Traditional Wisdom LO9113

J Macnamara (100317.2417@CompuServe.COM)
14 Aug 96 12:51:52 EDT

This is in reply to LO8906 and LO9060

In LO8906 (Ben Compton) and LO9060 (Debbie Broome) address the potential
conflict between "managers" and "employees" in the management of change.
Debbie indicates that she would be "interested in hearing about methods
that other folks have used to facilitate discussion and shifts in
organisational thinking".

It seems to me that "managers" in this context means the formal
organisation and "employees" means the informal orgnisation.

The formal organisation is primarily concerned with what Stacey has termed
"ordinary management". Here, the organisation formulates and executes a
strategy to achieve a set of objectives. Since the formal organisation is
the guardian of the status-quo, difficulties in executing this strategy
are likely to be accompanied by a relatively mild desire to modify the
system.

The activities of this formal management system are analysed continuously
by the informal organisation. Almost inevitably this analysis will
identify anomalies or "mixed messages". Rationalisation of these anomalies
will act as self-reinforcing feedback to the organisation's culture.
Where, however, the anomalies are perceived to be contradictory, or, not
in the interests of the informal organisation, it is likely that the
informal organisation will seek to change the organisation either overtly
or covertly.

(There is more on this on the "Change Management" page of the Glandore
Associates web site).

An approach I've used with some success, which is based on Japanese
practice, is to get the formal organisation to identify the changes they
believe are necessary but to use the informal orgnisation to identify the
best way of achieving this.

As an example, with one of my clients, management identified that various
supply chain processes needed to be improved so that:

- a complete order could be delivered to the customer 98% of the time
whilst keeping inventory to a minimum. In this context "complete" meant
that the order should include all the items ordered by the customer when
they first ordered it and that there should be no back orders.

- the customer could be advised when this standard could not be met.

- the production planning process could be improved.

We then ran a workshop which involved everybody concerned with the supply
chain.

Some of the issues emerging from this were that:

- When inventory policy changed there were always back-orders and that
people never learnt

- There was a failure to understand inventory and production policy and an
illusion of JIT which could not be achieved with the factory configured as
it was

- When problems occurred, the only action taken was trouble-shooting and
there was no analysis and correction of the root-cause

- etc

Action plans were then developed and implemented by X-functional teams
created from the people attending the workshop.

Contrast this with another situation where, at a meeting, a general
manager reviewed various operational failings with his subordinates. The
afternoon was spent with the subordinates justifying their position,
ganging up on the GM and explaining why the problems were "not their
fault" rather than trying to solve them.

Finally, there was an article in the March 19 edition of Fortune called
"Secrets of HP's 'Muddled Team'" which may be of interest. This describes,
in Fortune's words, how two managers developed a new way to lead. They
stood aside and let subordinates come up with the answers.

Hope this helps.

Best wishes

Julian Macnamara 100317.2417@compuserve.com Glandore Associates
<http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/glandore>

-- 

J Macnamara <100317.2417@CompuServe.COM>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>