Responding to Malcolm Burson in LO27900 --
Malcolm, noting the existence of difference organizational
change/improvement/transformation methodologies, also notes that
proponents of these various methodologies have, on occasion, laid claim to
the same improvements. He then asks:
>"What evidence is there that any particular approach, including LO,
>actually produces long-term results that are demonstrably better or
>longer-lasting than any other?"
Good question and I'm glad you couched it in terms of evidence instead of
proof.
I am confident that even a cursory review of the organizational
change/improvement/transformation literature would turn up lots of
"evidence" regarding the efficacy of this or that approach. The
difficulty, of course, lies in making the connections between the
intervention, whatever it might have been, and the changes in measured
variables that constitute the evidence. Did Company A suddenly become
more profitable because of "reengineering" per se or simply because people
started paying attention to the cost of organizational processes? Did
some marvelous new "strategy" emerging from a facilitated "strategic
thinking" effort really lead to a reshaping of the business or were
people simply paying attention to their markets and emerging new ones?
Did efforts to change the culture really work or are the observed changes
in patterned behaviors an accidental by-product of changed measurement
systems and said changes had nothing to do with the cultural change
effort? Or, did the customer simply choose to throw more business Company
A's way (or take it away, as the case may be)? Who knows?
I do know of one instance in which the CEO brought in a consulting firm to
bring about significant improvement in organizational performance through
a process improvement approach. After months of work, most of the
employees were wondering what had been accomplished. As far as I know
they're still wondering. Yet, at least one VP, implicitly acknowledging
the lack of results directly tied to the consulting firm's efforts,
regularly reminded his direct reports that the effort would be viewed as
successful. The clear message was that the CEO's engagement of the firm
would not be questioned let alone challenged. Certain financial results
at this company have indeed improved considerably and continue to improve.
No doubt the consulting firm and its approach to process improvement will
be honored with some of the credit. Lo, there will be more "evidence" of
its success.
Most evidence I've seen, and I've seen a lot of it over the years, is of
the "post hoc ergo propter hoc" kind. "After this, therefore because of
this." Rigorous evaluation is rare and, owing to the inability to control
the variables in question, the results are usually inconclusive and open
to different interpretations.
In my radical behaviorist days, all the claims made for large-scale
organizational interventions would have qualified in technical terms as
"superstitious behavior."
Regards,
Fred Nickols
740.397.2363
nickols@att.net
"Assistance at A Distance"
http://home.att.net/~nickols/articles.htm
--Fred Nickols <nickols@att.net>
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