The Bolavens phase 2 management project

Komi

Phase 2 Discussion Board

Dialogue has proven to be an important part of the trust-building process. I have talked to the client a few times about their situation, in order that I might be able to get some clarity and some different perspectives regarding the challenges that they face. I have also been able to get them to open up a bit more about some of the more sensitive aspects of their situation. This has shown to be important, because the client was initially not ready to talk about certain things, and by getting them to open up a bit I have learned some valuable things that will help with the consultancy.

The client has reacted positively to the process, but has definitely proceeded with caution. I think that this is good for the project, because as long as the client is positive, and seems happy to hear from me, we are on the right track. If anything, they would like to see me move into the first round of recommendations. That is something I can do differently -- instead of just talking about the process I can start to bring some valuable insights to the client, so that they can see the process in action.

What has surprised me, a little bit, has been how open the dialogue has become. I expected that the client might be initially reluctant to engage but it has not taken long for the client to open up a bit about their business and all of the different dynamics surrounding it.

The next step is going to start to bring some ideas to the table, but in the form of dialogue. I want to present some thoughts to the client that will ready them for the final recommendations. This is important to keep the process moving forward. Action research is about working with the client to produce recommendations, but it is also an iterative process, which means that it will take time to introduce new ideas, test them, and stick to the ones that work the best. Since it takes time, and we have done enough introductory talking, the time to table some ideas for the client is fast approaching.

Phase 2, Discussion Board 2

I took the role of consultant in response to the client. I made the initial request to work with the client, not the other way around. I would say that I do not really understand this question -- it is referring to some hypothetical situation that is not described.

So basically I will tell the class what they already know. We are to work as consultants with an organization, and that is the role that I have taken. My client wants to maximize its operational efficiency, in terms of getting more donations and then being able to do more with less. I have listened to the client and determined a few important things. If there is adequate metaphor it is that initially I was a doctor listening to the client tell me what it believes its problems to be, both in terms of symptoms and underlying causes. But after that the doctor metaphor falls apart, because it is a metaphor and it is easier just to explain things as they are, without leaning on metaphors.

I am a consultant in this situation, conducting action research. That means that I am working with the client to find solutions to the problems. The action research framework emphasizes that the consultant and the client should work together. The consultant brings knowledge and an external perspective to the issues, and in that way that help the client to understand some of the things that the client is seeing.

I am at this point an expert in terms of what I bring to the table, using my business knowledge and knowledge of business processes to help determine what the issues are, and what can be done to resolve them.

Phase 2, Discussion Board 3

The questions that had the biggest impact on the client were the personal ones. One of the things that one must understand about organizations, if you have studied any type of organizational theory, is that they are comprised of individuals. Ultimately, it is the individuals in organizations that drive their successes and their failures. All the theories in the world will not help if the individuals within an organization are not capable of the roles to which they are assigned. One of the issues that is faced with small organizations, and in particular small not-for-profit organizations, is that they tend to be driven by a handful of key people. If those people are unable to adapt, do not have the necessary knowledge, or resist change, they cannot always just be replaced. So the process of consulting can be a little bit different because it is not just about implementing processes and systems, it is about changing people. If you do not change the people, you do not get success.

Thus, the most effective questions cut right to the heart of the matter, about the people involved and what they could do to make the organization work better. For me, my own mental processes, I was just looking to solve the problem. I was simply approaching the matter from a problem-solving perspective.

My own biases, I guess, are with respect to the types of people I like to work with and who in my experience have been successful. So when I see people in an organization who lack these traits, or whom I see as being ineffective, my instinct is to remove them and get people in who are more capable. I definitely bring those biases into how I would structure an organization, including the client organization.

Phase 2, Individual Project

The organization with which I am working is a small not-for-profit entity, where less than half a dozen people work full-time, and where almost all work is done by volunteers. The organization has been around for a while, and most of the people involved at the higher level have been there for years. The organization has struggled lately, in terms of not getting the donations and having trouble fund-raising. This in turn has created operational difficulties and there is almost an existential crisis for some of the principles. The organization felt, as it was described to me, like it had stayed the same in a changing world. Staying the same was a specific strategic choice, but it did not work out well.

Ultimately, the organization has struggled to make the changes. When I approached them, they confided that the time had come where they knew change was needed. They had rejected change previously, billing it as strategy, but also out of fear that they could not handle change. True to form, this had been pretty much the case again. They know that things are unsustainable as they are, but they feel relatively powerless to make the right changes. There is a lack of confidence at the very least, and in my estimation probably also a lack of ability. The people within the organization, being volunteers, have tended to only do things that they know they are good at -- they play to their strengths and to their comfort zones.

So the first thing that needed to be done was to understand the problem in terms of the objectives of the organization. The recommendations would not flow from what the organization was currently doing, or what it had done in the past, but what it wanted to accomplish in the future. Bear in mind that at this point in the process, I was seriously considering appreciative inquiry. The reason for this was that I recognized that volunteers, and in this case they are almost all older people, are oriented towards playing to their strengths and only really motivated to do things they are good at. I was forced to reject this way of thinking as being needlessly restrictive. First, I started to think that focusing on only positivity was restrictive, but second I started to realize that I was bound by my own biases. I believed that the individuals that comprise the organization are unable or unwilling to learn new skills, and that this bias may be false. In fact, the people within the organization might well be perfectly willing to learn new skills or do new things, if they had sufficient motivation. They were doing things at which they were good out of inertia, as their roles within the organization had evolved in a certain way, but that ultimately the organization needed to restructure, and with sufficient motivation people would learn new roles and skills as long as they still believed in the mission of the organization.

So the first thing was to develop a set of objectives. There were short-term and long-term objectives. The action research framework was ideal for this, because it allowed me to work closely with the leaders and influencers within the organization to get a set of objectives that everybody would buy into. This is important -- it is not possible to simply impose objectives on volunteers, lest they withdraw their service. They have to play a role in creating the objectives in order to have sufficient motivation to pursue them.

Using both short- and long-term objectives also allowed for the iterative process within the action research to unfold. The early iterations would focus on the short-term, achievable objectives, and then gradually the organization would shift towards what were initially considered to be longer-term objectives. We first sat down and began to discuss the long-term objectives, deciding that these should be the basis for the short-term objectives, so that what the organization does initially will be working towards what it will end up doing in the long-run.

The long-term objectives included increasing financing, finding new mandates to meet, so that the organization can put its resources and name towards other projects. The organization therefore will be in a position where it will, over time, shift away from older responsibilities, for which maybe there is less need, towards newer areas of need. There was a lot of brainstorming. Some of the short-term objectives reflected the need to brainstorm about new directions and then conduct follow-up research on which areas would be the best ones to target. This is a pretty similar process to how a business would look at its assets and think about what new markets it could enter. So it was applied to an organization that has considerable financial and organizational assets that maybe at this point are not being utilized to their fullest.

Sorting out the objectives is an ongoing process at this point. The client wants to have time to fully investigate its options. It needs to make a decision -- sooner rather than later -- but it also needs to have buy-in from the key people in the organization, many of whom are oriented towards doing their homework and making sure that they have found the right opportunities. People seemed genuinely energized by the drive for new opportunities, and the timeline is actually fairly tight for the earlier objectives. This is good, of course, because it means that the organization is already starting to change its culture. The culture is now starting to turn away from the inertia of the past and already we are seeing people, just in the earliest meetings, re-envisioning the organization and perhaps just as important they are starting to examine their own role or roles within the organization.

Reaching agreement with the key players in the organization continues to be a work in process. In some sense, I see that I will personally be a guide for this process. Remember that in action research, the objective is to work with the organization, not dictate to it. The key is that you must help the organization to come to its own conclusions. The people within the organization are going to implement everything that you come up with, so they need to be fully on board with all objectives and new roles and structures.

My role therefore is mostly as a facilitator. It is important that I keep them focused on the tasks at hand, and ensure that their plans are good and strong, but beyond that it is not the role of the action researcher to specifically disagree with the people in the organization about what they need to do or how they need to do it. The role of the consultant is an facilitator and advisor, not the new leader. The existing leadership structure needs to remain in place.