Business Alignment and Attunement Dallas TX

Alignment and Attunement Concepts Expanded
Most EWC journeys tend to be under-funded and under-resourced, especially in terms of people, when one considers the complexity and magnitude of the planned change. Change consultants sometimes don’t help matters with their terminology. The talk today is about the alignment of people in the enterprise in support of the desired changes. Alignment is an industrial and mechanical term. It is appropriate when discussing assembly lines, robots, and technical systems. Alignment of delivery is an appropriate term. Alignment of people is not. The authors would like to belatedly thank Roger Harrison, a pioneer in the OD field, for this distinction learned more than thirty years ago in a long-forgotten ses- sion. This distinction may seem a small change, but the leverage it makes possible is enormous. People are living systems. We don’t function like robots. People have feelings, emotions, a brain, and a spirit, in addition to hands and feet that perform physical work tasks. When change consultants use the term alignment to refer to people, they are inadvertently downplaying the human requirements for successful Enterprise- Wide Change. Attunement is a musical term that means to bring into harmony—to ensure that each instrument in an orchestra or band is tuned exactly the same way as all the others. The proper term for what executives need to do with people in an enterprise is attunement. Collaboration is required to bring our hearts and minds into harmony with each other and with the higher-level system goals. You can force alignment, but you cannot force attunement. Note: For those interested in reading more on the tension between alignment and attunement, we highly recommend Michael Beer and Nitin Nohria’s Breaking the Code of Change (2002). In 1998, a Breaking the Code of Change conference was held at the Harvard Business School. Professors and executives were asked to compare, contrast, and debate two theories of change: Theory E (creation of economic value) and Theory O (development of an enterprise’s human capability and culture to implement strategy). Their conclusions support the views in this book.

A large West Coast financial services enterprise underwent a massive turnaround and EWC process. The process was a rousing success because the new CEO and executive VP cared deeply about both the economic alignment and cultural attunement issues. The executive VP was the internal executive in charge of the program management office and the external consultant was the president of University Associates (an external consulting firm). Even though more than fifty managers and executives were individually terminated for poor performance, morale and profits went up dramatically in the first full year after the new CEO was hired. And . . . no lawsuits for wrongful termination were filed.

Questions to Ponder

What revolutionary changes do you see going on in the world today?

Do you agree that Enterprise-Wide Change is fundamentally different from traditional change? Why or why not?

Do you agree with our “big three” reasons why Enterprise-Wide Change fails? Why or why not? Final Thought—Great Results and Great Frustrations We want to be clear that there are many cases of CEOs, executives, and change consultants who are very successful at achieving superior results for their organizations— both in terms of the economic alignment of delivery and the cultural attunement with people. We will give some examples of them throughout this book. However, we also know that there is ONE GREAT FRUSTRATION regarding change in enterprises and businesses by executives, employees, and change consultants alike. It is a great frustration that we all don’t seem to see the same picture. Each of us personally thinks that our picture is THE CORRECT PICTURE. This leads to frustration with each other and the lack of superior results for customers, stockholders, employees, and the community. This lack of both yin and yang strategies is one of the overarching themes of this book (Figure 1.3). Star Results Economic Alignment (of Delivery Processes) Cultural Attunement (with People’s Hearts) Positioning For Customer Value Figure 1.3. The Yin and Yang of Strategies

Preview: The Enterprise-Wide Change Journey
There are three goals of Enterprise-Wide Change. This book covers the three goals and an entire process to achieve them in depth. Three Goals in Enterprise-Wide Change Prework: Use a Smart Start with a Systems Thinking foundation Goal #1: Develop an overall enterprise-wide clarity of purpose, with a game plan for dramatic change. Goal #2: Ensure simplicity of execution, with enterprise-wide systemic change. Goal #3: Build and sustain business excellence and superior results, year after year. This book approaches each goal in depth, giving you both a theoretical foundation and practical tools you can use to guide EWC efforts. Obviously, it would be unusual for an enterprise to use all of the points of this book—even our clients rarely do. But this book gives you a template from which to choose and tailor your Enterprise-Wide Change effort. Prework: Build a Smart Start The prework concept in Chapter Four is the most commonly skipped, missed, or ignored part of any EWC. There are real, non-negotiable preconditions for successful systemic change that must be in place before an Enterprise-Wide Change process can hope to succeed. Smart Start helps enterprises to engineer success upfront before the formal beginning of the journey. We recommend that senior management first undergo a two-day retreat. The goals of this Smart Start are

To educate the executives on Enterprise-Wide Change

To assess issues critical to the Enterprise-Wide Change

To tailor the EWC process to your needs and unique situation

To organize the EWC effort to fit your size, budget, and focus

Prework: Lay The Systems Thinking Foundation Competence and a foundation in the core technologies of Systems Thinking are critical for executives and change consultants who undertake EWC. In Smart Start, enterprise leaders learn the assumptions, mental models, and methods that will help them to understand their organization’s challenges and strengths from a full Systems Thinking perspective. Terms like “mental map,” “model,” “paradigm,” “framework,” “concept,” “worldview,” and “Weltanschauung” (German for view of the world) are similar words for a collective mindset, a way in which humans understand (or misunderstand) the world in which we live. Specific change interventions typically use a narrow analytical mental map. While the interventions have value, even the best of these is only partially successful. No one can begin to maximize the overall potential business excellence and superior results without a systemic mental map of some kind. Our belief is that Systems Thinking is one excellent mental map to understand an organization. We also believe there is much to be gained by carefully choosing elements of other change models and methodologies. Just remember to integrate them within some kind of holistic approach. There are other kinds of large-scale change approaches in this Pfeiffer Practicing OD Series that the reader is invited to review as well.

The U.S. Coast Guard is now part of the new Department of Homeland Security. In the post–9/11 world of terrorism we now live in, the Coast Guard has taken on added importance. They are now seeing increased funding for their mission. Historically, their fleet of over 1,500 boats was of dozens of different types. They ranged from 19 to 52 feet long, of many different manufacturers, with all kinds of different engines, and many different type hulls. Local commanders had carte blanche authority to purchase almost any type of boat needed (even with special modifications), 188 different stations, sixty aids-to-navigation stations, and dozens of Marine Safety Offices, on their own—an example of analytic thinking run amuck. The complexity of this hodgepodge approach caused many problems from readiness to safety, sea handling, proficiency, maintenance, parts, training, and transferring personnel. Now, with a more Systems Thinking view, they have a plan to transition to four standardized classes of shore-based response boats. One manufacturer is building all new 117-foot Fast-Motor Lifeboats and 47-foot highly maneuverable Fast-Motor Lifeboats. In addition, all 25-foot Small Response Boats are being built by another manufacturer and all 41-foot Medium Response Boats will have a contract awarded in 2004. The boat fleet will now be standardized—not quite as systemically as Southwest Airlines, with only one 737-type aircraft, but a huge systems improvement for the Coast Guard.

Goal #1: Achieve clarity of purpose Gaining true clarity of purpose requires conducting, identifying, and clarifying four parts of the Game Plan, if they are not already in place:
1. Conducting an environmental scanning process of relevant external factors
2. Developing enterprise-wide positioning (desired outcomes) that articulates the overall direction/vision of the enterprise
3. Clarifying core values, which are the guiding principles for decision making throughout the change effort
4. Setting measurable goals for the process—year by year if necessary

A large, thirty-year-old, employee-owned engineering business had been doing well by the standards of a plan that had been developed five years before. The entrepreneur-founder CEO had fired the president and COO within the past year. Running the business had been left to the executive team (with rotating leadership) during the vacuum. As is typical of organizations at this stage, the executive team often received conflicting messages from the CEO regarding strategy and change. The executive team knew it couldn’t afford to wait for the new president to be hired before a new EWC plan was developed. They embarked on a journey to refine the organization’s vision, values, and positioning and completed a comprehensive future external environmental scan. It took months for a new president to arrive, but in the meantime, the organization had its EWC plan in place and a solid base for the new president to build on. It also enabled the executive team and new president to work effectively with the entrepreneur-founder-CEO.

Goal #2: Ensure simplicity of execution During EWC efforts, you obviously cannot know everything in advance. The Game Plan has to be a living, breathing process that is continuously re-created as it unfolds. Goal #2 is where execution of change formally begins in all its gory, chaotic, and complex details. Without a systems orientation, this is, unfortunately, often the place where change consultants and executives start—thus ensuring piecemeal failure up-front by failing to adequately lay the groundwork that emerges from the prework (Smart Start) and Goal #1. Goal #2 requires regular meetings of an Enterprise-Wide Change Leadership Team. It is supported by a Program Management Office with detailed tracking and regular reporting about issues, results, and measures of success.

Goal #3: Sustaining business excellence Key actions at the end of each year include recycling back through the prework and all three goals again (wave after wave of change):

Reviewing and assessing the business alignment and people attunement results from the last year

Assessing how well you are “walking the talk” on your core values

Developing further action plans to correct for a values breakdown—areas of weakness or failure

Assessing the results of the first year of the EWC Game Plan itself

Refining the Enterprise-Wide Change Game Plan for the next twelve months, adjusting core strategies and their key initiatives as necessary

Chapter One Recap
1. Richard Beckhard’s original definition of Organization Development in Organization Development: Strategies and Models (1969) is still as relevant today to Enterprise-Wide Change. Organization Development is an effort that is planned, organization-wide, and managed from the top to increase organization effectiveness and health through planned interventions in the organization’s processes using behavioral-science knowledge.
2. Enterprise-Wide Change is fundamentally different from other traditional changes. It has a major structural impact, is strategic in nature, is complex, 30 Enterprise-Wide Change chaotic, or radical, is on a large scale, is system-wide, and occurs over a longer timeframe.
3. An estimated 75 percent of major change efforts fail.
4. The “big three” Enterprise-Wide Change failure causes are (1) an analytic, piecemeal approach to systems problems (multiple conflicting frameworks and mindsets); (2) focusing mainly on the economic alignment of delivery; and (3) focusing mainly on cultural attunement and involvement with people. 5. Three goals in Enterprise-Wide Change are to (1) develop an overall enterprisewide clarity of purpose, (2) ensure simplicity of execution with enterprise-wide systemic change, and (3) build and sustain business excellence and superior results, year after year.

Click Here to Purchase this Book

Hutchinson Business Partners, Inc.

214-459-3150
100 Crescent Ct
Dallas, TX
www.hutchbp.com