38 Intervention Techniques for Organizational Development (Sensitivity Training, Process Consultation, Survey Feedback and Management by Objectives)

Structure

1.   Objectives

2.   Introduction

3.   Process Consultation

4.    Survey Feedback

5.    Sensitivity Training

6.    Management by Objectives

1.      Objectives

At the end of the session learners will be able to-

• Explain Process Consultation
• Apply Survey Feedback
• Explain Sensitivity theory
• Explain Management by Objectives

2.  Introduction

In an effort to increase effectiveness, efficiency and viability companies will employ interventions that pose as change agents to bring about change, improvement and up gradation in its working. The purpose of such interventions is to improve productivity, performance or behaviors through a series of structured individual and team activities that focus on what employees do and how they do it. These structured activities can be as diverse as formal group discussions, casual on the lunch table discussions, experiential exercises, surveys through questionnaire, attitude scale, and interviews. In fact, any action that has been employed purposefully by an organization in a client and external agent relationship and which has resulted in an improvement or development maybe termed as an intervention. There are several intervention techniques that can be selected and employed fruitfully for Organization Development.

Some of the intervention techniques that can be taken up are as follows:

• Sensitivity Training
• Process Consultation
• Survey Feedback and
• Management by Objectives

3.  PROCESS CONSULTATION

The phrase ‘Process Consultation’ was the title of a book written by Edgar Schein in 1969 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management. Schein describes process consultation as “a philosophy of ‘helping’, and a technology or methodology of how to be helpful.”

Process Consultation is the process in which the consultant works with the individuals and groups to help them learn about human and social processes and learn to solve problems that stem from process events.

Process Consultation is defined by Schein as, ‘Process Consultation is the creation of a relationship with the client that permits the client to perceive, understand, and act on the process events that occur in the client’s internal and external environment in order to improve the situation as defined by the client.’

According to Reddy and Q. Brendan ‘Process consultation is the reasoned and intentional interventions by the consultant, into the ongoing events and dynamics of a group with the purpose of helping that group effectively attain its agreed-upon objectives.’

This means that it is a conscious attempt in which an external agent is hired to help an organisation to examine the various processes and events that occur in the working environment with the purpose of understanding the problems that could arise and to deliberate upon solving these problems for improving performance and effectiveness of organizations.

The areas that are focussed in Process Consultation are as follows:

Communication- The manner in which communication flows to and fro from the superiors to the subordinates in the organization. The communication maybe one way or two way depending on the leadership style and whether there is clarity or a lack of it has to be found out.

Functional roles of members- What functions do the members perform as a virtue of their role and what kind of problems they pose. Are the job profiles clearly spelt out or there is ambiguity which adds to problems.

Group problem solving and decision making- How are problems that arise in the teams addressed and decisions arrived at. What kinds of group dynamics operate when the team works together?

Group norms and growth- what are the group norms that the team has arrived at how it affects their growth.

Leadership and Authority- What style of leadership is exerted and how does it impact all.

Inter group co-operation and Competition- depending upon the philosophy and leadership of the organisation what is dominant, competition, collaboration, or a fair balance of both; is examined.

All these areas have to be thoroughly examined to be able to sift out problems, snags in the processes that operate in an organization.

PC works on the following assumptions

• Managers need expert help to diagnose what is wrong in the organisation. Though the managers are dealing with the organisations the perspective of an external, neutral party helps to see the problems in a new light and gain better insights to solving them.
• They have the desire but do not know how to increase organizational effectiveness. The managers need to go beyond the intent of helping and find concrete ways of translating the intention into action plans.
• They can be effective if they learn to diagnose strengths and weaknesses.
• A consultant and the manager need to work in harmony. The external expert and the manager need to have an excellent rapport that will help them work together to find viable solutions for increasing organisational effectiveness.
• The role of mangers is to see problems and suggest desirable state of affairs. The role of consultant is to suggest alternatives to overcome the problem.

Process consultation procedure

The consultation process takes place through the following step

Initial Contact

A professional consultant is hired who would be working closely with the manager.

Define Relationship

The relationship between the external agent and the manager is a professional relationship of a client and consultant. The role that each will play in this professional contract is clearly defined. The manager has to provide all relevant inside information to the consultant who will objectively analyse it to find gaps, snags, and solutions to problems.

Selection of Method

After a lot of discussions, exchange of information and deliberations between the consultant and the manager decision is taken about the methods that will be used to gather data. Which method of gathering data would be most appropriate-questionnaires, personal interviews, observations-any one or all together is to be decided.

Collection of Data and Diagnosis

With the help of questionnaires, personal interviews, observations, either individually or in a combination as decided earlier, data will be gathered and analysed. The analysis should provide insights into the underlying problems which can be addressed.

Intervention

On the basis of the findings, appropriate intervention programmes would be identified. Intervention programmes like team building, transactional analysis, sensitivity training, survey feedback, staff welfare programmes etc. can be taken up.

Reducing involvement and termination

In this step, the organization is gradually weaned away from the support of the external agent. This calls upon the manager taking charge once again and moving the entire system towards improvement in terms of productivity, efficiency, and staff well-being.

Thus, Process Consultation can be a significant intervention technique that can mend the processes if they are a hindrance to achievement of organisational goals. It helps organisations in growth, improvement, and development.

4. SURVEY FEEDBACK

The study of Survey Feedback is developed as an organization wide intervention by Mann and his associates (1957-1965).

Survey feedback is a process in which organizational members complete questionnaires on various organizational issues, receive feedback on the results, and then take appropriate actions to address the critical needs and concerns. The objectives of survey feedback are:

To assist the organization in diagnosing its problems and developing action plan for problem-solving.

To assist the group members to improve the relationships through discussion of common problems.

The steps in Survey Feedback are:

• Data collection
• Feedback of information
• Developing action plans based on feedback
• Follow up.

Data Collection

Data collection is usually done by a consultant based on a structured questionnaire. The questionnaire may include questions on leadership – managerial support, managerial goal emphasis, managerial work facilitation, peer support, peer goal emphasis, peer work facilitation, and peer interaction facilitation, organizational climate-communication with the company, motivation, decision-making, control within the company, co-ordination between departments, and general management, and satisfaction-satisfaction with the company, satisfaction with the supervisor, satisfaction with the job, satisfaction with the pay, and satisfaction with the work group.

The questionnaire is administered personally either by the members of consulting firm or by organization’s personnel.

After the questionnaires are completed, data are classified, tabulated, and statistical analysis is made to arrive at some meaningful conclusions.

Feedback of Information

The feedback may be given either orally or in a written form.

In oral system of feedback, it is provided through group discussion or problem-solving sessions conducted by the consultant with all or specific group of members of the organisation.

Alternatively, feedback may be given in the form of a written summary of findings.

This written summary will be provided to all the concerned members.

Feedback given should be constructive and suggestive, rather, threatening and emotion-hurting as survey feedback is aimed at identifying weaknesses which must overcome through follow-up actions and not the fault-finding technique for criticism.

Developing action plans and follow-up

Survey feedback programme has to be followed by some action plan to be meaningful.

Action plans may be either to advise the participants to develop their own action plans to overcome the problems or developing some specific OD interventions particularly, process consultation and team-building, by the consultant. Whatever decisions regarding the intervention programmes are taken, they have to be implemented.

Follow-up of the implemented action plans is essential to evaluate its effectiveness. The process of Survey Feedback thus, gathers feedback of personnel on all aspects of the organization in order to identify snags and problems that come in the way of productivity, efficiency and overall development of an organization and plausible solutions for the same. Thus, it is an important intervention tool for organisation development.

5. SENSITIVITY TRAINING

Sensitivity Training according to Cambridge Business English Dictionary

Is to help people be more aware of the feelings and needs of others, for example, by making them more aware of cultural differences.

Sensitivity Training is a type of emotional training designed to help people become more aware of their intrinsic judgements and prejudices, develop a better awareness of group dynamics and their roles in the group and ultimately more sensitive to the needs of others.

It is training in Empathy that helps people put themselves in shoes of the other and observe from their point of view.

Workplaces are diverse in the current scenario. The diversity maybe in terms of nationalities, races, ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations and differently abled.

This diversity can be the cause of a lot of intolerance and discord that threatens the effectiveness of organisations. Thus, individuals at the workplaces need to be competent to deal with multicultural, gender equality, sexual orientation issues and sensitive to the differently abled.

The founder of sensitivity training is the German-American psychologist Kurt Lewin, who developed a series of change experiments for the Connecticut State Interracial Commission in 1946.It was first used by National Training Laboratories at Bethel,USA.The training group called itself T group, therefore it is also called as T Group training.

Procedure of Sensitivity Training

Sensitivity Training Procedure has the three steps:

Unfreezing the old values

It requires that the trainees become aware of the inadequacy of the old values. This can be done when the trainee faces dilemma in which his/her old values do not provide proper guidance. The first step consists of a small procedure; an unstructured group of 10-15 people is formed. This unstructured group feels lost without any objective and looks up to the trainer for guidance. But the trainer refuses to provide guidance and assume leadership. Left to help themselves, the trainees are motivated to resolve the uncertainty, they try to form some hierarchy. Some take up leadership role which may not be liked by other trainees. Then, they begin to realize what they desire to do and the alternative ways of dealing with the situation.

Development of new values

With the trainer’s support, trainees begin to examine their interpersonal behaviour and giving each other feedback. On the basis of the feedback the trainees are motivated to experiment with new behaviour values. This process constitutes the second step in the change process of the development of these values.

Refreezing the new ones

There is a need to fix the new values learnt by the group. The more opportunities provided to practice the new value learnt, the better is the chance of it being fixed and biases and prejudices being diluted.

Impact of sensitivity training

There is no guarantee of the success of the sensitivity training program. This is because learning of every participant varies, some do not learn or learn very little from a T group experience, others learn some things, and still others learn a considerable amount and variety of things, because programs vary so much in terms of their nature and goals. Possible outcomes are as follows:

Self

• Increased awareness of own feelings and reactions, and its impact on others.
• Increased awareness of feelings and reactions of others, and their impact on self.
• Increased awareness of dynamics of group action.
• Changed attitudes towards self, others, and groups; i.e., more respect for, tolerance for, and faith in self, others, and groups.
• Increased interpersonal competence; i.e., skill in handling interpersonal and group relationships toward more productive and satisfying relationships.

Role

• Increased awareness of own organizational role, organizational dynamics, dynamics of larger social systems, and dynamics of the change process in self, small groups, and organizations.
• Changed attitudes towards own role, role of others, and organizational relationships, i.e. more respect for and willingness to deal with others with whom one is interdependent, greater willingness to achieve collaborative relationships with others based on mutual trust.
• Increased interpersonal competence in handling organizational role relationships with superiors, peers, and subordinates.
• Increased awareness of changed attitudes and increased interpersonal competence about organizational problems of interdependent groups or units.
• Organizational  improvement  through  the training  of  relationships or  groups rather than isolated individuals.

Sensitivity training is a very important intervention tool for organisational development as differences between co-workers can hinder progress, productivity and development of any organization. By making co-workers sensitive to their differences paves the way for healthier relationships, team work and collaboration that go a long way in their wellbeing as well as of the organization.

6.  MANAGEMENT BY OBJECTIVES

Management by Objectives (MBO) is a philosophy and approach of Management. The concept of MBO was first championed by management expert Peter Drucker and became commonly used in the 1960s. In his book “The Practice of Management,” published in 1954, Drucker outlined a number of priorities for the manager of the future, on top of the list was that he or she “must manage by objectives.”

It suggests that objectives should not be imposed upon employees from the top but must be collectively decided by the subordinate and superior, which is easily accepted and results in quick and easy achievement of objectives. It is a personnel management process where managers and employees jointly identify the common objectives, set the results that should be achieved by the employees, assess the contributions of each individual and integrate individuals with the organization so as to make best use of organizational resources.

Definitions of MBO

According to Koontz and Weihrich, “Management by objectives is a comprehensive managerial system that integrates many key managerial activities in a systematic manner and that is consciously directed toward the effective and efficient achievement of organizational and individual objectives.”

According to George Odium, student of Peter Drucker who took the idea further defines MBO as “A process whereby superior and subordinate managers of an organization jointly define its common goals, define each individual’s major areas of responsibility in terms of results expected of him and use these measures as guides for operating the unit and assessing the contribution of each of its members.”

Thus MBO is,

A process of setting goals for the employees so that they clearly know what they are expected to do at the workplace.

It helps individuals to shift from personal goals to common organizational goals.

It clearly defines roles and responsibilities for the employees and helps them to chalk out their future course of action in the organization.

It guides the employees to deliver to the best of their ability and achieve the targets within the stipulated time frame.

It is democratic as the employee himself sets the goals keeping in mind the organizational goals.

It shifts the focus from exercising control to assuming self-control.

The core concept of MBO is planning, which means that an organization and its members are not merely reacting to events and problems but are instead being proactive. MBO requires that employees set measurable personal goals based upon the organizational goals. The personal goal aligns with the organizational goals.MBO is a supervised and managed activity so that all of the individual goals can be coordinated to work towards the overall organizational goal. Thus, each personal goal is one piece of a puzzle that must fit together with all of the other pieces to form the complete puzzle: the organizational goal. Goals are set down and are continually monitored by managers to check progress. Rewards are based upon goal achievement.

The Process of MBO

1.  Define Organizational goals: Defining and verifying organizational objectives is the first step in MBO process. Generally, these objectives are set by central management of the organization but it does so after consulting other managers and identifying Key Result Areas (KRA). It also conducts market service and research along with making a forecast. Through this elaborate analysis, the desired long run and short run objectives of the organization are highlighted. The central management tries to make these objectives realistic and specific. After setting these goals, it is the responsibility of the management that these are known to all members and are also under stood by them.

2.  Define employee objectives: After organization objectives are established by the central management, the next step is to establish the department goals. The top management needs to discuss these objectives with the head of the departments so that mutually agreed upon objectives are established. Long range and short range goals are set by each department in consultation with the top management. After the department goals are established, the employees work with their managers to establish their own individual goals which relate with the organization goals. It has been seen that employees become highly motivated to achieve the objectives established by them.

These objectives for individuals should be specific and short range:

(i)   The overall objectives related with the job of subordinates.

(ii)   The key results which must be achieved by the subordinate to fulfill his objectives.

(iii)    The long term and short term priorities, a subordinate needs to adhere to.

(iv)   The extent and scope of assistance expected by a subordinate from his superior and other departmental managers and also the assistance, the subordinate is required to extend to other departments of his organizations.

(v)  Nature of information and the reports received by the subordinate to carry out self-evaluation.

(vi)   The standards use to evaluate the performance of the subordinate.

3. Continuous Monitoring Performance and progress

After the objectives have ben charted and plans of action have been spelt out between the manager and the subordinate, the plans are implemented and the manager continuously monitors the performance and progress of the organization.

4. Performance Evaluation

After charting out of the objectives, standards expected in terms of output and production is also decided upon jointly by the manager and subordinate. On the basis of these pre-determined standards, the performance of the subordinate is continuously compared and evaluated.

5. Providing Feedback

The role of the manager is to continuously motivate, monitor, and provide a feedback on the performance. Thus, the manager motivates while the subordinate tries to accomplish the objectives set by him. The purpose is to help the subordinate have clarity in function as well as come close to the objectives that he has designed himself.

6.  Performance appraisal: An informal performance appraisal is generally conducted in routine by the manager, a periodic review of performance of the subordinates should also be conducted. Periodic reviews are required as the priorities and conditions change constantly and need to be monitored constantly. These reviews help the mangers as well as the subordinates to modify the objectives or the methods whenever required. This significantly increases the chances of achieving the goals and also ensures that no surprises are found at the time of final appraisal. Periodic performance appraisal needs to be based on measurable and fair standards so that these are completely understood by the subordinates and they are also aware of the degree of performance required at each step.

MBO benefits the organization, manager as well as the subordinate.

For the subordinate, it brings role clarity, performance appraisal, job satisfaction, and improved productivity. It also helps in aligning personal goals with organizational goals. Since the objectives have jointly been agreed upon they offer more motivation and commitment to accomplish.

The superior benefits as it is a participative approach and results in a better rapport and mutual trust with the subordinate.

It benefits thus the whole organization by focusing on managerial effectiveness, identification of potential of the subordinate, better co-ordination between the manger and subordinate and eliciting dedication and commitment which results in decentralization of power.

There are certain limitations of MBO, for instance, it may neglect the personal needs of the manager. There is a problem while setting objectives among unequal ’s or with those at the lower level. MBO is difficult to implement in an environment of flux as it presupposes a relatively stable environment till the objectives set are met.

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