Of Organization Development Managers and Court Jesters

“Can I request you to give me an additional role?”, the Organization Development Manager asked the CEO. Noticing that the CEO was looking a bit confused and apprehensive, the Organization Development (OD) Manager continued;  “No, I am not asking you to add me to the senior leadership team. I am also not asking for any role that someone else is doing in our company. The additional role that I am asking for is that of a court jester – in the business context”!

Prima facie, roles of OD Managers and Court Jesters appear to be ‘strange bedfellows’. However, based on my 15 years of experience in OD (10 years of which in internal HR), I am increasingly realizing that one of the roles that an internal OD consultant (OD Manager in a business organization) needs to play is that of a ‘court jester’. 

Though the word 'jester' is often (incorrectly) interpreted to mean 'a fool', a jester (like Tenali Rama in the court of King Krishnadevaraya of the Vijayanagara empire in India or William Sommers in the court of King Henry VIII in England) is a much more profound creature than a fool. At a superficial level, both a fool and a jester might appear quite similar. When we look at them more deeply, these similarities vanish.

While a fool entertains others by 'making a fool of himself', a jester enables others to laugh at themselves. While the techniques of a fool focuses mainly on the physical plane (doing funny things, acting in a funny manner etc.), jester operates mainly in the mental and/or spiritual plane (generating insights). We can also say that fools represent ‘simplicity on this side of complexity' (or simplicity that ignores the complexity) while jesters represent ‘simplicity on the other side of complexity’ (simplicity after working through the complexity). In terms of impact, a fool leaves his audience 'entertained' while the jester leaves his audience 'enlightened'. In terms of their influence, fools are quite 'peripheral' while jesters are quite 'central'. Jesters had the right (or even the 'duty') to criticize the king and get away with that (or even get rewarded for that!). Often, Jesters possess 'shibumi' (great refinement underlying commonplace appearances).

An OD professional is supposed to facilitate change. This change also involves ‘mindset change’ and ‘questioning deeply-held assumptions’. Again (with due respect to the ‘good press’ that ‘bottom up culture change’ enjoys), change often needs to begin 'at the top of the pyramid’ in business organizations because the role modeling behavior of the leaders is the most important factor that drives and sustains behavioral/culture change. So, one of the key requirements for OD professionals is to enable very senior people to change their mindsets and deeply held assumptions.

Sometimes, these mindsets and assumptions are very change resistant – even to the extent of being funny. For example, once I was invited by a business leader to transform the mindsets of the leaders in his organization. During the diagnosis when it was becoming increasingly clear that he was a major contributor to the problem and that he would need to make significant changes to his pattern of behavior, he made himself unavailable for the intervention saying that he was very busy and that it was his team members who needs to change. In another context, the HR head came to me and suggested that as the business leader can’t change his behavior (and as he won’t move out of the organization for the next few years), we need to train his team to enable them to work with him better. While it is an interesting idea ( to train the team to be better followers if the leader is immune to any leadership development efforts) it highlights two problems that are important for us here – the difficulty in getting the senior leaders to change and the high degree of fear that many of the HR leaders have when it comes to attempting any ‘change interventions on the business leaders’. Hence, OD professionals need to find ways to encourage business leaders to examine their decisions and their behavior/mindsets/deeply-held assumptions without offending them and without making the HR leaders too jittery.

This becomes even more important for an internal OD consultant (OD Manager in a business organization), as these senior people he needs to influence are higher up in the reporting chain (food chain!) of the organization. Often, there is an organization layer between the OD Manager and the business leaders (i.e. the OD Manager reports to the HR Head who in turn reports into the CEO). This makes influencing the business leaders on their mindsets and deeply held assumptions  very difficult (if not impossible) for the OD Manager, as it would require a lot of deep interactions with the business leaders that too over a long period of time. The OD managers might not get such an opportunity because of the way of functioning of the organization (‘organization culture’)  and as the HR Head might get threatened by such direct connection efforts!  Again, one of the de facto expectations from the layer below the CEO (e.g. in HR Head in this case) might be to protect the CEO from unpleasant information/interactions and even to maintain convenient collective delusions . If this is the case, it becomes very difficult for the HR Head to allow this kind of interactions between the OD Manager and the CEO as the HR Head (and may be the entire HR function) might have to suffer the possible ripple effects of such interactions!  

This is where the role of the jester comes in.  Jesters can draw attention to the blinds pots without making people defensive. Humor can go through the emotional defenses more easily as compared logic. Jesters can help the leaders to laugh at themselves. Jesters are less threatening because what the they say can be taken as a joke if the leader is not yet ready to accept the truth (and hence the jesters' 'intervention’ is an 'invitation to change' that does not ‘put the leader in a spot’).

Now, let us explore how we can make the role of the jester work in the context of business organizations. The way of the jester requires a high level of wisdom and refinement as the jesters need to walk a very thin line between causing enlightenment and causing offense. Also, this line is a dynamic one and walking it requires a very high degree of situational and interpersonal awareness. To avoid becoming a threat to other functionaries in the court (read the direct reports of the CEO -including the HR Head) the jester should always remain as some sort of an underdog or a wild card and should also remain detached from the office politics. Some of the concepts outlined in ‘Wisdom-level consulting' and ‘A political paradox for OD and HR' might be useful in this endeavor.

From a sustainability point of view, it would be best to create some sort of a formal mandate for the role  of the jester and provide it some sort of ‘diplomatic immunity’(so that the messenger does not get shot). Unless the OD Manager is mandated to be a ‘full-time jester’ (which might not be feasible as there are many other roles that the OD Managers play), we would also need some sort of  a signaling mechanism (corporate equivalent to the costume of the medieval jester) to indicate when the OD Manager is in the jester role.  Since elaborate costumes are not easy to put on and take off, maybe we can settle for a simple cap! If the organization is not willing to let the jester intervene whenever he wants to do so, there can be a designated 15 minutes ‘jester time’ in the middle of a business review meeting (where the jester gets to be an observer/'fly on the wall')!

If the business leader is not open to the interventions from the jester in the context of a meeting (where his direct reports are also present), this can be done on a one-to-one basis (at least to begin with). To be sustainable, the jester has to become a cherished rather than a tolerated presence. This can be accomplished by helping the business leaders to realize their mistakes by allowing them to see it for themselves. Rather than directly contradicting/confronting the business leader, the jester can encourage the business leader (by showing enthusiasm for the idea that the business leader has come up with) to think through the idea to its logical conclusion, so that the business leader herself/himself can realize its absurdity.  To make this happen, the jester should have high degree of business understanding (insight to the organizational truth) in addition to perceptiveness, wit and interpersonal sensitivity/awareness.

 It has to be noted that the jester is not just for the CEO. The jester is for the entire company. This role is relevant for facilitating change at all levels. Jesters can also facilitate creative problem solving – as creative problem solving requires questioning basic assumptions and exploring new (unusual) ways to look at old problems. Since these need to be facilitated across the organization, we might have to create 'jesters at all levels' or enable the employees to 'discover the jesters in themselves'!!   

So my fellow OD professionals, what do you think about this? Can the ‘jester role’ be made a part of the OD Manager’s job description?  Is it likely to work?  Do you want to explore the art of being a jester?

A political paradox for OD & HR

“This is a political issue and we should resolve it politically”, said the senior consultant. I heard this interesting piece of ‘wisdom’ at an early stage in my career as an OD/HR consultant and it had left me somewhat confused.

I knew that as external consultants one of our main tasks was to diagnose the core issue/root problem correctly (as opposed to merely documenting the symptoms) so that we can design an intervention at the appropriate level. I also knew that ‘workplace politics’ existed in many of our client organizations. What confused me was the part that said ‘we should resolve it politically’. ‘Organizational politics’ was a ‘bad’ word for me at that time – something that incompetent people do to further their selfish motives – something that we as external  consultants should keep a safe distance from. So the suggestion that we should use political means to resolve the issue alarmed me. Over the last decade, I have developed a better understanding of the paradoxical nature of organizational politics and its implications for anyone who wants to lead/facilitate change in business organizations. 

As we have seen earlier (see 'Paradox of business orientation of HR'), a paradox occurs when there are multiple perspectives/opinions (doxa) that exist alongside (para)- each of which is true - but they appear to be in conflict with one another. Let us look at some of these opinions about organizational politics.

1. Politics is essentially about power. Any activity that reinforces or alters the existing power balance in a relationship, group or organization is a political activity. Organization development(OD) is about facilitating change. To make change happen power needs to be exercised and hence all Organization Development is essentially political.

2. Politics is based on informal power - power that is not officially sanctioned. Hence politics is illegitimate in the organization context.

3. A large part of the work in any organization takes place through the 'informal organization' (informal channels that are not captured in the organization structure/job descriptions/chart of authority/operating manual). Keeping this in mind, one can't claim that organization politics is illegitimate just because it is based on informal power.

4. Organization politics is undesirable as it is all about pursuing selfish interests.

5. Organization politics need not be about pursuing selfish interests. It is necessary in order to secure resources and further ideas in an organization. Both ‘bad politics’ (characterized by impression management, deceit, manipulation and coercion) and ‘good politics’ (characterized by awareness, creativity, innovation, informed judgment, and critical self-monitoring) exist in organizations.  

6. A good organization culture can eliminate organizational politics

7. Politics will be present in any group of human beings. The only way to avoid politics is to define and enforce detailed rules and procedures for all activities and interactions among the employees. This would be very difficult to do in most organizations and this would get more difficult when uncertain and fast changing business environment requires organizations to be dynamic and rapidly evolving. When an organization is in transition there won’t be clearly established rules/procedures and hence politics will become more prevalent. Since organizations are likely to spend increasing amounts of time in the ‘transition state’(because of the multiples waves of change), politics will become even more prevalent.
8. Politics is a social construct. Hence the behaviors that are perceived to be 'politcal' in one organization might not be perceived as 'political' in another organization.

So where does this leave us? I think that organization politics is  a reality and any one driving or facilitating change in an organization (like a business leader or an HR/OD professional) need to develop an accurate understanding of the power structure and political dynamics of the organization. One of the key reasons why many of the change efforts fail (and why many of the consultants’ reports/recommendations gather dust without getting implemented) is that they didn’t pay sufficient attention to the political dynamics of the organization. As Human Resource Management (HR) professionals move from transactional roles to more consultative/'change agent like' roles, they need to develop the ability to naviagte the 'polical waters' of the orgnization better. Again, if the change facilitators don't pay attention to the political dynamics, they might end up as ‘pawns in the political game’ or even as ‘sacrificial lambs in the political battle’

I also think that both formal and informal influence needs to be used to maximize the chances of the change effort's success. This will become increasingly critical as the organizations become more fluid (with less rigidly/clearly defined procedures) and dynamic (fast changing with higher degree of uncertainty both externally and internally).

However, I feel that the OD consultant should not ‘play politics’ (i.e. become a political activist) as that would mean driving a political agenda/imposing the consultant’s agenda on the organization. This goes back to the ‘process consulting’ foundations of OD where the consultant’s role is to enable the organization to solve its problems (and to increase its problem solving capability) as opposed to providing solutions. Yes, I agree that all HR/OD consulting need not be process consulting and that the dividing line between the mandate of the HR/OD initiative/project and the political agenda of the consultant (especially internal consultant) is not always clear.

Hence, my current thinking is that the change facilitator/change leader should gather data on the political dynamics of the organization (power structure, various clusters of interests and their assumptions/world view/agenda/unstated concerns, interrelationships among the various clusters etc.) and leverage the same to improve diagnosis, solution design and implementation. This includes presenting (at appropriate times/stages) relevant data on the conflicting assumptions/interests without taking sides. This can also reduce the relevance of politics by making relevant parts of the informal (unstated/implicit) elements of the organization dynamics more formal (stated/explicit). This is not unlike a psychoanalyst helping a patient to be more psychologically healthy by enabling the patent to make some of the relevant parts of the unconscious more conscious (and hence better integrated). Most managers consider politics as a routine part of organizational life - though they might not talk about it openly. Hence, incorporating (without any negative associations) discussions/training on 'understanding and managing the political dimension of change' in the change management intervention, will give the leaders/managers a legitimate platform and skills to surface, talk about and deal with this dimension thereby increasing the probability of the successful implementation of the change.  

Another relevant analogy is the approach for incorporating feelings and emotions into the decision-making process. Feelings and emotions are real – though they might not be rational – and hence they can’t be ignored.  However, ‘making decisions based on emotions’ is not desirable, from an effectiveness point of view. We can improve the quality of our decisions by gathering data on the emotions/feelings of the stakeholders/ourselves (including impact of the various decisions/possible options on the feelings/emotions of the stakeholders) and using the same to inform our diagnosis, solution design and implementation. Similarly, we can improve the effectiveness of our change interventions (diagnosis, solution design and implementation) by leveraging the data on the political dynamics of the organization without ‘playing politics’. Yes, this is a tightrope walk that requires very high degree of self awareness and critical-self monitoring. But it is something that HR/OD consultants must do to maintain their integrity, credibility, effectiveness & relevance!

The Culture Lizard

“We need to change the hierarchical culture here. So let us stipulate that everyone should be addressed by their first name in the office”, said the young HR professional. When I hear a statement like this, an image comes to my mind – image of the detached tail of a lizard!

It is said that when lizards are attacked (or when they are captured by the tail), they are likely to shed part of their tail and flee. The detached tail will continue to wiggle, creating a deceptive sense of continued struggle and distracting the attacker’s attention from the fleeing lizard. The lizard can partially regenerate its tail over a period of weeks.

Now, let us come back to our young HR professional. As far as I could figure out, the real problem that she was trying to address was the hierarchical culture. While I don’t think that there is anything inherently evil with a hierarchical culture (especially in the context of a larger society that has high ‘power distance’), I do agree with her that such a culture can be an impediment when an organization is trying to ‘empower’ the employees.

However, the source of my ‘disconnect’ with the young HR professional here was something very different. It was because I felt that the terms people use to address each other in the office (‘Sir’, ‘Boss’, ‘first name’ etc.) seemed to be just a symptom (or just one of the manifestations - that too a rather peripheral one) of the underlying hierarchical culture. I also felt that the manner in which people address each other in office was like the tail of the lizard (the 'hierarchical culture lizard!).

Hence my fear was that if our young HR professional tries to catch the culture lizard by its tail, it will just shed the tail and flee. Again, the distraction caused by the wiggling tail (the change that is happening in the way people address each other) might dilute the focus and adversely affect the chances our young HR professional might have had to bring about real culture change. So we might have a situation where people address each other by their first names but the underlying hierarchical culture remains very much intact. In my opinion, this is a more damaging situation as it creates cognitive dissonance and it can be very confusing – especially for new entrants.

In such hierarchical companies, newcomers might find it difficult to read the situation correctly when it comes to the degree of empowerment they actually have and how much innovation/creativity they should exhibit. For example, let us look at the following situation.

Your manager gives you the feedback that you need to be more innovative. You take it very seriously and you come up with many innovative/creative ideas during the next year. However, these ideas get promptly shot down by the manager. You detail out your ideas and try to convince manager that they are likely to work. However, the result remains the same and you also sense that the manager is becoming impatient and annoyed. At the end of the year, you again get the feedback that you need to be more innovative. Here what really happened was that that when the boss asked you to be more innovative, the boss was not really expecting you to come up with something very innovative/creative. The real expectation was that you should show more enthusiasm for the innovative ideas that the boss comes up with!!

In hierarchical organizations, it is often assumed that the bosses are the source of all good ideas and that the ideas from people down in the reporting chain (lower forms of evolution!) are unlikely to work as they won’t have sufficient understanding of the business/organization. It also follows that the best way to get the organization to implement your innovative idea is to create it twice - first in your mind and then in your boss's mind. The 'second creation' has to be done in a subtle manner - by 'triggering' or 'planting' it in your boss's mind without letting him/her know - so that the boss considers it to be his/her innovative idea. This might not be such a difficult task if the boss is prone to a bit of megalomania and/or self-delusion. This assumes that your primary motivation is to get your idea implemented and not to get credit for generating the idea. However, you might get 'indirect credit' - for implementing the idea - which has now become the innovative idea the boss has come up with. Not such a bad deal - considering that you managed to get your idea implemented and also received some sort of recognition (even if it was not for generating the idea)!

I am in favor of intervening simultaneously at multiple levels of culture to bring about culture change. Again, interventions/changes at a particular level of culture can sometimes have useful 'ripple effects' at the other levels of culture. Hence I do see value in making changes at the ‘outer layers’ of culture (like artifacts, norms etc.). But if we make changes at these levels without touching the inner/core layers of culture (like values, basic underlying assumptions etc.), the culture change is unlikely to work. Depending solely on the 'ripple effects' mentioned above is too much of a risk (especially since the ripple effects are often unpredictable). Also, as we have seen earlier, the lizard can regenerate its tail fairly quickly. Similarly, if the culture lizard is alive and kicking despite the loss of its tail (i.e. if the underlying hierarchical culture remains intact even after the change in the way people address each other), it might regenerate its tail without much delay!

Have you encountered any such ‘culture lizards’? If yes, what happened to the tail?

Note: Please see 'Placebos, Paradoxes and Parables for Culture Change' for further exploration of this theme.

Architects of meaning - From CHRO to CMO

"It doesn't make sense!" This is a statement that one is likely to hear quite frequently in today's 'dynamic & complex' business organizations. This makes me wonder if the problem has more to do with the 'it' part (the situation) or with the 'sense' part (the implied definition of the term 'sense' in this context) or with 'make sense' part (making sense of the situation)?

All the three seem to be highly probable 'suspects' - individually and in various combinations. Corporate life often throws up many 'strange' and 'messy' situations for the employees (e.g. those created by frequent reorganizations, frequent changes in the strategy/operating model etc.). It can also be argued that since business organizations are somewhat 'artificial' entities (significantly different from the 'natural habitats' or 'natural social groups' for humans), the term 'sense' should have a different interpretation in the context of business organizations as compared to that in more 'natural' settings! However, this post let us take a closer look at the third 'suspect' - 'sense making' - in the context of business organizations (i.e. process of giving meaning to experiences in organizational life). We will also explore the possibility of using another concept that has often been discussed in this blog -myths - as an aid to sense-making (see here and here for examples).

It is said that nothing is more practical than a good theory. So let us begin by examining some of the theories on sense-making. According to Karl Weick, sense-making is about contextual rationality. It is built out of vague questions, muddy answers and negotiated agreements that attempt to reduce confusion. Our perception of reality is an ongoing accomplishment that emerges from efforts to create order and make retrospective sense of what occurs. Sense making is not interpretation as it encompasses more than how cues are interpreted; but it is concerned with how the cues were internalized in the first instance and how individuals decide to focus on specific cues. Two types of sense-making occasions common to organization are ambiguity and uncertainty. In the case of ambiguity people engage in sense-making when they are confused by too many interpretations whereas in the case of uncertainty they do so because they are ignorant of any interpretations.

Sense-making occurs when activity/practice (habit/pattern of behavior) is disrupted (e.g. by events or ambiguity). However, people first look for explanations or reasons that will enable them to resume the interrupted activity. In cases where no explanation or reasons for the disruption can be found, a sense-making process is initiated. The process of sense-making on a situation has two steps. Bracketing & filtering cues followed by creating meaning. This in turn serves as the springboard for action. But the process is not so linear. It is muddy and iterative. Social sense-making is most stable (and effective) when it s simultaneously constructive and destructive -when it is capable of increasing both ignorance (unlearning) and knowledge (learning) at the same time.

As you might have realized, while the above theory on sense-making seems very reasonable, there is one important problem. The sense-making theory is mainly 'explanatory' in nature. This does not directly help us in our objective of facilitating/helping sense-making in organizations. To remedy this, the concept of 'sense-giving' has been developed. Sense-giving is the process of attempting to influence the sense-making and meaning construction of others toward a preferred redefinition of organization reality. Logically speaking, this could involve influencing the way people do the 'bracketing & filtering' of cues (i.e. the first step in the sense-making process described above). I feel that interventions based on behavioral economics principles (see note 3 in 'The power of carrot and stick') can be of use here. We can also look at influencing the second step in the sense-making process (i.e. creation of meaning). This is where myths comes in!

A myth is a story that embodies a powerful truth. While the incidents in the original story might not be factually correct (see Too true to be real) the 'truth' contained in the story remains valid across time. Anthropologically speaking, one of the key uses of myths in a society (or any group in general) is to help the members to make sense of the events in their life -especially the profound and/or no so pleasant events - the events and transitions that shakes one up. Myths can serve the same purpose in organizational life also. By the way, if you are wondering if concepts from Anthropology are relevant for today's business organizations, please see 'Accelerated Learning and Rites of Passage' for a discussion on how another concept from Anthropology - 'rituals' - can be used to facilitate key role transitions in corporate life.

We create stories about our experiences to give meaning to them. This can happen both at the individual and at the group/team level. Teams work well when they share a common set of myths - stories that have powerful, emotional truth - truths the team learned during their struggles/experiences in organizational life - stories they have created to give meaning to these experiences. Leaders can be more effective if they can tap into these myths - to generate energy to pursue new opportunities and to hold the group together. As Karen Armstrong says, myth is not a story told for its own sake. It shows us how we should behave.

Now, let us come back to second step in the sense-making process that we have seen earlier - creating meaning. By helping individuals and groups to create stories we can help them to create meaning from their experiences. Stories can help people to 'find their place' in the organization. This is important as who people think they are in their context shapes how they interpret events and what they do. Stories can also help in making sense (deriving the meaning) of the inevitable not so pleasant/unsettling experiences in organizational life. All these can very useful especially for new entrants to the organizations (e.g. management trainees). HR practices that create time and space for introspection as a group can create opportunities the group members to collectively understand and share their experiences of organizational events. Hence they can facilitate the process of organizational sense-making.

This discussion becomes very significant as meaning (finding meaning in work) is becoming an increasingly important issue in the workplace. This is possibly because of ‘higher order needs ‘(where ‘meaning’ forms a significant factor) becoming more active in a greater percentage of the employees and because of the unnerving pace of change in the workplace (that push employees out of their comfort zones and prompt them to think about ‘deeper’ issues including that of finding meaning). It can also be argued that one of the key responsibilities of managers/leaders in such situations is to help the employees to find meaning in work. Thus HR interventions that can help the employees and managers/leaders in this endeavor should become one of the key focus areas for HR.

By the way, if we leverage power of stories in HR interventions like coaching and mentoring, they are likely to be more effective in helping employees to make sense out of their experiences and to be better adapted to the organization. Stories can be useful for sustaining/celebrating the existing culture and also for changing the culture. Taking an existing story (myth) and making subtle changes to it (to the story and/or the truth implied in the story) can be a great way for initiating change. When we are telling a story to others we are telling the story to ourselves also. In a way, by changing our stories (and the truths embedded in those the stories) we can change ourselves. Also when we interact with others and with ourselves through story telling, the stories evolve.

From a change management perspective, stories have many advantages. Stories can communicate complex meanings and ideas (that are required to be communicated in today's complex organizations/organization contexts). Stories can help people to organize and integrate experiences (even a set of experiences that are not internally consistent). Since stories and story telling come naturally to human beings they are inherently non-threatening and hence the stories can directly engage emotions without having to face too much screening/too many arguments from the analytical mind. This can be very useful in generating initial buy-in for a new/unfamiliar idea. More importantly, people can add on to the stories. This can lead to a situation where people consider the stories (and the truths contained in them) to be their own and tell the stories to others. This in turn can convert them from being passive recipients of the change to active advocates of the change.

What does this mean for HR professionals? May be, we should start talking about 'being Meaning Architects' in addition to our (increasingly annoying) talk about 'becoming Strategic Business Partners!Extending this line of thought, the Chief Human Resource Officer (CHRO) should become the Chief Meaning Officer (CMO). This transition from CHRO to CMO is not without risks! I am sure that if 'creating meaning' becomes accepted as the key deliverable for business leaders, business heads (and possibly even the CEOs) might get tempted to 'steal' the CMO role and/or title from the CHROs! They can use the ‘tried and tested argument for these kinds of situations' - ‘the matter is too important to be left to HR’!!!

What do you think?

At the receiving end of 'change management'

If one looks at the job description of any 'strategic' HR position, it is highly likely that 'management of change' (or 'driving change initiatives') would feature very prominently. While I fully agree that organization-wide change management efforts are important in fast changing business environment, I am finding that my interest these days is more on the the psychological process of dealing with change (the 'transition') and on developing change resilience in individuals. Having been 'at the receiving end of organization level change management efforts' many times in my career, I am not sure as to what extent these are really effective. Often they degenerate into communication programs (at best) and con games (at worst). Unless the organization can create a credible value proposition ('what is in it for me') for the impacted people the chances are that the above degeneration would happen. It can also been argued that 'second order change' can not be managed (in the usual meaning of the term 'manage'). In this context, helping the employees to become more change resilient becomes more important.

I also feel that the impact of change on the 'psychological contract' between the employee and the employer is often not given adequate attention. The violation of the psychological contact could be one of the key reasons for 'change resistance' and negative outcomes like attrition, lack of motivation etc. Often employees feel that they are 'taken for granted' in the name of 'flexibility' and 'organization responsiveness'. Of course, organizations have sound business reasons for making these changes (realignment, restructuring etc.). My point is just that often the impacted employees (who have been 'realigned') feel that the psychological contract has been violated because of what they perceive as 'unilateral changes made by the organization'. (See a related link here)

Coming back to the 'HR job description' mentioned at the beginning of this post, there could be additional factors (apart from skill set related factors) that limit the ability of internal HR professionals to manage change. For example, often HR professionals get involved too late. By that time 'emotional wounds' have already been created and what is left is more of communication and 'dressing of wounds'. While this is useful, this is not change management. This is more of 'damage control'. Of course, in many situations the internal HR professionals themselves are experiencing the same adverse effects of change and hence this could further limit their ability to carry out their 'change management responsibilities'.

Note : Another related aspect (to organization-wide change efforts) is 'culture change initiatives'. There are many 'levels of culture' (like artifacts, norms, values, basic underlying assumptions etc.) at which an intervention can be made. Technically speaking, to be fully effective, culture change has to happen at the 'basic underlying assumptions' level (as per Schein's model). This would mean that 'culture change' has to happen in a bottom-up fashion (starting with the individual) as these assumptions reside in people's minds. However, the difficulty is that often a clinical intervention is required to surface and change these assumptions. This is usually too much to manage in the context of an organization-wide change effort. I think that the 'basic underlying assumptions' & 'world view' of a person are unlikely to change unless he/she is faced with a very significant event (often a traumatic event) in life. So it might not be realistic to make an intervention at this level in the context of an organization level change. Anyway, since one is likely to change many jobs during one's career, one can't afford to get influenced by organizations at such a deep level!!!

May be what can be attempted is to create a rational reason for behavior change. This does not necessarily mean 'carrot-and-stick' in the usual meaning of the term. The 'reason' could be aimed at any level in the hierarchy (e.g. Maslow's hierarchy) of human needs (including esteem and self-actualization) and not just at the lower level needs. This would also mean creating a context (including 'role models') where the desired new behavior has a higher possibility of emerging and thriving.

"Nature abhors vacuum" - HR Reengineering efforts hope so !

It was Aristotle who came up with the hypothesis "Nature abhors vacuum". While this hypothesis might not be strictly true in the original sense meant by Aristotle (that nature is full), it seems to work in many situations. For example, if we create a vacuum, air rushes in to fill it.

Now, why am I taking about all this here ? The reason is that this 'hypothesis' seems to inspire a key underlying assumption in many HR reengineering efforts. I have seen this happen in many organizations. The plots are quite similar. HR function decides to reengineer/transform itself. Transactional HR activities are automated or outsourced so that HR generalists are free to focus on strategic HR work. The objective is to become a 'strategic business partner' and add more value to the business. The objective is certainly a worthwhile one. The automation/outsourcing of transactional HR activities also takes place and they are removed from the job description of HR generalists. Now the problem starts. Transformation to the strategic business partner role does not really happen. Some of the transactional activities creep back (often in a slightly modified form) into the de facto job responsibilities of HR generalists . There is confusion and frustration all around.

As you might have suspected, the key issue here is with the assumption that we were taking about. The assumption was that by removing transactional responsibilities and thereby creating 'space' (or shall we say vacuum!!!) for HR generalists, strategic HR work would automatically rush in to fill the space(vacuum) and hence HR would move into the strategic business partner role. However, there are at least two main difficulties here. The capabilities required to perform the strategic business partner role are very different from those required for performing the administrative role.

In addition to this, there is a problem with client expectation mismatch. If the HR generalists have been providing mainly transactional support to the internal customers, it shapes what the internal customers (especially managers) expect from the HR partner in terms of both capability and deliverables. So if on one fine day HR declares itself to be a strategic business partner it might lack credibility. Again it might not be aligned to what internal customers(managers and the employees) expect/want from HR.

The solution lies in handling HR reengineering as an integrated change management initiative(and not mainly as a technology-driven change in the way HR processes work). This should devote adequate attention and time for

(a)discussing the business case for HR reengineeting(with business leadership)
(b)renegotiating the HR deliverables/HR engagement model (with the business leadership)
(c)HR capability building/getting the correct people on the job (to ensure capability to perform the strategic business partner role)and
(d)communicating the business case & new HR deliverables/engagement model (to managers/employees) and repositioning the HR roles/role-holders (to gain credibility and acceptance)

Of course, this would call for a lot of effort over an extended period of time. Some amount of fine-tuning of the new HR model (without compromising the basic nature of the model) would also be required to address new/context specific issues that were not anticipated initially. Difficult? - Yes; Messy? - Yes; Time consuming -Yes ! Any major change like HR reengineering is unlikely to be easy/simple. But it can be made to work.

Now let us come back to Aristotle and his hypothesis. In our context the problem was not with the hypothesis per se. The fact that the transactional activities often creep back back to fill the void created in the job responsibilities of HR generalists is in line with the hypothesis. The problem is actually with the assumption on what exactly would move in to fill the void. The mistake was to assume that strategic activities would move in to fill the void, where as it was more natural/likely for transactional activities to move in (keeping in mind the skill sets of the HR jobholders at that time and the internal customer expectations at that time). So our challenge is not to exorcise the ghost of Aristotle's hypothesis ! Our real challenge is to manage HR reengineering as an integrated change management effort !!