Focus 580; Terms of Engagement: Changing the Way We Change Organizations

In this our focus 580 will be talking about organizational change with a gentleman who is a pioneer in the field his name is Richard Axelrod. He is currently working with Peter Bloch in the Association for quality and participation to develop the school for managing an innovative approach to management education and we'll be talking specifically about a model of organizational change that he developed that he calls the engagement model which he argues works much better than the way that we have been doing it for at least the last 20 years. We'll be talking about the subject this morning and of course as people who are listening have questions if you like call in be a part of the conversation. You're welcome to do that very easy all you have to do is pick up the telephone and dial the number. Here in Champaign-Urbana. Where we are the local number 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We do also have a toll free line and it would be a long distance call for you use that number that's 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 and if you match the numbers with the letters on the phone you get w while

also three three three W. and toll free 800 1:58 W while Mr. Axelrod Hello Ira how are you. I'm fine thanks and and thanks for talking with us today. Thanks for having me. I thought it might be interesting before we go on and talk about the engagement model. Perhaps we might just talk a little bit about what we've done to date and look at some of the other ways that we have thought about change organizations have approached change maybe even going back to the what is perhaps the most basic the kind of change that happens in organizations where you have strong charismatic maybe sometimes dictatorial leaders. And the change happens like this the leader decides there will be change and then tells everybody and I suppose if he has that kind of authority then everyone goes along with it. That's perhaps the oldest way. There may in fact still be organizations though where that's the way they do it. Yeah well I think that I type with a very deep in our psyche the

idea is that the leader because of the pure your knowledge and insight and vision sees the future and then the leader's job is to convince those of the reluctant multitude to go along with them. So this is a very powerful and I think it got to model. Yeah. So that's what I call the leader driven change and then if you think you me take that even go back to King Arthur you know Knights of the Round Table and the hat and then there. Beginning at about the nineteen hundred is what I would call process driven change. And the idea was that if somehow we got control of the processes in the business of time businesses were getting more complex then that was the way to bring about change and with that you have the beginnings of industrial engineering. And then you could fast forward to today to re-engineering and enterprise redesign. Then beginning in the 1980s you began to hear about what we

call team driven change in things like quality circles and employee involvement and the idea here was that employees had knowledge employees voice and that they could make it. And then in about the. Nineteen nineties you began to hear the term change management and what you began to see was that in process driven change which was the industrial engineering approach eventually gave rise to the consulting firm they began to look over and see what was going on would improve and change. So what if we could find the best of both the best of these people and out of that came the idea of change management which the idea was good but it sort of lacked some things in its implementation. Well there there I think you summed it up very nicely that we there were these sort of two in terms of modern business and organization change there were these two ideas there was first the idea that if you were a manager maybe the thing to do would be to go

out there and get yourself some consultants people who are really sharp. They would come in and tell you what to do and then you would go to the organization and said OK this is what the consultant says. Then the idea that's that says well maybe it would make more sense if we really involve the people involved the workforce. You know they they they ought to be smart enough to have some pretty good ideas. So that's that the team driven approach and then we came to the idea that says you know both of those ideas have their features Let's put them together. So we had consultants and teams working together. But that now that seems to. Would seem to incorporate the best features of both of those models and yet what you're arguing is that change management for a variety of reasons. If it did work it doesn't really work very well anymore. What's the problem with that you see with that approach. Well a couple things happened. One is the if you move from leader driven change to process to change the role of the leader shifted the will of the leader became what I would call a cheerleader. They've moved from

they stepped aside and turned over the power to the consultants. And the change process began. Since he was driven by the consultant and then another problem happened as you move to team driven change. Then again the leaders sort of abdicated and said OK all the knowledge is equal with the people in the organization and I don't have to do anything. See you had this sort of epic A. That leadership which is one of the problems. The other thing that happened was that a structure became very popular call the parallel organization which was the idea of setting up a structure a temporary structure usually composed of the. Sponsor group which was the role of leadership the steering committee. And then there were actually problem solving groups that have an effect at the basic structure or organizational change today. Now what happened was the idea was that this structure would be a place where people could step aside and learn about the organization. Think about changes and again that was a great idea but in fact what happened

was people saw this as the few deciding for the many. So that you would have these groups maybe 30 40 100 people meeting deciding about the organization how its going to change and people within the organization starting to worry about what they were going to do to us. So there was there was one of the major flaws with the few deciding for them. And that's I suppose again one of the big problems here if you're talking about trying to make some changes if you have. And I know that you argue that the your approach should change is as as effective in a small organization as a big one. And I guess I'm thinking of relatively large organizations if the management and small numbers of workers get together and they decide this is what we're going to do. Then they present that to everybody else. Then the big challenge is getting everybody else to go along and they may have a variety of reasons for saying to themselves if they don't say it out loud Well this isn't going to work either because they feel that it effects

them adversely or they think that it's not a good idea or you know whatever it is there's there's the big challenge. If you have some if you have a small number of people making decisions everybody else has got to carry them out. You've got to have them with you and if they're not that the in the change decision gonna go. Yeah. And what we see is really was the you know the strategy or the idea of the change so flawed that it could be implemented. But where the prophecies would always money trouble would be could they get the sufficient ownership and buy it and so the flaw in that thinking was that even when you put these groups together and think that they would represent people and represent different points of view people out in the organization never really felt that their voice was being heard. That became a problem when it came to. The. It seems that one big problem here with or at least with a couple of these strategies is and maybe

again it's going to be an overriding problem for managers for them to feel that they're striking the right balance between managing and letting people sort of have the freedom to do to do what they what they know and you know you hope that based upon their daily experience working in an intimate way with whatever it is you do that they're going to have some good ideas about how things get done. Managers though are sure that they think well I'm a manager so I'm supposed to be managing it. And that it's easy to say to them you need to give your workers the freedom to do their jobs. But at the same time managers they've I'm sure they have to feel that they're doing that they're fulfilling their role and perhaps they also want to feel that they're in control. So that's I'm sure that that must be a difficult thing when you talk to people in management. Yeah I mean I think we're not advocating that managers let go completely. What we're saying is that. You know managers and leaders at all

levels have information. And that that information is necessary to get good solutions. So just having the leader be the only one who decides what is. What should be done. If you if you delegate completely are what I would call in some senses they advocate then you're missing system knowledge and so what we're advocating is bringing people together at all levels to address the issues and also bringing in outside stakeholders such as customers and suppliers. This with the change management did. Did it ever work that it once worked well. Oh yeah I mean I think. If you think back historically each of these was a step forward and it fits at the time. And so in in in I think one of the reasons it worked because it was it was an advancement over what was okay and so what we're seeing in organizations particularly ones who've been involved in you know trying to bring about organizational change over long periods of

time is that they get more and more sophisticated so than they need different kinds of approaches because what might have worked 10 15 years ago does not necessarily work today. How is it you know like you could see some of the work forward and the Quality is job one and some of those kinds of things. Examples of this process actually working how how what sort of a factor does the need to be able to make changes quickly. What is that one of the things that has made some of these other ways of changing Brabo matic the fact that they just can't they just don't respond quickly enough. Yeah in fact that's how we came to this approach that we would go in and you know having done Change Management Consulting we would go in to a client we'd say well we want to work with this small group of people and we'll work with them for six or nine months and then at the end of that we will bring the solution out to the organization and people are saying

their business would change so much in that nine months that it just could work for them that they need ways to bring about change more quickly. And in the end the engagement model that does that. Yeah I think what happens is that if you if you take what we've been discussing there's a there's a period where you design the changes you think about that in traditional method then you go out and you solicit by it. And what we see is that whole time of getting acceptance because we've involved so many people in the beginning it's reduced so that when you figure out what you're what you're going to do the amount of time it takes to get the organization to go along with it and implement it as it is be to sightsee maybe half maybe three quarters because people know what's going on in the very beginning. I should introduce Again our guest with this part of focus 580 His name is Richard Axelrod. He's an expert in

the area of organizational change and he is the author of the book terms of engagement changing the way we change organizations. So if you're interested in reading some more about his idea of the engagement model of organizational change. The book is published by Barrett Koehler publishers out of San Francisco and book should is out there should be available if you would like to take a look at it and of course also questions or welcome me I like to call in here talk with our guest. You can do that too. The number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 we also have a toll free line. That one's good anywhere that you can hear us around Illinois Indiana any place that you might be listening. The toll free line 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5 so again locally here 3 3 3 wy L.L. toll free 800 2 2 2 w. Iowa. Maybe you could talk a little bit about how it is you came to to develop this idea because I think that you were doing something that was kind of similar to this

and that this is made perhaps a further refinement. That you developed. Yeah in the early 1990s we developed a process called the conference model and the idea of the conference model was to bring large groups of people together to redesign an organization or a process and we would you know we could bring anywhere from 80 to several hundred people together in one room. They would be people at all levels. Including outside people such as customers suppliers other other important stakeholders and we would create an organizational vision we would look at prophecies and we would get in organizational redesign and you know so we were able to cut the time to implement change and change in half and reduce the subsequent resistance that we talked about earlier. And so we've been using this process for you know the last 10 years and we began to look at it and try to understand why

it works and also there were some other prophecies that were similar to ours. So what's going on here why why are people getting excited. Why are they willing to come in at night and off shift work on things like why is it that we're seeming to be able to. Yes I get the kind of implementation that that's required to bring about change and you know every time we would go into an organization we would always customize this process so we began to try and look and say what what what where the key or fundamental principles that were going on here and then we looked at there compared to other prophecies. I mean you know we came up with four principles. First one was what we call widening the circle of involvement involving more people than we ever thought prudent or possible and including people that you don't necessarily often think of including those who might you might think who are out there who would resist or opposed to what you're doing. Then the second principle was what we call

connecting people to each other into ideas that you can have a crowd. But then you know you have a crowd. Listen to a speech too so we have some ways to connect people to each other. Into the ideas of the process. Then the third principle was creating communities for reaction because you can have a group of people and they can connect to each other put in there willing to you know take action if it's meaningless. And then the fourth principle was what we called embracing democratic principles. Which means providing freedom and autonomy means listening providing information including people in decision making. So that those sorts of things. And also a sense of bringing equity and fairness to the process and what we see zis as a system of principle. And a lot of the stories in the book are people who. Just that OK we've got to change process we've got a problem and how can we apply these four principles to what we're

doing so that there was really when you think about the engagement Aradigm it's the application of those four principles. We have a caller to talk with others certainly if you have questions you'd like to call and talk with our guest Richard Axelrod you're welcome to do that here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5. There's color in ur Banna number one morning. Yes. So you call the process being engaged in process. What happens when a company downsize. I would think that your process probably wouldn't work if people felt that they were going to be losing their jobs. Or do you not work with downsizing. We have and it's sort of counterintuitive but yes going back to the sense of democratic principles we work with downsizing.

What we see in the organization this is with the principle of equity and fairness. I think I can barely hear you but I'm saying I'm saying this is one of the principle. Record unfairness comes in can hear me now OK. And I think I'm going to hang up and listen. Okay yeah sure. Thank you. Go ahead Mr. Axelrod. This is where the principle of equity and fairness comes in and it's part of the democratic principles. So if we're going to work with a company that's downsizing when we're saying let's look at this process and is it the process going to be equitable and fair how are people going to be treated who are downsized. What's the process for that is all that laid out in advance. Can we find out when companies are able to do that when we have such a situation at British Airways where they they really throughout the entire thing that's how do we treat people. Well what happened to them is that people weren't. Willing to participate. You wouldn't think so but.

But I think the key to that is the sense of what's going on. It has a sense of equity and fairness that I'm going to be treated OK in the process. And some people I would rather have a say in it and have it done to me. Well that's interesting. Does that mean I actually mean that the the employees had some sort of role in deciding who was going to keep their jobs. Well not on an individual basis. OK. But we would have a say in how the work was redesigned because who's who would actually stay is actually a management decision. But the actual redesign of the work was done by employees some of whom when they looked at the new organization voluntarily said Well I think I'd like to work at some other part of the organization or maybe it's time for me to do something different. And others didn't have that choice. But what they all knew at the very beginning is how they would be treated. I think another thing that often goes on with these things is that the

that the top remains unchanged where it's the bottom that's downsized so. Think what you have to have is a process. Compasses the whole organization. Now it's not just so that it's that everybody is part of this process of downsizing not it being done just one group of people. Going back to you were talking about the fact that the model that you developed has basically these four sorts of features and one of them is that essentially you want to for change to be more effective you need to involve more people in the process. I can imagine that that's there. There is a point at which it becomes awkward if too many people are involved there. And I guess I'm just wondering you know you also talk in the book about the fact about the idea of critical mass that there are a certain number of people who have to get involved. Is there a line past which you

you get too many people involved and that if you give everybody a voice that what happens is you just get find yourself in endless debates about what we do. And that becomes counterproductive. Yeah. Well we're lucky and it depends on the organization. We would say a minimum of 20 percent. You know we've had other organizations where they said 40 percent and in some smaller organizations and I'm talking maybe organizations about a thousand. They say we want to get everybody in. So we usually leave it up to the you know we kind of give the organizations these guidelines and then the organization makes a decision about you know where they want to go. Well we were we we have our two ways of involving people we have these what we call Raj group meetings which are the conferences and that's where we bring the hundreds of people together and then we have another process that we call a walk through is where the decisions that are made in the conferences get taken out into the

organization. And people need smaller groups of maybe 20 to 30 and oftentimes these meetings are voluntary and they get their input and that goes back into the conference. So you have this process of taking information out into the organization and then going back into getting that input and having it fit back into the change process in one organization that we worked with in California. Their goal was to empower 40 percent of the people in the organization and either a conference or you walk through. And what happened was when they did an employee survey and they asked people did you have Did you feel like you had a voice in the organizational change. 85 percent of the people said yes it was I thought an astounding number. And is it that common that then when you for example you get you do the walk through. Then if people on that level look at proposals that have been made and they say well look from my experience here doing the job on this level

I think this is really not the right approach. Let me tell you why and let me suggest something else then does that information really and then feeding back and changing the. Plan does that does that really. Does that really end up. Can that really end up changing the direction of the change. I think what of what happens is in the conferences we you know we have a broad based representation of the organization. And what I see more in practice I think what you're saying theoretically is possible to happen what happens mostly in practice is that we see more fine tuning of the approach where you know you're basically in the right area but you forgot this little piece here you forgot this idea here. So I see it more as people you've never seen one that was so wrong that people said well you have to throw it out completely. But we do see them is fine tuning it based on their experience.

I expect also that part of the functions of the conference. When you get to the large groups together is that it does do another one of the things that you talk about in this model and that is it brings together people from different parts of the organization that perhaps ordinarily might not have any contact with each other. Yeah I mean it's amazing how many times people come together maybe talk on the phone in a large organization but never met. In one organization says a paper mill that we work with. He was very sad lots of people worked in there. You know a different part of the manufacturing process and they came together in the in the hall and in this you know large conference and you know they start talking about issues of problems and people say oh I didn't know we caused that problem we can fix that right away. So just this building of personal connections to people creates a link that otherwise out there not only across the organization but also vertically.

I think it's a really. Interesting notion that that you would have to create a framework for that to happen. But perhaps that's just the nature of large organizations that there would be otherwise there would be no way for the people to say who are making some sort of policy or making some sort of decision on one level that was affecting the way that somebody else had to work or do their job and it was a big problem and the people on the other end they would complain about yeah those other guys they don't know what they're doing in business and everything but somehow the word would never get back to the to the other party that they were creating a problem for for the for for people that people in group were creating a problem for people in group B. Yeah. And and well what we see often and what we try to do in the organization and a lot of these conferences say you know we are both the creator and receiver of problem. You know there's problems we create in our unit that impact other people and then those other problems that are created another work unit that impacts us. And when people begin

to see that they're both the creator and receiver of those kinds of things a lot of the flaming stops and they began to look at these things as issues that need to be resolved. I would guess too that perhaps this process might actually legitimize or legitimate in which on the right were complaints that might be drifting around informally you know maybe the people in group A. Yeah the word gets back to them that the people in group B are really unhappy with something that they have done but they might tend to dismiss that. And perhaps if you have this kind of more structured way to get these people together with some facilitation that maybe then the folks in Group A would be much more inclined to take seriously what the folks in Group B are saying. Yeah and what you see often in organizations is you see this. What we would call an inner group or nominate where you know the people and they basically say he was only a smart as we were understood the world like we did and everything

would be all right. But that's what the people in group B are saying that the same thing. And so you put him in the room together and they face a common issue and they say oh my God these are human beings you know. They're not. Mother and rider rider barriers come down just by bringing people together. I assume that also one of the the things that happens here that maybe doesn't ordinarily happen is not only are you bringing people together from different parts of the organization that might not have that much contact but I suppose if this works right you're you're bringing your top management together with workers and they are again it's almost a class kind of a line that probably doesn't get crossed very much and that he or another group you know two groups of people that ought to have some contact that probably don't. And what we'll do with who we meet we often do the seating so that we have people sitting at tables at mixed levels and

mix departments. And so maybe in a smaller you know even though we might have hundreds of people there in a smaller group of eight to 10 they get to know people as human beings. And happy can facilitate conversation. The other thing that happens is when we bring in outsiders such as customers suppliers sometimes interested people from the community that voice is also gets heard a different way. But often like it. Well one thing we see very often is it's one thing for the leaders to say our customers want this or they require this or they have these kinds of complaints about. Products that then when we actually bring them into a session and people in the organization fear that information firsthand it's just not management trying to get us to do something else. They actually hear it from the customer it has a very different kind of message that way. We have another caller here someone on a car phone talk with will do that there are line number

for the money. Yes. Come on I'm like hearing a lot of what you're talking about is increasing personal communication involving people and getting people to actually talk to each other. And traditionally you know whatever the file was changed got handled because one person told another person or told a group of people. Then we got into telephone communication and now the big thing is that 8 million e-mails a day to everybody. And with e-mail you know what telephone you lose the face the face part of communication and our e-mail you'll lose what effect that over the phone with over vocal communication. So how do you combat you know the increasing them personalization of communication. Once you put this process of the order and then you know and the flights and I'll hang up and listen. Thank you. It's an interesting question would what do you think. Well I think what we're doing. I mean I think in the sense that it's a process maybe an antidote to this because we're we're actually bringing people together and trying to

create the links and oftentimes will to you know maybe two or three of these conferences so what we're trying to build strong personal links between people and then you can use the e-mail and as you know as a supporter or fire up to what's going on. But everything that we've done both the use of electronic media and knowledge management and talking with other people in the field that the most important thing is the personal communication and that you can use the databases and electronic communications as a secondary support. But when you turn it around you don't get those sorts of things. What do you do to try to institutionalize these channels of communication so that after you you as a consultant pack up in your workshops are over and you go away that this doesn't just become a one time

thing. Right. OK. Well I think one of the key things is having the organization have a deep understanding of these principles because what I believe is about the principles is sort of like if you remember in math you know if you would memorize a formula. OK. And then comes the math test and the instructor gives you a different problem you don't know what to do. But if you don't understand the principles deeply then you can get something new then you're able to address the situation in the future. So one of the things we see happening is that this organizations work with this process in people throughout the organization begin to understand the principles. Then the capacity of the organization begins to show up. In terms of their ability to manage and handle change I think that's the lasting benefit because you know we can bring people together and we make an organizational change and but you know things happen in the environment and things

change so that change may not be the right thing to do two or three years from now. And the issue is then what do you do two or three years from now to respond. And what we see is that yes people learn to work in this format. They take that back into the organization as they learn to understand the principles then they begin to apply those not always in the right scale but even into daily work or individual meetings that they may be having. Maybe it might be interesting to have you give a specific example sort of a case study because we've been talking here rather in the abstract. Maybe. A company that you worked with and how this works for them. OK well Ron did that give you one example from Detroit Edison where they had been going at trying to change their supply chain process for a number of years and really didn't have much to show for it.

And so they've been doing a fairly traditional methods. They asked us to come in and we began to work with these these principals and began to think about how we could bring about change in the organization in the first thing we realized was a radical concept work had been done so we didn't want to throw that out and we started in a sense we started with a series of rock tunes where we went people from Detroit us and went out into the organization talked about the supply chain process talked about the idea that we were going about two hundred fifty people. To look at the work that had been done what needed to be changed and how to make the supply chain process more efficient within Detroit Edison. So we had so we started with a walk through. We had one conference and you know like in it we said we want to have 250 people there. We only had about 180 show up at the first one went out did it walk through

anything. Second conference we had over 500 volunteers and we think what happened between the first and the second conference was a lot of the initial skepticism and cynicism got reduced because people began to realize that they could have avoided what happened at the end of it. Was that to try to get us and identify 26 process these that they could not posses the projects that they could use this new supply chain improvement process and it ended up saving the company millions of dollars so when this all happened within the space of about six months from the time that we we first met with them to the time that these projects began to be initiated. So let's sort of one concrete example. Another one is company we're working with right now large manufacturing firms and we've just been working with the principals and we started out we work with the leadership and we were

essentially was like 14 people and they have expanded out to 50 and now it's expanded out to about I think about 300 people at serious levels and it's in process now. I think what's interesting about it is that what the leadership is constantly doing is saying let's look at these principles. Let's look at how we apply and so it's at one point when you get the top 50 leaders of this engineering organization. He said well we need to ride the circle. So they came up with a sort of a unique way they randomly assigned each of the leaders different pay grades and it was their job to bring someone from the pay grade to the next meeting. And so that then expanded from 50 to I think about 150. We have another caller here let's talk with them someone in Champaign slow number one. Hello good morning. Hi It would help us if you could speak up so you're kind of faint. All right thanks. Hold the phone here.

Picture one I wanted to say thanks for the show I enjoyed the show and I particularly wanted to thank the person who was in with the message about how e-mail might actually be here my words not his step down from the level of communication and so much of the emotional aspect was to connect of course and if you're e-mailing a person that you know a great deal you can extrapolate presumably. But if it's a wonderful idea and so much. It was a totally brand new for me which has been a long time since I had one of those and I really appreciated it. In defense of email I'd like to say that it does give you written wherein you can refer back to it and make sure that you've got the right idea etc. but that might take additional emailing if our guest finds any of this appropriate

I'd be happy to. To listen I can either stay on or hang up. JERRY Well you want Mr. Axelrod you have further thoughts about e-mail. Yeah well I mean I think I think we're still trying to figure out how to make this to work I mean I think it does you know in terms of what the caller said you know I often find myself going back to e-mail and it's great for short little jot. I found it. You know I mean I've often caught myself when you're discussing controversial things over email just stopping in saying I got to talk to this person because I could see where the emails were going and they were you know it was the conversation was going to be you know disastrous because you just don't have that give and take that you have with someone in person and then I have often thought I wonder what people were saying when the telephone first came out and were they saying you know we've lost the ability to get you know all the nonverbal cues we get when we talk with someone in person and

so I think I think we're still learning how to work with this. I think those are the ideas of course when telephones first came out obviously seized on is a very gentle break probably as a great extension of our abilities and the detrimental aspect which you clearly scribed there wasn't factored in. I think Carol like once upon a time in this country vaccination I didn't receive that kind of press a receipt now because everybody understood that you know you might lose 1 percent of your pie. We're going to save 99 and it's so much better and I just picked her out of here. I'm not trying to be. That's the point I'm making is the belief systems understanding of the ending of what the outcomes could be are so much different now if people take so much

for granted. I have a question that you've given me listening to if I can formulate it quickly here. Jean do you find it in business that. Emailing our brief and cryptic origin do you find that there are two men and they have three English compositions that nobody knows what they're really trying. Together do you have any observations of him serious. Well I mean that they can just go by my own experience for I really like email sort of the short ones that you know we're going to meet on this state and you know we're just sort of surfing you know. Traffic that you can just do in a few sentences. And those those really work. I think the longer ones in general don't work. But. This example from our own consulting practice is we have some alliances with consulting firms in

the U.K. and across the country here and what we found is that you know if we periodically we get together first and we have a meeting and we sort of figure out our direction of what we're going to do on a project and we can do an awful lot on the MI e-mail between times which saves us the getting together that we periodically have to come together face to face. Keep those personal connections and get the overall of what it is we're trying to do. We want to come up with a color we're getting down to our last maybe. Two three minutes we have someone else I'd like to include here is a caller in Chicago. Our line number four. Hello. Thank you. I was wondering if your guest had ever given or applied his thoughts on organizational change for the big organization that is the World Trade Organization that people are talking about and the matter of engagement and personal contact and insight illumination of what's going on seems to be a factor that's excluded at least from the public's point of view as to what is really occurring.

Have you given some thoughts about that and about the furnace or lack of it as to what is perceived to be going on and this one what you had thought sung by some thought last year in Seattle that maybe some of these might help but they didn't call me so. While the necessity seems to be apparent to get more engagement and public awareness because well then you have the matter of the mega mergers that are occurring. An organizational change that as well with the recent one but dime a Benz and a Chrysler and suddenly there's a big shakeout and so things are happening where organizational changes are having impact not only that way as well as automation and computerization and robots and cetera. Your application along organise a position to change the law to aspire to and I think so.

I mean I think the thing that happens with mergers is they're not really mergers. There's very few mergers or creating a new entity and a lot of takeovers a lot of winners and losers. And I remember a program where Dr. Kissinger and William Buckley were speaking together about things at the month's turn of the millennium in addressing some of the matters of changes that are occurring and they said we haven't even developed the institutions to begin to deal with these changes of organizational factors. Who knows. Well I like to see you apply your thoughts to some of these matters. Bye bye. All right well thanks for the call. Perhaps related to that as a way of kind of rounding things out as we finish up one of the points that characterizes the model that we've been talking about is the idea of embracing democracy your words and I think that force for some people they might say to people that might we might say we're cynics or they might say they were realists that it's very very difficult

for large corporations large business entities to indeed be democratic organizations that it just that somehow that it's it just runs counter to the kind of values that come with being a large profit driven. And it is is it really possible to for these organizations to be democratic by their nature or is there still some limit to that some line past which you really can't go. Yeah. Well I think when I was doing main thing embracing democracy is. I think there's a trend towards being more democratic. And I think you know particularly when you look at the Internet the moment an organization with e-mail in its system they have no control about how people use it. So there's a way in which people could communicate where they could never communicate. But in terms of what I'm talking about I'm talking about a set of democratic principles of equity and fairness. So is your business and what you're doing in your

organization. Does it have a sense of equity and fairness. Are you sharing information to the max. And are you providing. Involving people with in as much as much as you can in the decision making process and when you do you know you're giving people a sense of freedom and autonomy so that they can take action. That's that's what I mean by democracy. It's a lot of times people will say well democracy means everybody has a vote and I would submit that voting is not necessarily a symbol of democracy because this is plenty of countries where people vote and they're not democratic at all. You know there's one they're told who to vote for there's one vote on the party. So it's a I think it's more than just it's voting it's it's having a sense that your voice counts and it's it's about these four things that I mentioned before the equity and fairness information sharing the decision making and having a sense of freedom and autonomy. As there were been the case for your experience that. An organization

might look at this kind of model might implemented because they think that it will simply make the organization run more smoothly and hence be more profitable. And that as a result of that changes come about in the organization that that no one would have anticipated. Maybe even some people if they were honest so would say I'm not sure that I think that that was such a good thing. That wasn't what we had in mind but because of the because you instituted these other things these these built these channels of communication you encouraged people to speak up to talk about things that they thought could happen to could be done to to make things run better that then things happen that. No one would have predicted. Well I think you'd be a UVM unintentionally. That's the thing that happens. No one predicted predicts is that it is this opening up channels of communication. Eating wings.

When when people talk about the process they say well we created this change. Well that was good. But guess what we got these other benefits. We get deeper connections between our departments we get people who understand change better they understand our business better they understand how to handle change in their own part of the organization and if they had increased capacity which I think is the biggest unintended consequence that people talk about I think probably after the specific change that they've actually implemented. No one comes along afterward and said you know maybe we should have done this in the first place. No I don't think we've had anybody who said we should have done it in the first place. I mean they would say we could have done it better. OK. So with hindsight we might have done this we might have done that. I don't I can't think in 10 years of doing this where they said you know this was a big mistake to bring people together to do this. I think I think a caution would be there. If you were doing it.

I mean. You can't do this. From a purely mechanistic standpoint. So you have to you have to have the business reason for doing it. It might be we want things to run smoothly. You want you know to be more efficient with customers better. But it's the way you go about doing it. It's as important as what you do. And that's where all these principles come. Well we are going to have to leave it at that. I'm afraid because we're here at the end of the time we want to say Mr. Axelrod thank you very much for talking with us today. Okay thank you enjoyed being with you. Our guest Richard Axelrod and if you would like to read more about this you can look for the book that he's written that lays out the strategy for change terms of engagement changing the way we change organizations. That's the title in the subtitle Barrett Koehler publishers out of San Francisco they published the book.