The information involved in understanding culture has several aspects:
Ĺ Discerning the most relevant weak and strong points of the existing everyday reality and their impact.
Ĺ Determining the underlying factors of the existing everyday reality.
Ĺ Mapping possible preliminary goals for the intervention – that is, improvements in both the weak and strong points – as well as ways to realize these improvements.
Ĺ Mapping points of agreement and differences of opinion among the different stakeholders concerning the weak and strong points, as well as what are possible goals and ways to accomplish these goals.
Ĺ Mapping possible undesirable side effects of the different solutions.
Existing Everyday Reality
First, there is information about how the organization operates. This involves information about the organization’s environment, its performance, its culture in general, how well the culture achieves its functions, possible sources of ineffectiveness of its everyday reality and a number of variables measuring the employees’ evaluation of their work and organization.
Essentially, the information about how the organization operates concerns what goes well and what goes wrong, both according to the different informants and according to some index numbers. An additional point here is that knowledge must be collected about what has already been done before in relation to what is not going well now, and what the effects have been of those interventions.
Underlying Factors
The change agent also needs information about the factors underlying the present state of affairs: its causes. Experience tells us that the so-called Pareto principle is applicable here. The Pareto principle states that 80% of effects are usually caused by only 20% of causes. Consequently, not only must we know what factors play a part, we also want to know their relative importance. Put more simply: What are the most important underlying factors? The answer to this question enables the change agent to focus on the right causes in order to change the culture as effectively and efficiently as possible. Another interesting question here is: What underlying factor is the easiest to deal with? The reason for asking this question is that it is often advisable to start the intervention with a relatively simple action that results in a quick, appealing effect: a quick success to boost morale.
Goals and Solutions
In addition, the change agent wants to learn about what the stakeholders involved see as the possible outcomes of the intervention. It is important to realize that this information is probably even more divergent than the information about how the organization is doing:
different members may come up with completely different goals and solutions.
Theoretically speaking, there are several kinds of solutions and all of them can be valuable. First, it is often possible to do something that is of direct influence on what we want to improve. For example, we can repair a machine that has broken down or we can tidy our cluttered desk. Likewise, we can strengthen a successful part of the business by providing it with more resources and by deploying more people. This direct influence can also consist of taking away or loosening up limiting conditions. For example, we can make communication in a bureaucracy more effective by eliminating rules that limit the possibilities of communication between certain departments or levels. Another example is provided by an organization that is more or less paralyzed as a result of a stalemate in a conflict between its two most important managers. It then makes sense to organize a dialogue or mediation session to solve the conflict (see Chapter 5), and this will then take care of the paralysis too. In addition, to improve matters we can focus on the factors underlying the present state of affairs. For example, we can get rid of many planning problems by improving communication between departments about when certain orders can be expected. The underlying factors that determine everyday reality can be approached
in different ways: apart from taking the underlying factors away, we can change them, give them another meaning and shield ourselves from their effects.
Sometimes threatening underlying factors cannot be taken away, but they can be influ- enced in a way that renders their effects less threatening. Examples are a cash shortage that can be temporarily overcome by borrowing money, a low share price that is boosted by spreading rumors about being taken over by another company, or a more positive example:
when well-trained personnel are hard to recruit, an organization can decide to educate its own employees.
Yet another approach consists of changing underlying factors by changing one’s own mindset and perception of these underlying factors. Examples here are all organizations – and people – that are in a tough spot, have run into trouble and have got themselves into a state of ‘learned helplessness’ (Seligman, 1990). This learned helplessness implies that they don’t undertake much action to improve things and do not see – or better, do not pay any attention to – opportunities to get out of their difficult situation. By changing this mindset of learned helplessness into one of self-efficacy – that is, into the conviction that we can influence our fate and that opportunities will present themselves – we can change our difficult situation into a field of opportunities. Essentially, overcoming learned helplessness involves looking for and seeing possibilities and acting to turn them into reality.
A final way to deal with underlying factors is to shield ourselves from their effects. This is sometimes the easiest, though not in itself the best, approach. An example is a waiter who regulates his task load by saying ‘Coming’ while he walks away. Other examples are changing the name of the company after a scandal has taken place, or letting employees use earplugs to prevent damage from noise. Problems with such approaches are that they often do not work completely and they usually have undesirable side effects. The waiter, for example, annoys his customers, while employees with earplugs cannot hear each other The information of the status quo on the one hand and information about the goals and solutions on the other lead together to information about agreement and differences in opinions about these issues between different parties in the organization. This information can be used to make ananalysis of the forces for and againstcertain goals and solutions.
This analysis gives answers to questions such as the following:
Ĺ What is the importance of the problem as perceived by the different parties in the organization?
Ĺ What interests in the status quo do the different parties have?
Ĺ Who assumes responsibility for the problem?
Ĺ Why has nothing been done about it before?
Ĺ To what causes do the different stakeholders attribute the problem?
Ĺ Who wants to be involved in solving the problems?
Ĺ What do they want to do about it?
Ĺ To what degree do these interventions interfere with the normal ways of working?
Ĺ What reactions would the project evoke in other departments and how might they deal with that?
Ĺ What interests in the possible solutions do the different parties have?
Ĺ What role do they have in mind for the change agent?
Ĺ What do they consider to be the best possible solutions?
The answers to all these questions lead to a sketch of the organizational force field with respect to the problems and possible solutions, and give an initial indication of what
support there is in the organization for the project. In general, it must be clear what parties, interests and differences of opinions are involved regarding the problems, causes and possible solutions.
Undesirable Side Effects
When solutions are proposed, it is advisable to ask what kinds of unwanted side effects each of the solutions might have. For example, when an organization wants to manage its performance by systematically reinforcing behavior that is measured by certain index numbers – such as volume of sales, time used for a customer contact or number of phone calls made – this often suppresses other behavior that is also needed in the organization, such as helping each other or the amount of money saved or earned per customer contact or phone call, but is not measured and not reinforced (Cohen, 2006; Klein, 2003).