OST as an "halfway technology" and outcome

Tue May 11 00:31:24 PDT 2004

Dear Joelle, Artur and you others,
I have been reading "Productive Workplaces Revisited" by Marvin
Weisbord (delightful fun and learning for me).
He actually looked up a whole bunch of organizations he has worked
with over the last decades.
Here is a quote from page 484 (the book has 485 pages):
"Would I plunge again into the projects in this book, knowing that
for most the half-life would be an eye blink in human history? Yes, I
would do them all again knowing - as should anyone who takes on the
awesome task of improving systems - that "outcomes" in a sea on
non-stop change are as short lived as butterflies in summer.
I would do this work again because I believe that:
-Dialogue and inquiry are good for us
-Humane workplaces enjoy greater economic success
-Helping people gain control of their work engenders hope, and we all
need hope to bet by
-It is existentially right to encourage cooperation - social,
technical, and economic - across lines of age, class, culture,
education, ethnicity, gender, national borders, race, status, and
occupation.
Finally, I would do this again for the sake of future generations.
Getting everyone improving the whole is a legacy from the ancestors
honored in these pages ( Frederick Winslow Taylor,Kurt Lewin, Douglas
McGregor, Eric Trist, Emery, Bion,...add your sources, this is my
addition in parantheses). It is a legacy our grandchildren richly
deserve from us. More to the point, in the workplace of the future,
it is the only one they are likely to find worth inheriting."

This encourages me to continue with my open space-work.
Of course, I do love to see results, outcome, especially of the kind
like a sparkle in someones eyes, or responses like "I never had so
much fun working and I am refreshed" but installing a new system of
improving the quality of teaching, or redesigned toilets and other
tangibles are nice, too.

Greetings from Berlin
mmp
(am off tomorrow to the first Future Search Learning Exchange that is
taking place outside the US in Sweden...well, yes, OSonOSes have been
all over the world for a while)

--Original Message Text---
From: EVERETT813 at aol.com
Date: Tue, 11 May 2004 00:21:52 EDT

Artur,

Very interesting speculations, those.  Some of them assume knowledge
that I don't have and reveal an in-depth study of the ideas on your
part.  Very fine piece of work.

Not to hook you up with my thesis, or imply that you are aligned with
it, but earlier in the year I speculated that real change from OST
efforts seems hard to find.  By that I meant significant outcomes
that made significant changes in the organizations over time.  I was
'assured' by OST posters that I was just not seeing what was
happening and dropped the discussion because I'm rarely directly
involved in OST efforts.  However, I respect the process and feel it
has real possibilities.

I do deal in organizational change through my consulting in Lean
Thinking, which is the Toyota Management System that is shaking the
corporate world these days.  Having passed Ford, after spotting them
a 40-year head start, they have the attention of companies all over
the world.  They will be the largest auto company by 2010, barring
some kind of societal disaster.  They seem to have solved the
transfer of power and leadership conundrum because of the longevity
of the progenitors and the Systems demonstrated superiority to any
other currently known management system.

My observation is: most organizational change is temporary (by
definition, maybe?) and companies soon revert to the mean.  How soon
depends on the Leadership.  Welch and Goizutta moved their
organizations to new heights.  So did the head of Motorola, but when
he left, they stumbled badly.  When leadership changes, the company
changes, despite numerous 'change agents' working in the organization
on strong trajectories.  I can cite dozens of examples where very
significant change and results were being achieved, the leader of the
corporation changed, and they rather quickly reverted to a mean
(which may be a slowly rising slope, slowly declining slope, or a
flat line, whatever it was before the prior leader came and 'did
things.')

Hence my thesis: who leads OST change efforts makes all the
difference, and I mean ALL the difference.  If you don't have the top
honcho, you can get one or two standard deviations away from the mean
for a brief time but reversion is sure when the middle leaders
change, or more likely, are fired or quit.  Or, in the case of
government, lose the election or position.  They get too far out of
synchronization with the culture and get spit out.  (I know of a
study that found that the initial change agent in a company had best
be prepared to be fired or quit part way through the effort because
almost all were.  Then a new change agent was appointed and s/he
continued the effort and brought it to some semblence of completion.)

Anyway, one of the issues in American management is constancy of
purpose, as Deming noted.  We catch fads like colds because we change
leaders like we change our clothes.  Only when the exceptional leader
lasts a long time do we get a marked shift, imho. (A sobering comment
on our democracy).  Seeing this, I always try to start with the
leader first, and if I can't do that, I don't usually waste my life's
time messing around in a change process that doesn't involve the top
people.  It's too precious.

Best to you in your seeking and discussion, Artur.

Paul Everett

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