What will it take to transform your organization in the 21st century?

Ilium, New York, is divided into three parts. In the northwest are the managers, engineers,

civil servants, and a few professional people; in the northeast are the machines; and in the south, across the Iroquois River, is the area known locally as the homestead, where almost all of the people live.

- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. Player Piano (1952) We are about to cross the imaginary millennium timeline into a new century. Each century moves with the powerful currents of its own momentum. The 20th century is no exception. Massive change has led to cultural erosion. Traditional institutions have been impaired, leaving fractured homes, schools, churches, workplaces, and governance in their wake. But this is not exclusively an American problem. Age-old societies are succumbing to centrifugal force, driving them away from their historic values and beliefs. Meanwhile, centripetal forces are driving these same societies into a common global village, whether they like it or not. It is unwise to see change simply in nationalistic terms. Rather, we should see it as a manifestation of a changing world.

At the same time, exploding electronic technology has failed to be the hoped-for miracle to set everything right. Work, workers, and the workplace pivot on the paradoxical dilemma that little is as it seems. The contentious combination of being pulled apart and forced together strains the postmodern collective will to comprehend and deal with conflicting knowledge, bent norms, and trampled values. Alas, we are weighted down with forward inertia, psychologically blindfolded by this strenuous century.

Violent, and, yes, paradoxical, this century opened with uncritical optimism. It was assumed that progress through industrialization would ensure confidence in the future. This confidence was dampened by the First World War, the most horrible war the world had ever known. When the fighting stopped, Victorian innocence had expired and the modern world began. World War II, the Great Depression, global hysteria, existentialism, women in the workforce, and the civil rights movement all ushered great changes into the workplaces of the 20th century.

Today we enter a new century with the possibility of moving toward a more dystopian or utopian future. The cultural baggage we carry is heavy and loaded with paradoxes. In addition, there are threats to humanity just entering our consciousness. There is the prospect of an increase in population that will outstrip the food supply and other resources, and in some countries, leave too little space per person, and make most problems-political, social, and economic-less manageable. There is also the vulnerability of the environment-air, water, the earth itself, and even the oceans-to many kinds of pollution. And always, as long as nuclear armaments exist, there is the threat of humanity's survival. Societies across the globe are faced with the paradoxical dilemma of establishing governments that are strong enough to govern effectively, but weak enough to allow room for personal freedom, human rights, and the pursuit of happiness.

As American social philosopher Eric Hoffer once sagely observed, "It is not at all simple to understand the simple." The difficult agenda ahead is a case in point. The natural inclination is to do what is easiest and least disruptive to preserve the status quo. Plato understood this. "We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark," he noted. "The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." This has put fad merchants with cosmetic solutions in constant demand. The organization, however, can no longer disguise its problems with cosmetic masks. As W Edwards Deming stated bluntly, "Transformation of American style of management is not a job of reconstruction nor revision. It requires a whole new structure, from the foundation upward."

Follow the leader? What leader?

The paradox is that most professionals cannot lead and don't want to follow. But they like to believe they are in charge. Then why don't they lead? They don't know how and don't want the responsibility. As a consequence, most organizations consider a management system to be its leadership. This might not be a problem except for the fact that things can be managed, but people must be led.

The crux of the productivity paradox is that American blue-collar workers are among the best in the world. But hands-on labor represents only about 10 percent to 15 percent of the cost of a product or service. True cost savings are found in indirect labor, the costs associated with the services of managers and professionals, which represent the other 85 percent to 90 percent. Over the past quarter century, as professionals have become the majority and blue-collar workers the minority, many organizations have ignored this reality, finding no other recourse than to downsize, merge, streamline, or conduct continuing redundancy exercises to remain viable. They stubbornly insist on managing professionals who respond only to leadership. Consequently, performance leaves much to be desired.

Rather than face this fact, the inclination has been to look for a silver bullet. The personal computer seemed to be such a miracle. Advocates envisioned a paperless factor. The electronic revolution was supposed to change our lives by eliminating distance. Some analysts now believe the enormous power of the computer is superfluous. Law briefs are now much thicker. Communications via e-mail are more frequent among employees. But it may be largely extraneous. Word processors have failed to make novels better or news reports more poignant. Nor have faster calculations made economic forecasting more accurate. Indeed, the converse is more likely. Could it be that the Internet, e-mail, and ponderous reports on word processors keep people from being productive? Economist Robert Solow, a Nobel laureate, calls this the productivity paradox: "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics."

The truth-and consequences-- of leaderless leadership

Information technology has shifted power from the few to the many throughout the organization. Yet most organizations stubbornly deny this by attempting to promote cosmetic change, or resorting to radical surgery such as downsizing or merging to remain competitive. These expedient measures have undermined the changing mind-sets and dispositions of these new professionals, workers with a different agenda than their fast-disappearing blue-collar colleagues. The vertical organization has programmed learned helplessness and non-responsibility into most workers by protecting them from failure and the consequences of their actions. Since the horizontal organization has not yet formed, professionals wander through the virtual hinterland like homeless minds. They are in virgin territory inventing processes and stratagems, practices and paradigms as they go. This is an iterative process-clumsy, fault-ridden, often embarrassing, and even more often counterproductive. Yet the more these workers shake free of the cultural shackles of their programming, the more they shine. They go forth, psychologically blindfolded, forced into a "managed society" that displays little leadership. Cultural conditioning is the blindfold. It perverts their reasoning and pollutes their performance.

Fortunately, professionals flourish in an atmosphere of chaos, conflict, confrontation, and contention if they are led instead of managed. They thrive on chaos to be creative, manage conflict to exchange genuine ideas, resort to confrontation when trust is abused, and become contentious when the work climate is rigged.

Many managers have a strong aversion to managing conflict. This is unfortunate. You cannot lead if you do not know the will of your workers. You cannot know the will of your workers if they are not permitted to express that will by questioning your leadership. Intimidation is not leadership. In such an atmosphere workers adapt, submit, or surrender to the will of their superior. At best, compliance results in workers bringing their bodies to work but leaving their minds at home.

The way to realize genuine cooperation is to allow workers to express their suppressed suspicions. If avoided, the prevailing norm is for workers to remain silent and reactive, or to retreat into passivity. Leaderless leadership prevails when collective suspicions are not aired. What is construed as cooperation is simply compliance, a sham of control and veiled deviancy. Leadership is seldom a function of harmony. It is more often a function of embracing the collective resistance of workers to penetrate their lethargy to purposeful performance.

Thinking differently on purpose

If one seeks to be consciously purposeful, chances are one will fail. Consciousness supports fragmentary thinking, or the compartmentalization of everything, at the expense of seeing the whole. Self-consciousness is consumed with what one is getting rather than the pleasure derived from the experience. Purposeful performance involves one's whole being-without analyzing, defining, assessing, or quantifying. Spontaneous action is the rich reward experienced in the service of others without estimating the cost-benefit to self This is not to suggest one sacrifices oneself in this service, but that the derivative benefit is self-fulfillment.

Counterintuitive as it may seem, purposeful performance grows out of chaos, not order; out of conflict, not harmony; out of confusion, not certainty. Purposeful performance is not something one seeks, but something one creates. Nor should confrontation be avoided; it should be embraced. By conditioning, most Americans tend to protest infrequently but violently, in deference to protesting frequently but politely. Managed conflict and polite confrontation are the glue that hold people to their purpose and the organization to its mission.

The problem with problem solving

The fallacy is in the thinking. Organizational strategies are driven by problem solving. Conventionally, problem solving creates mechanistic boxes, boxes that lend themselves to being solved. Vertical organizations have gone from emphasizing one box (management style) to another box (total quality management) to the current box (team management) in an effort to regain a global competitive advantage that mysteriously slipped away.

If managers are both task- and worker-oriented, workers will be happy and productive (management style). If quality is systematically driven, and checked at critical points in the process, a quality product will be produced (total quality management), which will ensure the confidence of consumers and recapture lost market share. If everyone works together (team management), synergy will result, and the competitive advantage will once again be ours.

Obviously, some success has been registered with these strategies, but none has proven to be the universal solution. Perhaps this is not so much the fault of these boxes as the certainty with which advocates viewed their construction. These boxes follow the Socratic method-- or a search for excellence as if excellence was something to be discovered, not created out of existing resources.

Too often organizations search, sometimes desperately, for managerial competence, when what workers want is management they can trust. Establish a trusting culture and workers will create solutions to problems by pursuing their own competence. Ironically, every organization has the workers it needs to turn itself around. It need only create a climate conducive to their thinking differently on purpose to embrace organizational challenges.

This is not to suggest that appropriate conduct of managers is not important, that quality is not desirable, that teamwork is not necessary. It does mean that if the all-consuming idea is that management style, quality, teamwork-or any other litmus test-is the answer, one is bound to be disappointed. Each tends to be a stylistic overlay on an already faulty cultural foundation, inappropriate infrastructure, and irrelevant functioning.

Culture clash

Whatever else may be made mechanical, human values cannot

Alan Valentine

Age of Conformity

(1954)

The cultural climate in America is not the same as Europe, Japan, Korea, or Singapore. Nor is the workplace culture in a General Motors operation in Indiana the same as one in Tennessee; nor are GM's operations the same in Belgium, Germany, or India. Moreover, within a specific GM plant, the workplace culture in production is not the same as that in engineering, sales, or marketing. All are unique to the prevailing values and cultural biases of groups within those respective operations. It is this combination of micro and macro cultures, within and between entities, that needs to be better understood, respected, and utilized to attain the results desired.

There is a clash of cultures in every workplaceengineering with production, and so on. This has been an especially wrenching experience of some merging companies. No two companies have the same culture. Cultural differences are bound to create havoc when they are merged into blind entities without forethought, which often seems the case. For most of this century, quantitative (vertical) thinking has supplied answers to problems of the workplace. This rational system has proven ineffective with merging companies because culture is a qualitative phenomenon. Culture teaches us that some problems have no solutions. They can only be controlled.

We typically solve people problems by searching for answers, classifying into sequential categories, taking problems apart and then solving them component-by-- component, in other words, imitating what works so effectively with "things." For this proclivity, we often suffer from the paralysis of analysis, as we are compulsive problem solvers. Solutions, as a consequence, always far outnumber problems.

Unfortunately, workplace culture does not fit neatly into a solution-driven, problem-solving paradigm. Nor can it easily be placed in a series of boxes. The collective will of workers is the key. His or her will is unresponsive to "search and evaluate" problem solving because a workplace is not something that can be discovered. It must be constructed out of the nucleus of the intuitive wisdom at hand where the emphasis is on conceptual, not critical, thinking; on perceptions, not processes; on ideas, not information; on subjective engagement, not objective detachment.

Management falsely believes that fixing management fixes the problem. Social engineers have perpetuated this myth for decades. The fact is, management is no longer strictly necessary. Work without managers is not only the call of the future but the prudent formula for now. Computers manage "things" far better than managers do. Workers are encumbered by managers. What is needed is leadership. Yet the irony is no one knows what leadership is, notwithstanding the scores of books on the subject, in the context of the horizontal organization.

Power has shifted from managers to a shared responsibility with workers. Newly acquired power appeals to workers, but concomitant responsibility doesn't. (Workers still enjoy strutting their stuff and proclaiming, when problems occur, "Not my problem! Let management deal with it!") Meanwhile, managers courageously attempt to assume responsibility without the concomitant technical skills. As a consequence, operational effectiveness falls in the breach. Problems are denied, or the problems addressed are designated as problems management can solve.

Several factors contribute to this paradox:

Values have changed, and the new evolving values are either ignored or denied because they threaten the established authority.

These new values affect the way people relate to themselves and each other.

-The information explosion has far outpaced the worker's ability to comprehend, much less control it. Obsession with control only exacerbates the chaos.

Information technology is creating distinctly different workers, with solipsistic styles and perspectives.

Their transitional posture is often counterproductive and counterintuitive, meaning they fail to respond to conventional demands and motivators.

Information is the critical mass of work, not conventional activity. Productivity is gauged less in hours spent doing and more in illuminating insight thinking.

The information edge no longer resides with management, but is well-distributed throughout the workforce. With beepers, cellular phones, faxes, e-mail, laptops, the Internet, and video phones, there are no more secrets.

Management is not only at the mercy of expert systems, but of the experts who design, build, and control them.

With the shift from doing to thinking, the debate heats up as to what constitutes real work. There is also the matter of who is in charge and what being in charge entails.

Regarding the latter, because management is results-oriented-and workers appear primarily process-driven-real work creates a puzzling dichotomy:

If work is measured in terms of results only, management is likely to see workers primarily as costs.

Seldom are workers asked to come up with the design of a better widget.

When they are asked for their ideas, it is usually via a patronizing suggestion program.This is like the blue ribbon they got in the first grade.

When workers are treated as an expense, they behave as a cost. When they are treated as an asset, they behave as a resource.

When the workplace is treated as one "big happy family," it implies the parents (management) are in charge and the workers are the children. This metaphor is no longer appropriate. It suggests workers are suspended in terminal adolescence. Treating workers as adults elicits authentic behavior-and mature response to unexpected demands.

When the focus is on process rather than outcome, work is more strategically driven or centered around doing the right things. Focusing on outcomes implies there is little room for error-for correcting and learning from mistakes-which unwittingly promotes finger-pointing and polarity, resulting in dissension among the ranks.

A state of mind, not a place

If the organization knows what goal it wants to accomplish and is structured to accomplish it, behavior will be purposeful and the goal will be achieved. If the organization knows what it wants to accomplish but is not structured to accomplish it, the focus will be diverted to deviant behavior and it will not be realized Focus is likely to be on what the organization is doing wrong, not what it is doing right-on whom to blame (for dropping the ball), not on how to find the answer (together).

Caveat: A good idea will fail if workers don't buy into it. A bad idea will succeed if they do. The psychological climate is more symbolic than substantive, more a mind-set than a place. Nothing translates into a more effective bottom line than the pervasive collective will to succeed. Attention must be paid to the workplace culture because culture drives behavior, and the structure and function of work drive culture.

Communication is key. It is imperative that everyone who should know does know before the fact. A large bottling plant in a metropolitan area wanted to increase production. Management hired a consultant, who designed a state-of-the-art bottling system and over a long holiday break had the new system installed. Plant workers returned to work astonished to find their workplace radically changed. Management thought workers would be pleased; they weren't. Workers demonstrated their displeasure passively-the new system failed. Breakdowns occurred. Delivery schedules were missed. Management appeared baffled. It wasn't until an organizational development (OD) consultant was retained that the source of the raging silence was uncovered. With management's consent, the consultant encouraged workers to candidly voice their complaints. Workers felt betrayed, felt they had been treated as if they had no ideas for improving operations. Management listened, took the heat without reprisals. A committee of workers and managers was formed to establish a true partnership. It was not a ploy; it demonstrated management's willingness to admit its error, to listen and engage workers in correcting its faux pas. In no time this healing psychological climate found operations exceeding the company's strategic goals.

The common sense of communications

Communication is more qualitative than quantitative. Throwing unfiltered information at workers tends to over- or underwhelm. It defeats the purpose of the information and contributes to worker frustration. Information requirements of workers follow common sense. Employees want:

Enough information to do a good job.

A clear understanding of what is expected, when it is expected, and where it is to be performed.

Information that helps them improve their performance.

Information that will contribute to their growth and development.

To know the status of the company in terms of effecting their security.

Four questions constantly enter workers' minds: How does this (information) ...

1) personally concern me?

2) affect my professional status?

3) impact what I am doing now ?

4) feel/sound? Do I believe it, do I trust it, will I use it?

Management takes the lead

We have designed organizations which ignored individual potential for competence, responsibility, constructive intent, and productivity.

Chris Argyris

Failure of Success (1972)

Valiant attempts have been made to change Argyris' assessment, but-unhappily-with only mixed results. Everything has been done to make workers more productive, save involve them in the design process. This was less a problem with blue-collar workers who expected to take orders and react to demands of management. They saw themselves as separate and different from their bosses. This, however, does not hold true of professional workers.

Professionals are much less intimidated by position power, mainly because they have the power of their special knowledge. Moreover, these workers are often better educated than their bosses. Likewise, they are less intimidated by status as they see themselves as part of management. Given this scenario, backlash is inevitable when the psychological infrastructure fails to change. For example, quality control circles (QCCs) have had great impact on Japan's productivity; subsequently, they were replicated with similar success among U.S. blue-collar workers. Not so among U.S. professionals.

Argyris' contention still holds true. The psychological infrastructure remains essentially as it was in 1945 when 80 percent were blue-collar workers. Contrast this with our current situation, where white-- or pink-collar workers dominate. At a time when workers have to think and behave differently, why don't more workers come forward? The answer is simple and understandable: they feel they have too much at risk. Management must take the first step to alleviate this fear.

Preparing for the 21 st century: winners and losers!

It is in the American character to look for the quick fix, the miraculous cure, the technological breakthrough to a perplexing problem. Many organizations continue to ignore the fact that the workforce has changed dramatically but the organization little, except cosmetically. The computer revolution looked to be that silver bullet. It has proven to be a disappointment. The psychological revolution of organizational change lags far behind the technological revolution.

The wonder of technology has not reduced the paradox: most workers are unaware of their power. Those who are aware prefer the power but not the responsibility; most managers are aware of their declining power, but courageously accept a responsibility they cannot discharge. This is the "productivity paradox."

To reconcile the situation requires a psychological mind-shift of workers and managers alike, a cultural shift of momentous proportions.

What does it take to turn an organization around? Does it simply require imitating successful companies-or does it involve such intangibles as culture, social structure, and enlightened attitudes toward alien practices? It is a question most organizations should ponder as they embark on a new century.

James R. Fisher Jr, Ph.D, an organizational development consultant, is a former international corporate executive and the author of Six Silent Killers: Management's Greatest Challenge (St. Lucie Press, 1998). Fisher is available for organizational development consulting and as a keynote speaker He

may be reached by e-mail at THEDELTAGRPFL@cs.com.

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