Week 5 Application Notes:
Nadler: (pgs 220 -226)
Figure 10.5 Twelve Interventions for Operating Environment Change:
1. Collaborative Culture Definition:
2. Collaborative Culture Definition:
3. Measurement and gap analysis:
4. Stakeholder analysis and engagement
5. Leadership Behavior and Accountability:
6. Communication:
7. Large – group Engagement Process:
8. Education:
9. Education
10. Formal Feedback Process
11. Structual Change:
12. Management Process Redesign:
13. Recongition and Reward
14. In – Depth individual intervention:
These leverage points indicate where, in terms of the organizational model, specific change efforts can have the
greatest impact. (p 220) Beyond that, specific interventions in the normal flow of business can be employed either to
change the culture directly or to change it indirectly by altering some other aspect of the organization. (p 221)
I’m not suggesting that all twelve will be equally appropriate in every single situation. Instead you should think of
these interventions as a tool kit. Each organization has to determine which tools – and more important, which
combinations of tools – will be useful in its particular situations. (p 221)
1. Collaborative Culture Definition: This is how Corning began reworking its operating environment: by
defining the required environment; constructing its specific dimensions; encouraging broad participation by
leadership and other employees; identifying specific behaviors required by the new environment; and
defining the relationship of vision, values, and environment to create a clear set of terms for deploying the
change. (p 221)
In Corning’s case, this work involved the active engagement of several groups. A task
force involving nearly three dozen managers provided the initial input that built momentum for the project.
At that point the senior leadership team, involving the corporation’s top executives, began fashioning a
vision of the new operating environment and defining its dimensions. Their work then went to the hundred –
member Corporate Policy Group for further revisions; over time the two groups traded successive versions of
the plan back and forth until both were satisfied. Getting started is sometimes the hardest part. (p 222)
2. Measurement and Gap Analysis: Throughout the process, it’s important for the senior team to assess the
current operating environment, compare it with the desired environment, and then identify the gaps between
the two. If conducted carefully, this assessment and analysis helps everyone focus on the areas that need the
most work. It’s also helpful at this stage to identify some outstanding examples of places, both within and
outside the organization, that best exemplify the kind of behaviors and practices called for by the new
environment; these can then be used as concrete examples for the rest of the organization.
Bear
in
mind that gap analysis is not a one – time intervention. Once the change effort has begun, the analysis should
be repeated periodically in order to assess progress and to determine whether any midcourse corrections are
in order. (p 222)
3. Stakeholder Analysis and Engagement: Early on, it’s important to identigy the key stakeholders – both
inside and outside the organization – who will be affected by the changed operating environment and how
they will be affected. (p 222) It’s critical to figure out where the opposition is likely to come from, what form
it might take, how intense it will be. Then it’s essential to develop strategies for neutralizing that resistance.
(p 223)
4. Leadership Behavior and Accountability: I’ve repeatedly emphasized the need for senior managers to
exhibit both substantive and symbolic behavior that reinforces the new cultural values. In order for that to
happen the senior team has got to identify the most critical patterns of behavior, give executives the
necessary coaching, monitor how they’re doing, and give them lots of feedback. (p 223)
5. Communications: It’s essential for the organization to use every means at its disposal to communicate the
key messages relating to culture change. All of the company’s communication processes – employee
meetings, newsletters, video conferences, broadcast e-mail and company Web sites, voice mail, letters from
top management mailed to employees’ homes, videotapes – the entire arsenal of corporate communication
tools should be unleashed in a concerted campaign to hammer the key messages home. ( p 224)
6. Large – Group Engagement Processes: It’s important to give individuals throughout the organization
personal exposure to the purpose and content of the new cultural objectives and, to the extent possible,
experience with their own version of guided discovery. Sometimes these messages can be conveyed through
mass events; personal involvement is easier at the unit or team level. But successful organizations use a
variety of venues to ensure the same message about culture is being heard in the same terms by large
numbers of people at the same time. (p 224)
7. Education: Beyond these mass mettings, people need to be involved in more highly structured training
sessions. Small groups are more conductive to making people aware of the need for change, the dimensions
of the new culture, and the specific behavior expected of them. They can be educated about new structures
and processes and about how those changes will affect their work. Finally, they can be given training and
skill development work in areas essential to the new culture. It doesn’t do any good to announce a new team
– based structure and to tell people their performance will be assessed on the basis of team performance if
they’ve never had any training in teamwork. (p 225)
8. Formal Feedback Process: Organizations, teams and individuals can be expected to sustain behavioral
changes only if they receive constant, meaningful feedback. The organization must develop specific
behavioral objectives, so that at each level in the organization people can both receive feedback on their own
behavior and give worth wild feedback to others. To give and receive useful feedback, people have to
understand precisely what’s expected of them – cultural objectives can’t be defined in ambiguous
“motherhood” and “apple pie” terms. (pg 225)
9. Structural Change: In terms of the overall change process it’s essential to align operational environment
change with the structural change addressed in chapter nine. This is where the notion of congruence, or
organizational fit, truly comes into play. (pg 225) One company after another – Xerox, AT & T, Ford, and
Sun Microsystems, to name just a few – has found that you can’t expect people to be independent,
entrepreneurial, customer focused, and accountable if they’re enmeshed in a tightly centralized, functionally
organized environment. Likewise, loosely integrated independent business units don’t work if their leaders
act like bureaucrats. You can’t have the structure without the operating environment, and visa versa. (pg 226)
10. Management Process Redesign: Similarly, management processes such as goal setting, budgeting, and
measurement of performance have to be changed to be consistent with the objectives of the new
environment. If one of the stated goals is to drive more decision making from the staff to the line, then the
budget process has to become a collaborative effort rather than an exercise in micromanagement by
corporate staff. Systems for setting goals measuring performance, and assessing output must all be consistent
with the objectives of the new operating environment. (pg 226)
11. Recongnition and Reward: This easily could have been included in the previous step, but it’s so important
it merits seprate attention. One of the frequent obstacles to culture change is that the recognition and reward
system lag behind the announcement that “things are going to change around here.” What’s the result?
Confusion, cynicism, and poor performance. That’s how Corning ended up several years ago with employees
who were being told that quality was the priority but who were seeing that their performance was measured
solely on the number of units that shipped. If the new culture objectives are to be believed and accepted, then
the formal and informal systems for assessing people’s work and then recognizing and rewarding appropriate
behavior have got to be consistent with the new environment. (pg 226)
12. In Depth Individual Interventions: Provide in – depth coaching and support for those individuals who are
willing and able to undertake major personal changes essential to the new cultural dimensions. Conversely,
deal decisively with executives and opinion leaders who actively resist. I’m not suggesting that these people
be publicly crucified; but at the same time, it is self – defeating to cover up or refuse to acknowledge the
reason for the removal or reassignment of an executive who has become a lightning rod for resistance. (p
226)
As I suggested earlier, each of these twelve interventions will apply differently to each organization. Taken together,
however, they provide a powerful portfolio of high – impact actions for reshaping the organization’s operating
environment. (p 226)
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