The Benefits of Clarity and Focus in Change Initiatives and The Self-organizing System

PLEASE ANSWER QUESTIONS SEPARATE
Module 6 DQ 1
Evaluate how a change initiative creates the conditions of high efficiency for an organization through clarity and focus. What are the benefits of clarity and focus in change initiatives?
Module 6 DQ 2
What are the characteristics of a self-organizing system? How can self-organize principles be utilized to interface with a marketplace? What are the benefits of doing so?
LECTURE NOTES
Introduction
The emergence of global competition and global markets has made the competitive business environment increasingly unstable. Organizations have to either evolve in their ever-changing environment or decline. Organizational development offers a way for organizations to evolve and improve their operations.
Organizational Development
Brown and Harvey (2006) define organization development (OD) as comprising a "long-range effort and programs aimed at improving an organization's ability to survive by changing its problem-solving and renewal processes" (p. 3). The primary purpose of OD is to improve organizational effectiveness through planned change, guided by behavioral science intervention activities. OD includes the development of individual organizational members and their alignment to the organization's goals. Brown and Harvey quote Beckhard's suggestion that "organization development is an effort: (1) planned, (2) organization-wide, (3) managed from the top, (4) to increase organization effectiveness and health, through (5) planned interventions in the organization's processes using behavioral science knowledge" (Brown and Harvey (2006), pg. 3).
Systems Management
Quinn (1996) suggests that organizations are systems and that all systems need to continuously evolve through an evolutionary process. He identifies a four phase transformational cycle that offers the potential for the emergence of excellence: "initiation, uncertainty, transformation, and routinization" (Quinn, 1996, pg. 167). The system (organization) maintains its health by continuously moving through the transformational cycle; otherwise, the system will degrade and shrink. It is considered a cycle because the last phase loops back around to the first phase.
Quinn further describes the cycle to begin with the initiation phase and the desire to improve. During this phase, a potential problem is fear of failure and the resulting stagnation that may ensue. If the organization is able to proceed, it determines a vision of what needs to be done. The potential problem at this point, is the vision becoming an illusion or a deception. After vision, the organization moves into the second phase of the cycle, the uncertainty phase. During this phase, vision leads to experimentation, which leads to insight. The potential problem at this point is that experimentation can also lead to panic (Quinn, 1996).
The transformation phase follows the uncertainty phase. The transformation phase supports strategy creation and definition, and thus this is where significant change can occur. However, the potential problem in this phase is exhaustion. At the end of the cycle during the routinization phase, the new approach or paradigm becomes routine therefore completing the transformational cycle (Quinn, 1996).
Unplanned and Planned Change
According to Brown and Harvey (2006), an organization encounters two kinds of changes: unplanned and planned. Unplanned changes are "forced on the organization by the external environment" whereas planned changes are "deliberate attempts to modify (the) organization in order to promote improvement" (pg. 96). One example of a planned change involves the Total Quality Management (TQM) program supported by a particular set of values in an organization's culture. For TQM to be successful, organizational members need to believe in those values.
Evolving organizational culture to embrace new values (both desirable and undesirable) requires that the organization adopt new philosophies about ways of work. Additionally, employee involvement should be encouraged by eliminating "fear of reprisal for asking questions or identifying quality problems" and "barriers between departments" which will help "promote cooperation and team approach for working together" (Russell and Taylor, 1998, pg. 83).
The OD Practitioner
The OD practitioner can be either internal or external to the organization. Brown and Harvey (2006) suggest that a fair number of major organizations have established their own internal OD groups, which offer both advantages and disadvantages. Internal OD practitioners know the existing organization, but may lack the objectivity of an external practitioner. A solution to maintain objectivity would be to employ a mixed practitioner team where the internal and external practitioners can offset the other's weaknesses. OD practitioners should possess strong people skills in the areas of communication, problem-solving, interpersonal and personal relationships.
Harrison (2005) describes the nature of the client-consultant relationship involved with organizational analysis and suggests that the organizational analysis consultant, or OD practitioner, moves through the following phases: entry, contracting, study design, data gathering, analysis, and feedback.
Organizational analysis, often at the front end of an OD practitioner operation, helps establish the initial consultant-client relationship, which leads to situational analysis and a contractual agreement. The OD practitioner should next establish a change program (solution) and then implement it (stages four and five of Brown and Harvey's (2006) five-stage OD model). The change program comprises a "series of interventions, activities, or programs aimed at resolving problems and increasing organization effectiveness" (Brown, et. al., 2005, pg. 16). Implementation involves evaluating the effectiveness of the change program, and stabilizing the changes called for in the change plan.
Process Intervention
Brown and Harvey (2006) define process intervention as an "OD skill used by OD practitioners, whether managers or OD professionals, to help work groups become more effective" (pg. 187). Much of this type of activity involves working with groups and understanding the group's dynamics in order to identify the best intervention approach.
Process intervention involves impacting how the group operates and not their task (Brown, et. al., 2006). A variety of process interventions are available to groups, including "clarifying, summarizing, synthesizing, generalizing, probing, questioning, listening, reflecting feelings, providing support, coaching, counseling, modeling, setting the agenda, feeding back observations and providing structural suggestions" (Brown, et. al., 2006, pg. 191).
Procedural Learning
Johnson and Johnson (1997) report that group dynamics involve the "scientific study of behavior in groups to advance our knowledge about the nature of groups, group development, and the interrelations between groups and individuals, other groups, and larger entities" (pg. 36). Their position is that group skills are learned and that building knowledge of group dynamics requires the use of procedural learning.
Procedural learning involves using feedback to refine and evolve knowledge over time. One could view this as practicing continuous improvement to refine one's knowledge about group dynamics. The learning process involves becoming a participant-observer and observing the nature of the group function by observing the interactions among group members (Johnson, et. al., 1997).
Trust and Communication
Groups exist to achieve a cooperative purpose, and to accomplish this, they create group goals. Effective group operation calls for all group members to commit to these goals and cooperate to attain them (Johnson, et. al., 1997). To be effective, group members also need a high level of trust in each other, which is "built through risk and confirmation" (Johnson and Johnson, 1997, pg. 131). Group members need to be able to communicate efficiently with free flowing information among its members (Johnson, et. al, 1997). Groups that possess trust and demonstrate effective communication skills can "identify problems, examine possible actions, and make decisions" (Brown, et .al., 2006, pg. 189). As a result, it can lead to the attainment of the group's goals. In addition, individuals play different roles within the group. Roles within the group can be categorized as "group task functions, group-building and maintenance functions, or individual functions" (Brown, et. al., 2006, pg. 188).
OD Strategies
Brown and Harvey (2006) define an OD strategy as a "plan for relating and integrating the different organizational improvement activities engaged in over a period to accomplish objectives" (pg. 215). OD strategy planning should occur only after insights have been gained through a situation analysis, and the strategy is aligned with organizational culture and structure. In fact, a three-way alignment is needed among the OD strategy, organizational culture, and organizational structure.
Three generic strategies are structural, technological, and behavioral. Any major OD strategy most likely will be a blending of these three. Behavioral strategies often involve cultural change, i.e., changing values and beliefs, which are usually the most difficult to evolve. Structural strategies revolve around changing organizational relationships and are often done to support a technological strategy that utilizes new technology, methods, or processes (Brown, et. al., 2006).
Team Development
Brown and Harvey (2006) report that "some 80 percent of U.S. organizations have employees working as teams" (pg. 281), which strongly indicates that teams are the way organizations now operate. Brown and Harvey define team building, or team development, as an OD technique employed to increase "communication, cooperation, and cohesiveness of units to make them more productive and efficient" (pg. 283). They also point out that teams often have problems operating effectively and suggest that those problems "center around the following elements: goals, member needs, norms, homogeneous members, decision-making, leadership and size" (Brown, et. al., 2006, pg. 287).
Not all conflict within groups is bad. A certain amount of conflict over choices that occur during the group decision-making process can lead to exploring more alternatives, improving decision-making, and avoiding groupthink. Well known in the field of psychology, groupthink is a "mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, and when the members' striving for unanimity overrides their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action" (Janis, 1982, cited in Brown and Harvey, 2006, pg. 288). Ineffective teams that exhibit symptoms of groupthink, and members do not trust one another or become discouraged from voicing their opinions, may be subject to poor decision making and lower quality decisions overall.
Conclusion
Teams are a critical part of most organizations. Often, an OD practitioner's task will involve the need to address a performance issue within the team. However, knowledge about team management and, how they work is largely ignored in many organizations. Being aware of team leadership, team readiness, and ways to empower teams can assist the OD practitioner in strategic planning for the organization's development.
References
Brown, D., and Harvey, D. (2006). An experiential approach to organization development (7th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Harrison, M. (2005). Diagnosing organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Johnson, D., and Johnson, F. (1997). Joining together group theory and group skills (6th ed.). Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Quinn, R. (1996). Deep change. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Russell, R., and Taylor, B., III. (1998). Operations management (2nd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.