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The organisation should present a problem or a question, rather than just asking for an consultant exploration.
The process of diagnosing by a consultant is comparable by with the diagnostics of a doctor. When a patient asks a doctor for a medical check up (a very broad question) the answer is perforce superficially. Only in the case that there are striking symptoms that refer to an illness, the doctor can give sensible judgments. If those symptoms are absent, the answer is inevitably rough. The same type of uninteresting answers is to be expected if the doctor is asked to measure the blood pressure (a narrow request). It is high, normal or low. So what? The available medical diagnostics can provide interesting information if the search is guided by the right question. And the right question arises from a conceptual model in the patient's frame of reference. An example of right questions is for instance: I am dog-tired in the evening nowadays and I had some funny tickling in my arms lately. Could it be that my heart condition is responsible for that? Such a question reveals the area in which the patient is interested and why. The search process of the doctor will be a more sensible one.
The same is true for consultancy- diagnostics. The organization should explore its own question, in order to enable the consultant to produce interesting information.
Examples of such questions are: can we do better on innovation. Or: can we raise the level of participation of our organization. Or: is our organizational development in line with our intended results. Or: can we improve the degree of professionalization of our organization. Or: how can we improve our accountability.
A consultant can offer two types of information upon a certain aspect of an organisation.
The first aspect is the factual situation: the facts and figures concerning that aspect. The second aspect is related to the underlying mechanisms, often dealing with the potential capacities of the organisation or with its limits to fully use them. Both are important to get some insight in the current situation of the functioning of organisations. And to be true, the second source of information is even more interesting than the first, because the potentials of an organisation can tell more about learning capacities and possibilities for improvement.
Let's look at for instance the degree of client-centeredness of organisations.
An example: An organisation asks for help in order to improve its client centeredness.
The consultant can get a picture of the degree of client-centeredness of the organisation by looking for symptoms and signs. For instance: how much time does it take before a letter of a client is answered, does the organisation have a system for processing complaints, how often does the organisation measure client satisfaction, how often rings a telephone before answered etc. The information gathered, offers a picture of the degree in which an organization is client oriented. And if the outcome is to be considered insufficient, than the organisation has to make new intentions. From now on we try to answer the telephone before it rings for the third time. Or: responses to letters shall be send within two weeks after receipt. Such intentions are mostly sincere, but the reality of the habits of an organization is not always influenced by good intentions.
Why not?
Because there are probably 'good' reasons for the lack of client-centeredness. And changing the habits of an organization will only succeed if the underlying motives are understood and are taken into account. So in investigating the client-centeredness of an organization, the potential capacities of the organisation to act client centred should be taken into account. The question is not only wether or not the actual behaviour of the organisation meets the demands of the client. The next question is in which aspects the organisation will be capable to client-centred behaviour in the future. To answer that second question we need to know the underlying factors that could explain the lacking of client-centred behaviour.
Defining not only the actual performance on client centeredness but also the mechanisms that cause a lack of client centeredness (influencing thus also the potentials to realise client centeredness in the future) requires a search for hidden conditions, for explaining factors of the seemingly self evident reality.
Why is this certain organization not capable to meet the demands of their clients? What are the hidden dynamics in neglecting the wishes of clients? Which are the missing conditions for client-centeredness? And so on and so on.
The answers to such questions can be found in a dialogue between the consultant with his or hers organizational point of view and the organisation with it's experience and insight knowledge.
The consultant can measure the objective performance of the organization on a certain organizational aspect. But for recommendations such a objective investigation is too meagre. In order to help the organization to improve its efforts on the aspect, we have to know which underlying factors contribute to the performance.
A dynamic analysis is needed. Without a dynamic analysis recommendations will stick in having the right intentions. In the example of the organizational aspect of client centeredness, an organization could do bad on the objective measuring. It takes days and days before letters are answered, for example. The flat, superficial, non dynamic recommendation of the consultant would be: answer your letters earlier. If the consultant investigates the dynamic mechanisms underlying the lack of client centeredness, one of the most decisive factors for the lack of client centeredness in this organisation could turn out to be the degree in which the organisation has decentralized the realization of quality. If the management style does not stimulate an external orientation, and if the staff in all functions and at all levels gets no freedom of action in meeting the demands of the client, then there is a real risk that the formal policy on client-centeredness is not put into practise. So, recommendations to improve have to go beyond: answer your letters quickly.
Without a dynamic underlying explanatory model it is impossible to recommend ways of improvement that will turn out to be effective.
The underlying mechanisms of the lack of client centeredness in a specific organisation could consist of course of more elements than only decentralization of quality. We could for instance think of causing factors like: dependency of clients (that is why governmental institutions in their monopoly-position can afford to act rather careless towards citizens), a lack of accessibility and susceptibility, a poor learning ability (for instance the possibilities for feed back loops, learning from experiences), too little external orientation and no involvement of clients. In each case the consultant has to look for the very causing underlying mechanisms.