In LO4812, I wrote:
>>....I sometimes get a response out of a manager who says that it
>>is the job of management to do these things. Is it possible that
>>part of the "how" in management's job is to engage the workforce
>>ang get them to actively participate in building the kind of
>>environment we all want, and to be involved in the developement
>>of processes we will all use?
In LO4868, Julie responds:
>It may have been effective at one time for this type of role for
>managers however, it seems to me, that in times of rapid change,
>large organisations and multiple processes it is no longer
>possible to manager to fulfill this role. [snip]
Julie,
I agree with all of the responses you made in reply to my original
message, including this last paragraph, at least in part. I have recently
gone through an experience that may help clarify the level of
participation we can use to balance the two extremes of no involvement
(authoritarian rule) and too much involvement (democracy?). Both can be
equally crippling, in my opinion.
When my managment decided they wanted to implement a new process, they
formed a team of 5 to work on the project full-time. These were internal
to the company, but external to the organization. These people created
three user groups: 1)Middle managers who would use the process;
2)Supervisors who would use the process; 3) Designers who would use the
process. All three levels would use different aspects of it. There were 5
in each user group. For about 10 weeks, while the process was under
intense developement, each group would spend time separately with the five
full time team members. We were also encouraged to come forward and share
thoughts and ideas throughout the process, even when there were no
meetings. These five people, I believe, did an excellent job in
"facilitating" the project. I spent between 2 and 4 hours per week with
my involvement, as did others. At first, I was not happy with the thought
that we were not included as "full-time" for the 10 weeks. No that it is
completed, I think that this would have been a waste of time and would
have hindered the process.
All of the users were encouraged to share with others what we were doing
and to get feedback. I also provided feedback that enabled these original
5 team members to enhance their roll-out training in such a way, as to aid
community buy-in.
Just before Christmas, one of the team members shared with me the feedback
scores he was getting after having trained about 100 designers,
supervisors and managers (total). On average, he was receiving an 85%
approval rate, with some saying, "it's about time." Considering that the
population was quite against the plan in the beginning I would say this is
a worthy effort. In all, there are 1200 that will have to go through the
process training, hopefully this number holds true throughout the
roll-out.
The user groups will stay in place, periodically recruiting new members.
The purpose: Continuous Improvement of the process. My pitch to others
has been, "let's not suppress feedback, let's come up with a system that
encourages feedback -- solicitation, if you will." The user group can use
such feedback as one of the ways to improve the process, allowing the
community to feel they are involved in that improvement.
For managers to make use of such user groups, would be well to their
advantage when developing and implementing new processes that will have to
be used by others. Herein lies the ability to create a quality process
that will enable most to buy-in to.
-- Diane M. Korzeniewski ToCOLLABR8@aol.com