This video delves into the intricacies of organizational development, emphasizing the critical stages of inquiry, discovery, and data gathering in the context of change initiatives. The author highlights the importance of one-on-one interviews, group interviews, surveys, and observational methods as effective tools for understanding an organization’s dynamics. The piece underscores the significance of interpreting gathered data accurately, offering insights into potential biases and challenges associated with each method. With a focus on change strategy, the video navigates through the upsides and downsides of various data collection approaches, providing valuable perspectives for leaders involved in steering organizational transformations.
Transcprict
Inquiry, discovery, data gathering, figuring out what needs to be done in any change initiative, whether it’s with a small group or a department or a huge organization, there’s a point where you have to figure out what do we focus on? Out of all the things that are happening here, where do we focus our attention? There’s some very important principles here that I want to show you. First of all, you need to understand that you’re actually gathering data from the very first phone call or the very first contact with the client. The first time I’m speaking with someone in the organization, I’m asking questions. What’s happening? I’m listening to how they respond. I’m gathering data about how open they are, how ready they are, how eager they are for this to happen, how careful they are, and so forth. So with every person that I’m talking to from the very beginning, I’m logging that data in a sense in my little file folder here in my mind. So from the first phone call, you’re gathering data. There are some actual data gathering methods that you need to understand. There are six of them that I’m going to show you all six, and what the strengths and weaknesses are, the pros and cons of each one. The first one is one-on-one interviews. I don’t think I’ve ever done any kind of change initiative without at least some one-on-one interviews, usually with key stakeholders.
If I can, I like to do what I call a diagonal slice of the organization, where I interview people from the bottom to the top, across a sample, across departments and across levels. Now, the pros about that, the upsides are you get rich personal insights from people. They’re more honest in the way they speak. And I’m beginning to build a relationship with those people. So when we get into the actual work, they feel like there’s more of a connection. The downside is it takes a lot of time for these one-on-one interviews, and there’s a personal slant or bias that is present can go unchecked. If you just listen to, let’s say someone is very persuasive. Sometimes people that are articulate will carry more weight, and their data might mean more when actually it might not be exactly the way it is for most people. There’s a second way to do these interviews, which is in groups, small groups. You can either do groups of people from the same area. What I like to do is create mixed groups where people from different areas, different departments or different areas in that small group that I’m interviewing, 4 or 5, six people max. And because I like them to hear each other. So we’re already beginning to help the organization in a way, by them understanding a little bit more about what’s going on in other parts of the organization.
The upsides of group interviews are you get some personal insights there. People aren’t usually totally afraid. They’re a little more careful. It’s much more time effective, like by a factor of four or 5 or 6, however many you have in the group, and the group actually can stimulate fresh thinking from it. Yeah, that reminds me of this and so forth. The downside is that there is the possibility of an audience effect where they’re a little more careful with what they say because there are people there from other parts of the organization or that they don’t know. The third method, which is also quite often used, is a survey where people are given a survey either electronically nowadays, quite often it’s online or in the old days. In fact, two of my colleagues and I created the first computer-scored organization effectiveness survey that anybody knew about in like 1978. But people filled out the form, and so forth. And then we collated the data. The upside of using surveys is that you get wide coverage. I mean, as soon as you create the questions, you can have an infinite million people taking the survey now online is low cost per data point, and it’s numerically scorable because you’re gathering data, you can get numbers, which are very important when you’re trying to figure out where the where, the where to focus your effort.
The downsides are that it forces the focus onto what the questions are. As soon as you write the questions, that’s what you’re going to find out about. And maybe what you need is not in those questions. You’re not going to find out about it. So the downside is that it narrows down the areas that you’re gathering data about. It also requires interpretation because a number doesn’t mean anything. Okay. You get a 3.2 on this score out of five. Well, what does that mean. So ultimately it has to be interpreted. And as you’ll see when we get to that other video, I like to have the people themselves interpret the data, not some little group of experts in HR or in the consulting firm, but the people that actually gave you the data, they know what that number means. Just ask them what that number means. And there’s sometimes a loose connection between the survey and reality, depending on who developed the survey. If it’s an off-the-shelf survey, maybe it doesn’t fit the organization exactly. Right. So that’s another downside. Surveys are very, very helpful though for another reason, giving everybody a chance to have their voice be heard so they can at least be you’ve touched bases with people. The fourth one is to look at organizational hard data like public reports and so forth, and there’s lots of it available.
It’s not as time-dependent. It doesn’t take a lot of time because it’s already been prepared by the organization. And there’s some kind of a usually a connection between what you’re reading about and the strategic objectives of the organization. The downside is that it’s been cleaned up. You know, somebody at corporate sort of wrote the article, and probably legal and HR and several other areas had to kind of make sure that it didn’t violate any principles. So what comes out at the end for public data is sometimes not as raw as you really need to have in order to know what’s really going on. And sometimes the linkage of that data to the change, what the change is needed is somehow not very clear, so that more work needs to be done to say, what’s the connection between this article that was in the company magazine and what we need to do in the change initiative. A fifth one is actually just to watch people. And I love to do this. I like to go to the cafeteria and eat with people I like to sit in, just sit in the back of the room and watch a few meetings, just to kind of get a visceral feel for what’s happening in the organization. I don’t carry a stopwatch. I’m not timing people. Like in the old days, how long it took them to do this or that or the other thing.
But I get a feel for how they connect with each other and so forth. The upside of this, it’s reality-based. It’s immediate. I mean, what you’re seeing is right there, it’s real, and there’s a relatively wide scope because you can watch, you can go and watch pretty much everything. The downside is you still need to interpret what’s happening. And the observer bias. Like when I’m watching, I’m always watching through my own bias. And then finally, the audience effect, where people know that I’m watching, that can change a little bit of what they do. So that’s a downside. But it’s very, very powerful. I like to do this as much as I possibly can. Finally, what’s called unobtrusive, live, unobtrusive meaning not obvious like you’re not. Nobody knows that you’re gathering the data. And this is information that’s in the public media, that’s in the magazines or newspapers or TV. The upsides are that it’s reality-based because it’s happening and people have been reporting on it. It provides a historical point of view. You can go back and look at annual reports, read the annual reports, you can read what people are writing, have been writing about that organization in the past, and you can get a wide scope of information about that. The downsides are that it’s open to interpretation. And the media also is looking for a story. So sometimes the way they spin something is not the whole truth, but it’s like something that they think will sell.
Now how to find out what’s real. What I suggest is that you take multiple data points, what we call fixes. I’m not talking about drugs. I’m talking about something else. When I was in the Navy on our ship and we were trying to find out where we were in the ocean. This was before GPS. I’m an old guy. What we would do if we were in sight of land, we would we would take a fix, meaning we would take a bearing. We would get on the compass and see what’s the direction to this point and then to this point and this point. And once we had three of them, we had a crisscross and we knew that we were right here. So what I highly recommend is that you do one-on-one interviews with some combination of these other data gathering methods. Use as many as you can, and the more you have, the more confident you can be and the more confidently you can share with the client and work with the client when they see, oh, this is where we are, this is where this is where we are. It’s a great place. And in fact, in my opinion, the only place to start a change initiative, know exactly where you are just as accurately as you possibly can. Take multiple data fixes.
