Reflecting on the semester

“Memory, when duly impregnated with ascertained facts, is sometimes surprisingly fertile.” GEORGE ELIOT, Silas Marner

Through blog posts, readings, and reaction essays, this course has offered me many opportunities to think about the company in Colorado that I worked for as an HR manager and to reflect on the change efforts that I was involved in there. Since the beginning of this semester, I knew that I wanted to “check-in” with my former boss about the current state of those initiatives in order to make a more complete meaning of the models, concepts, theories and systems that we’ve explored in this class. The fact that I waited until the very end of the semester to seek him out implies that my sub-conscious might have known that my bright memory of fast, CEO-dictated, HR-orchestrated change would not remain unvarnished.

In fact, after only five minutes of personal “catching up”, this former boss referred to an effort which I had led to develop a set of global core competencies for the organization as not having yet really “gained traction.”

Pop! (That’s my bubble bursting….)

Motivated by that quick pin prick and the other updates he provided during our phone call, I’ve surveyed many of the semester’s readings again and found new clues and insights about what could have been done differently to have obtained a more positive result.

When I asked my former boss to say more about the failure of the core competency roll-out, he reflected that leaders had not been held accountable for participating in the processes or more importantly, according to Burke & Litwin’s causal model, for serving as role models of the key behaviors that were established. To say it in a different way, the leaders’ supportive words (which we had used as testimonials) were disconnected from their actions and this disconnect allowed the organization’s culture and climate to remain at odds with the strategy to incorporate the “non-negotiable” behaviors. He also shared that since the organizational pace remains at full throttle, the business requirements of the rapid mergers and acquisitions strategy have allowed all employees from leaders down to line managers to ignore the mandates and deadlines which were intended to help embed the practices into daily life. He shared that in retrospect, our mistake had been to rollout the models and accompanying tools and training and to trust too much that the organization would embrace them.

When I asked him about why he thought that our efforts at the time to encourage ownership by having the executives participate in creating the models didn’t work, he confided that in a recent leadership meeting, several looked as if they were seeing the competencies for the first time. When he reminded them of the development exercises that they were involved in, only a couple remembered being interviewed and none remembered much else about the 2-quarter long communication plan and world-wide training efforts. At this same meeting, one leader, who is well-known to me, apparently admitted getting the importance of the effort but felt that he did not know how to “just do it”. As it stands now, the recovery plan for competencies is to kick-off a six-week cycle of leadership training where executives are first trained and are then held responsible for training their direct reports and then the organization cascades the effort. Thinking about this plan since we hung up the phone, I worry that this approach is similar to what has been successful before but that it may not be powerful enough at this point. In fact, to finally move the culture, transformation is necessary and cascaded executive-led training seems only to be a new tactic.

Hungry for some good news, I asked him next what was “changing well” from his perspective. He shared that major progress was made on harmonizing the organization’s total rewards plans. As well, he said that organization-wide and matrix-level communications were better than ever before and that after three years, the “new” mission, vision and values have finally been fully adopted by the organization. This comment reminded me of the importance of shared values and the matrix structure from the chapter by Emery & Trist and specifically of their discussion that both can help an organization cope and even succeed in step 4 environments. In fact though, the authors comment that the adoption of shared values and a matrix really only help transform the turbulent field back to step 2 and step 3 where strategy and operations are again critical for the system to meet its still complex environmental challenges. (p.17)

Turbulent environments and matrix designs were also discussed in Chapter 9 where organizations as open system organisms were explored by Gareth Morgan. From his discussion, I gained a new appreciation for how important integrative skills like coordination, internal differentiation and conflict resolution are for organizations in complex and unstable situations. As an organism/organization reacts to and takes inputs from its environment, its sub-processes must be enabled and its sub-teams willing to co-create the future and to become new together. If I had better understood this ecological view of the organization and also the social constructionism theory that undergirds the large group interventions at the time, I certainly would have pushed less for the results orientation competency and more for a focus on collaboration and the processes of working with teams and partners.

Another “world view” that was called into question by this conversation with Colorado was my predisposition to accelerating change. I recognize now that this was a behavioral adaptation required by that organization and not fully credible based on theory or best practice. I now value Piderit’s argument from Chapter 26 that using time to foster ambivalence can yield positive effects. Referencing Pratt and Barnett, Piderit suggested that ambivalence is needed “to stimulate unlearning” and to “motivate new action rather than the continuation of old routines”. (p. 430) Looking back, I see that we did not allow enough time for the organization to be ambivalent or to then unlearn their bias that the M&A climate necessitated constant attention whereas performance management only required action twice a year.

Reviewing Chapter 29 and the discussion by Brown and Starkey about the learning organization, reminded of a leadership change in the organization that I had heard about via the grapevine: the Sr. Director of Training and Development had been let go and her responsibilities had been assumed by a Sr. Director of HR Special Projects. At the time, this staff change was viewed skeptically by the staff since the CEO had conspicuously shared one day that he would spend the organization’s last dollar on training and development. What to make of that disconnect? I realize that this organization is simply not at all a learning organization in the habit of reflecting on itself, its identity, or its future. It is not fair to say that no mental models exist though; in fact, the existing mental model is rapid and constant change.

The last topic that I discussed with my former boss was the organization’s philosophy about integration of acquisitions. At the time that I left, there was heartburn beyond imagination during every Stop-Go meeting on a potential target when discussion centered on whether we would integrate the business or allow it to stand-alone. I fully expected to hear that the philosophy had shifted from “always integrate” to a prevalence of stand-alone units. In fact, what I heard was more comforting. The goal is still to integrate and harmonize policies and practices but the calendar is set after consideration is given to how much stress and change the incoming company can endure over what time frame. Size and culture is taken into account; for instance, the 10+ person family business needs more time to integrate into a 4000+ person organization. I really liked hearing this because it suggests that the organization recognizes that not only does the magnitude of change and the end results matter but that the approach is also important. Integration for an open complex system is about becoming something new together.

In reflecting and reading since the phone call last week, I’ve thought about what I would do or say or try to influence if I went back into the organization now. Remembering now that most planned changes were mechanical and hyper-focused (and apparently not always successful ) but that the CEO was equally curious, approachable and worldly, I would try to introduce the concept of large-group interventions and the idea of searching for higher, common ground to him. I believe the idea of appreciating the past, acknowledging the present and co-creating the future would resonate with the newly acquired businesses as well as with the legacy employees who also require attention in such a complex and fluid environment. To identify and appreciate everyone’s differences and use those to build a new future together could be quite powerful for this organization.

When I named my blog at the beginning of the semester, I had no idea that I’d walk away from this course with a repertoire for actually “integrating human resources”. As I shared in my very first post, integrative thinking is about refusing to choose between opposing ideas and instead working together to create a new and better model. The theories, systems and large group change strategies that we’ve explored in this course have provided new tools that I can use to help organizations improve their processes, people, teams and their futures.