In Organization Development, the consultant's approach is client centered, much like Rogerian counseling. It assumes clients have the capacity and intrinsic motivation to learn, to become more effective in their work, and to interact collaboratively with others toward shared goals.

Edgar Schein has usefully contrasted three models or approaches to consulting:

1. The Purchase of Expertise model, in which clients don't have the time or skill to do something, and hire a consultant to do it for them. An example might be market research conducted by focus group experts, resulting in a report and recommendations about which version of a product is likely to sell better. Peter Block calls this "a second pair of hands."

2. The Doctor-Patient model, in which clients ask for an assessment of a particular function and receive the consultant's analysis and recommendation--a prescription to fix the problem.

3. The Process Consultation model, in which clients and consultants work as partners in observing and understanding how key work processes are working, and then jointly develop approaches for improving them. This is a facilitative approach to consulting.

Most people are familiar with the first two models because they are in the popular culture, or simply because they are more commonly employed in organizations. The facilitative approach is less common, and harder to understand at first--by clients, or by new consultants. "Why would you pay me a lot of money to help you figure out what you already know?"

Some people choose to become consultants exactly because they want to be able to tell others what to do. In our culture, it is somewhat counter-intuitive that you can ease others' way toward their own goals by helping them get clear on what they are, individually and as groups, then consider together how they are currently working toward those goals, and how they might get more traction in doing that. The OD consultant creates conversations and interactions that clarify, remove obstacles, and engender coordinated self-directed effort. It often requires some self-discipline on the consultant's part to share control with the client.

And yet, a little experience with this approach quickly validates its power for positive change. Instead of one smart consultant figuring everything out, a group of clients who do the work on a daily basis--and have a stake in improving it--bring together their knowledge, experience, and motivation to assess current ways of operating, consider current obstacles to achieving intended goals, analyze underlying systemic causes for the difficulties, generate and assess options for improvement, and take responsibility for planning and implementing those changes. And the OD consultant? S/he makes it easier for them to do all this together, by creating and managing a forum for these conversations, and providing relevant questions for the group and its manager to consider as they proceed through this self-managed process-improvement work.

We facilitate--make communication easier for others. But that doesn't mean what we do is easy. It takes a special expertise to focus on implicit aspects of a discussion; an ability to invite shared inquiry into the usually unspoken assumptions about clients' work together; a willingness to control the process of discussion while giving control of the content or substance to members of the organization, who after all have a stake in making their own work more satisfying and effective.

"I'm amazed at how often I'm able to use the techniques and skills I learned in the Sonoma State OD program in my job in national account sales. I sincerely believe that any interaction that requires working with, influencing or leading people can be vastly improved by using OD methods.

The OD program not only gave me a different set of skills, it provided me with a new way of thinking about and seeing things. It has enriched both my personal and work life."

Mindi Lewis, MA (Class of 2004)
Director, National Account Sales
Carl Zeiss Vision

The Psycholog MA in OD at Sonoma State builds the leadership skills needed for successfully consulting to, or leading organizations, including:

o Powerful new tools to be a more effective manager, leader, or consultant

o Cutting-edge approaches, theories, and tools one can use now to create and sustain winning organizations and thriving communities

o A wider professional network, broadly applicable skills, and increased employment options.

Students learn through practical experience, hands-on projects, and internships. The two-year program meets two nights a week and one Saturday a month.

A good way to learn more about this program is to attend an information meeting at Sonoma State. The next one is on:

Saturday, April 8,
1:00 to 3:00 PM
In Stevenson Hall, Room 3095

Call 707/664-2682 for information, or visit us at SSU OD Program.

Our global and local environments are less stable and predictable: For example, there are reports that carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere continue to increase; petroleum reserves may be peaking; forests are decreasing; world energy usage is increasing; global population is increasing, though not evenly--Europe is facing a shortfall in their labor force; iPods now display video; a bird flu pandemic is predicted, with inadequate supplies of vaccine; the proportion of college educated and employed women world-wide is increasing; jobs and knowledge are being exported across national borders; undocumented workers are being imported; research and technology is improving health care but making it more expensive; project teams in multi-national corporations work across time-zones, and seldom meet face-to-face; managers make decisions, but outcomes are hard to assess because the variables are so complex--they get promoted for being decisive, rather than for making the right decisions; short-term solutions turn out to lead to unanticipated disasters. Are you confused and overwhelmed? Guess how your clients feel?

We are all increasingly aware that our world is changing, and that we need to be intentional about evolving our ways of practicing OD in the years ahead. As the global and organizational environments in which we practice continue to change, OD practitioners are called on to be clear about the core values and principles that guide us, while adapting our intervention strategies and developing the appropriate competencies to carry them out effectively.

The growing need is for ways to guide change in the present while keeping the future in mind. What changes and trends are you aware of in your own work experience, reading, media reports, travels?

Consider what you are noticing about how our world is changing. We can to put our individual perspectives together like a mosaic, and become more aware of the changing contextual patterns in which we are practicing OD.

And you may be interested in the results of a Delphi study about OD and the future that is speeding toward us.

At the comedy club almost anything the entertainer says is funny, or at least interesting, as long as it is consistent with the behavior of a comedian. Some jokes are funnier than others, but I do expect jokes, not tragic news. At the drug counter the new kid serving as clerk mumbles his questions and gets my name wrong. Then I notice his plastic bracelet and ask what cause he's supporting. It's some kind of tragic disease that needs more research funding; my behavior softens and I help him understand my name and find my order. We part wishing each other a great day. The context shifted.

In a staff meeting I expect to talk about work issues and to state relevant views about decisions we need to make. In this group I expect strange off-topic behavior from certain staff members, and weak unfocused leadership from the manager running the meeting. I'm resigned to frustration for an hour and a half, but look for opportunities to interject sanity or at least a smart aleck remark.

All interaction, in this sense, has both content and context. We focus on content but are implicitly aware of context for guiding our understanding and response choices. These are the figure-ground combinations described so well by Gestalt psychology: we assign meaning to experiences in terms of the interplay between the figure and the ground--in my terms, content and context. Changing either one changes the meaning of the whole.

We tend in most circumstances to accept context as it is--even to be unconscious of it, and engage in content exchanges. The meeting is the way it is; my focus is on what people talk about, and my choices are about what I say. One way of understanding OD is to view our work as paying attention to the context in which people say and do things; to notice the way that context supports or limits their awareness and choice; and to intervene at the level of context as much as content.

In the role of consultant or facilitator in a staff meeting I can say something about the topic we're discussing--content--and I can also say or do something about how we're talking and interacting--context (or as some refer to this, process).

I might say, "Ah… I just want to check; what agenda topic are we on?" and the context pops out of tacit background and into explicit focus in everyone's awareness. Group members come out of trance. It's like watching a play and turning to the next person saying, "what do you think this stage setting is doing to the action of the characters?"

This is always experienced as a break in the flow in some way. Pulses quicken; color returns to faces. Tension shifts, up or down--either expecting defensiveness and conflict, or experiencing relief from frustration and powerlessness. It's a high-risk, high-power move. In that moment our behavior is counter-cultural--outside the norm. Done well, it releases group members' creative energy for constructive change. Done slightly wrong--in timing, tone, or wording, it can evoke aggressive coordinated group reaction in protection of the group and its formal leader from this hostile outsider.

We do this all the time in our work, in small or large interventions. Whether we are doing a role-play in a training session, or recording the agenda on a flip-chart or guiding the redesign of work structures, we're changing the context.

And we--anyone--can do this every day in any interaction. We are always each other's context as we talk, work, play, be silent together. We are actors on the stage and also stage designers for ourselves and each other. As co-authors of our lives we can make it up as we go along, creating the quality of our dramas, our tragedies, and our comedies.

The OD practitioner's job is to take these creative risks appropriately and effectively, moment by moment, in each intervention, training session and client engagement. It can't be done well as a technique or a manipulation, because it won't work, or it will backfire. When we consistently do it well, authentically, we truly earn those big bucks, and we get the satisfaction of catalyzing constructive change and making a difference.

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This all worked very successfully and generated creative new approaches for organizing the work and also great enthusiasm for implementing the changes. And then they hit a catastrophic glitch: The internal consultants and plant manager had made an early decision to not include a key vice-president in planning the project. He had a reputation of not supporting participative work methods, so they thought they would demonstrate the success of the project to him after it was completed and thus get his approval. Instead, the VP walked in on the implementation planning session, having missed all the previous ones, and was outraged. He declared the new design totally inappropriate: "This is communism--we're not doing it." And that was that. The whole project was cancelled and everyone went back to the old way of doing things, though with great disappointment and frustration.

So what should one do when the needed support at the top is not there? For one thing, it depends on the role of the OD practitioner. External OD consultants learn to focus on the clients who are genuinely interested and ready to work in this different way. Rather than convincing or "selling" managers that this would be good for their organizations, the strategy is to work only with those organizations that have a demonstrated readiness, understanding and interest in an OD project. Since these projects are much more likely to succeed, they will create the track record of effective change projects, and word of these successes will quickly get around to other organizations that were almost ready, often leading them to consider the OD approach themselves. I learned this perspective from Herb Shepard, who was my mentor at Case Institute of Technology, and one of the founders of OD. One of his rules of thumb for change agents was "Never work uphill."

But what about internal OD consultants or managers who see the potential for OD in their organization, but don't have the support of higher managers? Shepard also said, "Start where the system is." He meant by this that one must assess the situation and propose projects that the organization and its leaders understand as relevant and appropriate. These may be less ambitious than the consultant can envision, but they are much more likely to be accepted and to succeed--thus laying the foundation for more comprehensive projects. This way of working requires great patience, and great empathy. One must see the world through the managers' eyes, and design and propose projects that are relevant to their current view of the organization.

This is a tough discipline and requires patience, self-acceptance, and a focus on the long view--even if that key manager is being driven by this quarter's business numbers. Shepard also used to say, "Think globally and act locally." The corollary of that statement might be, "Think about the future and act in the present."

I invite further comments and questions.

Just like individuals need to make a living by doing something useful, every organization does something useful to make its living. This means producing something people want to buy, or providing a service that is worth paying for. Organizations need to make that product or provide that service in ways that are effective in terms of the cost to the consumer and with satisfactory quality and reliability, compared to competitors. OD practitioners help people to make their own organizations more effective in producing whatever they produce. This is an important part of OD, but not all there is.

In order for an organization to function effectively, the people in it need to communicate in sane and constructive ways. Without that kind of communication organizations devolve into environments that look like the Dilbert comic strip (which, by the way, is based on letters about real events in organizations, continually sent to the cartoonist). As new technologies are introduced, or new competitors enter the market, or new needs emerge from customers, people in organizations need to talk and work sanely, effectively, creatively, to adapt and innovate. Otherwise the organization soon goes out of business, or loses its funding.

So in order for any organization to function effectively, its people need to interact effectively. As a consultant, I generally find dysfunctional task processing arrangements that are caused or maintained by dysfunctional interaction patterns among its people. Over the years, new employees are taught the dysfunctional procedures, which may have originally been temporary work-arounds, as the right way to do things ("Don't ask--that's the way it's done here.")

OK, it keeps getting interesting: Much of the reason for dysfunctional patterns of interaction among people in organizations is that the task procedures, technologies, work structures and hierarchies, tend to isolate people, pit them against each other, and limit their ability to engage their full intelligence and creativity in the work setting. So dysfunctional task structures create or maintain dysfunctional interaction patterns, which prevent people for making sensible changes to the task structures. It's a vicious cycle.

The good news is that when you find a vicious cycle you can reverse it by changing any of its elements. When we bring people together in a collaborative creative context they spontaneously generate significant design improvements to the task structure. As new task structures are implemented, these tend to reduce the crazy-making qualities of the task arrangements and interaction patterns continue to improve. It becomes a benign cycle. This is true OD.

People who claim to do OD and work only on "bottom line" improvements, or only on touchy-feely "team-building" experiences are not doing real OD. Those partial approaches tend not to work, or to actually make things worse. OD is about working with people to improve their own task structures and interaction patterns by improving both.

I'm looking for examples of what I'm describing here. I welcome your short stories.

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Trist and Emery thought there might be something in that work pattern that could be generalized and applied in other settings. Out of that investigation came the understanding that there is an intrinsic interdependence between the way work arrangements are structured and the way people feel and act toward the work and toward each other--that a change in the technical work system affects the social work system, and vice-versa. Looking for descriptive terminology for this they came up with "socio-technic systems." They developed ways to design new work arrangements, or to redesign old ones, guided by these discoveries. Most often--though not always--the redesign process led to self-managed teams that included all the skills and resources needed to complete a whole job from beginning to end.

The increases in productivity and work spirit in a range of organizations where this was implemented during the next two decades were astounding. In a world that was beginning to experience accelerated change, technological innovation, and globalized competition, these self-managed teams had a superior ability to adapt and innovate, and to move up any learning curve quickly. And they showed an amazing intrinsic motivation to do so. They didn't need a supervisor to tell them to improve the work--they had an interest in doing it themselves and did it quite well. In fact, supervisors tended to get in the way.

The emerging realization was that there is a fundamental clash of cultures between these two ways of structuring work. Emery distilled the difference in terms of a Design Principle I, referring to the conventionally vertical coordination of work through hierarchy, and a Design Principle II, referring to the horizontal coordination and self-regulation of self-managed teams. Part of the difference, too, was the shift from organizing departments according to function--marketing, fabrication, R&D, etc. (what we now refer to as silos), toward the inclusion in any team of all the skills required by the job--they were not only self-managed teams, they were cross-functional self-managed teams. The classic example is the redesign of the Volvo assembly line, so that instead of each individual attaching the same part to each car moving by on the assembly line, a team of assemblers traveled with the car from beginning to end, putting the whole thing together. At the end, they engraved all their names on the engine block.

But the shift from Design Principle I to II is not an easy one. It affects technology, organization, supervision, reward systems, assumptions, and interaction skills. Supervisors, especially, can be problematic because their role seems to become redundant. It takes considerable time, planning, training, and support to implement this shift successfully. At an oil extraction plant in Canada where I was part of the consulting team supporting this shift, the staff of the Utilities Division (that produced all the electricity, steam and processed water for the mine) was released from work for one week per month for six months to carry out the planning and training needed to make the shift (yes, temporary workers were hired during this time). At a Motorala cell-phone assembly plant in Florida, teams went through several phases of change, in which supervisors first became participative leaders, then coaches, then on-call consultants.

The tragic error among managers who learn about the benefits of teams is to implement them by memo--to decree the end-result structure while skipping the participative analysis of all work processes, the appropriate tailoring of the new work design to their core work situation, the necessary investment in training and support, and the time people need to integrate a fundamentally different work culture. In the end, the experiment therefore fails, and work structures revert to the old ways--problematic but familiar. And some managers breathe an unconscious sigh of relief--they are needed after all, and they don't have to change their old ways of managing.

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When I was a grad student at UCLA, I learned from mentors like Bob Tannenbaum and Jim Clark that OD emerged from the growing awareness that Management Development, even when very successful, had major limitations. Key managers could be immersed in powerful training experiences like T Groups, developing a fundamentally different understanding of themselves and their interaction with people, but when they returned to their organization they faced three difficult choices:

1. They could become change agents, leading their organization toward significant new ways of being and working--very few people managed to do this.

2. They could become trouble-makers, out of step with their peers and subordinates' assumptions and expectations, working uphill to create change that nobody seemed to believe in or want. Some people did this for a while, and then gave up, or they were neutralized or expelled as an alien organism from their organization. A few left purposely, and even changed their chosen profession, becoming writers, sculptors, etc.

3. They could unlearn what they had learned and go back to their old way of doing things, encapsulating their brief departure from the norm as a temporary aberration, hopeful but naïve; most managers chose this option, and achieved it rather quickly.

So there was something not working with Management Development--the development of managers as individuals. The underlying assumption that you could change an organization by changing individuals did not pan out. Time for a paradigm shift.

Borrowing from what were then new developments in family therapy, such as the work of Virginia Satir, some applied social scientists and consultants began to consider the need to develop the organization as a whole, not just the individuals within it. Family therapists were learning that they could treat a problem child with apparent success, but on returning to the family s/he promptly reverted to the previous problem behavior. The problem was not in the child as an individual, but in the family as a system. Similarly, an organization could be improved not by developing individuals within it, but by changing the organization as a whole--hence the shift in thinking--from management development, to organization development.

Think about some problem in your own organization. Consider how it can be interpreted in terms of the problematic behavior of a particular individual. Then consider how this behavior might be an expression of the organization's unacknowledged, perhaps unmentionable problematic patterns.

What thoughts or questions do you have about this, or about OD, or about the OD Program at Sonoma State? Use the Comments link below to respond to or comment on this entry.

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