Month: November 2023

There are multiple key similarities and differences between internal and external OD practitioners in the assessment phase.

Similarities

Essentially, both internal and external OD practitioners are partnering to help guide a change, problem, or continuous improvement. In the assessment and feedback stage a few actions stand out as similarities.

• Stakeholder Management – it is crucial to build strong relationships, trust, diverse perspectives, and partnership. It is also important to understand the organizations OKRs, KPIs, and goals.
• Data Collection – collecting data from day one, to assess current state, in the forms of 1/1s, focus groups, surveys, observations and quantitative data/metrics.
• Problem Solving/Diagnosis – Using a multitude of tools and frameworks to analyze data to identify areas for improvement.
• Objectivity – Attempted to remove bias, and provide objective, data driven analysis.
• Providing Feedback – Providing regular and constructive feedback is critical to spotlight areas of growth and improvement. This is also important for stronger partnerships.
• Communication – the ultimate goal is continuous improvement, so strong and effective communication, via multiple forums.

Differences

With so many similarities, likely the key difference is the customization and delivery from the practitioner. We are all unique in our approach, personalities, and experience and this difference could vary greatly. Some additional differences:

• Objectivity – Also a similarity, but it is common that internal consultants may struggle with objectivity due to current bias, relationships, and history with the organization whereas external, often have more impartiality (I struggle with this big time).
• Access to data/information – It is common that internal consultants have more access or easier access to data and information. For an external, you depend on what is given to you – and must have the expertise to know what else to ask for regarding the engagement.
• Relationship Management – Relationships are often already built in the internal world. The consultant may even be a part of the department. It is often quite challenging for an external consultant to build that trust and strong relationships quickly.
• Expenses – Typically, an external consultant is more costly. Internal consultants may be “baked in” to the payroll, however they may not have as much expertise than an external.
• Speed to completion – often an internal consultant has a head start to solve a problem or continuous improvement. It takes more time for an external consultant to build relationships and foundationally learn about the organization.

 

 

1. What challenges have you experienced developing the feedback report in three different forms? I felt quite lucky with this assignment as I was creating a lot of communications for my project across the division. I am a bit of an over communicator, I would much rather overshare, than not share enough, so I was using multiple types of communications, forums, strategies, and platforms. I carefully and strategically thought about my audience for each of these communications and made decisions accordingly. For example, I knew my senior leadership team for this project was a fan of Mural boards, affinization, and I knew that they also liked memo style communications. I have had a lot of success with the strategy BLOT – Bottom Line On Top (often used in the military) where you provide a summary statement of a sentence or two. Below BLOT you provide the details and give the details. The leader has enough information from BLOT to know the update, but they have the details below, should they want to learn more.

Differentiating communications is also very important and was for my project. What I shared with a leader, was slightly different than what I would share with a crew/contractor. Ensuring that the basic objectives, the why, solutions, and next steps were similar, but the level of details varied. I challenged myself to think about the receiving end of the communication. What is my perspective as the receiver? What do I care about it and how does it affect ME – I did this for all 3 of these communications, adjusting accordingly.

2. What skills do you need to further develop to expediate the process?Communication is an area that we can always be learning – always. I am a fan of asking for communication feedback – did that memo land for you and the team? Did the information resonate with you and was it clear? I often checked in with recipients to continue to hone my communication craft, and this is something I will continue to do with future work. I am a big fan of podcasts as well and there are some excellent ones about communication. One of my favorites is Think Fast Talk Smart. I definitely have a growth mindset and love learning from the host and his guests.

 Share lessons learned from this activity. The biggest lesson that I have learned from my communications is that you must know your audience. Ask from day one of your sponsor or leadership team, how they prefer their communications. Also ask this of your stakeholders – perhaps they would like a weekly touchpoint rather than an email – you never know if you don’t ask. Also, check with your communications team (if you have one) on their lessons learned with communication in a certain division. What works well? What has fallen short in the past? My company has some great folks in this area and they were a strong ally for me.

A few challenged that I encountered during my data collection and analyzation stage were:

 Ensuring that I am gathering enough voices. Diverse perspectives are so important, especially in a large organization. I was very conscientious about this fact and spent considerable time creating my focus groups with multiple crew and contractors, leaders and managers, trainers and onboarders, all the while ensuring that I had a mix of tenures, teams, and cross site representation of the division. I likely completed more focus groups than I needed to, especially since the participants were sharing the same adherence story again and again. I should have recognized that and perhaps not completed the last one or two, but they were already scheduled. Ultimately though, focus groups are incredible engaging for our crew and when they get the change to share their voices, opinions, ideas, and feedback, they greatly get the chance to be a part of the solution – so no regrets for me for giving that extra time to the teams.  

1. Analyzing and Affinitizing the voices. Summarizing large amounts of data can often prove to be challenging and definitely was for my adherence focus groups. I gathered a lot of voices and had hundreds of direct quotes, responses, ideas, innovations, etc. Affinitizing those thoughts and finding the best way to summarize, document, communicate, and move into next steps can be a bit daunting. I think an important lesson is knowing your audience and what kind of communication is preferred and desired. I made sure that I asked directly to each of my business partners regarding their desired communication methods. This helped greatly. I also looked back at my prior experiences with this senior leadership team, which led me to choose a Mural board as my main visual when I met and communicated with them. On my board, I included quotes, ideas, themes, and everything was color coded, making it very easy to read, even if I was not present (very important). I also added some additional visuals – circles, arrows, highlights – to even better stress a theme or finding. This was very effective and my senior team was very pleased with my deliverable. However, I am an internal consultant and my original coding for the focus group assignment was not up to par had I been an external consultant. I re-reviewed my comments, utilized an in vivo coding methodology (using the participants own words) and created categories to simplify and best tell my focus group story.