OEC Handout # 10

Organizational Learning

In his book The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, Peter Senge defines a learning organization as the big one that can create the results it truly desires.
According to Senge:
Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human. Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do. Through learning we repercieve the world and our relationship to it. Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life. There is within each of us a deep hunger for this type of [learning.]
The reality each of us sees and understands depend on what we believe there is. By learning the principles of the five disciplines, teams begin to understand how they can think and inquire their realities, in a way that enhances collaboration in discussions and in working together towards creating the results that matter (to all them).
In the Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge describes learning organizations as places "where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole (reality) together". They do so by:
Seeing, learning and practicing to work with interrelations (circles of causality or "feedback") as well as processes of change (or the time (delays) it takes for change to happen). The extent to which we see and work with these feedbacks and delays hinges on the frames or lenses we are using to help us make sense of our realities. Are we learning to see (practice) the "whole story" or a part of it (linear cause-effect)? The extent to which we see our frames determines the extent to which we understand our realities.
Sharing a set of tools / methodologies and theories: A learning organization creates a common and agreed upon understanding of terms, concepts, categories and keywords that apply within that organization that facilitates this work. See: http://www.lopn.net/60_Tools.html.
Building Guiding Ideas: Leaders and members in a Learning Organization, see primacy of the whole (understand complexities), the generative power of language (generative conversations by recognizing one's frames that get in the way of seeing another's frames) and the community nature of self (seeing oneself and the connectedness to the whole and the world). The true learning organization is redesigning itself constantly or not merely led by the leader (and his frame). A leader in the organization instead supports this redesigning by acting as a steward (stewarding persons' visions), teacher and designer (bringing different views together for all of us to see the extent of the system (or ship)as compared to the merely being the captain of the ship).
In a way those who work in a learning organization are “fully awakened” people. They are engaged in their work, striving to reach their potential, by sharing the vision of a worthy goal with team colleagues. They have mental models to guide them in the pursuit of personal mastery, and their personal goals are in alignment with the mission of the organization. Working in a learning organization is far from being a slave to a job that is unsatisfying; rather, it is seeing one’s work as part of a whole, a system where there are interrelationships and processes that depend on each other. Consequently, awakened workers take risks in order to learn, and they understand how to seek enduring solutions to problems instead of quick fixes. Lifelong commitment to high quality work can result when teams work together to capitalize on the synergy of the continuous group learning for optimal performance. Those in learning organizations are not slaves to living beings, but they can serve others in effective ways because they are well-prepared for change and working with others.
Organizational learning involves individual learning, and those who make the shift from traditional organization thinking to learning organizations develop the ability to think critically and creatively. These skills transfer nicely to the values and assumptions inherent in Organization Development (OD). Organization Development is a “long-term effort at continuous improvement supported at all levels of the organization, using interdisciplinary approaches and modern technologies.”1 Organization Development is the mother field that encompasses interventions, such as organization learning. OD is about people and how they work with others to achieve personal and organizational goals. Many times achieving goals means making changes that require creative thinking and problem solving. French and Bell report that the values held by OD practitioners include “wanting to create change, to positively impact people and organizations, enhance the effectiveness and profitability of organizations, [to] learn and grow, and exercise power and influence.” (1995, p. 77) Although values do shift over time, the values held by OD practitioners mesh well with the characteristics of learning organizations as outlined in this paper.
The paper is organized according to the five disciplines that Peter Senge (1990) says are the core disciplines in building the learning organization: personal mastery, mental models, team learning, shared vision, and systems thinking.2 Even though the paper makes liberal use of Senge’s pervasive ideas, it also refers to OD practitioners such as Chris Argyris, Juanita Brown, Charles Handy, and others. What these writers have in common is a belief in the ability of people and organizations to change and become more effective, and that change requires open communication and empowerment of community members as well as a culture of collaboration. Those also happen to be the characteristics of a learning organization. The paper is influenced by team meetings in which the five authors prepared a class presentation on the topic of learning organizations. The team worked to emulate a learning community within the group. The paper reflects the learning, reflection, and discussion that accompanied the process.
Personal Mastery
Personal mastery is what Peter Senge describes as one of the core disciplines needed to build a learning organization. Personal mastery applies to individual learning, and Senge says that organizations cannot learn until their members begin to learn. Personal Mastery has two components. First, one must define what one is trying to achieve (a goal). Second, one must have a true measure of how close one is to the goal. (Senge, 1990)
It should be noted that the word ’goal’, in this context, is not used the same way it normally is in management. Managers have been conditioned to think in terms of short-term and long-term goals. Long-term goals for the American manager are often something to be achieved in the next three to five years. In personal mastery, the goal, or what one is trying to achieve, is much further away in distance. It may take a lifetime to reach it, if one ever does. (Senge, 1990) Vision is a more accurate word for it. Senge worked with Chart House International to prepare a videotape on Personal Mastery. In the videotape, the idea of lifelong learning is represented by the story of Antonio Stradivari whose quest was a particular musical sound that could be produced by a violin. Stradivari spent his entire life in the pursuit of that sound. He made constant refinements to the violins he crafted and produced instruments that are considered outstanding to this day. No one will ever know if Stradivari was fully satisfied with his last violin. Senge would say that Stradivari was not satisfied because of his obsession with continually trying to improve on the sound. (Senge, Self-Mastery, 1995) Senge refers to the process of continual improvement as ‘generative learning.’ (Senge, 1990)
The gap that exists between where one is currently functioning and where one wants to be is referred to as ‘creative tension.’ Senge illustrates this with the image of a rubber band pulled between two hands. The hand on the top represents where one wants to be and the hand on the bottom represents where one currently is. The tension on the rubber band as it is pulled between the two hands is what gives the creative drive. Creativity results when one is so unsatisfied with the current situation that one is driven to change it. (Senge, 1990) Another aspect of personal mastery is that one has a clear concept of current reality. Emphasis is placed on the word ‘clear’ here. One must be able to see reality as it truly is without biases or misconceptions. If one has an accurate view of reality, one will see constraints that are present. The creative individual knows that life involves working within constraints and will not waver in trying to achieve the vision. Creativity may involve using the constraints to one's advantage. (Senge, 1990)
Handy has a similar concept in his ‘wheel of learning.’ The wheel consists of four quadrants: questions, ideas, tests, and reflection. The metaphor of the wheel makes one think of something moving. What keeps the wheel moving is:
Subsidiarity: Giving away power to those closest to the action,
Clubs and Congresses: Places and opportunities for meeting and talking,
Horizontal Fast-Tracks: Horizontal Career-Tracks that rotate people through a variety of different jobs in the new, flattened organization,
Self-enlightenment: Individual responsibility for his own learning,
Incidental Learning: Treat every incident as a case study from which learning can occur.
The driver of the wheel should be the leader of the organization who sets the example for others to follow. (Handy, 1995.)
Individuals who practice personal mastery experience other changes in their thinking. They learn to use both reason and intuition to create. They become systems thinkers who see the interconnectedness of everything around them and, as a result, they feel more connected to the whole. It is exactly this type of individual that one needs at every level of an organization for the organization to learn. (Senge, 1990) Traditional managers have always thought that they had to have all the answers for their organization. The managers of the learning organization know that their staff has the answers. The job of the manager in the learning organization is to be the teacher or coach who helps unleash the creative energy in each individual. Organizations learn through the synergy of the individual learners. (Senge, “The Leader’s New Work,” 1990)
Mental Models
Mental models are the second of Senge's five disciplines for the learning organization.(Senge, The Leader’s New Work, 1990) Much of the work involving mental models comes from Chris Argyris and his colleagues at Harvard University. A mental model is one's way of looking at the world. It is a framework for the cognitive processes of our mind. In other words, it determines how we think and act. A simple example of a mental model comes from an exercise described in The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook. In this exercise, pairs of conference participants are asked to arm wrestle. They are told that winning in arm wrestling means the act of lowering their partner's arm to the table. Most people struggle against their partner to win. Their mental model is that there can be only one winner in arm wrestling and that this is done by lowering their partner's arm more times than their partner can do the same thing to them. Argyris contends that these people have a flawed mental model.
An alternative model would present a framework where both partners could win. If they stop resisting each other, they can work together flipping their arms back and forth. The end result is that they can both win and they can win many more times than if they were working against each other. (Senge, 1994) Argyris says that most of our mental models are flawed. He says that everyone has ‘theories of action’ which are a set of rules that we use for our own behaviors as well as to understand the behaviors of others. However, people don't usually follow their stated action theories. The way they really behave can be called their ‘theory-in-use.’ It is usual:
To remain in unilateral control,
To maximize winning and minimize losing,
To suppress negative feelings, and
To be as rational as possible by which people mean defining clear objectives and evaluating their behavior in terms of whether or not they have achieved them. (Argyris, 1991)
People act this way to avoid embarrassment or threat. (Argyris, 1991) Argyris says that most people practice defensive reasoning, and because people make up organizations, those organizations also do the same thing. So at the same time the organization is avoiding embarrassment or threat, it is also avoiding learning. Learning only comes from seeing the world the way it really is. (Argyris, 1993) Argyris believes that we arrive at our actions through what he calls the ‘ladder of inference.’ First, one observes something i.e., a behavior, a conversation, etc., and that becomes the bottom rung of a ladder. One then applies his or her own theories to the observation. That results in the next rung on the ladder. Subsequent rungs on the ladder are assumptions we make, conclusions we draw, beliefs we come to have about the world, and finally the action we decide to take. As we climb farther up the ladder, we are becoming more abstract in our thoughts. Unfortunately, our flawed mental models usually cause us to make mistakes in this process of abstraction, and we end up with inappropriate actions. This entire process becomes a loop. We generalize our beliefs and assumptions to the next situation we encounter and use them to filter the data we are willing to consider. Hence, every time we start up the ladder for a new situation, we are handicapped from the beginning. (Argyris, 1993; Senge, Fieldbook, 1994)
Teams
WHAT IS A TEAM AND WHY ARE THEY IMPORTANT?
A team, say Robbins and Finley, is “people doing something together.” It could be a baseball team or a research team or a rescue team. It isn’t what a team does that makes it a team; it is a fact that they do it “together.” (Robbins and Finley, 1995, p. 10) “Teams and teamwork are the ‘hottest’ thing happening in organizations today...” according to French and Bell. (1995, p. 97) A workplace team is more than a work group, “a number of persons, usually reporting to a common superior and having some facetoface interaction, who have some degree of interdependence in carrying out tasks for the purpose of achieving organizational goals.” (French and Bell, 1995, p. 169)
A workplace team is closer to what is called a selfdirected work team or SDWT, which can be defined as follows: “A selfdirected work team is a natural work group of interdependent employees who share most, if not all, the roles of a traditional supervisor.” (Hitchcock and Willard, 1995, p. 4) Since teams usually have team leaders, sometimes called coaches, the definition used by Katzenbach and Smith in French and Bell seems the most widely applicable: “A team is a small number of people with complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose, set of performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.” (1995, p. 112)
Organization development (OD) focuses on the human side of organizations. It is believed that individuals who have some control over how their work is done will be more satisfied and perform better. This is called empowerment in OD. Put these empowered individuals together into teams and the results will be extraordinary, we are told. French and Bell put it this way:
A fundamental belief in organization development is that work teams are the building blocks of organizations. A second fundamental belief is that teams must manage their culture, processes, systems, and relationships, if they are to be effective. Theory, research, and practice attest to the central role teams play in organizational success. Teams and teamwork are part of the foundation of organization development. (French and Bell, 1995, p. 87)
CHARACTERISTICS OF SUCCESSFUL TEAMS
OD interventions are divided into two basic groups: diagnosis and action or process. Team building is one type of process intervention. In fact, French and Bell consider teams and work groups to be the “fundamental unitsof organizations” and the “key leverage points for improving the functioning of the organization.” (1995, p. 171)
A number of writers have studied teams, looking for the characteristics that make some successful. Larson and LaFasto looked at highperformance groups as diverse as a championship football team and a heart transplant team and found eight characteristics that are always present. They are listed below:
A clear, elevating goal
A resultsdriven structure
Competent team members
Unified commitment
A collaborative climate
Standards of excellence
External support and recognition
Principled leadership (Larson and LaFasto, 1989, in French and Bell, 1995, p. 98)
How does a group become a highperformance team? Lippitt maintains that groups operate on four levels: organizational expectations, group tasks, group maintenance, and individual needs. Maintenancelevel activities include encouraging by showing regard for others, expressing and exploring group feelings, compromising and admitting error, gatekeeping to facilitate the participation of others, and setting standards for evaluating group functioning and production. (Lippett, 1982, p. 9)
Lippitt defines teamwork as the way a group is able to solve its problems. Teamwork is demonstrated in groups by: (a)”...the group’s ability to examine its process to constantly improve itself as a team,” and (b) ”the requirement for trust and openness in communication and relationships.” The former is characterized by group interaction, interpersonal relations, group goals, and communication. The latter is characterized by a high tolerance for differing opinions and personalities. (Lippett, 1982, p. 207-208)
TEAM BUILDING AND TEAM LEARNING
A recent concept in OD is that of the learning organization. Peter Senge considers the team to be a key learning unit in the organization. According to Senge, the definition of team learning is:
...the process of aligning and developing the capacity of a team to create the results its members truly desire. It builds on the discipline of developing shared vision. It also builds on personal mastery, for talented teams are made up of talented individuals. (1990, p. 236)
Senge describes a number of components of team learning. The first is dialogue. Drawing on conversations with physicist, David Bohm, he identifies three conditions that are necessary for dialogue to occur: All participants must “suspend their assumptions;” all participants must “regard one another as colleagues;” and there must be a facilitator (at least until teams develop these skills) “who holds the context of the dialogue.” Bohm asserts that “hierarchy is antithetical to dialogue, and it is difficult to escape hierarchy in organizations.” (Senge, 1990, p. 245) Suspending all assumptions is also difficult, but is necessary to reshape thinking about reality.
Before a team can learn, it must become a team. In the 1970s, psychologist B. W. Tuckman identified four stages that teams had to go through to be successful. They are:
Forming: When a group is just learning to deal with one another; a time when minimal work gets accomplished.
Storming: A time of stressful negotiation of the terms under which the team will work together; a trial by fire.
Norming: A time in which roles are accepted, team feeling develops, and information is freely shared.
Performing: When optimal levels are finally realized—in productivity, quality, decision making, allocation of resources, and interpersonal interdependence.
Tuckman asserts that no team goes straight from forming to performing.“Struggle and adaptation are critical, difficult, but very necessary parts of team development.” (Robbins and Finley, 1995, p. 187)
Senge’s characterization of dealing with conflict draws on Chris Argyris. Argyris writes about how even professionals avoid learning, using entrenched habits to protect themselves from the embarrassment and threat that comes with exposing their thinking. The act of encouraging more open discussion is seen as intimidating, and they feel vulnerable. (Argyris, 1994, p. 346-7)) The missing link for Senge is practice. Team learning is a team skill that can be learned. Practice is gained through dialogue sessions, learning laboratories, and microworlds. (Senge, 1990, p. 245) Microworlds are computerbased microcosms of reality, in which one learns by experimentation . Examples are Logo, in which children learn the principles of geometry, and SimCity, in which one literally builds a city, making all the decisions and learning the consequences of those decisions. Simulation, Senge believes, is a tool for learning “How do things work?” and just as important, “How might they work differently?” (Senge, 1990, p. 338)
TEAM PRACTICES
Contributors to The Fifth Discipline Fieldbook declare that team learning is not team building, describing the latter as creating courteous behaviors, improving communication, becoming better able to perform work tasks together, and building strong relationships. (Senge, 1990, p. 355) Just as teams pool their knowledge and then examine it from many different angles, so have the practitioners of OD shared their different perspectives and experiences. One such OD “strategist” is Juanita Brown, who has coached organizations toward innovative ways to involve employees. Looking back on groups with which she has worked, she recounts those experiences where team building turned into team learning. She draws inspiration from the community development movement and from the study of voluntary organizations. Roots of this are found in the work of Miles Horton, Paulo Freire, the Scandinavian study circles, Saul Alinsky, M. Scott Peck, and Marvin Weisbord. (Senge, Fieldbook, p. 508-9)
Of particular interest is her description of the San Francisco Foundation, a funder of worthy causes throughout the Bay area, which she counseled through a period of extraordinary growth, change, and pressure. Foundations may promote innovative projects, yet they are seldom organized progressively themselves. The executive director, Martin Paley, wanted to shift the role of the Distribution Committee from administrative decisions to policy making, involve the community in a dialogue on project directions, and then for the first time publish explicit grant guidelines in a newsletter. He also faced the delightful problem of an extremely large bequest. Approaching it as an adventure, he hired Juanita Brown as a long range planning consultant. In addition, he attended a systems dynamics training session led by Peter Senge at M.I.T. (Sibbert and Brown, 1986)
Six ‘Commitment to the Community’ input sessions were held to open the foundation to new ideas. What they heard was that this foundation didn’t belong to the Distribution Committee or to the staff; it belonged to the community and community members wanted “damn good care” taken of it. They came to think of the foundation as a kind of community development bank. They learned that every meeting agenda is subject to change; that they had too much structure; and that people can learn from each other. (Sibbert and Brown, 1986)
Brown expressed her belief in the importance of dialogue as follows: “Strategic dialogue is built on the operating principle that the stakeholders in any system already have within them the wisdom and creativity to confront even the most difficult challenges.” The ‘community of inquiry’ can extend beyond employees to include unions, customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders, becoming a “dynamic and reinforcing process which helps create and strengthen the ‘communities of commitment’ which Fred Kofman and Peter Senge emphasize lie at the heart of learning organizations capable of leading the way towarda sustainable future.” (Bennet and Brown, 1995, p. 167)
EVALUATION
While much anecdotal evidence exists, there remains a lack of a clear understanding of how to really describe and measure team learning. As Senge stated:
Until we can describe the phenomenon better, it [team learning] will remain mysterious. Until we have some theory of what happens when teams learn (as opposed to individuals in teams learning), we will be unable to distinguish group intelligence from ‘group think,’ when individuals succumb to group pressures for conformity. Until there are reliable methods for building teams that can learn together, its occurrence will remain a product of happenstance. (1990, p. 228)
Shared Vision
What does it mean to have a shared vision? A shared vision begins with the individual, and an individual vision is something that one person holds as a truth. Throughout history there are many examples of people who have had a strong vision, some of these people are remembered even today. One example is John Brown with his vision of a holy war to free the slaves, which culminated in his attack on Harpers Ferry, Virginia, in 1859. According to Carl Jung, "Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart.... Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes." (Mindscape, 1995)
What is this vision that is found within our hearts? According to WordNet,3 a vision is a vivid mental image. In this context, vivid means graphic and lifelike. Based on this, it can be concluded that a vision is a graphic and lifelike mental image that is very important to us, i.e., held within our hearts. The vision is often a goal that the individual wants to reach. In systems thinking that goal is most often a long term goal, something that can be a leading star for the individual.
The shared vision of an organization must be built of the individual visions of its members. What this means for the leader in the Learning Organization is that the organizational vision must not be created by the leader, rather, the vision must be created through interaction with the individuals in the organization. Only by compromising between the individual visions and the development of these visions in a common direction can the shared vision be created. The leader's role in creating a shared vision is to share her own vision with the employees. This should not be done to force that vision on others, but rather to encourage others to share their vision too. Based on these visions, the organization's vision should evolve.
It would be naive to expect that the organization can change overnight from having a vision that is communicated from the top to an organization where the vision evolves from the visions of all the people in the organization. The organization will have to go through major change for this to happen, and this is where OD can play a role. In the development of a learning organization, the OD-consultant would use the same tools as before, just on a much broader scale.
What is a shared vision? To come up with a classification for shared visions would be close to impossible. Going back to the definition of a vision as a graphic and lifelike mental image that is very important to us, Melinda Dekker's drawing [see p. 2] is as good as any other representation of shared vision. The drawing will probably be interpreted differently by people, but still there is something powerful about the imagery that most people can see.
Reflection on shared vision brings the question of whether each individual in the organization must share the rest of the organization's vision. The answer is no, but the individuals who do not share the vision might not contribute as much to the organization. How can someone start to share the rest of the organization's vision? Senge (1990) stresses that visions can not be sold. For a shared vision to develop, members of the organization must enroll in the vision. The difference between these two is that through enrollment the members of the organization choose to participate.
When an organization has a shared vision, the driving force for change comes from what Senge calls "creative tension." Creative tension is the difference between the shared vision and the current reality. With truly committed members the creative tension will drive the organization toward its goals.
John Brown, mentioned earlier, had a vision of freeing the slaves. Obviously, this was not a vision that came out of his own mind. He must have taken the slaves’ vision and shared it with them. Clearly, if the slaves had truly preferred to stay enslaved, John Brown's vision could not have existed. The slaves’ sense of shared vision made it possible for them to die by Brown's side, but they did not die for Brown, they died for a shared vision.
Systems Thinking
In the October 17, 1994 issue of Fortune magazine, Brian Dumaine named Peter M. Senge: "MR. LEARNING ORGANIZATION.” (Dumaine, 1992) Why is it that in a field with so many distinguished contributors, Peter Senge was referred to as the "intellectual and spiritual champion?" (Dumaine, 1992, p. 147) The reason is probably because Senge injected into this field an original and powerful paradigm called ‘systems thinking,’ a paradigm premised upon the primacy of the whole --the antithesis of the traditional evolution of the concept of learning in western cultures.
Humankind has succeeded over time in conquering the physical world and in developing scientific knowledge by adopting an analytical method to understand problems. This method involves breaking a problem into components, studying each part in isolation, and then drawing conclusions about the whole. According to Senge, this sort of linear and mechanistic thinking is becoming increasingly ineffective to address modern problems. (Kofman and Senge, 1993, p. 18) This is because, today, most important issues are interrelated in ways that defy linear causation.
Alternatively, circular causation—where a variable is both the cause and effect of another—has become the norm, rather than the exception. Truly exogenous forces are rare. For example, the state of the economy affects unemployment, which in turn affects the economy. The world has become increasingly interconnected, and endogenous feedback causal loops now dominate the behavior of the important variables in our social and economic systems.
Thus, fragmentation is now a distinctive cultural dysfunction of society.4 (Kofman and Senge, p. 17) In order to understand the source and the solutions to modern problems, linear and mechanistic thinking must give way to non-linear and organic thinking, more commonly referred to as systems thinking—a way of thinking where the primacy of the whole is acknowledged.
THE PRIMACY OF THE WHOLE
David Bohm compares the attempt to understand the whole by putting the pieces together with trying to assemble the fragments of a shattered mirror. It is simply not possible. Kofman & Senge add:
The defining characteristic of a system is that it cannot be understood as a function of its isolated components. First, the behavior of the system doesn't depend on what each part is doing but on how each part is interacting with the rest ... Second, to understand a system we need to understand how it fits into the larger system of which it is a part ... Third, and most important, what we call the parts need not be taken as primary. In fact, how we define the parts is fundamentally a matter of perspective and purpose, not intrinsic in the nature of the 'real thing' we are looking at. (Kofman and Senge, 1993, p. 27)
In his prominent book, The Fifth Discipline, Senge identified some learning disabilities associated with the failure to think systemically. He classified them under the following headings:
"I am my position"
"The enemy is out there"
"The illusion of taking charge"
"The fixation on events"
"The parable of the boiled frog"
"The delusion of learning from experience" (1990, pp. 17 - 26)
Although each of these contains a distinct message, illustrated how traditional thinking can undermine real learning by following up on one example: "the fixation on events."
According to Senge, fragmentation has forced people to focus on snapshots to distinguish patterns of behavior in order to explain past phenomena or to predict future behavior. This is essentially the treatment used in statistical analysis and econometrics, when trying to decipher patterns of relationship and behavior. However, this is not how the world really works: events do not dictate behavior; instead, they are the product of behavior. What really causes behavior are the interactions between the elements of the system. In diagrammatic form:
systems (patterns of relationships) ---> patterns of behavior ---> events (snapshots)
It is commonly recognized that the power of statistical models is limited to explaining past behavior, or to predict future trends (as long as there is no significant change in the pattern of behavior observed in the past). These models have little to say about changes made in a system until new data can be collected and a new model is constructed. Thus, basing problem-solving upon past events is, at best, a reactive effort.
On the other hand, systems modeling is fundamentally different. Oncethe behavior of a system is understood to be a function of the structure and of the relationships between the elements of the system, the system can be artificially modified and, through simulation, we can observe whether the changes made result in the desired behaviors. Therefore, systems thinking, coupled with modeling, constitutes a generative --rather than adaptive-- learning instrument.5
Thus, according to Senge:
Generative learning cannot be sustained in an organization if people's thinking is dominated by short-term events. If we focus on events, the best we can ever do is predict an event before it happens so that we can react optimally. But we cannot learn to create. (1990, p. 22) [emphasis added]
[Source: http://home.nycap.rr.com/klarsen/learnorg/]

OEC Handout # 9

The Process of Empowerment

An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success."
- Stephen Covey

At the core of the concept of empowerment is the idea of power. The possibility of empowerment depends on two things. First, empowerment requires that power can change. If power cannot change, if it is inherent in positions or people, then empowerment is not possible, nor is empowerment conceivable in any meaningful way. In other words, if power can change, then empowerment is possible. Second, the concept of empowerment depends upon the idea that power can expand. This second point reflects our common experiences of power rather than how we think about power. To clarify these points, we first discuss what we mean by power.
Power is often related to our ability to make others do what we want, regardless of their own wishes or interests (Weber, 1946). Traditional social science emphasizes power as influence and control, often treating power as a commodity or structure divorced from human action (Lips, 1991). Conceived in this way, power can be viewed as unchanging or unchangeable. Weber (1946) gives us a key word beyond this limitation by recognizing that power exists within the context of a relationship between people or things. Power does not exist in isolation nor is it inherent in individuals. By implication, since power is created in relationships, power and power relationships can change. Empowerment as a process of change, then, becomes a meaningful concept.
Empowerment is the process of increasing the capacity of individuals or groups to make choices and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes. It enables one to gain power, authority and influence over others, institutions or society. Empowerment is probably the totality of the following or similar capabilities:-
Having decision-making power of one's own
Having access to information and resources for taking proper decision
Having a range of options from which you can make choices (not just yes/no, either/or.)
Ability to exercise assertiveness in collective decision making
Having positive thinking on the ability to make change
Ability to learn skills for improving one's personal or group power.
Ability to change others’ perceptions by democratic means.
Involving in the growth process and changes that is never ending and self-initiated
Increasing one's positive self-image and overcoming stigma
Empowerment is the process that allows one to gain the knowledge, skill-sets and attitude needed to cope with the changing world and the circumstances in which one lives. Employee empowerment is a strategy and philosophy that enables employees to make decisions about their jobs. Employee empowerment helps employees own their work and take responsibility for their results. Employee empowerment helps employees serve customers at the level of the organization where the customer interface exists.

Does empowerment mean absolute authority or absolute power?
The answer is certainly NO. Empowerment refers to enlargement of an employee’s job responsibility by giving him the authority of decision making about his own job without approval of his immediate supervisor. Empowerment is the degree of responsibility and authority given to an employee. By empowerment, the employees are supported and encouraged to utilize their skills, abilities and creativity by accepting accountability for their work. Empowerment occurs when employees are adequately trained, provided with all the relevant information and the best possible tools, fully involved in key decisions, and are fairly rewarded. Employee empowerment entails identifying how much responsibility and authority an individual can effectively handle without becoming over-burdened or distressed. Empowerment includes supervisors and employees working together to establish clear goals and expectations within agreed-upon boundaries.

How to empower employees?
Respect the employees
Your regard for people shines through in all of your actions and words. Your facial expression, your body language, and your words express what you are thinking about the people who report to you. Your goal is to demonstrate your appreciation for each person's unique value. No matter how an employee is performing on their current task, your value for the employee as a human being should never falter and always be visible
Share Leadership Vision
Help people feel that they are part of something bigger than themselves and their individual job. Do this by making sure they know and have access to the organization's overall mission, vision, and strategic plans.
Share Goals and Direction
Share the most important goals and direction for your group. Where possible, either make progress on goals measurable and observable, or ascertain that you have shared your picture of a positive outcome with the people responsible for accomplishing the results.
Trust People
Trust the intentions of people to do the right thing, make the right decision, and make choices that, while maybe not exactly what you would decide, still work.
Provide Information for Decision Making
Make certain that you have given people, or made sure that they have access to, all of the information they need to make thoughtful decisions.
Delegate Authority and Impact Opportunities, Not Just More Work
Don't just delegate the drudge work; delegate some of the fun stuff, too. You know, delegate the important meetings, the committee memberships that influence product development and decision making, and the projects that people and customers notice. The employee will grow and develop new skills. Your plate will be less full so you can concentrate on contribution. Your reporting staff will gratefully shine - and so will you.
Provide Frequent Feedback
Provide frequent feedback so that people know how they are doing. Sometimes, the purpose of feedback is reward and recognition. People deserve your constructive feedback, too, so they can continue to develop their knowledge and skills.
Solve Problems: Don't Pinpoint Problem People
When a problem occurs, ask what is wrong with the work system that caused the people to fail, not what is wrong with the people. Worst-case response to problems? Seek to identify and punish the guilty
Listen to Learn and Ask Questions to Provide Guidance
Provide a space in which people will communicate by listening to them and asking them questions. Guide by asking questions, not by telling grown up people what to do. People generally know the right answers if they have the opportunity to produce them. When an employee brings you a problem to solve, ask, "what do you think you should do to solve this problem?" Or, ask, "What action steps do you recommend?" Employees can demonstrate what they know and grow in the process.”
Help Employees Feel Rewarded and Recognized for Empowered Behavior
When employees feel under-compensated, under-titled for the responsibilities they take on, under-noticed, under-praised, and under-appreciated, don’t expect results from employee empowerment. The basic needs of employees must feel met for employees to give you their discretionary energy, that extra effort that people voluntarily invest in work.

Barriers to empowerment
Empowerment can fail for any one of several reasons:
* The manager's fear of losing power.* Pressure from the manager's boss to be on top of all details.* Rationalization that employees are not ready.* Fear of losing control reduces empowerment.* The feeling that "Only I can make the right decisions".* Fear of having nothing to do...being redundant or having no purpose.* Fear of losing face or status.* Not accepting that subordinates are more knowledgeable or better placed to make some decisions.* Lack of support from the organization's culture - demands for more centralized decision making.* Preaching the value of making mistakes while still punishing them.* Not providing clear authority or boundaries.* Not enabling those empowered - not developing them or giving them sufficient confidence to make decisions independently.* How can you minimize these barriers to empowerment?* Empowerment normally means letting others make decisions that you would normally make.* You can also empower leadership in the sense of encouraging employees to think for themselves and to challenge upwards.

OEC Handout # 8

Power and Politics

Power
POWER: A CAPACITY THAT A HAS TO INFLUENCE THE BEHAVIOR OF B SO THAT B DOES THINGS HE OR SHE WOULD NOT OTHERWISE DO.
This definition implies:
1)A potential that need not be actualized to be Effective.
2)A dependency relationship.
3)The assumption that B has some discretion over his or her own behavior
DEPENDENCY: B’s relationship to A when A possesses
Something that B requires.
To create dependency,the thing you control must be perceived
As: IMPORTANT
SCARCITY
NONSUBSTITUTABILITY

INFLUENCE: The process of affecting the thoughts,behavior and feelings of another person.
AUTHORITY: The right to influence another person

BASES OF POWER
What do power holders control that allow them to manipulate
The behaviors of others.

FORMAL POWER
LEGITIMATE POWER: One’s structural position in an
organization.represents formal authority to control and use
orgn resources.Positions of authority include coercive and
Reward powers however legitimate power is acceptance by
Members in an orgn the authority of a position.
COERCIVE POWER: Power that is based on fear.
REWARD POWER: Compliance based on the the ability
To distribute rewards that others view as valuable.
INFORMATION POWER: Power that comes from access to
And control over information.

SOURCES OF POWER

PERSONAL POWER
Power that comes from an individuals unique characteristics
EXPERT POWER: Influence based on expertise special skills
or knowledge.
REFERENT POWER:An elusive power based on interpersonal
attraction.(desirable resources or personal
traits)
CHARISMATIC POWER:An extension of referent power
stemming from an individual’s personality
and interpersonal style.
OPPURTUNITY POWER: Influence obtained as a result of
being in the right place at the right time.
POWER TACTICS: Ways in which individuals translate power
bases into specific actions.

1 LEGITIMACY: Relying on one’s authority and position or
Stressing that a request is in accordance with organizational
policies and procedures
2 RATIONAL PERSUASION:logical arguments& facts
3 INSPIRATIONAL APPEALS:emotional commitment to values
Needs, hopes and aspirations.
4 CONSULTATION:involvement
5 EXCHANGE: quid pro quo
6 PERSONAL APPEALS: compliance based on friendship/loyalty
7 INGRATIATION:using flattery,praise before making a request
8 PRESSURE: using warnings,threats and repeated demands.
9 COALITIONS: An informal group bound together by the
active pursuit of a single issue.


IS POWER ELASTIC?

POWER IN GROUPS:-
Those “out of power” and seeking to be “in”will first try to
increase their power individually

The alternative is to form a coalition- an informal group bound
Together by the active pursuit of a single goal. Eg., trade unions

Coalition: two or more individuals who combine their power to
Push for or support their demands.

Coalitions in organizations seek a broad constituency to support
The coalitions objectives.


KANTERS SYMBOLS OF POWER:

1Ability to intercede for someone in trouble
2 Ability to get placements for favored employees
3 Exceeding budget limitations
4 Procuring above average raises for employees
5 Getting items on the agenda at meetings
6 Access to early information
7 Having top managers seek out their opinion.

KANTER’S SYMBOLS OF POWERLESSNESS
1 Overly close supervision
2 Inflexible adherence to rules
3 Tendency to do the job themselves rather than training
the employees
4 resist change and protect turf
5 budget cutting,punishing others, using top-down communication

POWER ANALYSIS
Amitai Etzioni takes a more sociological orientation to power
He says there are three types of organizational power and 3 types of
Organizational involvement or membership.

3 types of organizational power:

COERCIVE POWER: influencing members by forcing them to do
something under threat of punishment,or through fear and
intimidation
UTILITARIAN POWER: Influencing members by providing them
with rewards and benefits
NORMATIVE POWER: Influencing members by using knowledge
that they want very much to belong to the organization and
by letting them know that what they are expected to do is the
“right” thing to do.

ETZONI HAS ALSO PROPOSED THAT WE CAN CLASSIFY
ORGANIZATIONS BY THE TYPE OF MEMBERSHIP THEY
HAVE.

ALTERNATIVE MEMBERSHIP:
The members have hostile,negative feelings about being in the
organization.They don’t want to be there. Eg., prisons, juvenile
centres, alcohol anonymous.

CALCULATIVE MEMBERSHIP:
Members weigh the benefits and limitations of belonging to the
Organisation. Businesses are a good example.

MORAL MEMBERSHIP:
Members have such positive feelings about organizational
membership that they are willing to deny their own needs .
Religious groups, Red cross.

Organizational Politics
To understand organizations, we might consider them as political systems. The political metaphor helps us understand power relationships in day-to-day organizational relationships. If we accept that power relations exist in organizations, then politics and politicking are an essential part of organizational life.
Politics is a means of recognizing and, ultimately, reconciling competing interests within the organization. Competing interests can be reconciled by any number of means. For example, resorting to "rule by the manager" might be seen as an example of totalitarian rule. On the other hand, politics may be a means of creating a noncoercive, or a democratic work environment.
As mentioned, organizations need mechanisms whereby they reconcile conflicting interests. Hence, organizations, like governments, tend to "rule" by some sort of "system". This "system" is employed to create and maintain "order" among the organization's members.
Systems of rule within organizations range from autocratic to democratic at the extremes. Between these extremes we find bureaucratic and technocratic systems. Whatever the system, each represents a political orientation with respect to how power is applied and distributed throughout theorganization. Each type of organizational "rule" simply draws on different principles of legitimacy.
According to Aristotle, politics stems from a diversity of interests. To fully understand the politics of the organization, it is necessary to explore the processes by which people engage in politics. Consistent with Aristotle's conceptualization, it is a given that, within the organization, all employees bring their own interests, wants, desires, and needs to the workplace.
Organizational decision-making and problem- solving, while seemingly a rational process, is also a political process. Organizational actors seek to satisfy not only organizational interests, but also their own wants and needs; driven by self-interest.
Rational models of organizational behavior only explain a portion of the behavior observed (Farrell and Peterson, 1982):
Members of a corporation are at one and the same time cooperators in a common enterprise and rivals for the material and intangible rewards of successful competition with each other. (Farrell and Peterson, 1982)
Political behavior has been defined as :
the non-rational influence on decision making Regardless of the degree to which employees may be committed to the organization's objectives, there can be little doubt that, at least occasionally, personal interests will be incongruent with those of the organization. Organizational politics arises when people think differently and want to act differently.
The tension created by this diversity can resolved by political means. In an autocratic organization, resolution comes through the directive: "We'll do it my way!". The democratic organization seeks to resolve this diversity of interests by asking: "How shall we do it?" By whatever means an organization resolves this diversity, alternative approaches generally hinge on the power relations between the actors involved.
According to Farrell and Peterson(Farrell and Peterson, 1982), the successful practice of organizational politics is perceived to lead to a higher level of power, and once a higher level of power is attained, there is more opportunity to engage in political behavior
One things does appear to be clear: the political element of the management process is non-rational. Organizations cannot pretend to engage in rational decision-making processes so long as political influences play a role -- and they always will!
· For purposes of understanding organizational political behavior, Farrell and Peterson (1982) proposed a three-dimensional typology. The dimensions are: where the political activity takes place -- inside or outside the organization,
· the direction of the attempted influence -- vertically or laterally in the organization, and the legitimacy of the political action.

INTERNAL-EXTERNAL DIMENSION
EXTERNAL
· whistleblowing
· lawsuits
· leaking information
INTERNAL
· exchange of favors
· reprisals
· obstructionism
symbolic protest
VERTICAL-LATERAL DIMENSION
VERTICAL
· by- passing the chain of command
· complaining to a supervisor
· mentor- protege activities
LATERAL
· exchange of favors
coalition formation
LEGITIMATE-ILLEGITIMATE DIMENSION
LEGITIMATE
· activities genarally accepted in an organizational context
ILLEGITIMATE
Threats
Most organizational politicking occurs in the internal-vertical- legitimate realm. An example would be individuals trying to achieve personal gain by giving "voice" to their demands/needs.
This could be done by complaining to supervisors, bypassing the chain of command, or obstructionisn (ignoring requests or missing deadlines). In less autocratic organizations, political activity can be expected to occur most frequently in the internal-lateral-legitimate cell. This activity includes coalition formation, the exchange of favors, and reprisals.
PREDICTING ORGANIZATIONAL POLITICAL BEHAVIOR
· As managers (and as students of organizations) it is useful to be able to predict behaviors; this includes political behavior. Exchange Theory, which we have encountered before when discussing motivation (Equity Theory) and power (Dependency Theory of Power), provides some insight into people's political behavior in organizations. Let's examine four variables: investment
· alternatives
· trust
efficacy

Investment
As employees spend more time with a firm, they acquire nonportable training and skills.
The skills acquired working as a machine operator in a pulpmill are valuable to the employee only so long as that employee is employed in the pulp industry. This training constitutes a valuable investment insofar as the employee has value to the firm because of these skills. These same skills are of little value in another industry like mining. Thus, in another industry, the employee has lesser value and, as a consequence, less job security.
An employee with considerable time invested in industry-specific training is less likely to engage in organizational politics, that might jeoporadize that investment, than an employee with less time invested.
Furthermore, over time, most employees acquire frienships with coworkers. These friendships constitute social and psychological investments. Because political activity could potentially undermine an employee's employment with the firm, a senior employee may be assumed to be reluctant to risk losing his/her investment -- friends in the workplace.

OEC Handout # 7

Organizational Climate and Culture
Psychological Climate –Organizational Climates
Are created by SHARED psychological climates
It is the employee’s PERCEPTION of the work environment and not the environment that is important
Definitions of Culture
The shared values, beliefs, and behavioral norms in an organization (Ouchi, 1981)
The social process by which members share their values, beliefs, and norms

Culture describes the social context of the work environment
Climate describes the psychological impact of the work environment
Why are climate and culture important?
The success of Human Services organizations generally depends on the relationships and interactions between service providers and service recipients. These relationships are central to the quality and outcome of services.
The Role of Norms & Values
The norms and values that drive service providers behavior and communicate what is valued in organizations and the shared perceptions that influence service provider attitudes create a social and psychological context that shapes tone, content, and objectives of the service
How Does Climate Develop or Change?
Individual Differences
Administrators use selective hiring and firing as means of either maintaining existing norms or changing them.
Individual perception is consistent across work environments - Positive or negative views carry from one workplace to another.
Importing Climate and Culture From the External Environment
Organizations adopt ways from other organizations with which they compete or cooperate.
Organizational mimicry- norms of one organization adopted in effort to emulate success.
Impact of Organizational Design: Structure, Technology & Leadership
Structure, core technology, and leadership describer the patterns of interaction between practitioners, interaction of practitioners and clients and administration’s style of governance.
Structure Impacts:
Flexibility, approval seeking, risk taking and innovation
Highly centralizes structure restricts participation in decision making
Highly formalized division of labor with strict procedures place little value on flexibility and innovation
Core Technology Impacts
Introduction of new computer technology
New service delivery methods
New technologies may impact the relationships among workers
Leadership Impacts
Manipulation of culture is an essential function of leadership
Values in practice are often those of the leader
Symbolic acts are important
Leadership shapes perception of fairness and support
Leadership Impacts (cont.)
Good leadership has been identified as one of the few factors that contributes to both employee job satisfaction and commitment, each which is highly correlated with positive organizational climate
How Are Climate & Culture Maintained in an Organization?
The Need for Certainty
Organizations abhor uncertainty
Certainty is engendered by sharing common ideas about the way things get done
Culture contributes to certainty in through shared norms and values
The Need for Power
Power is distributed both formally and informally through processes of conflict that lead to a negotiated order.
Many have an investment in maintaining existing norms to maintain power base.
Mergers, reorganizations and new administrations are are opportunities for culture change.
Transferring Climate and Culture to New Employees
New employees are socialized into the culture and climate of their work group or they resign.
Employee selection is important in maintaining existing cultures and climates.
More experienced, competent hires may import new norms, values and perceptions.
Conclusion
Organizational climate and culture are important to social welfare administration because they provide the critical links between organizational characteristics and service outcomes.

OEC Handout # 6

Management of Change
If you work in a corporation or with a large organization, you might have heard the phrase "change management" used from time to time. Change management has been around for a while, but has become extremely popular with organizations or corporations that would like to initiate significant change to processes that can include both work tasks and culture.
A common definition used for change management is a set of processes that is employed to ensure that significant changes are implemented in an orderly, controlled and systematic fashion to effect organizational change. One of the goals of change management is with regards to the human aspects of overcoming resistance to change in order for organizational members to buy into change and achieve the organization's goal of an orderly and effective transformation.
Change management has been developed over a period of time and one of the models that have played an influence in change management is the ADKAR model. ADKAR was a model developed by Prosci. In this model, there are five specific stages that must be realized in order for an organization or an individual to successfully change. They include:
Awareness - An individual or organization must know why a specific change or series of changes are needed.
Desire - Either the individual or organizational members must have the motivation and desire to participate in the called for change or changes.
Knowledge - Knowing why one must change is not enough; an individual or organization must know how to change.
Ability - Every individual and organization that truly wants to change must implement new skills and behaviors to make the necessary changes happen.
Reinforcement - Individuals and organizations must be reinforced to sustain any changes making them the new behavior, if not; an individual or organization will probably revert back to their old behavior.
Organizational Change Management
Organizational change management takes into consideration both the processes and tools that managers use to make changes at an organizational level. Most organizations want change implemented with the least resistance and with the most buy-in as possible. For this to occur, change must be applied with a structured approach so that transition from one type of behavior to another organization wide will be smooth.
Management's Role in the Organizational Change
In most cases, management's first responsibility is to identify processes or behaviors that are not proficient and come up with new behaviors, processes, etc that are more effective within an organization. Once changes are identified, it is important for managers to estimate the impact that they will have to the organization and individual employee on many levels including technology, employee behavior, work processes, etc.
At this point management should assess the employee's reaction to an implemented change and try to understand the reaction to it. In many cases, change can be extremely beneficial with lots of positives; however certain changes do sometimes produce a tremendous amount of resistance. It is the job of management to help support workers through the process of these changes, which are at times very difficult. The end result is that management must help employees accept change and help them become well adjusted and effective once these changes have been implemented.
Change management process
The change management process is the sequence of steps or activities that a change management team or project leader would follow to apply change management to a project or change. Based on Prosci's research of the most effective and commonly applied change, most change management processes contain the following three phases:
Phase 1 - Preparing for change (Preparation, assessment and strategy development)
Phase 2 - Managing change (Detailed planning and change management implementation)
Phase 3 - Reinforcing change (Data gathering, corrective action and recognition)
Change Management Process — A Structured Approach
Adopting a principled approach is great, but how do you apply these change management principles in practice? Business Performance Pty Ltd has developed an easy to understand and structured approach to implementing change in your organization. We call our unique way of planning and delivering real organizational benefits the CHANGE Approach ©.
This approach consists of six phases that successful change programs progress through.
Create tension
Articulate why change needs to happen and why it needs to happen within the planned timeframe.
Harness support
Get on board the key decision-makers, resource holders and those impacted by the change.
Articulate goals
Define in specific and measurable terms the desired organizational outcomes.
Nominate roles
Assign responsibility to specific individuals for the various tasks and outcomes.
Grow capability
Build organizational systems and people competencies necessary for affecting the change.
Entrench changes
Institutionalize the change to make it “the way we do things around here”.

OEC Handout # 5

Resistance to Change

People like
Comfort Zone
Stability
Predictability
Familiarity
Conventions
Status quo

People do not like
Change
Risk
Instability
Uncertainty

Both these factors have an impact on how people react to any change programme at a workplace.

More precisely, why people resist change?
Fear of Unknown
Fear of Failure
Disagreement on need for change
Losing something of value
False beliefs/Misunderstanding
Lack of Trust
Personality Conflicts
Peer pressure
Loss of status/job

Phases of Organizational Change
Organizational change causes individuals to experience a reaction process comprising four phases:
Initial Denial: Employees feel that chnage is not at all required in the company.
Resistance: Employees try to prevent the implementation of change programme
Gradual Exploration: Employees try to explore their role in the new scheme of things and start cooperating with the management
Eventual Commitment: Employees commit themselves to new way of doing things.Resistance is a natural and normal response to change because it involves going from known to unknown.

Conceptual Framework of Resistance to Change
Perception-Cognition-Affect-Resistance

Perception: Employees try to perceive the impact of change at this stage. The force or resistance is directly proportionate to the perceived impact of change on an individual.

Cognition: During organizational change, individuals create their own interpretations of what is going to happen, how they themselves are perceived, and what others are thinking or intending. Generally, peopel have a tendency to develop a negative self-schema about themselves and their life events (organizational change, for example). This results in cognitive distortions as they are not able to remain objective in the cognitive process.In case of any change programme, the employees construct irrational ideas as part of cognition.
Affect: Affective processes are usually operatinalized as emotions and feelings that are related to actions. Emotions in the context of organizational change can be described as a state of arousal involving facial and bodily changes, brain activation, sujective feelings, cognitive appraisals, which can be either conscious or unconscious, rational or irational. Psychologists have identified a number of primary emotions experienced by individuals universally such as fear, anger, sadness, joy surprise, disgust, contempt, etc.Organizational change generally leads to feelings of anger, denial, loss and frustration.Individuals experience loss and grief when estbalished ways of doing a job are changed. Changes and losses role identity can lead to feeling of anger, sadness, anxiety and low self-esteem.
Resistance: At this stage, the employees display physical actions that can be seen and heard. Moreover, it also includes mental process which cannot be seen or heard.So the employees may oppose, argue, obstruct, stall, dismantle and undermine a change effort. At the same time, they may withdraw, avoid or ignore the change efforts.How the companies respond to changeFailure of many corporate change programmes is often directly attributed to employee resistance. For example, a longitudinal study of 500 large organizations found that employee resistance was the most frequently cited problem encountered by management while implementing change. The study was conducted by Waldersee and Griffiths in 1997. More than half the organizations in that survey experienced difficulties with employee resistance.

Management usually focusses on the technical aspects of change with a tendency to neglect the equally important human element which is often crucial to the successful implementation of change.In order to successfully lead an organization through change, it is importnt for management to balance both technical and human aspects. Organizational change is driven by personal change. So engineering personal change should be tackled by the management with great care.

OEC Handout # 4

Models of Change

Three-Stage Model of Change
Kurt Lewin propounded a three-stage model of change in 1951 that has come to be known asthe unfreezing-change-refreeze model. This model requires prior learning to be rejected and replaced by a new method.
Unfreezing
Unfreezing as a concept entered the change literature early to highlight the observation that the stability of human behavior was based on "quasi- stationary equilibria" supported by a large force field of driving and restraining forces. For change to occur, this force field had to be altered under complex psychological conditions because, as was often noted, just adding a driving force toward change often produced an immediate counterforce to maintain the equilibrium. This observation led to the important insight that the equilibrium could more easily be moved if one could remove restraining forces since there were usually already driving forces in the system. Unfortunately restraining forces were harder to get at because they were often personal psychological defenses or group norms embedded in the organizational or community culture.
How to unfreeze?
1. DisconfirmationAll forms of learning and change start with some form of dissatisfaction or frustration generated by data that disconfirm our expectations or hopes. Disconfirmation, whatever its source, functions as a primary driving force in the quasi-stationary equilibrium. Disconfirming information is not enough, however, because we can ignore the information, dismiss it as irrelevant, blame the undesired outcome on others or fate, or, as is most common, simply deny its validity. In order to become motivated to change, we must accept the information and connect it to something we care about.
2. Anxiety/GuiltThe disconfirmation must arouse what we can call "survival anxiety" or the feeling that if we do not change we will fail to meet our needs or fail to achieve some goals or ideals that we have set for ourselves ("survival guilt"). In order to feel survival anxiety or guilt, we must accept the disconfirming data as valid and relevant. What typically prevents us from doing so, what causes us to react defensively, is a second kind of anxiety which we can call "learning anxiety," or the feeling that if we allow ourselves to enter a learning or change process, if we admit to ourselves and others that something is wrong or imperfect, we will lose our effectiveness, our self-esteem and maybe even our identity. Most humans need to assume that they are doing their best at all times, and it may be a real loss of face to accept and even "embrace" errors.
3. Creation of Psychological Safety or Overcoming of Learning Anxiety Unless sufficient psychological safety is created, the disconfirming information will be denied or in other ways defended against, no survival anxiety will be felt, and, consequently, no change will take place. The key to effective change management, then, becomes the ability to balance the amount of threat produced by disconfirming data with enough psychological safety to allow the change target to accept the information, feel the survival anxiety, and become motivated to change.The true artistry of change management lies in the various kinds of tactics that change agents employ to create psychological safety. For example, working in groups, creating parallel systems that allow some relief from day to day work pressures, providing practice fields in which errors are embraced rather than feared, providing positive visions to encourage the learner, breaking the learning process into manageable steps, providing on-line coaching and help all serve the function of reducing learning anxiety and thus creating genuine motivation to learn and change.
Change
How to Change?
Changing through Cognitive Restructuring : Helping the clients to see things, judge things, feel things and react to things differently based on a new point of view obtained through
a. Identifying with a new role model, mentor etc.
b. Scanning the environment for new relevant information.
Refreeze
How to Refreeze?
New way of doing things has to be reinforced through rewards and punishment mechanizm as also through various motivational techniques.The main point about refreezing is that new behavior must be to some degree congruent with the rest of the behavior and personality of the learner or it will simply set off new rounds of disconfirmation that often lead to unlearning the very thing one has learned. The classic case is the supervisory program that teaches individual supervisors how to empower employees and then sends them back into an organization where the culture supports only autocratic supervisory behavior. Or, in Lewin's classic studies, the attempt to change eating habits by using an educational program that teaches housewives how to use meats such as liver and kidneys and then sends them back into a community in which the norms are that only poor folks who can't afford good meat would use such poor meat.The implication for change programs are clear. For personal refreezing to occur, it is best to avoid identification and encourage scanning so that the learner will pick solutions that fit him or her. For relational refreezing to occur, it is best to train the entire group that holds the norms that support the old behavior.It is only when housewives groups met and were encouraged to reveal their implicit norms that change was possible by changing the norms themselves, i.e. introducing collectively a new set of standards for judging what was"ok" meat.

Burke-Litwin Model of Organizational Change
This model was developed by Warner Burke and George Litwin. This model identifies the variables involved in creating first-order and second order change which are also termed as transactional and transformational change respectively.
First Order Change/Transactional Change
First Order change aims at improving the organizational climate by implementing incremental changes in the workplace. Organizational climate is peopl'e collective assessment in terms of whether it is a good or bad place to work, whether it is friendly, warm, cold, hard-working, easy-going and so on. These perceptions are based on managerial practices and organizational systems and procedures.
In case of First Order change, Structure, Management Practices and Management Systems (Procedures and Polices) are altered.First Order change can be brought about by a transactional leader (generally a proactive manager) who can motivate people to accomplish organizational objectives within stipulated time-frame.
Second Order Change/Transformational Change
Second Order Change is aimed at altering the organizational culture.Organizational Culture has three aspects: Artefacts, Values and Assumptions.In case of Second Order Change, Vision/Mission, Organizational strategy, Leadership and Organizational Culture are altered.Second Order Change is brought about by transformational leader who enables his followers to transcend their abilities to perform exceedingly well and thus contribute towards organizational effectiveness.

Characteristic features of Burke-Litwin Model

• includes twelve theoretical constructs (i.e., organizational variables)

• distinguishes between the culture and the climate of an organization

• distinguishes between transformational and transactional dynamics

• specifies the nature and direction of influence of organizational variables

• is based on previous models, empirical studies, and OD practice

The twelve organizational variables in the B-L Model are external environment, mission and strategy, leadership, organizational culture, structure, management practices, systems, work unit climate, task requirements and individual skills, motivation, individual needs and values, and individual and organizational performance. With the representation of the external environment as a variable, it is evident that open systems theory underlies the B-L Model. The external environment variable is considered to be the input to the system with the individual and organizational performance variable representing the output.
Organizational Variables in the Burke-Litwin Model
External Environment
Any outside condition or situation that influences the performance of the organization, including marketplaces, world financial conditions, and political/governmental circumstances
Leadership
Executive behavior that provides direction and encourages others to take needed action; includes followers’ perceptions of executive practices and values and leaders’ role modeling
Mission and Strategy
What top managers believe and have declared as the organization’s mission and strategy, as well as what employees believe is the central purpose of the organization; the means by which the organization intends to achieve its purpose over time
Culture
The collection of overt and covert norms, values, and beliefs that guide organizational behavior and that have been strongly influenced by history, customs, and practice
Management
Practices
What managers do in the normal course of events with the human and material resources at their disposal to carry out the organization’s strategy
Structure
The arrangement of functions and people into specific areas and levels of responsibility, decision-making authority, communication, and relationships to implement the organization’s mission and strategy
Systems
Standardized policies and mechanisms that are designed to facilitate work and that primarily manifest themselves in the organization’s reward and control systems (e.g., performance appraisal, management information systems, budget development, and human resource allocation)
Climate
The collective current impressions, expectations, and feelings of the members of local work units, which in turn affect members’ relations with supervisors, with one another, and with other units

Motivation
Aroused behavioral tendencies to move toward goals, take needed action, and persist until satisfaction is attained (i.e., the energy generated by the combined desires for achievement, power, affection, discovery, and other important human values)
Skills/Job Match
The behavior required for task effectiveness, including specific skills and knowledge required to accomplish work
Individual Needs
and Values
The specific psychological factors that provide desire and worth for individual actions or thoughts
Performance
The outcomes or results, with indicators of effort and achievement including productivity, customer or staff satisfaction, profit, and service quality

As is evident through the climate and culture variables, Burke and Litwin make a distinction between organizational climate and culture. Climate is defined as individuals’ perceptions of how their work unit is managed and how effectively they and their colleagues work together (see Table K) (Burke & Litwin, 1992). People are much more cognizant of organizational climate than culture (i.e., climate is in the foreground, whereas culture is in the background). In contrast, culture has been defined as the relatively enduring set of values, norms, and beliefs that underlie the social system of the workplace (Burke & Litwin, 1992). These values, norms, and beliefs related to organizational culture are not entirely available to one’s consciousness.
In addition to the distinction between culture and climate, the B-L Model distinguishes between transformational and transactional dynamics within organizations. Burke and Litwin’s (1992) consideration of transformational and transactional dynamics is rooted in leadership theory and specifically, in the differences between leaders and managers. In the model, transformational change is associated more with leadership, while transactional change is associated more with management. Hence, transformational dynamics represent fundamental changes in behaviors and values that are required for genuine change in organizational culture. In terms of management, transactional dynamics are the everyday interactions and exchanges in work life related to organizational climate (Burke & Litwin, 1992).

Porras-Robertson Model of Change
This model was developed by Jerry Porras and Peter Robertson. The basic premise of this model is that OD interventions alter features of the work settings causing changes in individuals’ behaviour which in turn lead to individual and organizational improvements. Organizational change occurs when individuals change their behaviour and these behavioural changes occur by modifying elements of work setting.
Elements of Work Setting
Organizing Arrangements
Social Factors
Physical Setting
Technology

Organizing Arrangement
Goals
Strategies
Structures
Administrative policies and procedures
Administrative systems
Reward systemsOwnership

Social Factors
Culture
Management style
Interaction processes
Informal patterns and networks
Individual attributes

Physical Setting
Space configuration
Physical ambience
Interior design
Architectural design

Technology
Tools, equipments and machinery
Information Technology
Job deign
Workflow design
Technical expertise
Technical procedures
Technical systems

According to this model, OD interventions are linked to factors in the work setting. For example, OD interventions that focus on goals, strategies and rewards will affect organizing arrangements. Interventions that focus on culture, management style, and interaction processes will affect social factors. Interventions that focus on job design, and workflow design will affect technology.Work setting modifications influence cognition of the employees (they learn what is expected, required and rewarded) which in turn influence their on-the job behaviour leading to higher productivity and commitment in most of the cases.

[P.S. The content in this blog-post is based on Organization Development: Behavioural Science Interventions for Organization Improvement by Wendell L French and Cecil H Bell, Jr. and Kurt Lewin's Change Theory in the Field and in the Classroom: Notes Toward a Model of Managed Learning by Edgar H. Schein (sourced from the website of Society for Organizational Learning)]