| Go Back | Main Menu | OD TOOLKIT |
The process of consulting is approaching its finish. Ideas are being transformed to operational plans.
Most of the time the process of change is described as if we are dealing with a fixed procedure and as if consultants are following the path of the theory: intake, dynamic analysis, recommendations, implementation. But life itself is more complex and chaotic.
Implementation of changes in an organisation can be compared with action research in investigation. The moment the consultant makes his or her appearance in the organisation, its reality starts to be influenced.
The mere announcement of change causes already changes.
The art of consulting is to push those changes in the desired direction.
Consulting is not dealing with a scientific determination of the effect of recommendations. The heart of the matter is bringing about feasible and effective changes.
So defined, implementation covers far more than carrying out recommendations in the last phase of a consultancy process. Other topics are also part of the process, like sensitizing the organisation for the problem at hand, strengthening the support for the recommendations and making the organisation susceptible for change. Implementation is an ongoing process, right from the start.
The core question of implementation is: how to use the energy, available in the organisation, in behalf of the realisation of the intended change.
The famous formula: E=KxA is applicable: the effectiveness of the recommendation equals the quality of that recommendation multiplied by its acceptation.
The consultant/change agent considers the development of the acceptance as part of the job. Consultant who are blaming the organisation not being fit for their recommendations, those consultants will find the cynics on their hands, but will not manage to put the organisation in motion.
It can happen that an organisation turns out not being able to realize the consultants recommendations. Thinking in terms of action research: in such a case something in the recommendations will be deficient too. Probably the consultant has taken the role of the expert who has not taken into account the possibilities or capacities of the organisation.
Working on acceptation is the part of the process of implementation that always need attention. Because if the right breeding ground is available, the organisation probably had thought itself of a solution. The presence of a consultant indicates the need for help of an organisation in adjusting itself to a changing reality.
Some recommendations can be introduced top down, neglecting the level of acceptance. But such recommendations are rare. When the turning point of the change has to do with (the knowledge, attitude or skills of) people, an active support will be needed for a successful implementation.
To change an organisation, passive support is not sufficient. What we need is active and dynamic support. Like said before: when the turning point of the change has to do with (the knowledge, attitude or skills of) people, it is not enough that people acquiesce in a new policy, structure or culture. People have to consider the change necessary, and they have to feel the need to support it.
Only then the change has a chance to be integrated in the realm of action. Such a support requires energy.
Studying the ways an organisation tries to tackle problems (or how it was done in the past) can reveal the employment of energy of an organisation. Sometimes the organisation stresses the possibilities and chances and everyone is mobilised to think about solutions. Such an organisation has forward directed energy. Other organisations are primarily preoccupied with the threats and run the risk to get stuck in that phase. The energy is frozen. Some organisations put their energy in looking for the guilty ones or a scapegoat and keep themselves busy with the question: how could it happen? The energy has a backwards direction. Some organisations only want to be put in the right (I warned several times....)
The ways to cope with problems are not accidental nor incidental. The way an organisation directs its energy is comparable with the current of a river. It is not a choice, it is the resultant of the past. The direction of the stream creates the bed of the river which makes the same direction for the next time more probable.
A consultant cannot just order another flow. The art of consulting is to use the common direction of the energy on behalf of the solution of the problem. Not only by placing the problem in the middle of the stream, but by joining the motion of the stream and using its force.
Sometimes the intended change itself generates the energy for its realisation. The ideas ignite the enthusiasm of people and all that should be done is to use and direct the ebullition of energy.
In some organisation such positive use of energy lies ready to be used. The work of the consultant is to think about ways to employ the energy. Sometimes an extra ignition is needed for a take-off speed to break away. Take-off ignition can be found for example in an opening conference or start-meeting that stimulates the existing energy and offers an approach to the problem, directed to solutions.
Sometimes it is necessary to temporarily evade structural obstacles in order to provide the process of a successful start. For that reason some organisations make use of a temporary infra-structure (a task force with a specific assignment and own channels of communications) by which blockages in the line -or in the communication- no longer are obstacles for the process of change.
The intended change not always finds a favourable breeding ground. Maybe the organisation has some energy, but that is being used for other purposes. The consultant could try to apply judo techniques: take advantage of the forces on behalf of the change. The most important activity for implementation in such a case is joining the motion.
The consultant should investigate by what kind of topics people tend to be mobilised. The next step is to join the change-topic to the existing stream of energy: i.e. to the mobilising-topic. This activity can be compared with the smart habits of the small white heron that pokes about in the presence of a cow, making profit of its abundance of food. Use the richness of energy of something else for your own purpose.
A smart energy-seeker always finds streams of energy that can be used.
A disadvantage of this strategy is its inevitable invisibility. If we should make the strategy visible, the change topic becomes visible. But that change topic is not able to generate enough energy under its own steam, otherwise it should be placed in the category above (the change generates the motion).
Joining the motion as a strategy can be used on content and process. For instance: the heron of the gender-approach can make use of for instance the energy of the cow: personnel policy or the quality policy (using another content). Or: the heron gender-approach makes use of the energy of the cow: lunch meetings (using another process).
The consultant who is invited as a change agent often feels the existing culture as a major obstacle. An example: the organisational culture is procedure driven, while the core of the intended change is to turn the organisation towards an external orientation. Being driven by procedures is a sign of an internal orientation, so at first sight the assignment of the consultant seems to be to fight the existing culture. But organisational culture is never trivial and organisational culture is never composed of only useless elements. It is the task of the consultant to recognise those elements in the existing culture that can be used as materials for improvement.
For instance: we begin to look closer to what we called procedure driven. It turns out to be a summary of a variety of actions (habits): people are used to describe in detail whàt should be done before doing it, hòw it should be done, whò is doing what, in which order and whò will be responsible.
What could the consultant use this culture on behalf of the development of an external orientation??
For instance by organising a series of individual agreements (!) with members of the organisation in order to map out in detail (!) in which networks they participate. Those individual networks will be joined to one external map (!) of the organisation. In a general meeting it will be determined (!) which connections are missing and which should be used better. This common analysis (!) is followed by the precise distribution of tasks (!) and the planning (!) of agreements. To round it off the evaluation (!) is planned.
The consultant uses the existing stream of the culture and makes his or her own preference (for instance to celebrate the start of becoming external orientation with a tremendous party) of minor importance.
Ostentatious challenging the existing culture sometimes brings about admiration, but seldom success.
Using the culture (as the heron uses the cow) is not always possible. There are some organisational cultures which make a favourable turn impossible
An example is the organisational culture which is called: popular cynicism. In an organisation suffering from cynicism the people have given up the hope of improvement. In fact they are in a state of collective depression, which is not expressed in the blues. On the contrary, people seem to rejoice that things are rotten. There is a collective ambition to amuse each other with bitter jokes at the expense of the organisation.
An organisation in deep sombreness is a difficult but not impossible challenge for a consultant. Helping an organisation that amuses itself with its misery is well-nigh impossible. The reason for that is because the cynics have committed themselves to a certain attitude and each opening to improvement would strike at the roots of their certainties. People have to reject ideas for improvement because the risk of loosing one's footing is too big.
There are more examples of impossible cultures, but the consultant is not always empty-handed. It is important to explore quietly the spreading of the popular cynicism over the organisation. Is it really uniformly spread, or are there differences in the organisation? The outcome of such an exploration often is that it is only a minority that defines the expressions and the manners and that the majority would like to be hopeful, if they only dared.
The consultant should work with those people in small groups, avoiding for the time being plenary sessions in which the cynics set the tone.
In a lot of change processes the consultant will detect three types of people in the organisation: supporters, opponents and bystanders. It is necessary to begin with the process of change with supporters. Even if the organisation proposes to compose a task force "in which also some critical people who are not in favour of changes" (in a sincere attempt to provide the consultant of a representative group) the consultant should choose for a group that feels like help thinking.
After a while the Help Thinking-group should deal with the question: how to reach the probably biggest group in the organisation, the bystanders, those people who sit on the fence. What could we do to make them enthusiastic?
By displacement of the enthusiasm to the middle group one could try to reach the opponents. In a successful process the opponents have sometimes simply disappeared. Sometimes they wait in the wings in case the project yet happens to fail. Sometimes they develop themselves into people with a positive critical function.
It is important for the consultant to realise that the question of failure or success is not decided by the supporters or the opponents, but that the critical mass is decisive. In a succeeding project the number of people who are joining in swells and at a certain moment it will pass a limit that makes the change inevitable.
Consultants should bear this in mind and should try to recognise this phenomenon, because opponents can have a massive negative effect on their energy and attention. One gruff man who is shaking his head in an audience that is generally enthusiastic, one such a person is able to absorb the energy of the speaker. We call this phenomenon the power of distraction. The consultant in the role as speaker should be aware of this phenomenon. A firm intention to direct the own energy towards the supporters and bystanders may help prevent this unbelievably annoying experience.
Generally spoken: the forces in an organisation always tend to continue the once taken direction. Even if the consultant is recruited on behalf of a desired change, even then the energy of an organisation will be directed primarily on continuation of what people were doing. Probably we are dealing here with a pattern of a social psychological nature. Though some experts' starting point is people liking change (as for instance Moss Kanter), the most common point of view is that an organisation is likely to show resistance to change.
The practise of change shows that the most successful changes are realised if a clear necessity for change is apparent. The more tight the link of the necessity is to the survival of the organisation, the more complete and quick will be the change of the organisation.
If the board of an health institution wants to integrate a gender approach in its treatment this will be easier accomplished when the institution has a fast growing number of female patients.
A new policy alone causes no organisational necessity. The change in the group of clients does. That is why consultants speak of a workable necessity.