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Eric Schmidt’s description of the Google hiring process and culture does make sense for their type of organization and the innovation that they try to inspire. However not all of it can be applied to my organization. For example Eric says, “One of the things that I learned—and I learned a lot from Larry and Sergey—is that it makes an enormous difference who you hire at every level. And people don’t really sort of manage that. So we worked very, very hard on who’s going to be in our company.” (McKinsey Quarterly, 2011) While I agree that it does make an enormous difference on whom you hire, the military unfortunately doesn’t get the luxury of choosing the best people for the right job. Ultimately, were constantly shifting personnel and in the end were stuck with what we got. This means we have to put a lot of trust in the system to make sure it works.

Eric also brings up the idea of the 20 percent rule; an idea that 80 percent of an employee’s time is dedicated towards main organizational objectives while the other 20 percent is dedicated towards innovation of new products. This is something else that doesn’t get taken advantage of at my organization because it’s almost not required. Jets brake from war and training and they come to my organization to fix them. While I won’t say there’s no innovation to be had in the maintenance field, as there certainly is, what I will say is that it’s nothing compared to that of the service/software industry.

The idea of self-managing, self-directing work teams can be used in my organization though (and to some extent it already is). One of the greatest aspects of my job is the troubleshooting aspect, finding a solution to a problem. Many members of my organization view troubleshooting the same way and so should I ever becoming an expediter, I plan to take this idea and allow people to solve problems their own way. Rather than manage and tell people what to do and force work/tools onto them, instead I’ll ask them what they need and help them get it. In a way I’ll work for my people as opposed to having my people work for me.

References

McKinsey Quarterly. (2011). Eric Schmidt on business culture, technology, and social issues. Retrieved 2014, from http://whispersandshouts.typepad.com/files/eric-schmidt.pdf

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Tom Wujec concluded that business students are “trained to find the single right plan and execute on it,” which causes them to have higher failure rates than kindergarteners. (Wujec, 2010) I find this conclusion to be perfectly acceptable and it certainly makes sense. Business students are hired to take on a task to which they have no formal familiarity with and as a result they fall back onto what they know, which is to design and build something to the very end and then hope that the execution goes well for them. While on paper it may seem like a good idea, in practice there were a lot of covert elements that were unaccounted for.

Kindergarteners on the other hand start with the marshmallow and make incremental changes over time, figuring out what works and what doesn’t work. This is more or less a process of trial and error, which takes them along a path that eventually leads to an acceptable outcome. While the vision could have been entirely different at the start, the process leading up to the end allowed the teams to fix and correct their own problems and to take ownership over their own future.

Process intervention is about “[observing] individuals and teams in action and [helping] them learn to diagnose and solve their own problems.” (Brown, 2011) Brown mentions that “the actual timing of when to provide feedback to members is a judgment call by the practitioner” which implies that the practitioners can either give members incremental feedback or wait to the conclusion of the workshop. (Brown, 2011) Giving feedback throughout the workshop would be a similar approach to kindergarteners receiving instant feedback to figure out what works and what doesn’t work when building towers. The alternative would be to wait till the end of the workshop before revealing process findings, similar to Wujec waiting 4 months and allowing the same students perform the trick under a more enlightened circumstance. (Wujec, 2010)

What I take from this is that in an unknown or unfamiliar setting where change is demanded, prototyping and incremental changes are key because you quickly find out if that particular change effort is a good idea or bad. This is especially true when the stakes are high because instant feedback across a change effort is needed to better secure the future and in effect it reduces risk. Implementing major change all at once is to risky and from what I learned in the past, if the people don’t own it, they’d reject it.

References

Brown, D. (2011). An Experiential Approach to Organization Development. New Jersey: Pearson.

Wujec, T. (2010). Build a tower, build a team. Retrieved from TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/tom_wujec_build_a_tower#t-149507

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The type of barriers involved with Honeywell’s merger is no different than any other merger, challenges are going to be there and those challenges will need to be conquered. Brown mentions in his text that “changing a corporate culture is not easy. Culture emerges out of the shared behaviors and the working relationships of organization members that have developed over time.” (Brown, 2011) Two different companies, Honeywell and Allied Signal for example, grew up separately from one another and have thus developed two completely different cultures. When merging the two, there is likely to be a culture clash and possible heavy resistance to any sort of change project.

Michael Bonsignore mentions that he will compensate and reward people who look for best practices from both companies and punish those who do not. (Duke University, 2011) In the sense of rewarding those who adapt, Brown brings up the point that “one of the basic underlying concepts of motivation is that people tend to behave in ways that provide rewards or reinforcement.” (Brown, 2011) By rewarding people who go along with the Honeywell/Allied Signal merger, a smoother transition is likely to take place. However the idea of punishing those who don’t adapt, while noble, has the potential to cause problems. Scott Anthony, managing partner of the innovation strategy consulting firm Innosight, brings up the idea that “the most successful businesses come out of a process of trial-and-error experimentation. Failure and false steps are natural parts of the process.” (Anthony, 2012) The fear of punishment could be greater than the risk of innovation on adapting best practices from both companies and as such, it will be hard to predict the outcome of Honeywell. Will the rewards sway people in the right direction or will the fear of failure stop people from taking chances?

As Honeywell crafts its newly merged organization it will need to be mindful of the three basic strategies: structural, technological, and behavioral. Structural strategies “attempt to change an organization’s design by modifying the lines of authority, span of control, and arrangement of work functions.” (Brown, 2011) It was a little unclear in the video how Honeywell will tackle the problem; however merging two big companies changes everything as top managers will gain new spans of control and arrangements change. Technological strategies are about “[implementing] new technologies, such as new computer systems and machinery.” (Brown, 2011) Allied Signal is a technical organization that builds many different products. By adopting the company and their practices, they are adopting the technology and machinery as well. Finally, behavioral strategies “emphasize the use of human resources.” (Brown, 2011) Bonsignore talks about using reward and punishment strategies for the organizational transitions, which in theory would take advantage of human potential and remove bad behavior all at the same time.

References

Anthony, S. (2012, May 3). How Do You Create A Culture Of Innovation? Retrieved from http://www.fastcodesign.com/1669657/how-do-you-create-a-culture-of-innovation

Brown, D. (2011). An Experiential Approach to Organizational Development. New Jersey: Pearson.

Duke University. (2011, June 01). Mastering the Art of Corporate Reinvention. Retrieved from Films on Demand: http://digital.films.com/play/GWEU7L

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Change can come from and spawn from anywhere. No matter how large or small, any number of peoples may get affected within an organization. One of the most common responses I hear about change is that “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” For example early on in my deployment it was determined that while my shift had worked well together and there were high amounts of cohesion, the other shift was having a lot of issues and problems with its people (each shift covered 12 hours per day). Our leadership proposed the idea that each shift should have a handful people swap shifts in order to try and solve this dilemma. So what was the most common response from my shift? “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

                  I can understand the huge amounts of resistance from my shift because of the disruption of norms the suggested change would bring. Norms can be defined as “shared ideas about what members of an organization should do and feel. . . . Norms cannot easily be changed because of their strong group support.” (Brown, 2011) A certain set of norms have already been solidified on my shift and to completely change the majority of the peoples would disrupt the strong group support.

                  Generally in order for change to occur, it must first be bred within a tribe and slowly grown outward and beyond, at least according to Seth Godin. Seth Godin talks about how mass marketing’s are not the way to go because it requires very average idea that appeals to the masses. Average ideas aren’t what change the world, ideas strong enough to start a movement do. What I gather from this is that if I want to start a change within my work environment, I first need to find those that also believe in the idea. Let them take ownership of the idea and spread their stories to others. When people hear an idea from one person, it doesn’t have nearly the same effect as hearing the idea from many people. When enough people fight for what they believe, that’s when the potential for revolution is at its strongest.

Bibliography

Brown, D. (2011). An Experiential Approach to Organizational Development. New Jersey: Pearson.

Godin, S. (2009). The tribes we lead. Retrieved from TED: http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead#t-457256

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            Sean O'Keefe makes one of the most impactful messages in my opinion on change required within NASA’s culture. The reason why Sean addressed NASA employees to describe the plan to bring about proposed changes to the culture fits somewhere along the lines of Brown’s “Life Cycle of Resistance to Change,” where the proposed change should first be introduced to the members of an organization. (Brown, 2011) In this stage Sean describes the current situation that NASA is in and that major changes are going to have to be made for the longevity of the organization. The fact of whether or not he was believable is a tough one to judge so soon, at least at this particular point in time.

            Sean O'Keefe said it himself that NASA loves to brag about it’s core values and how important these core values are towards the organization, however there was a lack of action that reinforced the importance of these core values. (O'Keefe, 2004) What this meant was that the organization loved to talk the talk, but just didn’t walk the walk. So to say if he were believable at this point would be a tough call to make due to NASA’s track record. However the fact that he brings to light NASA’s inability to show true to its core values can be seen as an eye opener, one to which he truly believes himself that change needs to happen.

            What I take from this is that in order for change to occur, organizational members need to see the reasons as to why change is to happen. If they don’t see the “why” in the change, the change will be resisted and it may not come to fruition. However at the same time in order to find out the “why,” a full diagnostics on the current situation and climate of the organization needs to take place. Then can the people of the organization be addressed on what to expect in their future.

References

Brown, D. (2011). An Experiential Approach to Organizational Development. New Jersey: Pearson.

O'Keefe, S. (2004). NASA Cultural Changes. Retrieved from C-SPAN: http://www.c-span.org/video/?181348-1/nasa-cultural-changes