Client Articles: Beyond Teams
Research Issues & Design by: By Max Elden
How has Magma achieved such dramatic results in such a short time? What could Magma team from its own experience that would help produce similar results in the future and contribute to a better understanding of transformative organizational change? Formulated in this way the question has both important practical and theory aspects (i.e., a practice theory). The purpose of this inquiry is to provide a systematic explanation of what people in Magma do to produce results outside of the ordinary-beyond business as usual or what would have been predicted from a trend line.
A study team was formed in the summer of 1992 to explore this question. The team consisted of the author, Magma's Vice-President for Internal Development (who as lead consultant for the consulting team responsible for the first Scottsdale meeting helped start the whole process), and a leading internal consultant who previously had been a union president.
One approach the study team explored initially was simply to ask key leaders in the change process what they thought explained Magma's success. This approach led to diverse but partial answers depending on the personal experience, frame of reference, or favorite ideas of the person asked. Some, for example, saw the main explanation in "gainsharing," others in "crisis," the "need to survive," or "attitude change," or "people development," or, commitment," or "leadership." No participant we spoke to was without a theory which was the full and "real" explanation behind Magma's success. Such partiality is not limited to 'insiders" at Magma.
No doubt different outsider researchers could use a more systematically developed theory of "leadership," human resource ("people development'), motivation, or total quality management to explain what happened at Magma. Actual change activities at Magma are so diverse that all of these insider and outsider theories can be relevant and useful to some extent. But which? How much? In what way? What other explanatory frameworks not limited to existing conceptual schemes could be relevant? What underlying dynamics help us understand and produce transformation? The study team wanted an explanation that emerged from the experience unrestricted by preconceived explanatory frameworks. We attempted to mount an inquiry free from such frameworks as sociotechnical systems thinking, a motivation theory, new leadership theory, "transformational thinking," or other prepackaged analytical or explanatory constructs. We had to avoid such preexisting constructions if we were to discover a viable practice theory. We wanted to understand how people made sense out of what they were doing when they were doing what we bracketed as "transformation," whether or not they themselves labeled it as such.
Part of the problem in studying transformation is that when confronted by something new and unique, people tend to fit what they can into preexisting concepts, so it doesn't appear as something fundamentally new. Thus a transformative experience might easily be "explained" in preexisting categories rather than new categories that would help us explain and practice it better. A further difficulty in studying transformation is that it is by its very nature often transparent to those who experience it. It is a total shift in one's perceptual world, so that in looking back it seems like a natural development rather than a radical innovation. For example, many people were using the same terms to describe what they were doing, but these terms were new and unusual. They used words like "requests," "breakdowns," or "getting out of the box" in their discussions with each other, but they did not see this as a new vocabulary. They were just using words that made sense to them in talking about what they were doing. And, of course, people always use language that makes sense to them in understanding what is happening in their life.
The irony is that we had clear evidence of a fundamental organizational change but substantial difficulties in accessing it. Our way out of this dilemma was to ask people to reflect on their initial experience of a major shift occurring. We were not interested in their theory about transformation but simply the story of what was happening when they first became aware that it was no longer business as usual at Magma. We created a new concept, "generative event," to label this first occurrence. The generative event occurs where transformation began for the person concerned, whether they thought about it as such or not.
A generative event is when you first see the possibility that the future could be quite different than you thought possible. Your consciousness and whole way of thinking shifts. This in turn leads to new behaviors and ideas which others can see as "attitude change." What is important about a generative event for our purposes is that it is where you change course: you begin a different kind of action. This personal, initial insight and acting differently occur together. A generative event interrupts what your experience and predisposition otherwise would have led you to do. It creates an opening for you to act in another way than you (or others) would have predicted.
The next question in designing the research was how to get useful data on generative events. Who would we engage with and what kind of "data" would we seek? Since we were primarily interested in the experience of a generative event, we sought a full and natural description of the event. We did not want to formulate questions that would pre-dispose someone to a particular aspect of transformation. We wanted as much as possible to capture people's unique way of making sense out of the event. Essentially we wanted to hear the story of what happened. Our contact took the form of a conversation rather than an interview. We asked to hear the story of what happened in the generative event. Hence we call our method "story listening" (a term suggested by Carol Meyers).
Story listening conversations took the following form. First we asked the person or persons (we had several group conversations-especially in developing the model of invention described below) to describe their work history at Magma and what, if anything, they had noticed was different now compared to five or ten years ago. Whatever they said had changed, we asked them to describe exactly the difference between then and now and when they first noticed the difference. In short, we asked them to tell us the story of their generative event. This gave us quite detailed information which we discuss below.
As to the question of whose stories we should listen to, we assumed that the richest source of data would be those who were most active in the change process. Magma's strategy was to develop in-house resources to help further the change process. Several hundred people were active in Magma's change process. We focused on the most active. We identified these by starting with a few key management and union leaders who had started the process at the original Scottsdale meeting in October, 1989, and asked them to identify other active leaders in the change process.
We were able to collect stories about generative events from 34 change activists (about a 1/3 of these were hourly). In addition, all three members of the study team had been involved with the change effort from the beginning. Additional data came from this experience in the form of field notes, observations, and conversations dating from before the Scottsdale meeting in October, 1989.
We recognize that these data were quite limited considering that Magma is a large, complex organization with more than 4,000 employees in a half dozen locations and many more than just a couple of dozen change activists. The data can be very powerful in providing insight into the dynamics of the transformational change process at Magma, but we cannot say much about how extensive these dynamics are, or the conditions under which they could become more widely practiced. The data are also limited in that we only talked to employees who, by virtue of their active leadership, had helped to create the new culture we are studying. They were biased in support of it. Additional conversations with those who went from being inactive to being active (and the reverse!) are needed if we are to understand fully what turns people on (or off or has no effect) about "possibility" and getting started in a joint union- management change process. We did not explore alternatives to the culture of invention, although oppositional or critical perspectives exist at Magma and in the theoretical literature. For these reasons, the following findings should be considered preliminary and exploratory.
Introduction
Magma-A: Part I
Magma-A: Part II
Research Issues & Designs
Findings: Generating A Culture of Invention
Invention As A Practice Theory For Organizational Transformation
Contrasting Organization Development And Transformation
Summary, Acknowlegements And References
A study team was formed in the summer of 1992 to explore this question. The team consisted of the author, Magma's Vice-President for Internal Development (who as lead consultant for the consulting team responsible for the first Scottsdale meeting helped start the whole process), and a leading internal consultant who previously had been a union president.
One approach the study team explored initially was simply to ask key leaders in the change process what they thought explained Magma's success. This approach led to diverse but partial answers depending on the personal experience, frame of reference, or favorite ideas of the person asked. Some, for example, saw the main explanation in "gainsharing," others in "crisis," the "need to survive," or "attitude change," or "people development," or, commitment," or "leadership." No participant we spoke to was without a theory which was the full and "real" explanation behind Magma's success. Such partiality is not limited to 'insiders" at Magma.
No doubt different outsider researchers could use a more systematically developed theory of "leadership," human resource ("people development'), motivation, or total quality management to explain what happened at Magma. Actual change activities at Magma are so diverse that all of these insider and outsider theories can be relevant and useful to some extent. But which? How much? In what way? What other explanatory frameworks not limited to existing conceptual schemes could be relevant? What underlying dynamics help us understand and produce transformation? The study team wanted an explanation that emerged from the experience unrestricted by preconceived explanatory frameworks. We attempted to mount an inquiry free from such frameworks as sociotechnical systems thinking, a motivation theory, new leadership theory, "transformational thinking," or other prepackaged analytical or explanatory constructs. We had to avoid such preexisting constructions if we were to discover a viable practice theory. We wanted to understand how people made sense out of what they were doing when they were doing what we bracketed as "transformation," whether or not they themselves labeled it as such.
Part of the problem in studying transformation is that when confronted by something new and unique, people tend to fit what they can into preexisting concepts, so it doesn't appear as something fundamentally new. Thus a transformative experience might easily be "explained" in preexisting categories rather than new categories that would help us explain and practice it better. A further difficulty in studying transformation is that it is by its very nature often transparent to those who experience it. It is a total shift in one's perceptual world, so that in looking back it seems like a natural development rather than a radical innovation. For example, many people were using the same terms to describe what they were doing, but these terms were new and unusual. They used words like "requests," "breakdowns," or "getting out of the box" in their discussions with each other, but they did not see this as a new vocabulary. They were just using words that made sense to them in talking about what they were doing. And, of course, people always use language that makes sense to them in understanding what is happening in their life.
The irony is that we had clear evidence of a fundamental organizational change but substantial difficulties in accessing it. Our way out of this dilemma was to ask people to reflect on their initial experience of a major shift occurring. We were not interested in their theory about transformation but simply the story of what was happening when they first became aware that it was no longer business as usual at Magma. We created a new concept, "generative event," to label this first occurrence. The generative event occurs where transformation began for the person concerned, whether they thought about it as such or not.
A generative event is when you first see the possibility that the future could be quite different than you thought possible. Your consciousness and whole way of thinking shifts. This in turn leads to new behaviors and ideas which others can see as "attitude change." What is important about a generative event for our purposes is that it is where you change course: you begin a different kind of action. This personal, initial insight and acting differently occur together. A generative event interrupts what your experience and predisposition otherwise would have led you to do. It creates an opening for you to act in another way than you (or others) would have predicted.
The next question in designing the research was how to get useful data on generative events. Who would we engage with and what kind of "data" would we seek? Since we were primarily interested in the experience of a generative event, we sought a full and natural description of the event. We did not want to formulate questions that would pre-dispose someone to a particular aspect of transformation. We wanted as much as possible to capture people's unique way of making sense out of the event. Essentially we wanted to hear the story of what happened. Our contact took the form of a conversation rather than an interview. We asked to hear the story of what happened in the generative event. Hence we call our method "story listening" (a term suggested by Carol Meyers).
Story listening conversations took the following form. First we asked the person or persons (we had several group conversations-especially in developing the model of invention described below) to describe their work history at Magma and what, if anything, they had noticed was different now compared to five or ten years ago. Whatever they said had changed, we asked them to describe exactly the difference between then and now and when they first noticed the difference. In short, we asked them to tell us the story of their generative event. This gave us quite detailed information which we discuss below.
As to the question of whose stories we should listen to, we assumed that the richest source of data would be those who were most active in the change process. Magma's strategy was to develop in-house resources to help further the change process. Several hundred people were active in Magma's change process. We focused on the most active. We identified these by starting with a few key management and union leaders who had started the process at the original Scottsdale meeting in October, 1989, and asked them to identify other active leaders in the change process.
We were able to collect stories about generative events from 34 change activists (about a 1/3 of these were hourly). In addition, all three members of the study team had been involved with the change effort from the beginning. Additional data came from this experience in the form of field notes, observations, and conversations dating from before the Scottsdale meeting in October, 1989.
We recognize that these data were quite limited considering that Magma is a large, complex organization with more than 4,000 employees in a half dozen locations and many more than just a couple of dozen change activists. The data can be very powerful in providing insight into the dynamics of the transformational change process at Magma, but we cannot say much about how extensive these dynamics are, or the conditions under which they could become more widely practiced. The data are also limited in that we only talked to employees who, by virtue of their active leadership, had helped to create the new culture we are studying. They were biased in support of it. Additional conversations with those who went from being inactive to being active (and the reverse!) are needed if we are to understand fully what turns people on (or off or has no effect) about "possibility" and getting started in a joint union- management change process. We did not explore alternatives to the culture of invention, although oppositional or critical perspectives exist at Magma and in the theoretical literature. For these reasons, the following findings should be considered preliminary and exploratory.
Introduction
Magma-A: Part I
Magma-A: Part II
Research Issues & Designs
Findings: Generating A Culture of Invention
Invention As A Practice Theory For Organizational Transformation
Contrasting Organization Development And Transformation
Summary, Acknowlegements And References