Greetings Ragnar,
> best regards from snowy Munich
As well as here! We have a complete chaos on the roads right now, because
of the 1 cm(!) snow that has fallen. More than 250 km of 'Stau".
> Winfried Deijmann schrieb: We never explained the culture on forehand, it only
> produces wrong biases But, during the introductionary period of 3 months, we
> asked the newcomers to write a diary/logbook targeted at writing down all
> "typical" cultural and behavioral occurrences that they met in their work.
> Because they still could see processes with a fresh perception this was very
> valuable!
> At the moment I am thinking how I could use the fresh perception from the
> Newbies for the organization developers/management. It really makes sense for
> me to use these informations, they are a kind of more or less unpaid
> consultants. I think it is important not to publish these infos to all the
> employees.
I agree, It is important to keep in mind that the main objective of
this/my approach is to give the Newbies a change of an outlet and do
something positive with their first impressions. They experience the fact
that they are allowed to do something with the info as a form of being
taken serious! The process is more important here than the outcome.
There is indeed no point in distributing "negative" problem-areas
co-workers and management secretly know already of. We never informed the
(top)management of the problems the newbies found, only their direct chief
with allowance of the newbie. It gives newbies (in fact every employee)
more satisfaction to walk into a chiefs office already with a proposal for
a solution in their hands!
What we did was to encourage the newbies to brainstorm on solutions, find
sponsors for whom it was important that the problem was going to be solved
and publish their success-stories as learning-histories in a database
(intranet site), this is: the problems AND the solution, AFTER they had
diagnosed and solved the problem or took them one or two steps ahead in
cooperation with an experienced colleague or their mentor. (Knowledge
Management in action) Top Management loves to tap into these
learning-histories!
> In the LO-list I wrote that these explicit researches can be of great
> disadvantage. Newbies are observed as spies because they aren't integrates
> yet. How do you practice it?
It probably wont surprise you that we found exactly this problem always
recurring as number one experience of the newbies.
What we did was making this implicit problem explicit and discussed -in
connection with Dynamic Judgement Building- how to tackle it.
>Which questions do you use when Newbies have to write down the
>occurrences and how do you combine it with the dynamic judgement
>building?
a) describe the situation as 'clean and clear' as possible (Place, time,
action and people) (FACTS)
b) what is your own interpretation? and why? (CONCEPTS)
c) What makes you care about the situation? (Welche Sorg haben Sie wenn
nichts damit gescheht?) (CENTRAL KEY QUESTION)
d) What do you think needs to be done with it? (GOALS)
e) How would you handle the problem and what do you think you need, and from
whom, to solve the problem? (MEANS)
Of course they cannot answer all the questions at once, but it makes them
ponder on both diagnose and solution. In the training sessions we made
them dialogue especially on the d) and e) questions until they found a
realistic solution and action plan.
BTW; if the "spy" problem appears to be very solid than you also have
another attitude problem in the organization that works very
contra-productive and has to be tackled: "Silent Sabotage".
Hopes this helps you!
Greetings from Holland,
Winfried Deijmann
-- Mr. Winfried M. Deijmann - Deijmann & Partners - Zutphen - The Netherlands Artists, Consultants and Facilitators for Organizational Learning, Leadership and Action Learning Events Het Zwanevlot 37. NL 7206 CB Zutphen, The Netherlands <deijmann@dialoog.net> Phone + Fax: +31-(0)575-522076 website: <http://come.to/dialoog>For information about our international workshops: <http:/dialoog.net/deijmann/workshopsuk.html>
"An educated mind is useless without a focussed will and dangerous without a loving heart." (source unknown)
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