ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT SESSION 7 1

Session 7 - Issues in Consultant-Client Relations

OD PROCESS

 Client Selection
 Entry
 Contracting
 Formation of ideal model
 Diagnosis
 Design alternative
 Goal selection
 Planning
 Intervention
 Monitor/Evaluate
 Stabilize

Individual Focus Interpersonal/Group/Intergroup

 Goal-Setting Role Analysis

 T-Groups Role Negotiations
 Life Planning Confrontation
 Sensitivity Training Team Building
 Stress Management Conflict Resolution
 Job Design Mirroring

Types of Change Strategies

 Empirical-Rational: rational determination that change is in one’s own interest

 Normative-Reeducative: educating on values in order to change attitudes and establish new norms
 Power-Coercive: compliance to the desires of the powerful

The OD Practitioner

 Internal and External Consultants

 Professionals from other disciplines who apply OD practices (e.g., TQM managers, IT/IS managers,
compensation and benefits managers)
 Managers and Administrators who apply OD from their line or staff positions (e.g., project managers,
product managers)

Competencies of an OD Practitioner

 Intrapersonal skills
o Self-Awareness
 Interpersonal skills
o Ability to work with others and groups
o Authenticity (Block ch. 3)
 General consultation skills
o Ability to get skills and knowledge used
 Organization development theory
o Knowledge of change processes

Role Demands on OD Practitioners

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 Position
o Internal vs. External
 Marginality
o Ability to straddle boundaries
 Emotional demands
o Emotional intelligence: How we work with clients.
 Use of knowledge and experience
o Attend to all phases of the business
o Focus on how we are working with clients

CHANGE CONSULTANTS’ STYLES

 Stabilizer: forced upon practitioner

 Cheerleader: employee motivation/morale; non-confrontational; maintaining harmony
 Analyzer: efficiency; rationality; confrontational; authoritative; expert; clients’ properly diagnosed
problem; individual satisfaction not as important
 Persuader: effectiveness and morale; low risk; avoids confrontation with forces; “good enough;” satisfy
different forces; weak change intervention
 Pathfinder: effectiveness, satisfaction, participation, collaboration; confrontation/conflict = means to an end

Professional Ethics/Ethical Dilemmas

 Misrepresentation of skills
o Professional/technical ineptness
 Misuse of data
o To punish, layoffs
o Breaching confidentiality
 Collusion & Coercion
o Nonparticipation is acceptable
 Promising Unrealistic Outcomes
 Values and Goals Conflict

THE ENTERING PROCESS

 Clarifying the Organizational Issue

o Presenting Problem
o Symptoms
o Digging Deeper
 Determining the Relevant Client
o Working power and authority
o Multiple clients—multiple contracts
 Selecting a Consultant

Why clients want OD intervention?

 To help make management decisions

 To increase collaborative decision-making
 Legitimizing informal systems
 Become responsive to valid data
 Legitimize conflict; “disagreeing in harmony”
 Examine leadership and management practices
 Emotional Demands of Entry
 Client Issues
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 Exposed and vulnerable

o Inadequate; mixed motivation
o Fear of losing control
o Concerns about exposure
 OD Practitioner Issues
o Empathy
o Worthiness and competency
o Dependency
o Over-identification

Getting Stuck on Wants and Offers

 When people mean  They express it by saying
 I don’t like it  I don’t understand it.
 Let’s get more data.
 I’ll get back to you.
 Let me talk it over with my staff
 Nothing
 I don’t understand a word you are saying.
 Do as I say, dammit.  Why don’t you think it over and get back to
me?
 I wouldn’t let your group even get close to my  We want to talk to some others about
organization. alternative approaches and we’ll let you know.

Getting Stuck and Recognizing It

 Listen to words used

 Alternate explanations
 Gut feeling
 Nonverbals
 Ask: how do you feel about what we are discussing?
 Recognize the impasse and adjourn for further thought/terminate.
 Change offer/wants (within proper scope)
 I think we are stuck.
 How can we reach an agreement?

Elements of an Effective Written Contract

 Problem Statement
 Stakeholders for intervention/Point of Contact
o Inclusions/Exclusions of people; triangular/rectangular contract
 Practitioner Role
 Ground Rules/Confidentiality
 Psychological contract/Trust/Clear Mutual Expectations
o Anticipated Outcomes/Deliverables/Schedule
o Publishing cases/results
 Time and Resources
o Compensation/fees
o Access to client, managers, members, information
 Contract modifications/Mutual Consent

Who’s the client?

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 Initial client team

 Top management/CEO
 VP of HR or other
 Steering committee
 Consultant is always creating change!
 Therefore, each person or group directly or indirectly touched by consultant is a client.

Trust

 Top Management debriefed on interview themes

 Confidentiality
 Concerns over use of information
 Who needs to trust?
 Labeling concerns
 Setting expectations
 Note taking
 Audio- or video-recording

Consultant’s Role

 Expert on process and encouraging collaboration

o Okay to present alternatives along with implications, costs and benefits
 Not task or content, b/c
o Client must develop its own resources
o Client must take ownership of solutions (OD consultant should not sell and defend ideas)
o Reduces trust and increases perception of adversarial relationships and collusion
o Expectations will change with greater reliance on consultant as instrument of change

Diagnosis/Discovery

 Readiness for Change

o LO of OD are appropriate
o Culture open to change
o Key people
 Layers of Analysis
o Symptoms of problems
 Political Climate
 Resistance to Sharing Information
 Interview as Joint Learning Event; change has begun
o Pursue issues early on, don’t shy away

Feedback

 Funneling Data into actionable items

 Present personal and organizational data on which recommendations may be implemented
 Manage and control feedback meeting
 Focus on present and how client is managing and dealing with feedback
 Don’t take reactions personally; it’s hard to own up to problems

Intervention

 Do not implement fads for fad sake

 Interventions address diagnosis
o Depth of interventions is to needed level
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o Careful not to appease clients; some risk-taking may be necessary

 Engage in top-down vs. bottom-up interventions
 More participation than presentation
 Allow for difficult situations to surface
 Commitment to solution through choices
 Dialogue on responsibility, purpose, meaning, & opportunities
 Physical environment of intervention

Pitfalls

 Client commitment to change

 Power to influence change
 Appeasing clients
 Becoming expert on content
 Getting socialized into organizational culture and politics
 Collusion/Manipulated use of practitioner
 Providing confidential reports
 Removing parts of reports so as others won’t know

Terminating Relationship

 Deliverables include steps for ensuring client internalizes skills

 End date in contract
 Sense assistance no longer needed
o Poorly facilitate mourning old process (not ready for change)
o Internal power struggles not discovered early enough
o Crises pulled away attention of key people
 Discovery: putting out fires vs. prevention
ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT SESSION 8 1

Session 8 - Action Research & OD

OVERVIEW

 Dual purpose of action research:

o Making action more effective.
o Building a body of scientific knowledge around that action.
 Action refers to: Programs and interventions designed to solve problems and improve conditions.

A PROCESS AND AN APPROACH

 Action research is a process, an ongoing series of events and actions.

 Definition:
o Action research is the process of systematically collecting research data about an ongoing
system relative to some objective, goal, or need of that system;
o feeding these data back into the system;
o taking actions by altering selected variables within the system based both on the data and
on hypotheses; and
o evaluating the results of actions by collecting more data.
Wendell L French and Cecil Bell define organization development (OD) at one point as "organization
improvement through action research".
ACTION RESEARCH

 Conceptualized by Kurt Lewin and later elaborated and expanded on by other behavioral
scientists.
 Concerned with social change and, more particularly, with effective, permanent social change,
Lewin believed that the motivation to change was strongly related to action: If people are active
in decisions affecting them, they are more likely to adopt new ways. "Rational social
management", he said, "proceeds in a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of
planning, action, and fact-finding about the result of action".
Kurt Lewin’s Action Research Model

 process of change involves three steps Unfreezing: Faced with a dilemma or disconfirmation,
the individual or group becomes aware of a need to change.
 Changing: The situation is diagnosed and new models of behavior are explored and tested.
 Refreezing: Application of new behavior is evaluated, and if reinforcing, adopted

 Action research is depicted as a cyclical process of change. The cycle begins with a series of
planning actions initiated by the client and the change agent working together. The principal
elements of this stage include a preliminary diagnosis, data gathering, feedback of results,
and joint action planning.

 In the language of systems theory, this is the input phase, in which the client system
becomes aware of problems as yet unidentified, realizes it may need outside help to effect
changes, and shares with the consultant the process of problem diagnosis.
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 The second stage of action research is the action, or transformation, phase.

 This stage includes actions relating to learning processes (perhaps in the form of role
analysis) and to planning and executing behavioral changes in the client organization.
Included in this stage is action-planning activity carried out jointly by the consultant and
members of the client system. Following the workshop or learning sessions, these action steps
are carried out on the job as part of the transformation stage.
 The third stage of action research is the output, or results, phase. This stage includes actual
changes in behavior (if any) resulting from corrective action steps taken following the second
stage. Data are again gathered from the client system so that progress can be determined and
necessary adjustments in learning activities can be made. Minor adjustments of this nature
can be made in learning activities via Feedback Loop B (see Figure 1). Major adjustments
and reevaluations would return the OD project to the first, or planning, stage for basic
changes in the program.
 Data are not simply returned in the form of a written report but instead are fed back in open
joint sessions, and the client and the change agent collaborate in identifying and ranking
specific problems, in devising methods for finding their real causes, and in developing plans
for coping with them realistically and practically.
 Scientific method in the form of data gathering, forming hypotheses, testing hypotheses, and
measuring results, although not pursued as rigorously as in the laboratory, is nevertheless an
integral part of the process.
 also sets in motion a long-range, cyclical, self-correcting mechanism for maintaining and
enhancing the effectiveness of the client's system by leaving the system with practical and
useful tools for self-analysis and self-renewal
ORGANIZATIONAL DEVELOPMENT SESSION 9 1

Session 9 - Power, Politics & OD

Power defined . . .

 The intentional influence over beliefs, emotions and behaviors of people.

o Potential power is the capacity to do so
o Kinetic power is the at of doing so
 One person exerts power over another to the degree that he is able to exact compliance as desired
 “A” has power over “B” to the extent that “A” can get “B” to do something that “B” would
otherwise not do.
 The ability of those who possess power to bring about the outcomes they desire.
 The capacity to effect (or affect) organizational outcomes
 “Pouvoir” from the French stands for both the noun “power” and the verb “to be able”

Common elements of the definitions

• Reflectance—getting one’s way

• Necessity of social interaction among two or more parties
• The act or ability to influence others
• Outcomes favoring one part over the other
• Power is the ability to get one’s way in a social situation.

Power in Action

• Influence
– Cooperation
– Society
• Leadership
– Technological, medical, political, financial, spiritual, organizational  standard of living
– Warfare, confiscation, repression misery

Faces of Power in Action

• Positive • Negative
– Leading – Coercing
– Influencing – Forcing
– Selling – Hurting
– Persuading – Crushing

McClelland and The Two Faces of Power

• Positive power characterized by socialized needs to initiate, influence and lead

– Seeks to empower self and others
• Negative power characterized by primitive, unsocialized need to dominate others
– Seeks to dominate and control others

FRENCH AND RAVEN’S 5 BASES OF POWER

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• COERCIVE POWER depends on fear

• One reacts to this type of power out of fear of the negative results that might occur if one fails to
comply
• It rests on the application (or the threat) of physical sanctions
• REWARD POWER . . . is the opposite of coercive power
• People comply because doing so produces benefits
• anyone who can distribute rewards that others value will have power over them
• LEGITIMATE POWER . . . represents the power a person receives as a result of his or her position
in the formal hierarchy of an organization
• Legitimate power is broader than the power to coerce and reward
• it includes acceptance of a person’s authority by members of the organization
• EXPERT POWER . . . is influence wielded as a result of experience, special skill, or knowledge
• Expertise has become a strong source of influence as the world has become more technologically
oriented
• As jobs become more specialized, we become more dependent on “experts”
• REFERENT POWER . . . is based on identification with a person who has desirable resources or
admirable personal traits.
• It develops out of an admiration for someone and a desire to be like that person
• If person A admires person B enough to model behavior and attitudes after him or her, then
person B has power over person A

WHAT CREATES DEPENDENCY?

 Importance of the Resource

 Scarcity of the Resource
 Number of Viable Substitutes

LOCATING POWER IN ORGANIZATIONS

• Departmental
• Place on committees
• Number of employees
• Budget allocation
• Location of offices
• Individual
• Ability to intercede
• Approval for spending
• Items on the agenda
• Access to top brass

Individual Factors Which Contribute to Political Behavior

• Level of self monitoring

• Need for power
• Internal locus of control
• Investment in the organization
• Perceived alternatives
• Expectations of success
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Organizational Factors that Contribute to Political Behavior

• Low trust
• Democratic decision making
• High performance pressures
• Scarcity of resources
• Role ambiguity
• Self-serving senior managers
• Unclear evaluation systems
• Zero-sum allocations

Types of Organizational Politics

• Legitimate political behavior consists of normal, every-day politics:

• forming coalitions
• bypassing the chain of command
• complaining to your supervisor
• developing outside contacts through professional activities
• Illegitimate political behavior is so extreme that it violates the rules of the game
• Sabotage
• whistle-blowing
• symbolic protests

Political Perspective Explains Organizational Behavior

Examples of political organizational behavior

• withholding information
• restricting output
• attempting to “build empires”
• publicizing their successes
• hiding their failures
• distorting performance figures
• engaging in similar activities at odds with organization’s goals, efficiency and effectiveness

OD, POWER AND POLITICS

• OD values consistent with positive face of power

– Trust, openness, collaboration, individual dignity, promoting individual and
organizational competence
• Emphasis on power equalization
– Increases power among organizational members the whole organization has more
power

OD in Political Environments

1. Become a desired commodity personally and professionally

• High interpersonal competence
• Listening, communication, problem-solving, coaching, counseling skills; appreciating
other
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2. Make OD a desired commodity

• OD allows individuals and organizations to reach their goals
3. Make OD a valued commodity for multiple powerful people in the organization
• Creates value for OD
• Increases power base and support
• Endorsement, support and protection of OD interventions

4. Create win-win situations

• Enhance stable, constructive social relationships
• Different way to handle conflict

5. Mind you own business (help others solve their major problems)
• Help upon request
• Help the manager meet her/his goals
6. Mind your own business—be a process, not content, expert
7. Mind your own business and don’t invite political trouble
• OD practitioner’s role is that of facilitator, catalyst, problem-solver, educator
• Role is not power-broker or power activist
Organizational Development SESSION 10 1

Session 10 - Future of OD
In this session you will learn:

 To explore the trends affecting how OD is likely to be practiced in the future

 To explore how OD is likely to change in the future

Trends Affecting OD Practice

• Traditional Trends
– Wealth is becoming more concentrated
– Economy is more globalized
– Ideologies are shifting from consumption to coexistence and ecological sustainability
• Pragmatic Trends
– Workforce is becoming older, more diverse, more educated
– Shift toward contingent employment & change in psychological contract
– No careers
• Scholarly Trends
– Emphasis on values of understanding, prediction, and control
– Search for variables that explain change and effectiveness
• Organization Development Will…
– Have more conflict in the short term
– Be more integrated in the long term

The Future of OD

 More embedded in the organization’s culture

 More technologically enabled
 Shorter OD cycle times
 More interdisciplinary
 More diverse client organizations
 More cross-cultural
 Greater focus on ecological sustainability