1.What did Betty do wrong prior to the meeting and what could have been done to avoid missing the deadline?

Betty could have managed the situation better by keeping track of Don’s progress. She said he had a history of turning things in late, knowing that she could have checked in with him at three weeks to the deadline and again a week and a half before it was due, and the end of the prior week, just to see if anything came up that required extra time or if more resources were needed for the project.

2. What did Betty do wrong in the meeting itself, and what could have been done to make the meeting more effective?

In addition to asking for updates, she could have asked Don what the status of the report is. Instead, she started to attack him for being late. There is a number of reasons that it may not be ready. It may have been more productive to work with him to solve the problem, and then go back to figure out what went wrong.

The problem started to escalate when Betty began to attack Don personally, for always being behind, having a messy office, and then she threatened his job. It was counterproductive and if anything, may have left him demotivated to complete the project, worst-case scenario is that he quit and she’ll be stuck completing it.

3. What should Don have done to be more effective?

Don should have provided Betty with an update when he ran into his first issue. One can assume that the reason she asked him to do the project is because of his diligence and attention to detail. If he had told her that there was an issue with the numbers, she may have been more willing to allocate additional resources to assist him with the project to ensure that it would be completed on time.

He called Betty to provide an update, but when she didn’t return his call, he should have persisted to ensure that she got the message instead, she was blindsided when she returned to the office.

“Organization Development (OD) is a change effort that is carried out in a participative way, involving those affected by the change, and that uses action research as a key roadmap for the change” (Rothwell, 2012, p. 276).

Action Research is a representative approach and process, which serves as a model for most OD interventions. Please post your lesson learned from the OD approach.

I struggled this week. I reported on the results of a survey. The meat of the presentation was to focus on the committees that comprise the council is made up. Many leaders feel that there are too many committees and that there is an opportunity to merge them. When I presented the results, the group started to talk about the people who participate in the meetings, not the potential that could arise from merging some committees.

The discussion was fruitful. The group reached a consensus to shifting from committees to project teams. The discussion also raised a recurring topic about the role of the senior leadership team at committee meetings. Do they have a place? Should they have their own group? What benefit do they bring? How much of the conversation does their presence hinder?

I spent a lot of time reflecting on:

• My performance as a facilitator
• Potential ways to address senior leadership participation
• How to write a survey

The final point, about how to write a survey and how the results are shared, made me think of Edgar Schein and how everything is an intervention, and how as practitioners, we must always come from a place of inquiry.

The number of committees drives me crazy. There is so much overlap between the committees that when one committee works on something, they typically have to run it through two more before the idea is presented to senior leadership. I didn’t know it at the time, but I let my feelings and perceptions drive the questions on the survey. Although I shared it with the council chairs and received approval, it originated from my frustration and observation that there are too many. As a practitioner, I need to pay more attention to the reasons I say or do something. Is it because I’m trying to push my own agenda, or is it because it’s something that has come up with the group I’m working with? I wonder if I should have shared the questions with the committee chairs before the survey to get their feedback on the questions before posing the questions?

When I thought back to the presentation of survey results and the way I facilitated, I was happy with the amount of discussion, the openness of the participants, and their desire to continue to reflect and improve on what has happened over the past year with the work of shifting the culture to be more inclusive. I realize that more came from the discussion than what I had originally intended. The group is leaning towards shifting to project-based work. There needs to be a space for senior leadership to participate in a way that doesn’t hinder discussion.

In what way does this discussion represent action research? This conversation was one of many in which we’ve discussed what has been done and where we want to go. The group comprises people of all ranks and experience in the organization who are drawn together to make the workplace more inclusive. The Action Research steps that I’ve accomplished with the council is:

1. Recognized an organizational problem: The DEI Council has implemented several great initiatives, but they have yet to make transformative headway in the organization’s culture.
2. Hire a consultant: They hired me as an internal consultant to discover more integration in the organization.
3. Investigate the organization: As an internal consultant, I’m familiar with the organization, the stakeholders, how it’s structured, and the work it does.
4. Collect information about the problem from stakeholders: I’ve conducted interviews and surveys to get a sense of what’s working and what can be improved.
5. Provide feedback about the problem to stakeholders: This is where I tripped up a bit. I thought I knew the main problem: too many committees that were slowing down the work and momentum. But, in providing the feedback, another issue surfaced, which is the role of senior leaders in the committees.
6. Agree on the problem: The structure of the council and the role of senior leadership have been agreed upon by the committee chairs as a problem.
7. Collect information about the solution from the stakeholders: This is where I’m going to go outside of the organization. The DEI council is the first time that employees have been allowed to change the culture. It’s new, unexplored territory. Now that some issues have surfaced beyond the integration of a new culture, I will reach out to other departments within our institution and outside to get a sense of how they have formed their committee work and what roles senior leadership plays.

Reference

Donahue, W. (n.d.) Action research model. Approach for project: Action research model. Pennsylvania State University. Retrieved from https://psu.instructure.com/courses/2141433/modules/items/32216726