Conscious Use of Self Requires…Ego Management

We like to deride ego. However, we all have one in whatever shape of strength or fragility. Our goal as facilitators is to use our egos for our goals rather than whatever goals our egos might have.

I certainly have an ego-derived need to look like I know what I’m doing. And there are times in working with a group that I have no idea what is going on or what I might do about it. Unfortunately, to sit back looking wise while things escalate out of control has not proven to be useful. Nor have my attempts at changing the topic been any more useful. What has been useful is showing-off by acknowledging that I haven’t a clue about what’s happening and asking for those clues. I’ve yet to find a group that wouldn’t help me. In that process, I demonstrate humility (an admirable trait) by acknowledging that I don’t know and gain critical information for myself and for the group that leads me to knowing what to do! Ah, my mighty ego not only survives but wins another round!

I can use my ego successfully as long as I am not automatically identifying with the automatic responses of my ego. If I am operating as if I am my ego, then I am doomed to operate as my ego dictates. Likewise, I would be doomed to do what my anger wants me to do (fight) or my fear wants me to do (flight) or my guilt wants me to do (punish myself) as long as I identify myself as my emotions, such as, “I am angry,” “I am afraid,” or “I am guilty.” Have your ego, don’t be it. Use it to get your job done or put it slightly aside to deal with later when it can no longer derail your facilitation.

Whether we are talking about intention, connectivity, or ego-management, consciously choose what you believe since that directs your thoughts which direct your emotions which direct your actions. You can consciously be in charge of all four if you choose (and have the support) to do so!

Conscious Use of Self Requires…Connectivity

There is little that we change by ourselves. It is hard to change even ourselves without help from friends, coaches, mentors, or therapists. Managing change in groups so that they become effective teams or in organizations requires that we have more help.

We can get that help by connecting more effectively across our range of human systems. Yet, we are often disconnected from ourselves and others while wondering why things don’t seem to be working. We are often disconnected from awareness of our intentions, our emotions, our thoughts, and our beliefs—obviating any conscious use of self. We disconnect ourselves from others as we judge them harshly, as we see them as behaving in ways in which we do not approve.

The way we define parts of ourselves as OK and parts as not OK is another hindrance to effective use of self. Too often we deny the large portions of ourselves that we define as not OK. We want to see ourselves as male, not female or female, not male. We want to see ourselves as ‘nice,‘ never as ‘mean.’ In this manner, we deprive ourselves of the inherent flexibility that comes with the multiple aspects and attitudes that make up our fundamental integrity. We often judge ourselves too harshly, and this also damages our connectivity. Through connecting with others we can help ourselves and help others to help themselves.

Conscious Use of Self Requires…Intentionality

Intentionality as conscious use of self gives us the ability to choose from moment to moment what we want to accomplish.

Do want to prove our rightness or righteousness? Do we want to maintain or build a relationship? Do we want to pretend that we know what we are doing? Do we want to learn something new? Do we want to protect ourselves? Do we want to improve productivity? Each of those goals might be appropriate for any given circumstance so there is no right or wrong here. What is here is the opportunity to be consciously choiceful about our intentions so that we might direct our behavior accordingly.

From childhood most of us were given only minimal choice opportunities. As infants we had the choice of cry or not cry, but we don’t think there was much consciousness involved with that back then, though we may have consciously found it to be a useful tactic a year or so later. Mostly, we had little choice but to follow the dictates of our parents or other caregivers about what to do and how to behave. In school it was quite the same thing, as it was in church or temple. Some of us did choose to rebel, but doing what our parents and teachers didn’t want us to do did not really offer a broad range of options. Most of us longed for adulthood when we would finally be free to make our own choices—only to discover that the world of work gave us a series of bosses whose dictates we had to follow if we wanted to keep our jobs.

Through all of these processes we are socialized and conditioned via reward and punishment to be nice, work hard, and follow all of the other rules of the institutions around us and society in general. Some of us tried to walk a road less traveled only to return to the beaten path later. Mostly, we’ve been duped by society “to go along to get along” and be otherwise obedient whether it is satisfying and productive—and too often neither. With so little practice in choosing our own intentions it is often simply easier to follow the crowd. Even at the personal level we think we’ve chosen to “never do that again” or “from now on to” only find that we are still not exercising, still eating too much, or still not doing whatever we said we intended to do or still doing what we intended to no longer do.

Unfortunately, habitual or socialized behavior maintains the status quo. It changes nothing. Only through conscious and deliberate intentionality are we able maintain a selected focus that would have us believe, think, feel, and behave in ways that will

• Enhance our relationships with others,
• Make our teams more effective, and
• Make our organizations more productive and satisfying.

We can choose and maintain the intention to empower ourselves, to play infinitely with others, to build personal and organizational support systems. In doing so we increase our ability to contract, gather data, intervene, evaluate, and disengage more effectively with ourselves, others, groups, and organizations.

The First Discipline of Planned Change: Conscious Use of Self

The primary tool that anyone wishing to manage change in a human system uses is the configuration of intellectual, emotional, and physical energies that that particular person brings to the situation. That includes her personality, her various abilities (particularly her ability to learn), and her idiosyncrasies.

Most of us have only begun to recognize and develop full command of ourselves. Most of us respond to many situations automatically. These automatic or habitual responses are the result of over-learning. Over-learning is the extrapolation of an appropriate learning from past experiences and applying it too broadly to other situations that may seem similar, even identical, when they are not at all similar. Often they are not similar simply because we are amazingly different from when we originally learned the response. Accordingly, the impacts of many of our actions fall far from our intended results.

In the processes of effective change management we need all the personal flexibility we can muster. How we behave in one situation or with one person is not likely to be very effective with another, though similar, situation or person. To manage change in human systems we must be able to tailor our behavior to the immediate situation in such a manner that it will move us and those around us toward whatever change goal we have in mind.

To manage our behavior, however, is not a simple matter. Consider that:

• Our behavior is directed by our emotions.
• Our emotions are directed by our thoughts.
• Our thoughts are directed by our belief systems through which we understand ourselves and the world around us.

How often do we believe we have no choice about what to do in a particular situation? In fact, with conscious use of self we can make choices at the level of our behavior, our emotions, our thoughts, or our belief systems. The further along this continuum of choice the greater our ability to choose effective courses of action rather than follow our habitual patterns. As we move toward mastery of these aspects of ourselves, we will be more and more able to behave in such a manner that the systems within which we wish to manage change will respond in ways consonant with our goals and intentions.

We want to pay attention to three particular areas of conscious use of self—intentionality, connectivity and ego management. We will look at each of these in subsequent posts, so stay tuned!

The Disciplines of Managing Change in Human Systems

In recent blog posts we have looked at the stages of planned change, which can also be thought of in terms of critical interventions, and at the levels of organizations in which the skilled practitioner works. We also offered a general process of Organization Development that takes into account these stages and organizational levels. Now we will consider eight crucial disciplines, the mastery of which binds it all together.

Effectiveness with each of the prescribed stages of change across the levels of organization systems requires a degree of critical thinking that is generally beyond that found in the target organization and the general social milieu in which the organization exists.

Each of the eight disciplines directly supports the empowerability of human systems and the people that live and work within them. They also support the use of collaborative strategies and tactics aimed at open communication, consensual decision-making, cooperation, learning, and relationship building which together can make for powerful and productive human systems anywhere. Each is related to and supports the others toward a systemic understanding of critical thinking as applied to making humans systems both productive and satisfying.

These disciplines focus upon:

• Conscious Use of Self
• Systems Orientation
• Sound and Current Data
• Feedback
• Infinite Power
• Learning from Differences
• Empowerment
• Support Systems

We will look at each of them in greater detail in the coming weeks.

The Process of Organization Development

Hey All,

I’ve been thinking about how to formulate with sufficient detail to be useable and in a temporally logical manner, the things that the top OD folks think about as they move from the beginning of an OD project to its end. The problem, of course, is that each step requires the personal judgment needed to move a step from number  3 to 9 or step 12 to 5. Most steps will need to be repeated over and over as the process unfolds anyway.

I’m offering a loose recipe that will always require your own tweaks, modifications, and embellishments. It’s stuff worth thinking about for those who want to increase their ability to manage change in human systems.

Go to http://www.chumans.com/human-systems-resources/process-of-od.html for the document.

Let me know what you would add, change, or subtract from the list that would make it more useful! I’d really like that!

Michael

The Levels of Organizational Systems

Previously we looked at the stages of the organization development process: Contracting and Re-contracting, and Data Gathering, Intervention, Evaluation and Disengagement. Those stages are applied across the five levels of organizational systems—personal, interpersonal, group, organization, and community—as needed. These levels make up the second dimension of the Meta-Model of Planned Change.

Personal

At the personal level individuals are systems of intellect, emotion, and physicality that include their personalities, belief systems, opinions, attitudes, aptitudes, and relationships with others outside of the organization. The OD practitioner works at this level of system to support increased functionality regarding behavior that impacts the other levels of the system. This is what makes the work of the practitioner different from the psychotherapist—though we often need to refer clients to the latter.

Interpersonal

Individuals, of course, interact with other individuals on a one-to-one basis. These relationships range in quality from close to distant, from attraction to conflict, and from trusting to distrust. It is the quality of these relationships that often dictate the quality of groups and teams that are the next level. The healthy organization can tolerate only a certain amount of dysfunction at this level. Where needed, the practitioner works to resolve dysfunctional interpersonal relationships to higher levels.

Group

How well people work together in the group level of the system dictates a major portion of organizational effectiveness. At this level of systems strange things (that we have become quite used to) occur. Think of meetings you’ve been in where the individuals present were intelligent, likeable, and well-meaning, yet the meetings were dull and unproductive beyond belief. Groups are the fundamental units of organization. The bulk of the work of most organizations is done at this level. If the organization’s groups and teams do work well, the organization will do work well. Helping groups become teams and helping teams improve their productivity and levels of satisfaction is a crucial skill area for the practitioner.

Organization

An organization is essentially a group of groups working together. Sometimes these groups, these units of the organization, are not working well together. They may be at odds about priorities, strategies, or tactics. They may see themselves as competing for resources, status, or attention. Regardless, the OD practitioner helps her client identify and resolve as needed the various misalignments and conflicts toward improving productivity and satisfaction.

A very important aspect of the organizational level is culture. What is the culture of the organization? Is it helping or getting in the way of effectiveness and efficiency? Where are key levers needed to shift the culture if need be? The culture of an organization dictates as we’ve discussed earlier the beliefs, emotions, and general behavior of an organization. All of which in turn impact the functionality of the organization. How might a very authoritarian, bureaucratic, command-and-control culture that is very stable but stifles creativity be changed to one that is more participative and collaborative and, therefore, more able to innovate and be flexible enough to develop new products quickly? The skilled OD practitioner can identify and help change the human processes that hold culture in place.

The next series of posts will examine the third dimension of the Meta-Model of Planned Change—the eight disciplines of managing change in human systems. Stay tuned!

The Stages of the Organization Development Process, Part II

This is the second of two posts that look at the stages of the organization development process. The first post discussed Contracting and Re-contracting and Data Gathering; now we will look at the other three stages: Intervention, Evaluation and Disengagement. Bear in mind, however, that the stages are not discrete. They overlap. They are iterative. They often must be orchestrated simultaneously. Each can trigger the need for another.

Intervention

Implicit in the idea of the empowerability of human systems is the assumption that through improving relationships within the system the leaders and members of the system can begin to identify and resolve their own issues and, in the process, create whatever change they wish. This could mean improving the relationships and resolving conflicts between system structures, between groups, and between individuals. At the intrapersonal level, some change action is often needed to help resolve the internal conflicts that bedevil many system executives and managers.

Interventions, then—as a stage in the total change process—are those actions designed to improve relationships within the target system on behalf of opening communication and developing more informed and inclusive decision-making processes. Interventions include, in their various forms, feedback to the system, team-building, strategic planning, training, conflict management, and coaching.

Two important skills needed to design and carry out these interventions include group facilitation and conflict management. Those two skill sets require deep use of our listening and straight-talk capacities. A systems orientation wherein we act from a perspective that keeps in mind impact on the entire system is essential. Of course, the ability to use ourselves flexibly and congruently with any particular situation is fundamental. Use of self and a system orientation are notable as the first two change management disciplines described in the sections below.

Evaluation

As much an ongoing process as a specific stage, the Evaluation stage informs the change agent and the system about the results the change project or specific change actions have had. In essence, evaluation is a feedback-based data-gathering process—feedback which will give the change leaders critical information about how the system has responded to a change action and how they might design the next action to be more effective. This concept is notably different from the use of feedback as a means—generally, ineffective—of getting someone to change. Feedback is more useful as a means of determining the quality of relationship that has or has not been stimulated by a particular change action. Feedback is essentially an evaluation process that can also be used to gather data about what can make a more effective next change action.

Evaluative processes can be as simple as asking someone or a group how well something worked and what might work better next time. More formal group processes can take a form where everyone takes a turn responding to an evaluative question (such as, what did you learn about managing change this weekend?). System-wide evaluations might be done at the end of a change project and at periodic intervals after that to see how much staying power some systemic change might have. It is a good idea to have evaluative feedback processes built into a system’s ongoing routine to monitor the specific and general wellbeing of that system.

Disengagement

Little discussed in the change management literature is the process of completing or ending a change project. A typical disengagement process for the participants in the change project might include a closing evaluation session, statements of learnings gleaned from the project, and celebration of whatever success was achieved.

In addition, the change leaders—task leader(s) and process facilitator(s)—should get together to formally agree that the project is completed or otherwise at an end. Additional and more personal feedback might be shared in this meeting about what worked well, what worked less well, and what might be done differently in a future project. Some celebration would certainly be in order.

Appropriate closure and disengagement allow the system and the people in it to learn from their experience in the project and to let go of what has been completed to move effectively on to whatever is next.

Next we will look at the levels of organizational systems across which the stages are applied.

The Stages of the Organization Development Process, Part I

In our previous post, we discussed our Meta-Model of Planned Change, a three-dimensional matrix that describes the traditional model of organization development (including the stages of the planned change process and the levels of human systems) and the disciplines of critical thinking. In this post and the one following we will look at the stages of the organization development process, beginning with Contracting and Re-contracting and Data Gathering.

The Stages of The Organization Development Process

The stages of contracting and re-contracting, data gathering, action, evaluation, and disengagement represent the basic structure of OD. They are not our formulation, but are basic to the field. They are not discrete. They overlap. They are iterative. They often must be orchestrated simultaneously. Each can trigger the need for another. Data-gathering, intervention, evaluation, and disengagement can all lead to re-contracting. All are interventions that can have system-wide impact and which can generate new data and lead, again, to re-contracting. Any stage can lead to any other stage. For the sake of presentation, the order presented is generic as if all things were equal and ideal, but they never are in human systems.

Contracting and Re-contracting

Contracting is a negotiated process for coming to agreement. We make agreements all the time. Some are implicit. A few are explicit. Many are vague. Occasionally, they are specific. The process of OD works toward contracts that are explicit, specific, and that have the potential for all parties to the contract to arrive at some significant level of satisfaction.

OD-type contracting is the process of coming to consensual agreement with the person or persons who are key to the success of a change project. If an OD practitioner is involved there must be a contract with the organization’s leader. The leader (with the support of the practitioner if there is one) must contract for change with those who are key to facilitating and implementing the change. This process of contracting for mutual satisfaction is core to the process of effective organization development.

Effective contracting clarifies goals, roles, basic strategies, relationship values, and the next steps of a change project. Of course, as a project moves forward new information is uncovered requiring re-negotiation of the initial contract and subsequent contracts. Contracting and re-contracting are dynamic, on-going processes that move with the movement of the project.

Data Gathering

Once the initial contract has been established, the prudent change agent insists on a data-gathering stage. This process serves several purposes:

• It provides needed information for the effective planning of further Change Actions.
• It galvanizes organizational energy in preparation for “something happening.”
• It provides an opportunity for some initial empowerment coaching of those from whom data is gathered.

Data should be gathered about the following:

• What’s working in the targeted system?
• What needs improvement within the system?
• What has been done to attempt improvement?
• What barriers occurred to such attempts?
• Reactions to the change goals and reasons for them.

The information being sought is the general themes and patterns extant about the state of the system and its readiness for a particular change goal. This data will direct the formation of the strategic and tactical plans for the change project. From this data, needs of the system which could act as resistance to the change need to be considered in their own right and can be planned for and engaged.

This is not the only time that data will be gathered during a change project. The data gathering process is continual, as we will discuss under the discipline of Sound and Current Data.

Next Up: We will look at the stages of Intervention, Evaluation, and Disengagement.

The Meta-Model of Planned Change

We have defined organization development as “collaborating with organizational leaders and their groups to create systemic change and root-cause problem solving on behalf of improving productivity and employee satisfaction through strengthening the human processes through which they get their work done.” We have looked at what OD practitioners do, the results they are after, and how OD works, and we have looked at some of the ideal characteristics of a successful practitioner. Without a useful framework, however, even the most conscious and skills practitioner will have trouble achieving the triple impact that is ideal.

The Meta-Model of Planned Change

This Meta-Model of Planned Change offers a structure for understanding and practicing organization development. It is based upon the classic perspective of OD described above and as developed in the NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science. That perspective holds that the tasks of an organization—from planning to production to delivery—are accomplished with the highest level of productivity through processes that are highlighted by a high quality of relationship among those responsible for those tasks. It is a model that believes in the empowerability of human systems and the people that live and work within them. Accordingly, the Meta-Model calls for collaborative strategies and tactics aimed at open and thorough communication and consensual decision-making.

A model is a descriptive system of information, theories, inferences, and implications used to represent and support understanding of some phenomenon. Meta-, in the sense used here, is a context or framework. A meta-model could, then be understood as a framework or context of a model—albeit, a model of a model. A meta-model of planned change, then, is a framework from which any number of more specific models of how to manage change in human systems can be understood and developed. Organization development is dynamic field able to contain many models, strategies, and tactics malleable to the system and individuals—the leader, her groups, and the practitioner—involved.

Our model (click the picture to enlarge) is a three dimensional matrix. The horizontal and depth axes describe the traditional model of organization development including five iterative stages of the planned change process and the five levels of human systems. The iterative stages are contracting, data-gathering, intervention, evaluation, and disengagement. The five levels of human systems are personal, interpersonal, group, organization, and community—across which the stages must be carried out as necessary.  The vertical axis describes our addition of eight disciplines of critical thinking which, when each is consistently adhered to, enable the stages across the levels to support the success of any particular change management effort.

We will explore the stages, levels and disciplines in our next series of posts. Stay tuned!