The Super Abundance Blog

The Organization has to Want to Change

2010-04-27T04:10:00Z

One would think that when engaged in Organizational Development the OD consultant would encounter much resistance to change. Those stakeholders each having their own priorities would support an environment where there is much conscious or sub-conscious sabotage to what the consultant is attempting to accomplish. In reality, if the developer understands the stages that an organization can go through and know how to leverage the concept of enrollment, everyone involved would be much more cooperative, allowing the aims of management and the OD Consultant to be attained. I have relied heavily on the book, Tribal Leadership by Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fisher Wright available from Amazon.com

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Introduction

There is an old joke, how many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? The punch line is, only one, but the light bulb has to really WANT to change. This joke can be extrapolated over to Organizational Development, The organization really has to want to change and since an organization is made up of people it is the people in the organization who must really want to change. Much to the chagrin of the OD Consultant, this is rarely an easy task; each stakeholder in the organization has their own interest and that is what they are looking out for. In addition we as human beings are resistant to change.

In November, 2008, at the cusp of the greatest financial crises in seventy years, Barrack H. Obama was elected President of the United States promising change. His party also made significant gains in both the Senate and the House of Representatives. Despite this, every change he is attempting to make is being fought. Is this just because the Republican’s are The Party of No and want to defeat Mr. Obama for their selfish interests? Remember that until Scott Brown’s election in Massachusetts in Jan 2010, the Republicans didn’t have much say yet despite the fact that the Democrats were 100% in control; President Obama was still having difficulty getting his reforms through the Congress. There had to be something more going on than just party politics. The difficulties that President Obama is having are difficulties that all executives face when attempting to implement corporate change.

Organizational Culture and Tribal Leadership

In their book, Tribal Leadership, Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization, Authors Dave Logan, John King and Halee Fisher-Wright discuss organizations as being made up of tribes, each tribe, a group of 20 to 150 group members (Logan, King & Fischer-Wright, 2008) Each tribe goes through stages which are to a tribe as the Maslow hierarchies are to individuals (Kohnen, J, 2009). The tribal stages are as follows (Logan et al, 2008, p25)

Stage	Mood	Theme
5	Innocent Wonderment	“Life is Great”
4	Tribal Pride	We’re great (and they are not)
3	Lone Warrior	I’m great (and you’re not)
2	Apathetic Victim	“My life Sucks”
1	Despairing Hostility	“Life Sucks”

For organizational development to take place, the organizational developer must find out what stage of development the company is in and bring the company up to stage 4. Until the fourth stage of development you can try any method of Organizational Development you want whether it be Lewin, Action Research, Positive Model or even the Donald Trump Your Fired method and none of it will work; it would be like asking someone who is low on the Maslow scale and concerned about where he is getting his next meal to be concerned with Global Warning. Having a business with a stage 4 culture is also only the first step. The stake holders still need to be sold on the plan that the OD Consultant has developed. A stage 4 culture is only the first step which will ensure that stake holders are not subconsciously sabotaging the situation.

Enrollment

The OD Consultant is in a company with a stage 4 culture and has made the diagnosis as to how to change the company. What comes next is enrollment, in other words the stakeholders must be inspired into action. If the OD Consultant or manager were to tell the employees, “Follow this plan or you will be fired,” the company will have fallin back to stage 3 or below as the manager would essentially be saying, “Follow this plan because you all suck and I am better than you.” We have established that a tribal culture must be in stage 4 so if you lower it to stage 3, Organizational Development will not work. The consultant and management must find other ways to motivate the tribe. One way to do this is to use one of the tried in true methods of Organizational Development such as the Lewin, Action Research or Positive models (Cummings & Worley, 2008). These are researched, tried and true methods and using one of those does not make it look like the OD specialist just pulled something out of his or her hat! The organization thus will know that the actions being taken was stuff that was researched and that there is a good probability that if they are taken, the organization will get the results that the changes are designed to achieved.

It is also a good idea to have a staff meeting to allow the staff to communicate their concerns with the plan and to listen to the plan. This is primarily designed to get the concerns out into the open and dealt with. Also, these plans are living documents, nothing about them is written in stone. By discussing and brainstorming some good ideas could come forth to the surface which would add to the plan. The plan must also be monitored and the staff kept in the loop so it can be fine tuned when things move off course or there is some unexpected external factor (such as the events of September 11^th 2001)

Conclusion

So how do you make the light bulb want to change? First, you must bring the culture of the organization up to stage 4, per Tribal Leadership. This way the stakeholders are all on the same page with the attitude that We are Great (Logan et al, 2008). By dealing with a stage 4 culture the OD consultant avoids the petty politics that are the norm of the I am great culture. Then the consultants i sell the tribes on the idea by inspiring and involving them so that they see that we can be even greater.

Again, the book, Tribal Leadership is available from Amazon.com
Shop Amazon.com

References

Andy Adcroft, Robert Willis, & Jeff Hurst. (2008). A new model for managing change: the holistic view. The Journal of Business Strategy, 29(1), 40-45. Retrieved April 18, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1443668601).

Cummings & Worley( 2008) Organizational development and change Mason, OH Cengage

Kohnen, J.. (2009). Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization The Quality Management Journal, 16(2), 61-62. Retrieved April 18, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1681059681).

Logan, King & Fisher-Wright (2008) Tribal leadership, Leveraging natural groups to build a thriving organization New York, HarperCollins

Making the Comeback

2010-02-25T02:18:00Z

Introduction.

Tiger Woods was one of the most respected figures in Sports. He was an African American who had excelled in a field where there were not many African Americans. He also had a likeable personality and he was the spokesperson for several different products. Woods was the epitome of success. Then a car accident brought to light that Tiger may have been having sexual relationships with women other than his wife, an act frowned upon in today’s society. Tiger had to take a leave of absence from his golf career and had also lost several of his endorsements. Will Tiger Woods just remain a memory in the world of golf or will he make that comeback and again be seen on the golf courses of the world, winning tournaments and impressing the fans? The answer is in his resilience. Resilience is defined as, “the maintenance of healthy functioning following exposure to potential trauma” (Bjorkland and Bee, 2008 p317). It is recovering from the stress and trauma involved and rising up out of the ashes. This is also know as, making the comeback.

Human beings periodically encounter personal and widespread disasters ranging from personal bankruptcy, family deaths, and job losses to massive disasters such as hurricanes and earthquakes. My grandfather, Samson Meyberg, was a survivor of the holocaust. In the holocaust, he lost his parents, 3 out of 5 of his siblings and a successful business. He fled to Columbia South America with his pregnant wife and two toddlers and built a business from nothing. Twelve years later, he had the opportunity to bring his family to the United States so again he left everything behind and moved his family to the United States. During the entire time that the author had known him, Meyberg never once uttered a bad thing about Germany or the Germans. On the contrary, he would often spend time at the Germania Hall, telling stories and singing German Folk songs. When he visited his home town in Germany a year before his death by natural causes, he was given the key to the city and a parade.

Acceptance

Extrapolating Elisabeth Kubler Ross’s 5 stages of death and dying to the area of loss and grief, one would know that first have to go through the five stages to the stage of acceptance in order to make the comeback. Samson Meyberg had to accept the fact that almost all of his family and everything he had was taken from him by the Nazis before he could move on with his life. Tiger Woods is going to have to accept the fact that he cheated on his wife and all of the ramifications of that act. It is essential for one to be able to accept life the way it is before they can move on to the desired state, in much the same way that if a traveler wanted to travel to San Francisco and that traveler thought he or she was in New York but in reality he or she was in San Jose, that traveler would end up driving into the ocean.

Forgiveness

The next step in bouncing back is to be able to forgive the person or circumstances that caused the situation. Forgiveness is the act of giving up the right to get revenge or retribution and giving up of any anger, rage or resentment (Toussaint, L. 2003). In a series of three studies done by Williams and Gonzales they found that the experience of forgiveness decreases the amount of Psychological pain felt and increases the amount of empathy felt for the offender (Williamson & Gonzales 2007). Samson Meyberg had the difficult task of learning to forgive the German People, his friends that he had grown up with who had betrayed him when Hitler came into power, for the deaths of his parents, grandparents, siblings, cousins and the loss of his business and for forcing him to flee thousands of miles to a third world country. Tiger Woods is going to need to forgive himself, his wife, the other women, the press and anyone else who was involved that committed any real or imagined transgressions. When forgiveness does not occur and one maintains the grudge, that person can become like Captain Ahab from the Novel, Moby Dick. Before Ahab encountered this Great White Wail, he probably had goals and dreams to become a great whaler. Instead he spent his entire life working on getting revenge against this creature of the sea (Melville, H, 1851).

Internal Locus of Control

Locus of control has to do with psychological ownership. Those with an Internal Locus of Control have a high sense of ownership; they know that they are the ones totally responsible for the situation. Those with an External Locus of Control believe that others are responsible for the situation ( McIntyre, N., Srivastava, A., & Fuller, J. 2009). Being responsible for what happened is different than taking the blame. When one takes the blame they are not being responsible. They are merely making themselves wrong which is totally contrary to the intended purpose. By being responsible, one is giving themselves permission to alter the situation or to leave it the way it is. Samson Meyberg took responsibility for his situation by fleeing the country. He didn’t blame anyone nor did he think about how it just shouldn’t be. Had he done that, he, his wife and children would have been killed in the gas chamber. Tiger Woods will need to take responsibility for his situation and then chose whether he wants to reboot his career or not. Whatever he decides to, for his next step in life to be successful, he would need to engage in strategic planning.

Strategic Planning

Strategic Planning is the process one goes about to get to the desired state from the present state (Anderson, P 1982). It is figuring out what the goals are and then figuring out how to get from the present state to the desired state. Lets again look at the paradigm of the traveler wanting to drive from NY to San Francisco. The present state would be New York, the Desired State would be San Francisco and the road maps the plan on how to go about getting there. After the failure is put into the past, one must make plans so that the next venture succeeds. Meyberg probably did not engage in strategic planning as he did not know about it. It was not common knowledge in the 1940’s. Business-wise, he never did attain the levels of success that he had in Germany before World War II. The tools of strategic planning are however available to Tiger Woods and he indeed can restore himself to the level of success that he had before his accident.

How this pertains to me?

As an engineer during the Dot Com Boom of the 1990’s I had a comfortable 6 figure income with a good savings account and a retirement plan. Then the bubble burst and in 2001 there was the Dot Bomb; I was laid off of my job and eventually spent all the money in my savings account and retirement plan. I spent over five years suffering before I was able to accept the situation, forgive the people involved, (including myself) and take responsibility. I would blame the “stupid investors” and the moronic managers of the companies I had worked for. I was unable to move on until I could accept the situation, forgive the people involved, psychologically own the situation and strategically plan out the next phase of my life. Today business owners and entrepreneurs are facing similar challenges. With my training and life experiences, I am in the perfect position to coach and consult these people dealing with their lives being turned upside down by disasters of their own or other’s making by coaching and consulting in the fields of strategic, tactical and marketing planning. To that end, I do maintain a blog, www.super-abundance.com.

Conclusion

Human Beings are subject to setbacks of all types, from minor setbacks such as a late flight arrival causing one to miss their meeting, to major layoffs such as Hurricanes and Holocausts. Rarely are we able to control the circumstances but what we can control is how we respond to those incidents. Resilience gives us the power to bounce back from these incidents. How high one bounces depends on how well one can accept the situation, forgive everyone involved, be responsible for what happened and strategically plan their lives from that point forward.

References

Anderson, P (1982) Marketing, Strategic Planning and the Theory of the Firm, Journal of Marketing Vol 46 (spring 82) 15-26 Retrieved from www.jstor.com

Bjorklund, B. & Bee, H. (2008). The journey of adulthood (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River:

Pearson/Prentice Hall.

McIntyre, N., Srivastava, A., & Fuller, J. (2009). The Relationship of Locus of Control and Motives with Psychological Ownership in Organizations. Journal of Managerial Issues, 21(3), 383-401. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database.

Melville, H (1851) Moby Dick New York, Harper

Toussaint, L. (2003). Levels of Forgiveness Following the September 11, 2001, Terrorist Attacks. 1. Retrieved from PsycEXTRA database.

Williamson, I., & Gonzales, M. (2007). The subjective experience of forgiveness: Positive construals of the forgiveness experience. Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology, 26(4), 407-446. doi:10.1521/jscp.2007.26.4.407.

Prescription for your 2010 Success

2009-12-25T21:01:00Z

2009 is rapidly coming to an end. For some of us it was a terrible year, The Economy" didn't do "well," we lost a lot of people who were important to us. Some of us lost our jobs and some of us lost our homes. For some it was a great year, Babies were born,People started businesses and some graduated from high school or college. It is interesting that whether you think it was good or bad, it was the way that it was and what’s important is to leverage what happened in 2009 so that future years and the rest of your lives are lived with fulfillment. Does that mean that every moment of our lives can be a Rogers and Hammerstein musical, no it does mean that you will have a blueprint to follow to tell you if you are on track or not. This first step is to enter 2010 with a context of gratitude. Then we can look at what we want to accomplish in 2010 and put together a plan to accomplish this. So this is my Prescription for ending off 2009,

1) For the next week, every morning write down one event in your life that happened in 2009 that you are grateful for. Communicate this to at least one other person. If you have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or some other social media presence, you can communicate it through your social media.

2) Write down anything that happened in 2009 that you would have rather not have happened. Forgive anyone that you were blaming for those situations. Realize that there is nothing you can do tokeep those things from happening. These situations are in your past.

3) Write down on a different sheet of paper, what youl earned from those situations.

4) Take the sheet of paper that you wrote down the situations and shred it. You want tokeep the paper with the lessons though, so if you didn’t follow what I said above, write the lessons down on a different sheet of paper.

5) Envision yourself at the end of 2010. (If you really want to think long term you can envision yourself at the end of 2019, ten years, or even 2034 twenty five years, but if you do that remember to also do it for 2010) What are your results? To make this even more powerful, write them down as if they have already happened. Results should be SMART. (See the entry, JimRohn on Goal Setting )

6) To get those results, Where do you need to be at the end of each quarter, start with where you want to be on September 30^th,June 30^th and March 31^st.

7) Write down the actions that you need to take to get the results; there are actions that you need to take at one time, daily,weekly, monthly, by monthly, etc.

8) Schedule these actions into your Blackberry,I-Phone, Planner or whatever you use to manage your schedule.

9) Track and Tweak: Monitor your results on a regular basis,Revise the plan based on your results and any current events. These plans are not written in stone, they are alive and if your results are not where you want them to be, you are going to need to change something. Also,current events may force a change in your plans. For example, if you sell health insurance, or have a business where you have employees, I am sure you will need to change your plan based on what the final health care plan that congress passes.

10) Celebrate! You have just completed another year in your life, celebrate your achievement by doing something that you enjoy doing. Me? I am going to have a glass of wine and watch videos.

Of course, I am willing to make myself available to work with you on your business and marketing tactical and strategic planning. To contact me, email: levine_j@att.net

Jeff Looks at How to Choose an MLM Company

2009-12-17T09:01:00Z

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It seems like more people have an opinion about Multi Level Marketing than do Tiger Woods. Some people believe that you can make a ton of money in the Multi-level Marketing Business; others think it is a pyramid scam! If you are looking into starting a home based business, on either a full orpart-time basis, and are good at working with people, but have little businessknowledge and minimal capital, then Multilevel marketing may be for you. Beforeyou jump into a MLM company, you should consider the positives and thenegatives of an MLM company.

This article will show you the positives to look for in an MLM company andsome of the downsides of MLM companies.

An MLM company provides a product or service to the consumer through anetwork of distributors. The distributors make their money through a percentageof the products they sell. They also make a percentage of revenues from thecustomers of the distributors that they recruit and a percentage of thedistributors that their distributors recruit. This is why it is called multilevel marketing.

Reputable MLM companies also provide a low start-up cost, all the trainingyou need, advertising in one form or another, and supply you with a productline-up or service to sell.

Before you join an MLM company do your due diligence.

Here are the positive and negative factors to consider when choosing an MLMcompany.

POSITIVES TO LOOK FOR WHEN CHOOSING AN MLM COMPANY

-Established and marketable product line or service. -Striving to improve oradd to the existing line-up -Easy to sign up new distributors online. -Solidtrack record and good work ethic. -No experience required. -Training provided.-Excellent bonus plan with incentives. -Strong support system. -Successfulbusiness and marketing plan -Can work full time or part time.

These attributes would definitely belong to an ideal multilevel marketingcompany, however not all reputable companies excel in all these areas. Somecompanies will be better in certain areas than others. Do research on thecompany. Don’t just accept the motivational hype used by most MLM companies inorder to recruit.

THE NEGATIVES OF MLM COMPANIES

While the MLM model can be a great tool to achieve what you want in life, itwould be remiss not to mention the negatives of MLM companies.

-Watch out for disreputable MLM companies. -There are costs to running anMLM. -It usually takes a minimum monthly order to maintain yourdistributorship. -Watch out for getting paid to just recruit distributors andnot on sales volume. -Even though the companies insist the products sellthemselves, it is still going to take work to make money. -In MLM you have todeal with rejection.

When considering getting involved in an MLM company take the time to choosethe right company. There are many different companies to choose from. Resistthe temptation to just join any company, but do your due diligence.

Starting an MLM business can make you a fortune, however it is going to takeconsistent and diligent work to succeed. Make sure that the company that youchoose to work with has all the positives mentioned above and also take thetime to consider if you are willing to put in the work that is necessary tomake MLM work. And remember, God loves you.

For more information, contact Jeff Levine,. Jeff@tamianassociates.com