WFED572:

Lesson 4 Overview

The first three steps of the OD process change are

1. entry (which means attracting contacts from prospective sponsors and clients);
2. prelaunch (which means trying to find out what is going with the problem or situation facing the sponsors and clients); and
3. launch (which means collecting information about the problem, getting clarity on the appropriate solution, action planning, and implementation).

Entry is all about marketing; prelaunch is about initial client contact; and launch is about assessing and feeding back information about the current situation and desired situation, helping sponsors and clients reach clarity about how to solve their (that is, the sponsor's and client's) problem, how to implement the solution, and how to implement an intervention (change effort). The sponsor is the individual or group that pays for the consulting effort; the client is the individual, group, or organization that is to be helped.

To work as an OD consultant, you must be able to get business. That requires successful entry to client systems. (A client system consists of the people to be helped.) Once that initial contact is made, some information must be gathered about the organization that is experiencing the problem, what has already been done about it, what results were initially achieved, and what the sponsor wants to happen in the situation. Once that information is gathered, the consultant will prepare a proposal and negotiate a contract with the sponsor. At the end of that prelaunch process, the consultant works with the sponsor and client to help implement the sponsor and client's solution.

Lesson Objectives

After successfully completing this lesson, you should be able to

• explain the tasks and the challenges in the entry phase of OD,
• explain the tasks and the challenges in the prelaunch phase of OD, and
• explain the tasks and the challenges in the launch phase of OD.

Lesson Readings and Activities

By the end of this lesson, make sure you have completed the readings and activities found in the Lesson 4 Course Schedule.

Defining Entry and How It Works

If you are a consultant, you must market your services if you are to receive contacts from prospective sponsors or clients. Recall that a sponsor is the person or group who will pay your bill, whereas a client is the person or group that stands to benefit from the consulting process. Sometimes a sponsor is both sponsor and client; sometimes the sponsor and client are distinctly different. For instance, if a CEO calls in a consultant to help with a reorganization, then the CEO is both sponsor (paying the bill) and client (recipient of help to make the reorganization). Alternatively, suppose a CEO calls in a consultant to help with executive coaching for one senior manager. In that second example, the CEO is the sponsor, but the executive to be coached is the client.

A very important question in OD consulting is “Who is the client?” That means “who is really being helped?” That is important because it is essential to know who is to be changed and how that person or group is to be involved in that change process.

During entry, OD consultants are often passive. They do not reach out to make cold calls to prospective customers in the same way that an (annoying) telemarketer might call to ask if you want to buy something.

Indeed, the big challenge in OD consulting is to get those client leads. (A lead means an individual or organization that wants help.)

According to Alan Weiss in Chapter 8, “Entry: Marketing and Positioning Organization Development” of your text, one way to succeed in the entry phase is to create a gravity well that sucks in prospective sponsors (Weiss, 2016). The goal is to do so many things that those who believe they need help on an issue are drawn to you and your consulting firm for that help.

Suppose you are an OD consultant who wishes to market outdoor team-building efforts, which is sometimes called adventure learning. To that end, there are many things you could do to send signals out to the world that you wish to do that kind of work. You could

• create a website that touts your skills and abilities;
• create a LinkedIn description of your skills and abilities;
• write a newsletter about your special approach to team building;
• approach local groups—such as church groups, synagogues, and community groups, such as Rotary, Kiwanis or Lion’s Club, and local groups of such organizations as the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the Association for Talent Development (ATD) or the OD Network—to volunteer to do talks about your approach to team building;
• approach groups that offer webinars (that is, seminars over the web) to offer to conduct webinars on team building;
• offer free samples of your efforts (that is, free sample outdoor team-building events);
• conduct talks at regional or national conferences of various groups on your approach to team building; and
• build relationships with other consultants who offer services that may be compatible with your business.

Carrying out these efforts are examples of the many things you could do to create a gravity well of the kind that Weiss is talking about in Chapter 8 of Practicing OD (Weiss, 2016).

If your efforts are successful, you should begin to generate leads. One important question to ask everyone who contacts you is “How did you hear about me?” The answer will provide useful information about which approaches to generating leads are most effective and thus worthy of more effort and investment.

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References

Weiss, A. (2016). Chapter 8: Entry: Marketing and positioning organization development: In W. J. Rothwell, J. Stavros, & R. L. Sullivan (Eds.). Practicing organization development: Leading transformation and change (4th ed., pp. 137–153). John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Defining Prelaunch and How It Works

Prelaunch refers to the process of gathering information about the sponsor and the client. It is the step that precedes all efforts to implement change. It includes

• initial data gathering,
• proposal preparation and presentation,
• contracting and contract negotiations,
• assessment and feedback of information about the problem or issue,
• selecting solutions and interventions,
• planning for action and change, and
• clarifying change objectives and metrics.

Initial data gathering means collecting information from the sponsor and other stakeholders—before a proposal is prepared—about the problem or issue that led to the consultant being contacted. For instance, if the sponsor is complaining about morale problems, then initial data gathering usually involves emails, phone conversations, video sessions, or on-site meetings in which the consultant collects information about the problem. The goal of initial data gathering is to collect enough information to write a consulting proposal.

Typical questions posed in initial data gathering include the following:

• What seems to be the problem? What has already been done about it? What would success look like, and how much is the problem costing in money, customer goodwill, or other consequences/impacts of the problem?
• What does the sponsor think an appropriate solution should be?
• What are the sponsor's preferences in implementing a solution?
• What is the timeline for action? Does the sponsor have legitimate reasons to need a solution by a specific date?
• What might be the sponsor’s sensitivity to costs? Is there a budget for the intervention/change effort?
• How will (or should) success be measured?
• Who should be involved in the change effort/solution/intervention and why?

If answers to these and similar questions are gathered by consultants during the initial data gathering, then enough information should exist to write a proposal.

Proposal

A subsequent lesson will describe proposals in greater depth, but suffice it to say that any good proposal should answer the following questions:

• What is the problem or issue that is to be the focus of change? (Problem statement)
• What is the solution to the problem or issue, and what is the justification for it? (Solution statement)
• What are the action steps in a project to implement the solution/change intervention? (Project steps)
• What is the timeline for implementing the action steps? (Gantt chart showing the time and the action steps)
• What is the budget? (The budget is calculated separately, and costs and benefits are both shown. Separate budgets are usually prepared for actual consulting work and the expenses involved in doing the work, such as travel and photocopying fees.)
• Who will work on the project? (Staffing descriptions)

Good proposals match the requirements of those receiving them. Typically, senior leaders prefer short proposals (one or two pages); middle managers prefer longer, more detailed proposals (up to 15 pages). Consultants should always clarify with sponsors how long the proposal should be, when it should be submitted, and how it should be submitted.

OD proposals do not assume, as management or performance consulting proposals do, that the consultant will do all the analysis and make all recommendations. Instead, OD is all about participative change and is based on the assumption that the best experts about an organization are the people inside the organization and not external consultants. It is not unusual for OD consultants to offer two proposals. The first focuses on assessing information about the problem from stakeholders and then feeding back information about the problem or issue to the stakeholders to get agreement on the problem, the solutions, the action steps, and the metrics.

The second proposal focuses on implementing the OD intervention/change effort. It is done like this because it is not wise to assume that everyone knows at the outset what the problems are, how important they are, what is causing them, how they should be solved, how success should be measured, and similar issues that must be the focus of consensus-building within the organization's stakeholder groups.

Data about the problems or issues may be gathered by consultants or even by clients under consultant guidance. They are then fed back to key stakeholders. When agreement is reached on the problem, then consultants (or clients under consultant guidance) gather information about how best to solve the problems, implement the solutions, and measure success.

Action planning is the process of guiding agreement among stakeholders on how to implement the solutions and measure success. It is important to establish change objectives, which are measurable indicators (metrics) for success. Without change objectives, it will not be possible to focus stakeholders on the same goals for change and how to evaluate success.

Defining Launch and How It Works

Launch means execution or implementation. Most organizational leaders know that grand designs and plans founder on crude procedures. Most change fails during implementation.

An OD intervention may take a long time to implement. It could take years. Milestones can be established to indicate what measurable objectives or goals should be achieved by specific points in time. But someone—and this is sometimes a role for OD consultants—must continuously facilitate the change, communicate about it, train people to perform the new roles they need to enact to make the change work, and address conflicts about the change that emerge over time. In short, a key secret to successful change implementation is continuing follow-up. If in real estate the saying is “location, location, location,” then the saying in implementing successful change is “follow up, follow up, follow up.” Someone must be following up with leaders and all other stakeholders, individually and collectively to keep the change impetus alive, to monitor progress, and to communicate about the change. An important point to emphasize, though, is that OD consultants serve as facilitators, not as the champions of change (an advocacy role usually played by senior leaders) or as “medical doctors” to do all the analysis and implement the recommendations (a role usually played by different kinds of consultants, not by OD consultants).

Perhaps the most famous change agent of all time was the biblical Moses. Imagine: Moses was able to get an entire race of people to move from Egypt to Israel. It took 40 years to make the journey.

That meant Moses started from Egypt with the grandparents and arrived 40 years later in Israel with the grandchildren! It is not difficult to imagine that every few minutes someone asked, “Are we there yet?” or offered such complaints as “I’m tired,” “I’m sleepy,” “I’m hungry,” “Where are we going?” and “Let’s stop.” And yet Moses led the people successfully. The moral of the story is that OD consultants must be like Moses and be patient enough to ensure that people are continuously reminded of why they are changing, how they are changing, what benefits are stemming from the change, why they should keep changing, and so forth.

Lesson 4 Enhance Your Learning

Lesson Activities

Lesson 4 Discussion

In the discussion, respond to the following question:

• Both internal and external consultants face a marketing challenge. External consultants must get leads and eventually secure clients. But internal OD consultants must also market themselves internally to organizational clients. Regardless of your own experience and role, what suggestions would you have for internal OD consultants to build awareness of their capabilities to help managers and organizations? Please offer a list of actions for internal OD consultants to take to "market" themselves and their capabilities inside the organization.

Respond to two postings from your peers. Note: If two posts have been made to one peer, choose another peer’s response for your posting. Responses and postings will be evaluated on the quantity and quality of your submissions.

Research-Based Article Abstract

A research-based article summarizes the results of qualitative or quantitative research and reflects a systematic investigation of a topic. To emphasize: A research article is not based entirely or solely on the author's opinion. Examples of research articles might include studies focused on literature reviews, systematically conducted surveys, focus groups, social science experiments, or systematically conducted and analyzed interviews.

To complete this assignment, identify a research-based article on organization development or change management from such sources as Organization Development Journal, Leadership and Organizational Change, The Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Group and Organization Studies, Organization Dynamics, Human Resource Development Quarterly, Performance Improvement Quarterly, or other relevant journals. Be sure that the article you select is based on research. (Points will be deducted if you choose an article based solely on one author's opinion or a group of authors' opinions.)

For purposes of this assignment, your research-based article should focus on the topic of managing or facilitating change in an organizational setting.

Begin each abstract with a complete bibliographic citation (using the current edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association).

After the bibliographic citation, describe

• the research problem or issue that was investigated,
• the research questions or objectives (if reported),
• the methodology used (that is, how the study was conducted),
• the approach to sampling used (if any),
• the study's results,
• key limitations and/or assumptions of the researcher (if listed), and
• issues identified for future study by the researcher (if any).

The paper should be five to six double-spaced pages.

Use the Grade Sheet for Research Abstract to assess yourself to ensure that you met the assignment's requirements before submission. Please submit your own self-graded grade sheet with your completed assignment.

Ellsa Cahoy, Education librarian, provides suggestions on the sources indicated above. Here is the library guide for Databases for Organization Development and Change at Penn State Libraries.

Note: Video removed. You will have access to the video in the actual course.