In this video, organizational change consultant Alon Shvut introduces a thought-provoking ten-question assessment to gauge one’s global organizational development mindset. Shvut, based in Tel Aviv, challenges traditional principles developed by early Western leaders in the field and highlights the cultural nuances affecting organizational dynamics. The questions cover topics such as conflict resolution, cross-functional teamwork, time management, and participatory decision-making. Shvut asserts that even one affirmative answer suggests a need to upgrade organizational change assumptions for improved effectiveness in a global context. The video encourages readers to explore Shvut’s work, including his blog featuring the fictional character Gloria Ramsbottom, offering valuable insights into navigating the complexities of HR and organizational effectiveness in a global landscape.
Transcript
Do you have a global OD organizational development mindset? Here’s a way to assess your sensitivity to this. If this is something that comes from a good friend and colleague, Alon Shvut, who is an organizational change, an odd consultant based in Tel Aviv. And Alon has had a consulting practice for many years because he’s based in Israel and so many of the companies are global and multinational. He knows more than anyone that I know about what different cultures are like when they come together as a team, and it’s going to be very interesting because if you were raised like me in this field, you know about Kurt Levine, you know about Ron Lippitt, my mentor. You know about Dick Beckert, my colleague from Intel. These were the American sort of shapers and founders of the fundamental principles of change organization development. Then on the on on the across the ocean, you have Brian, you have Eric Trist and Fred Emery. These are three of the people. There are more, but these are six of the sort of the Founding fathers, so to speak. And Alan’s point is that our field, the fundamental principles at the bottom, were all developed by this wonderfully brilliant group of middle-aged, slightly older white men from either North America or the UK. And everything that we’ve done since then. Our tree, all the things survey, feedback, team building, leadership development, all these conflict resolution, all the principles that we use come from these early, early, the same people. And in his work, he has discovered how those fundamental things we believe like gravity, you drop something, it’ll fall things like you should have an open discussion whenever you have a conflict.
Some of these things just don’t work. In certain cultures, the opposite might be true. So Alan developed this wonderful ten-question assessment process to help you find out. Help us find out where we need to stretch and grow a little bit in working with other with other cultures. Here’s the first one, he says. Do you believe that discussing contentious meaning conflict field issues openly in a group, do you believe that discussing conflict openly in a group helps resolve those issues in every kind of situation, including a global team? Do you say yes or no to that one? Okay. Second one, do you believe that cross-functional teamwork is a universally positive organizational behavior? Yes or no? Number three, do you believe that time, time being on time, how you use your time and so forth as a resource should be universally valued in the same way by everybody, or is, in fact, universally valued in the same way. Number four, do you believe that being authentic with your emotions is a healthy, a good, generally a good thing to do? That was a hard one for me. Number five, do you believe that some degree of participatory decision-making is desirable in multicultural global organizations? That was another tricky one for me. Do you believe that most people in the world want their managers to delegate authority? Do you think most people would like to have more responsibility and more authority? Interesting. Number seven, do most people around the world, in your opinion, do you think that telling the boss what the boss wants to hear instead of the truth is a lie? In some cultures? We’ll see.
Number eight, do you think transparency is valued or should be valued in all cultures? Number nine. Do you think that a well-defined and well-rolled-out culture, like a corporate culture, do you think that if you have a really good, strong corporate culture, that it can bridge all those cultural differences? And finally, number ten, do you think that the terms trust and respect are universal around the world enough to serve as a bridge for the challenges in a global organization? If we just had more trust and more respect, that kind of thing, we could bridge these differences. Now, here’s cool. How many yeses did you have going in your mind out of those ten? If you had even one. Yes, Elon says you need to work on upgrading your organizational change assumptions in order to develop more effectiveness in the global environment. Elon, here’s his URL. I highly recommend you go to his website. And I think what’s very, very cool, he’s created this character named Gloria Ramsbottom. She’s an avatar. She’s not real, although some people think she’s real. And he has a blog, a beautiful blog about the about HR. And actually, while he’s making fun of HR in a brilliant way, he’s pointing out to us what HR really needs to be about and how it needs to support organizational effectiveness and change. Highly recommend that you go to his website and to his blog. Check it out. Get a global mindset. More and more and more. Every client you have is going to have people in there who do not navigate in the same way that the Founding fathers said people did.
