and unanticipated consequences of this approach are the ones that often plague companies that follow the traditional practices of hierarchical pyramid organization or bureaucratic organization (the latter far from the conception of its brilliant creator: Max Weber - 1947).
Customer Service Development has been an imperative for virtually all organizations that do not enjoy the privileges of operating as monopolies or oligopolies. The technological, commercial and financial globalization together with the continuous increase of Mergers and Acquisitions has put strong pressure on obtaining new Clients, protecting current Clients, developing customer retention and loyalty practices, among other commercial aspects.. This type or mode of intervention is designed with the purpose of increasing the sensitivity of employees regarding the importance of providing an efficient and courteous service, for which it is quite common for staff to be provided with the means required to develop effective customer service.There are many attempts to achieve the objectives that this mode of intervention preaches, but the results achieved have not always been close to the expected results in the different companies within Latin American cultures. A work by Eric Gaynor Butterfield (Organizational Development Congress; 2001 - Buenos Aires) shows that it is possible that the type of leadership within these cultures south of the Rio Grande is one of the reasons why the desired results are not always achieved. The type of leadership prevailing under the vertical hierarchical arrangement is oriented to privilege on the one hand a rather primitive system of rewards and punishments and also within the rewards it mainly takes into account the “hygienic” aspects instead of the really “motivators” (Frederick Herzberg - 1969).
Special mention requires the Mode of intervention that is known under the name of "Sociotechnical Systems". Here we suggest participants to attend the pioneering works of Eric Trist, among others. This field work shows how technological innovations in a coal mine that alter the way in which personnel worked and related “informally” are altered with the introduction of new production technology. Eric Gaynor Butterfield (Organizational Development Congress; 2001 - Buenos Aires) highlights the case that is presented in a process of implementing a new computer technology in a major airline within Latin America, with coverage in both accounting and operational areas.
Staff resistance reached the point where the Aviation company did not have financial and accounting statements for a period of several months, which had a highly negative impact on debtors of the caliber of large banks and even Eximbank. Ignoring the links through which personnel relate to work technology can be fatal for a company, regardless of the "operational" efficiency it can count on.
Considering the growing importance of large corporations in the global context and corporate "launches" we must keep in mind the Modes of intervention called "Large-Scale Technology / Future Search Conferences".
These interventions have been designed by the organizational development consultants so that it is possible to influence “almost the same instant” on some 300 to 2,300 people in the company who are at all different levels of the organization. The fundamental purpose is to create an "ideal future" to which the company must reorient; that is, towards a preferred setting.
Organizational Development professionals also have two particular designs: 1. "Transcultural Planning Processes" that is geared towards improving planning across different nations or cultures;
and 2. “Transnational Community Building and Problem Solving” which is designed with the purpose of improving the degree of trust and collaboration that exists between different national or cultural groups. These last two types of intervention are found in what we call a fifth unit of analysis, this being the planetary system as a whole.
As we can see the vast majority of practices at the level of organizational change and organizational / business development, it has not been present in companies and entities within the different Latin American cultures. We are not surprised, then, that North American organizations excel in countries like Uruguay and Argentina in the activity of "selling cooked meat" as Mc Donald does. We also find North American organizations that are highly successful in selling “Mexican tacos,” even in regions where Mexican culture is of great importance. And there is no need to mention the pizza chains that are found all over the planet and that often sell pizzas that may or may not even reach the quality standards of their Italian containers.
When Tom Cruise in the movie "The Color of Money" finds himself trying to figure out "what you need to know to win and play pool," Paul Newman gives you a surprising answer. When asked by Tom Cruise, the answer he receives does NOT have to be with the technical skill related to the pool;
Paul Newman replies that "all you have to know is about human behavior." And when Warren Buffet - the second richest man in the world - who has excelled in the area of finance is asked what he has to know to earn money, he replies: "About human behavior."
Thank you very much again for sharing. Let's rest for a few minutes and we have to go on to do a couple of Cases related to the different Intervention Modes.
It is not easy to sustain oneself in a competitive world governed by financial globalization and this requires an important capacity in leaders to design a new scenario that is different from what they are doing on a daily basis. The "comfort zone" seems to be an area where many times people want to be located and some of them stay; It is not common for leaders to do it, but it is common to find it at other levels, such as managers, executives and professionals.
So leaders then face two difficult problems to solve. On the one hand, they must be in a position to correctly appreciate what is happening outside their organization so that they can introduce the necessary changes, and on the other hand, they may encounter serious resistance from their own management team. Yes, we are referring to the team of people who are paid each month, who are highest paid, and who receive the best reward in terms of annual bonus. Many students at the Master's or Doctoral level sometimes ask
How is it possible that these people can offer resistance to change? Well, the fact is that this is a reality in the business world and becoming unaware of it can be fatal for owners, owners, main shareholders and business leaders.
The changes at the level of "tradition" or "transition" represent modifications that are not as great as the changes at the transformational level that have been experienced during the last 15 years in the different Latin American countries.
And what leaders may have in their heads to overcome transitional changes may well be enough to overcome transformational changes. Transformational changes require a perspective that may be vastly different from the common one; And this is not usually taught - or learned - in the best universities on the planet.
And this is where the possibility of having someone from "outside the organization" who could deal more effectively with the problems experienced "within the organization" appears. We had said that leaders require a significant feeling, perceiving, understanding and modifying ability to deal with day-to-day problems, but now we are asking for new perspectives that can usually contradict what they have just decided others do in day by day. And having a reasonable life with "doing things well daily" and on the other hand "questioning how these things are being done and then changing them" is not a very simple thing.
Some leaders have asked under this situation: Are you suggesting that I may have to split my head in two? Of course, this is not necessary - fortunately - but it is necessary that the leader begin to operate from a two-dimensional point of view where the current scenario that he has patiently built must be transformed into a new preferred scenario.
And you, dear participants, do you think that the entire management team must be in a position to accompany the leader to modify how they are currently working, how they have decided to give instructions for others to work, how they have decided to assign and distribute day-to-day resources, and especially how they currently interact with other managers and other departmental units. This has taken time to get to build and tear it down because only from the top you perceive and feel that things must be changed, in the eyes of management it does not seem reasonable.Furthermore, why should they do it if they are currently doing well? Managers do not feel the same way to change things since their remunerations and even bonuses within a reasonable time does not seem that they would change.
And now a new question: What then is left for business leaders who, between ideas, perspectives - and perhaps also dreams and nightmares - begin to have inside their heads that their company may not be sustainable or sustainable over time? Furthermore, he lives the dilemma of “with whom to share his concerns”. On the one hand, if you express and share your concerns with the management team, you may think that this could negatively affect management energy.
If, on the other hand, they do not share them - and initiate actions with others outside the company to gain a new perspective - the management team may think that they are not trustworthy. And the leader knows very well - as the biblical passage "That the employees are not the ones who lead the flock" shows.
It is the shepherd as leader instead, the one that guides the flock because they have total confidence in him. You don't need to give instructions or guidelines, much less make use of a reward and punishment system. The shepherd simply walks ahead and the sheep follow him in full confidence that they will receive protection from him.
This dilemma that entrepreneurs live has not been commonly dealt with in the literature, much less in the different Latin American countries. It may be for this reason that advisory services from outside the organization are required much less frequently than leaders in the most economically and financially developed countries do.
Decidedly in these latter countries, receiving assistance from outside with respect to a new perspective is extremely common and the United States of America has been characterized by being at the forefront in this regard over other developed countries. The need for the existence of this function to provide an outside perspective towards the company has been initiated and executed by the USA as a pioneer and it also exercises a leadership role regarding the Profession of Change and Organizational Development. Today we even have a series of competencies that are required to carry out the Organizational Development function (www.theodinstitute.org).
Consultants turn out to be the "natural" figure often chosen by business and organizational leaders interested in gaining a new perspective. Convinced that the day-to-day organizations and the success that they accompany in the daily events are not always useful for the development of a new scenario, the consultants turn out to be those that seem to be better equipped to deal with the change.
And here, then, two main currents arise regarding the consultants' approaches and orientations. Companies can choose those who have technical expertise that they cannot find within their own organization and can also choose someone to help them on how to improve decision-making in new scenarios. Of course there are many other intermediate positions but at the moment I think it would be good to take into account these two main ways of "improving" companies.
The Consulting Intervention turns out to be one of the mechanisms through which the organization can gain objectivity regarding its current scenario and position and at the same time get to visualize a new scenario "to be reached" that is preferred.
And one of the questions that has to do with the processes of change and process improvement within companies arises:
What do we choose - as consultants - to start our consulting intervention? What tools should we use to implement the change? What is the unit of analysis that we should privilege? Who should we work with within the company to facilitate the change process? What are the factors to consider that can limit and hinder the implementation of changes? What support do we have from the top of the organization? Do we find staff sufficiently enlisted for the change? In which sectors of the company are the greatest resistances? Will we have to focus on increasing the forces for change as certain resistance begins to appear?
In addition, the different Modes in terms of Consulting Interventions have a lot to do with the specific situation the company is experiencing at a given time and the need to change it, which implies another very important factor that is the new direction to be adopted. within the organization. The new focus is of utmost importance. Many consultants get involved in a process without spending enough time analyzing the new direction the organization has to take, and persevere in the change without taking into account that moving swiftly and persistently in the wrong direction often not only takes us away from the arrival point but also from the starting point.
The consultant in organizational change and development can privilege any of these different aspects:
- the type of problem that we confront the area or the role to change the person subject to change the main process in which the hierarchical area must be focused to be modified the combination of the previous options the scope with respect to points 1 to 6 above.
As we can see, there are different options in deciding the focus that we have to privilege and the combination of them makes the decision even more complex.
To this we must also add the fact that these different possibilities must be carried out through disparate practices and procedures. How the intervention is carried out is also a relevant aspect and the consultants can carry out their intervention using different methodologies.
More than 30 years ago, two leading experts in organizational change and development processes (Schmuck & Miles - 1971) developed a general model that can be followed and adopted by those interested in modifying organizational structures, processes, and participants.
Said model has been defined as the “OD Cube” which in turn takes into account three main aspects that are related to three fundamental issues that are present in any advisory intervention.
On the one hand, the diagnosed problems can be linked to the objectives, goals, plans, culture and organizational climate, leadership, authority and power, problem solving and decision making, conflict and cooperation, definition of roles, among others.
Another option has to do with the unit of analysis with which it is privileged to work. It can be focused on individuals or groups as an "entry point". In some cases it may be a single person, a role, a pair or a triplet, a group or team, an inter-group situation or the organization as a whole. It is common that - even in situations where a total change in the organization is attempted - an entry point is chosen that is related to a particular group.
A third option has to do with the way in which organizational change is made effective which can be carried out through various practices such as change through a new educational process, training or performance improvement, coaching, process consulting, meetings of confrontation, providing information feedback, problem solving or decision-making, structural technical activities, strategic planning, developing a dashboard, implementing a process improvement methodology, implementing information technology for "sales" cycle processes such as CRM or the “purchasing / provisions” cycle such as SCM, development of plans and projects, among others. In recent years, and as a result of the modifications that were introduced as a result of "process reengineering",The improvement of the two processes that are vital for any organization has been privileged: that of sales and that of purchases or supplies.
Currently the CRM methodology seems to have positioned itself as a leader in the sales process, while SCM does the same in relation to the purchasing process.
The list of modes of consulting interventions turns out to be extremely broad, especially when we decided to also incorporate all the “best practices” that consultants have introduced in the last 60 years. Eric Gaynor Butterfield (see: Best Practices at www.theodinstitute.org) lists more than 50 (fifty) best practices that have come into effect in the last 50 years, which means that each of them has been the “best” even though he has shared success with another for over a couple of years.
In the book book "Essential Competencies of Internal and External OD Consultants" the authors (McLean and Sullivan - 1989) developed a detailed list of options regarding Ways of carrying out consulting interventions, distinguishing them according to their unit of analysis.
McLean and Sullivan (already cited) include different Modes that represent organizational improvement interventions in relation to the first unit of analysis, that of the individual level.
Counseling / coaching is one of them and is characterized by having designed this type of intervention to formalize and increase relationships “to help others” in problem solving. It has to do with the development of “listening” skills and they are advised to deal with inter-personal problems.
This practice has been strongly spread within Latin American cultures since the last decade of the last century.
In fact, much of its foundation is found in the works and contributions of scholars and researchers in the behavioral sciences, paying special attention to aspects related to stress. An excellent pioneering work on stress in organizations is that developed by Dr. Donald W. Cole, which is explained in detail in his book "Professional Suicide or Organizational Murder" (Mc Graw Hill - 1981). We can suggest that readers interested in this mode of intervention become familiar with this work, since it can be useful for them to know the origin of the relationships - often dysfunctional - that take place between the organization and its organizational members.
Readers in Spanish can go to the book "Professional Suicide or Organizational Murder" where Eric Gaynor Butterfield is co-author of Dr. Donald W. Cole (Ed. The Organization Development Institute International, Latinamerica - 2003).
Readers interested in this mode of intervention are also suggested to familiarize themselves with the findings of the behavioral sciences in relation to awareness groups (T-groups) which did not always produce the results expected and anticipated by the consultants.
Training is another mode of intervention that is accessible to consultants and trainers who are trying to make changes in companies. The basic assumption of this mode of intervention is that people, by acquiring new knowledge, abilities and skills, and by changing their attitudes, are in a position to immediately apply it at work.
Our experience in consulting and training suggests that this basic assumption is not necessarily always true. People are not always in a position to apply at work what has come through "their heads" in a training program. And this is especially true when such courses, workshops, and workshops are held under traditional educational practices. Leavitt has shown more than 50 years ago that people - in training situations - learn as a consequence of the feedback that they can get to transmit in such programs. Something that is not common in the training programs carried out by companies within the different Latin American cultures. Evidence has also been found that courses often have to meet “other” non-explicit objectives.
Field work with human resources managers and training managers have shown that many times the hiring of courses has to do with:
to. "Raise" the motivation level of the staff;
b. satisfy formal requirements that may be linked to regulations from the top of the organization or as a result of external regulations (control bodies, regulatory bodies, ISOs, etc.)
c. provide new knowledge. As we can see, these objectives do not necessarily have to increase performance.
On the other hand, it has been found that managers often send training courses to those who have greater availability of free time within their respective areas, and not necessarily to those who have greater learning potential. It has also been observed that trainers upon their return face a real barrier to implementing any new changes within their department or sector. More than one participant has told us that when he returns to his job his superior receives him with phrases within this tenor:
Have you had a good day in training?
How was lunch? I ask that you please note that Rosa has been doing YOUR job, so get up to speed with her as quickly as possible. Oh, don't forget that if we are alive and doing well today it is because we are doing things efficiently. It will not occur to you to suggest changes regarding how we work here. ”
If companies do not take training in Latin America seriously they must find it difficult to compete advantageously. We already know that the level of innovation and new patents in the Far East is many times higher than ours and the gap seems to be widening.
Another way to carry out the intervention is one that is defined as “Setting Individual Goals” and that is practiced to increase planning skills towards increases in productivity as a consequence of the dialogue between the employee and his superior.
This practice is not common among Latin American companies, despite the fact that it has shown good results within the business sphere in the most economically developed countries.
The “Evaluation” systems are established within Latin American organizations and especially in those organizations that are subsidiaries of global corporations.
In the most developed cultures there is talk of a system of "Evaluation of Results" that by its very definition exhibits its differences. Under this type of intervention energies are channeled to modify performance measurement methods. There are some aspects that are key to achieving results that have to do with how frequently the tasks, roles and functions of people are changed, but superiors do not always tell subordinates how these changes have to do with new goals and how to reward them for these different new goals. In other words, the “psychological contract” between the superior and the subordinate is modified, but the subordinate is not always informed of the changes.This type of intervention mode also requires training and empowering superiors on how to give and receive feedback.
The Mode of intervention known as “Statistical Process Control” (SPC) has had almost no application within Latin American cultures. It involves a methodology and technique associated with a "close" appreciation of the variations that may occur in relation to production and performance, as well as their deviations.
The Job Descriptions represent a Mode of Intervention that has had considerable applicability within the world of consulting within organizations in Latin American companies. The most developed countries were those who applied and made use of this methodology in the first instance and in Latin America we find it developed quite frequently from the 50s and 60s of the last century. It was quite common for Job Descriptions in companies south of the Rio Grande to be accompanied by the organizational structure approach, which assumed that a change in "the organization chart" produced changes in the way of operating. The change registered in the organization chart was usually accompanied by a Job Manual, a Job Description Manual, and sometimes by a Process and Procedures Manual.Unfortunately, consultants belatedly learned some of the non-functional consequences of paying special attention to the "purely formal aspect" within organizations. The basic assumption that organizational participants would be in a position to modify and improve their behaviors as a result of a new Job Description is possibly valid only in borderline situations. It was very common to find the big audit companies in the world in the 50s and 60s of the last century (the “big six”) to make use of this practice in their Clients through their consulting departments.The basic assumption that organizational participants would be in a position to modify and improve their behaviors as a result of a new Job Description is possibly valid only in borderline situations. It was very common to find the big audit companies in the world in the 50s and 60s of the last century (the “big six”) to make use of this practice in their Clients through their consulting departments.The basic assumption that organizational participants would be in a position to modify and improve their behaviors as a result of a new Job Description is possibly valid only in borderline situations. It was very common to find the big audit companies in the world in the 50s and 60s of the last century (the “big six”) to make use of this practice in their Clients through their consulting departments.It was very common to find the big audit companies in the world in the 50s and 60s of the last century (the “big six”) to make use of this practice in their Clients through their consulting departments.It was very common to find the big audit companies in the world in the 50s and 60s of the last century (the “big six”) to make use of this practice in their Clients through their consulting departments.
The Mode called “Clarification of Values” is another additional option available to business consultants. It is a type of intervention that has been designed to appreciate and evaluate individual or group values within the organization.
"Life and career planning" is a type of intervention that has been designed to help organizational participants plan for both their personal lives and their careers. This practice has been common in the most developed economies and we can say that it has practically not been implemented globally within Latin American companies.
The transformations in the context - that companies within more developed economies perceived in the 1950s and 1960s - made many organizations, especially within the corporate world, pay special attention to this particular type of Mode of intervention. This practice has been known within the business world in Latin America only in the last decade of the last century and, unfortunately, financial globalization and the elimination of jobs did not give much opportunity for it to be applied advantageously.
Another Mode of intervention that we have not seen within Latin American cultures has to do with what is known as “People-Policy Development”. Under this type of organizational change mode, it seeks to establish general guidelines to be followed within the company in terms of personnel management, especially when some particular problems arise at work.
The “Procedures Manuals” - mentioned previously in the Job Description section - have the fundamental purpose of establishing and formalizing a method that allows managing those common problems that people face on a day-to-day basis in their functions within the company. This type of intervention has previously considered organizational policies, and based on them then procedures are developed.
Another type of Mode to which consultants can access is what is known as “Process Improvement”. This practice arises as a consequence of having issued the death certificate to the vertical hierarchical organization that privileges vertical functions. It seeks to modify the ways in which processes are developed.
It has been found that in Latin American countries there is a tendency to follow the “hard science” model where it is assumed that people have to change behavior “for the better” for the simple fact of having a new technology available to them. If the Latin American consultants took into account the findings of Eric Trist and those of the socio-technical school, they would surely introduce modifications in their projects of change and organizational development.
There are other levels of analysis beyond the individual, such as the one we have to deal with which is at the group level. Here we also find various Modes of Intervention, one of the most common being "Construction of Work Teams", which in Spanish is called Teamwork. The seasoned reader already notes how a different definition can produce different results.
The design of this mode of intervention seeks to increase the degree of cohesion / cooperation / commitment of people who are interrelated as a consequence of their work.
We want to make special mention of the fact that in Latin American cultures the common perspective does not always put enough emphasis on this second unit of analysis. It is "perceived" that the individual can "jump" to organizational efficiency, something that is very close to the absurd.
The literature on "groups" (their formation, development and growth) is extremely vast within the most economically developed cultures, and especially within the United States of America. In the Articles - Bibliography section of the website: www.theodinstitute mention is made of more than 300 important contributions and contributions in the matter of "Groups". Consultants who are interested in improving companies south of the Rio Grande will have to dedicate much of their energy to learning all that behavioral science within organizations has to tell us.
A special chapter deserves the Mode of Intervention known under the name of “Enrichment at Work” (Job Enrichment). This type of organizational intervention is aimed at designing a change in the way tasks and tasks are carried out, meaning greater responsibilities for organizational participants. It starts from the assumption that people are generally oriented to be autonomous and to gain “dignity” as a consequence of an enriched job where they prefer more complex jobs by themselves, away from repetitive tasks.
In general, it assumes that the division of labor threatens the development of people as a result of which the works turn out to be too simple and repetitive. Frederick Herzberg - through his findings and research - has shown that people generally cannot be motivated further by money or other hygienic factors.
Unfortunately, this practice has not been applied within organizations in different Latin American cultures, perhaps precisely because the management philosophy works "against the grain."
It is surprising that even today - some 50 years after this practice was launched in the economically developed world - it cannot be applied in companies south of the Rio Grande. And the most surprising thing occurs in countries like Argentina where the workers' representatives themselves strive to establish regulations that “make the tasks of the workers simpler, more routine and repetitive”.
Through the intervention mode called "Quality of Work Life", an organizational change is designed to improve working conditions and improve employee participation in all decisions that influence them and the companies where they work. We have not noticed efforts of consultants to install this Mode of intervention within companies in Latin American cultures (nor have many business leaders who have shown enough interest in them).
The “Circles” represent a Mode of intervention that has been designed to make use of small groups - which are usually working groups - to identify methods aimed at improving production and productivity or solving problems that arise in daily work. There are some difficulties for people to work effectively in groups within organizations in Latin America. In many cases this may be due to the limitations that originate in a hierarchical education, where the authoritarian style prevails. It is also frequent to find in Latin American cultures a preferential orientation towards “external locus of control” that is not helpful in making use of this best practice.
Setting objectives for the unit or department (Unit Goal Setting) represents a highly practical Mode of intervention to the extent that the company is unable to do so in the different links of the company (Likert - 1961). However, unclear goals from the top make managers also prefer not to clarify what subordinates have to do.
In the excellent work already mentioned by Dr. Donald W. Cole, it is shown that under the subordinate driving style it is the subordinates - and not the management - who are committed. And without clear goals, subordinates can be rewarded - or punished - in a way that doesn't make much sense, causing the media to be confused with organizational goals.
Managing Conflict (Conflict Management) is a Mode of intervention that the consultant designs with the purpose of reducing the destructive conflicts that arise between members of the same work team. We have not seen many consultants make use of this organizational change model within the business environment in Latin America.
Nor have we found any consultant work (in Latin America) that made use of the intervention mode known as Open-System Mapping. This practice of organizational change can be extremely useful since it is oriented towards a design that allows the identification of relevant inputs and outputs, as well as processes that allow an effective organizational transformation.
Process Consultation is an intervention that has been particularly designed to focus on how organizational members (or groups) interact with each other. Edgar Schein (1969 - Addison-Wesley) pays special attention to this methodology of organizational change and development, noting the differences in approach that exist between the “expert” consultant and the organizational change consultant.
There are still other Modes of Intervention that are related to what happens between different groups, at the organizational level and at the planetary level that we have to leave for our next day. We will now go on to discuss what we have learned so far regarding these practices or modes of intervention that have to do exclusively with the individual or group level and to explore the differences between what consultants do in Latin America and what they have done and continue to do. consultants in the most economically developed economies, particularly the United States of America.
I ask that you please leave your “auditorium” position for a moment and meet at round tables of five people to work as a team on the hand-outs that we have given you.
