Cases and Exercises in Organization Development & Change

Donald L. Anderson

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781506365770
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Economics

Cases and Exercises in Organization Development & Change, Second Edition encourages students to practice organization development (OD) skills in unison with learning about theories of organizational change and human behavior. The book includes a comprehensive collection of cases about the OD process and organization-wide, team, and individual interventions, including global OD, dialogic OD, and OD in virtual organizations. In addition to real-world cases, author Donald L. Anderson gives students practical and experiential exercises that make the course material come alive through realistic scenarios that managers and organizational change practitioners regularly experience.

Chapter 1 What Is Organization Development? Every Coin Has Two Sides

Donald L. Anderson

Learning Objectives

• To assess opportunities for organization development work at the individual, team, and organizational levels.
• To examine challenges in leading a team and practice seeing a situation from multiple points of view.
• To evaluate the role of an organization development practitioner.

In Tom’s Office

“I have a strange situation, and I’m not sure why it’s happening. I have done some investigating myself, but I’m perplexed about what do to next, which is why I reached out to you,” Tom began.

“Tell me more about it,” Paul asked. As an internal organization development consultant to Tom, he was used to perplexing situations and was eager to hear more.

“One of the managers on my team, Jared, is relatively new. I have four other managers who are much more tenured in my organization, but he’s been part of my group for only about 7 months. About 3 months ago I started getting complaints from his team,” Tom said.

“Remind me what Jared’s team does?” Paul asked.

“Jared’s team is responsible for the relationships with our suppliers. Any time we work with a supplier to buy parts from them, we have a supplier agreement that shows their agreed service levels to us, pricing, quality levels, shipping time expectations, and so on. Jared’s team members work closely with our suppliers to monitor the quality of the products they are shipping to us and whether the supplier metrics are meeting our agreements,” Tom explained.

“That helps. What kinds of complaints were you hearing from Jared’s team?” Paul asked.

“At first I was hearing general comments such as ‘he doesn’t listen to us.’ I take that with a grain of salt, because to be honest we have implemented a lot of changes in the last year, and I hear that complaint a lot. Plus, people just don’t like change, so they say that we’re not listening just because they don’t like what we are saying or we made a decision they don’t like. About a year ago we reduced our number of suppliers. We also centralized our supplier review teams into four locations in the United States—north, east, west, and south—and reduced staff by about 20%. While I tried to hold a lot of town hall meetings to communicate the centralization and the progress of our initiatives, I know that it wasn’t a popular change with employees. We worked through it and tried to be patient, and I think that generally speaking morale is on the upswing,” Tom said.

“But back to Jared’s team,” Paul prodded, returning Tom to the reason for the meeting.

“Yes, right. At first it was just one or two people that were the source of the complaints, but then I gradually started to hear other voices chime in. Jared’s team has about 10 members, so I interviewed each one of them in a ‘skip level’ meeting, where I met one-on-one with each person. Employees were very frank with me about their feedback for Jared. They weren’t sugarcoating. The themes centered on a couple of issues. In addition to listening, which was a pervasive comment, employees complained of not being taken seriously, being treated as incompetent, not having their ideas listened to, and being ‘talked down to’ in a condescending way,” Tom said.

“That sounds like honest and tough feedback,” Paul said. “Were you able to share with Jared what people generally said?”

“I did more than provide general feedback. I met with Jared and shared the very specific feedback with him. I told him that I had met with his team and that they had some concerns about his management of them. I shared all that I’ve just said to you, about listening, taking people seriously, treating people as competent, and so on,” Tom said.

“How did he respond?” Paul asked.

“He was embarrassed that I was confronting him with that data, and he wants to do something about it,” Tom said. “But this is where it gets confusing. He said that he had no idea that his team felt this way. He told me about regular one-on-one meetings he has with the members of the team and how he frequently invites their feedback to him directly. He showed me a survey he did of the team and the written feedback they gave him as well, which was filled with positive comments. He was right that none of the concerns I brought to him had appeared on any of the feedback he had received directly,” Tom said. “It just seems like such an odd disconnect between a group that has consistent negative feedback about his behavior but where Jared says he has absolutely no idea why people are saying those things about him.”

“Thinking about the feedback you heard, have you ever heard similar points about your other managers? Is this type of feedback widespread throughout the organization?” Paul wondered.

“No. I’ve never heard anything like this about any of my other managers. This is a pretty friendly department, overall. This is the kind of place where people throw foam footballs around the cubicles at lunchtime and have summer picnics with each other’s families,” Tom said. “But with Jared, it seems like some kind of mob mentality is forming, where the group is nice to Jared directly but they spiral into an angry crowd that feeds off of one another when he isn’t around. At first I was thinking that maybe it’s just growing pains, since Jared has a very different style than the former manager of this group, Brad.”

“Tell me about the former manager,” Paul asked.

“Brad got promoted and left the group, but he’s still around the company. In fact, it was from him that I originally started hearing about the complaints, because the team was going to their old boss and he was sharing their feedback with me. I told him that he needed to get out of the team dynamic now and leave it to me. I don’t think that’s healthy. But he was popular with the team, he’s laid-back but insistent on high-quality work, and the team respected him, so I can see why they were trying to get him on their side,” Tom said.

“How would you describe Brad’s style?” Paul asked.

“He treats people as equals. He doesn’t assume that he always has the answers, and he’s open to suggestions if his team members think they have a good suggestion or innovation to propose. He’s described as open, warm, and friendly. It’s probably due to him that we have the friendly collegial atmosphere that we have here. At the same time, you can’t get away with anything like slacking off or quality mistakes if you’re a member of his team. Brad really works to develop a team mentality where everyone is in it together and not out for their own personal achievements at the expense of the group. If someone has a problem on Brad’s team, they generally turn to the whole group to ask for input and not just assume that Brad will solve it. Frequent communicator, positive, team-oriented,” Tom concluded.

“In hindsight, is Jared able to identify any time when he had a feeling or intuition that something might be going wrong? And is the team able to look at a specific example and point out why they felt like they weren’t being taken seriously or being listened to?” Paul asked.

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Tom admitted. “Maybe we can ask the employees to share more specific examples. And that’s a good action for Jared, too.”

“Have there been any other performance-related concerns with Jared or his team?” Paul inquired.

“The thing is I can’t emphasize enough that Jared is a very smart individual. He’s always in my office sharing progress on the team’s work, he knows the content of the job really well, and he always has an answer to every question. I have a great deal of respect for his knowledge and expertise. That’s why I hired him. But now that you mention it, there is another unusual situation we had. It’s not a performance concern, but there was another situation. There was a big problem with three of our suppliers that took everyone’s work to address. After the team got the supplier back on track and quality concerns diminished, Jared took the three employees who were assigned to those suppliers out to lunch to celebrate their success. It caused some hurt feelings among other members of the team because it was widely recognized that everyone participated on the project, not just those that were assigned to the supplier,” Tom said. “Jared told me later that he wanted to hold up those three as role models in working with their suppliers. And then there are the gifts.”

“Gifts?” Paul asked, puzzled.

“Around the holidays, Jared’s team started giving him gifts. They started out as nominal sorts of things like pen and pencil sets or a desk clock,” Tom said. “Then someone gave him a generous gift card, another gave him a new briefcase, and another gave him an expensive bottle of wine. It turned into some kind of competition. Jared pointed to that as an example of his good relationship with the team, but we finally had to ask employees to stop. It’s strange because we don’t usually share gifts like that here. It’s never happened,” Tom said.

“That really sounds like an odd situation. Why would employees give lavish gifts to a manager they reportedly dislike?” Paul wondered.

“Agreed. When I asked them about it, they said they felt obligated and actually complained about that, too. But I can’t figure out how they would feel obligated when no employees across any of my other groups have ever given a gift to a manager. I don’t really want to open up that whole gift situation again with employees, but I mention it just as background. You see how confused I am,” Tom stated, exasperated. “My gut feeling is that there is some element of truth on both sides or some kind of deep misunderstanding. I need your help figuring out what that is and what to do about it.”

“Let’s start with Jared,” Paul said.

Meeting With Jared

“Hi, Jared; I’m Paul.” Paul sat down at the table in Jared’s office.

“I can’t thank you enough for your time on this project,” Jared said. “I am really hoping that you can help me understand how I can improve my relationships on this team and my management skills.”

“I’m glad to help,” Paul said. “I’d like to learn a little more about your transition to leading this team and how that went from your perspective.”

“Absolutely. I have worked for the company for the past 5 years, but only for the past 6 months on this team. I transferred from our East Coast office to take over for Brad after his promotion,” Jared said. “When I began, my first order of business was to improve productivity on the team. I took a look at the projects per employee as well as the weekly hours spent per employee with suppliers. Both of those were significant metrics for me to look at, and both were about 20% lower than I would have expected based on my experience. In my first few weeks, I had a meeting with the team where I asked them to identify initiatives that would help us improve our numbers. We came up with four initiatives as a group and chose project teams and team leaders for each initiative. Employees volunteered for the initiatives, and I have always said that the team owns them.”

“Tell me how those initiatives have been progressing,” Paul asked.

“I believe in empowering the team and giving them the authority to make decisions,” Jared explained. “I asked them to come up with timelines, milestones, and deliverables, and for each project we have a weekly review with me and the team. I’ll admit that I did push them on some of the timelines, but in general the whole team is doing incredible work. Our numbers are already up from the initial baselines.”

“How do you see morale on the team right now?” Paul asked.

“It’s not where I want it to be, but that is to be expected in the middle of a transition. That’s why I’ve already started a recognition program to thank employees for reaching major milestones. I take the supplier leads out to lunch when they reach a level of quality that I’ve publicized to everyone. As a manager, my style is to push hard to accomplish our team objectives, but to then recognize people when they succeed. Too many leaders just push people to get the work done but forget to say thank you, and any time you are trying to promote a change, it’s important to celebrate the small wins,” Jared said. “You asked me to think of specific examples of where misunderstanding could have occurred. I think my first attempt at recognition may have rubbed some people the wrong way, but when other team members reach their milestones, I will recognize them, too. It will take time for everyone to buy into the change.”

“Tell me about team meetings and how you interact with the team,” Paul inquired.

“I think our team meetings are very productive. It’s a light atmosphere, we joke around, and yet we also get the work done. I have regular one-on-one meetings each week with each member of the team, and these are really their time to bring up personal concerns, get career advice or coaching, or get feedback. I’m a strong believer in constructive feedback and coaching. A manager should praise in public and critique in private, so if I have direct feedback about an area that is an opportunity for improvement for someone on the team, I will wait to tell them that in a private setting,” Jared explained. “I also try to coach employees as much as I can. I want them to know that they are in charge of their own careers, and I can help them grow their skills and experience so when they are ready to tackle the next challenge in their careers, they can set themselves apart.”

“I have heard from Tom about some of the feedback the team has had, but I’d like to hear your perspective on that as well. Can you share with me what you have heard and what you think needs to be done?” Paul asked.

“Some of the complaints are about the workload and how strapped people are for time. I get that. I’m not entirely going to apologize for trying to push the team a little, but I also work hard to find additional resources when I can. So when someone is having trouble on a project, I try to create an environment where people want to help each other out. A great example of that comes from a recent meeting with Beth. She was struggling with her workload, so I asked other team members to jump in. Collaboration across a team is one of the most important factors in a team’s success, and I believe that we succeed as a team or fail as a team,” Jared said.

“Have you taken any action so far?” Paul asked.

“Yes. One comment Tom shared was that people felt like I was not recognizing the fact that they were skilled professionals. Recently, I wanted to commend a real superstar on the team, Nadia. She had done an exceptional supplier review that caught a number of errors that would have been very upsetting to our customers. I sent a note to the team to showcase Nadia’s work so that everyone would know of the importance of conducting high-quality reviews and how thorough she was,” Jared noted.

“What needs to be done, in your view?” Paul concluded.

“I am at a loss. But I will commit to listening to every piece of feedback that I need to hear and to doing what is needed,” Jared said firmly. “I have no doubt that we all probably need to take action, and I want everyone to know that they can give me any direct feedback that they want. No one but Tom has mentioned anything to me directly, so I hope you can help.”

“I’m going to talk to the team next, and then I will be better prepared to share specific thoughts with you about our next steps,” Paul said.

Excerpts From Meetings With Jared’s Team

“You wanted a specific example, so I found one that illustrates a common scenario,” Beth explained. “I’m sure he’s told you about the initiatives that he assigned us to. Well, we have weekly project reviews to share our progress on each initiative. I’m one of the team leads for Supplier Quality, but I also have six suppliers of my own to manage on a regular basis outside of the initiative. Last week we had an initiative review with Jared, but there honestly wasn’t much to share. One of my suppliers had a huge problem that required me to spend the entire week sorting out why they were not able to get us enough products in time for us to make our customer shipments. Customers have to be our top priority. I had no time to spend on the initiative since I was prioritizing my time on the supplier problem. So in this week’s review I told Jared that we didn’t make as much progress as I would have liked. His first response was, ‘What have you been doing all week? I wish I had that much free time,’ and then immediately sent an e-mail to the entire team that read, ‘Beth obviously needs help on her project since she was unable to make any progress this week. Please volunteer to help her immediately.’ There was no recognition that I was doing other critical work, and it was offensive to point me out in front of my peers like that.”

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“I’m sure you’ve heard about our first employee meeting with Jared,” Luke pointed out. “He told us how he looks at employee performance. He told us, ‘You need to set yourself apart from the others if you want to succeed around here.’ That’s a direct quote. Then he took a few people out to lunch when we had all helped them succeed, so we quickly learned that it wasn’t worth helping out our peers. It’s hard to get a raise or a promotion in this company, so everybody has started competing with each other a little. You have to be on Jared’s good side. If you’re one of his favorites it is clear that you’ll be taken care of.”

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“You asked me if I have ever given Jared direct feedback,” Mia said. “The answer is yes. Let me tell you how that went. I lead the team initiative on reporting where we are trying to organize a standard set of supplier reports so everyone has access to accurate data on a weekly basis. In one of our meetings, Jared said that he wanted to have a dashboard display different data than what we were planning. In fact, he was proposing changing the standard calculations that we have used for years. What he was proposing didn’t make any sense, and no one spoke up. In my next one-on-one...