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Critical issues facing Organizational Development

I came across this blog prost recently: December 10, 2013 http://www.blog.gr2010.com/?author=1The regular script and Bold highlights are by the original author. I have underlined a few important passages.

The items in Italics are my comments and links.

Best wishes

Dr. K. (Subbu) Subramanian, President, STIMS Institute Inc.

1) organizations are war zones in which people struggle not to join the ranks of the unemployed. Few people expect to have job satisfaction; “satisfaction” is having a job. Since market conditions favor the employer and not the employee, people are no longer all that important. People have become spare parts.

This severe economic crisis, “organizations at war” and “people have become spare parts” is the reality in most developed nations, which are suffering the severe impact of the Binary Economy. This may not yet be the case in some startup companies or across the board in emerging countries, but it will certainly be the case for most established companies or businesses across the globe (it is becoming more of a case for IT sector also).

The cornerstone of OD was to align the individual with the organization and focus on creating an environment which is good for the individual and for the organization. Thus, the relevance of OD’s value proposition appears bizarre at the present moment.

Today OD has to focus on making sure each professional has the highest effectiveness – PE Score – which in turn translates to identifiable business impact. In other words, OD has to become “bottom up” rather than “top down”.

2) Professions should have professional standards. These professional standards serve as a balance and complement the commercial criteria by which professions are evaluat

We recommend the PE Score as the standard for all professionals and System Thinking and Transformational skills as the means to increase the PE Score.

So, a chartered accountant who has a thriving business but violates accounting practices will find himself in deep water.

Any scientist or engineer who is successful today will be in deep water soon, if they do not continue to exploit the principles of Science or Engineer pertinence to their profession. This is part of the System Approach.

OD is a poorly defined profession with no borders. There are no agreed upon professional standards. Thus, commercial standards are totally dominating how OD is practiced. OD has become a commodity, sold by an OD vendor, and the OD practitioner must satisfy the client. If the client does not know what he needs, this is irrelevant because you “follow the money” and deliver what has been ordered.

In most cases the client as well as the OD vendor is unaware that the needs of 21^st century are not the same. They are Binary now: An organization to create a stream of New Solutions, and in parallel with an organization that can replicate known solutions in larger quantities. The requirements of these two parallel organizations – technical skills, people skills, risk taking, aptitude, System Thinking and Transformational Skills – are substantially different.

OD requirements for the two parallel organizations in the Binary Economy

A cornerstone of OD was to “speak truth to power”. If one needs to “titillate” and please the “customer”, the ability of OD to deliver on one of its major principles is castrated.

The truth that needs to be spoken today is the emergence of the Binary Economy. Requiring the above two parallel modes for OD. Customers are not aware of this or focused on this. The OD support providers are not aware of this or focused on this. This leads to the above conflict – need to titillate and inability to speak the truth – between OD Support provider and the clients.

3) OD was founded by White Western and European males, and the Western values of OD are in line with those of the founders: participation, openness, authenticity, delegation, team work. Organizations are now configured globally. In most of the world, there is more autocracy, more secretiveness, more discretion than is seen in the west; many of the values of OD are seen as parochial and irrelevant to the way people should operate, especially when they are threatened as people are in today’s economy.

These are not serious issues in the organizations focused on Replication Solutions (e.g): Large majority of Walmart workers or McDonald’s employees are not impacted by these issues of global cultures and management styles. But, this is true for professional workers (Scientists, engineers and managers, who work in global teams to create and implement New Solutions). The OD developmental requirements (see the Table above) for these professionals – engaged in New Solutions organizations – are nearly the same across the globe.

4) As OD “stands its ground” and waits for the economy to “recover”, other professions cannibalized OD. Change Management promises those in power that changes can be “managed” with a set of templates. HR is disguising itself as a “business partner”, has cast aside/betrays the lobbying for the human resource and often serves as management’s 5th column to “deal” and contain the human resource. Unions and organized labor may/will fill in the vacuum. Certainly in the country where I live, re-unionization is rampant.

This cannibalization is a reality in every profession. When the OD focus is largely for cost reduction, outplacement and out sourcing, then OD Providers serve this needs largely through Psychological counseling and rigorous training for effectiveness on standard tasks (such as speaking skills for call center employees). The Binary Economy requires structured and well executed OD development tools to growth the two parallel organizations at all levels in a diligent and sustained manner (and also in the right balance) unique to each company.

5) OD had a massive focus on communication. In organizations, people rarely talk too much anymore; they text and email and use portals. A major domain in which OD brought huge value is shrinking.

Knowledge (Academic, Sector/domain specific and Transformational), Experience and Inter-personal skills are the legs of any solution for OD. Of these, the Inter-personal skill requires effective communication. This small part of the skill development has been the major focus of OD, as mentioned above. But this view of the OD has to change. Instead OD has to become a system focused on a ladder of core capabilities, at the three levels: Individuals; Department/team; Enterprise/industry, leading to an organization of T- shaped thinkers and problem solvers.

T – Shaped employees,
organization and enterprise development.

Scientists, Engineers and Managers – are they innovators and entrepreneurs too?

Sc En Mgr as entrepreneur Recently I was speaking with a friend, who is a successful dot com entrepreneur. We both agreed that, to be successful today you need to be an entrepreneur and an innovator. After this initial agreement, I was startled to learn how profoundly different we were in our thinking in terms of what it means to be an entrepreneur or innovator?
My friend told me that he always admired the sorts of people who took the risk, by getting a second mortgage on his/her home, to fund their business. They were the risk takers and the true entrepreneurs”
I asked him, “How about all those people who take risks and move all the mountains to put a new material in the jet engine blades or new process that melts glass or holds beams together in a sky scraper or pushes a new product out in the market, even when the marketing says they have never heard about it in the field? Are they all not entrepreneurs and innovators?”
After some reflection, he agreed and said, “You are partially correct. Entrepreneur and innovator need not always be only the investors. True, they sow the seed and create the climate. But the many scientists, engineers and managers – the professionals – are also innovators and entrepreneurs. It is their collective efforts that make entrepreneurship and innovation successful”.
While we teach entrepreneurship and skills for innovation in colleges as they pertain to investors and as part of management education, we rarely teach the skills for technical professionals – the scientists and engineers. The ability of the professionals that combines their Science, Engineering and Management skills – as a system – together with innovation and entrepreneurship can be best described as Transformational Skills. Is it about time we offered formal education on System Thinking and Transformational skills?
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What is your “Professional Effectiveness – PE” Score?

Are you a professional? — An Engineer, Scientist, Manager, Consultant, Doctor, Lawyer, ………….. ?

You are busy more than ever, working literally on a 24 x 7 clock? Why is this? To help you assess your situation better, we offer you a simple test.

Everything you do, as part of your job or work can be divided into three distinct categories of work:

A = Clearly identifiable contribution of your work, in terms of Product (which generates revenue), Process (to make or create the product) and Application/USE of the product of your department, team or company. This may sound a bit abstract at first. But, if you think carefully you will find, these are the only outcomes that ultimately determine your value or use to your team or the employer. This category of work requires active and deliberate use of your professional knowledge, your experience in creating and implementing New Solutions. It requires thinking, reflection, data analysis, inferences, conclusions, risk taking, …….. Only you can do this category of work. Try as best as you may, you can not simply delegate this category of work!
B = Your effort in processing information (e-mail, phone calls, net browsing, voice mails – recording/receiving, paper work, keeping track of budgets, accounts, expense reports, budgets, booking travel tickets, etc.. With the increasing capability of IT Tools and their applications , each of us are increasingly drawn into this category of work. Gone are the days where administrative assistants and support staff could be used to carry out these tasks. It appears easier to do it all by yourself and apparently more efficient. Companies may see it as a cost reduction, when you do all this by yourself. But, it has every opportunity to distract and diminish your output under category A. You can delegate this category of work if you choose to. May be some one has already put this monkey – more of it – on your shoulders?
C = Your effort in physical work, such as travelling, commuting, sit in meetings, typing, etc. When you over do this category of work, it leads to your lower back pain, Carpal tunnel syndrome, lack of sleep, jet lag, physical exhaustion, and all other ailments!

Your total effort = A + B + C

Your PE = A / (A + B + C )

In a recent informal survey of professionals, over half of them felt that their PE is less than 20% While individual professionals attempt to increase their contribution through “A”, most companies are reducing the “B” and “C” content through IT applications, outsourcing, globalization, etc. The combined effect of these is a steady increase in labor productivity, where fewer people are producing more perceived outcomes. But, unless the “A” category of work is deliberately increased the innovative outcomes – in terms of new Products, Processes and/or Applications/USE – will continue to slide down. All that is left will be cost reduction (like squeezing the last few drops of water from dry wood)!

Any one at any level of responsibility has to be worried about the PE score. Integrated across all the professionals in the company, PE score will be the true measure of innovation or lack there of, in the company.

Senior executives, HR managers, as well as individual professionals need to become aware of the PE score. Such awareness, has to be followed by next steps to increase the PE score, which in turn will require formal and structured education, training and practice of Transformational Skills

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The three legs of Work force skills development promoted by STIMS Institute, quoted in a recent article in Lexington Minuteman

Lexington Minuteman, a newspaper well known in the New England area recently carried an article on November 28, 2013 in their ECONOMY section titled, “Skills gap has a high cost” authored by Spencer Buell and Caitlyn Kelleher Lexington@wickedlocal.com

An abstract from this article is cited below:
Three-legged approach for high-tech
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In Lexington, K. “Subbu” Subramanian, a mechanical engineer and President of STIMS Institute Inc., said closing the skills gap to foster a more vibrant economy in the future is going to require building a triangle: Education and training are its two legs, with motivation to create and implement new solutions – the Transformational Skills serving as the base.

The STIMS Institute, according to Dr. Subramanian is focused on developing physical, science-based technology innovation and management solutions. “There is a need to combine academic education and training application educations with a passion to create new solutions, Subramanian said. “This
triangle has to be created no matter what level we are going to. We are not thinking of the triangle. Nobody wants to come together to create a triangle.” The triangle needs to include educational institutions and businesses, he said, adding academic schools should take a lesson from vocational schools and encourage internships.

This year, Subramanian wrote the book “Thriving in the 21st Century Economy: Transformational Skills for Technical Professionals,” which focuses on the changing economy and the need for a new model for workers because of an increasing demand for high-tech skills.

“The parents have to push because their kids need the Transformational skills,’ Subramanian said. “The schools have a need because they have a social obligation. They can’t say we have high scores and we are good with that. They need to give kids the Transformational skills to get a job.” Businesses are not hiring, he said, because they want people with practical experience and Transformational skills.

Indeed, a National Manufacturing Institute study estimates that failure to fill 600,00O jobs due to a lack of qualified workers would cost the economy $67.8 billion in exports, $47.4 billion in foreign investment and $8.5 billion in lost research and development investment. Add that to that the $17.6 billion in unemployment insurance claims, $17.6 billion in lost income taxes and $6.6 billion in lost corporate taxes.

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Dr. Subramanian, President, STIMS Institute presented the key note lecture at the international seminar on Innovation and Higher Education

Key note lecture BBDIT 10 26 13 (FINAL)(1)

The international seminar on Innovation and Higher Education held on Oct. 26^th at BBDIT highlighted the following points. Every speaker seemed to converge on similar themes:

Education must promote skills for thinking (i.e.) challenge the status quo and ask the question “Why?” relentlessly.
Any education has to also promote an ability to apply the knowledge acquired to some useful end purpose.
Education has to be linked to some target industry or user. This makes the students work force ready.
Education has to be project oriented. Such project and their execution is a measure of the problem solving skills of the students.

The Key Note lecture also acknowledged the above points. In addition the following additional points were offered for Innovation and Higher Education.

At this time – in the 21^st century – we live in a Binary Economy: A high skills work force creating and exploiting a stream of New Solutions (Economy1) as a parallel and distinct from a low skills – low wage work force (in larger numbers) employed to carry out well defined tasks to Replicate known solutions (Economy 2).

https://stimsinstitute.com/2013/07/17/learn-to-swim-against-the-tide-of-binary-economy/

All educational efforts to meet the work force needs of Economy 1, have to make the student (and later the engineer) more comprehensive in his/her outlook as a professional, who can identify, develop and deploy/implement a stream of New Solutions. This requires System Thinking and Transformational Skills.
Such education on ST and TS has to be formal, structured and results oriented. Such formal education on ST and TS is a MUST, in order for all the academic education and industry oriented training to become effective and useful and achieve the end result of value to all: the students, the company and the industry.
Such education for students with effectiveness will also be the differentiating advantage for the colleges (academic institutions) in the long run.