>From: Liandre Maillet <maillet@sympatico.ca>
>
>I'm involved with a mid-size organization (350 employees) ewhich has been
>undergoing major changes in the last 4 years. All employees have taken
>training in team building, change, reengineering, etc. They have several
>groups responsible to manage the changes, people responsible for each
>team, etc.
>
>They are presently experiencing major problems in that most employees are
>under stress. It's as if they have been in the "unfreeze-change" phases
>(using the classic change model) and did not reach the freeze phase.
>
>How would one go about making a valid diagnostic of the hypothesis?
>Someone mentioned using "Open Space Technology" or "Open Group Forum".
>THese approach are new to me. Any references?
>
>If valid, how would one get these employees to consolidate the changes?
>
>And to complicate matter, still more changes are coming: new technologies,
>new software, etc.
>
>Is this a hopeless situation? I would appreciate any feedback,
>suggestions.
This question struck a chord. We've been on a quest to change an old style
organization into a team based learning organization for around 10 years.
In that pursuit we've changed schedules, seniority sytems, pay for skill,
job classifications, added businesses, divested, you name it. Around five
years ago, we began doing an employee climate survey, where we ask teams
to brainstorm the things that are contributing to good morale and the
things that are dragging on morale and then quantify where they are on
balance (from -3 to +3). We've watched the metric and also always used the
drag items as a key to work on. The picture that emerges from watching
long enough is that change is a negative. People articulate that as
stress. There are real consequences (for example, our safety performance
suffers somewhat when the rate of chasnge is great.) We've learned that
there's a rate of change that people tolerate, so we actually shoot to
have the climate end up around neutral. Sometimes events dictate what we
have to do and we go negative and work through it. The key learning in all
this is that if you're in the change game, and you're providing the
organization some freedom to be an active part of it, then there will be
stress and some sense of chaos, and as a leader you learn that that's a
natural part of the process to learn to live through. A chance to develop
listening skills!
*****
When an idea is wanting, a word can always be found to take its place-Goethe
--David Nelson <david.nelson@cyber-quest.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>