Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Where Cultural Competence & Organizational Effectiveness Meet

As an Organizational Development consultant, I get to think about how effective organizations are: their staff, their initiatives, their ability to deliver excellent service.  As I’m also trained in cross-cultural communication, I sometimes look at organizational issues through that lens. When I’m lucky, these two fields coincide, as in my visit last year to the administrative offices of a health care organization, where I saw a patient brochure about “hand-washing for doctors”.  You may know that this has been a focus in health care institutions, who are trying to reduce the spread of germs and infections.  This brochure said “Have you asked your doctor if he washed his hands?” 

Can you see anything wrong with this?  There are power issues inherent in this question. For one thing, we tend to defer to doctors, or any authority figure, particularly when they’re wearing  a white coat (or a uniform, or a stethoscope).  Even I, as a white woman, feel a little intimated in front of doctors.   Secondly, when you’re serving people from other countries and other cultures, who may not speak the language well, or who don’t feel fully acculturated, the authority gap is even wider.  They could have saved themselves time and money if they had convened some focus groups on this question (or they could have asked people like me! :)

Monday, March 22, 2010

Facilitative Leadership

Shortly after his administration began, Pres. Obama issued a document stating his commitment to open government and transparency.  In May, the administration invited recommendations to their new website "Open Government Brainstorming".  The organizations who have been involved in the planning of this include NCDD, National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation, America Speaks, International Association for Public Participation, and others.  Anyone and everyone can post suggestions on this website.  Here's my recommendation on "Training for Facilitative Leadership".

In order to create a program of dynamic public engagement, elected officials and government staff need training in the process and skills required to be successful – and this is a great opportunity to develop such trainings.

In order to support effective public engagement, leaders from federal, state and city government need to learn best practices for engaging the public, to understand:

* Facilitative leadership: they are the conveners of a process, whose purpose is to gather wisdom from many people. They need to identify and include the stakeholders who have a stake or interest, to help solve a problem that no one agency can solve by themselves. Government officials shouldn’t feel the need to have all the answers.

Sunday, March 21, 2010

What's our Impact??

As group facilitators, we're trained to examine our impact on the group. Skilled facilitators have developed radar that clues them in to how the group is reacting, and they can fix their delivery mid-stream.  We look for these clues in-the-moment, and also verbally check in with the group periodically.  We also ask for feedback at the end of a meeting, realizing that that's the best way to improve our skills.  This is also important to us in our role as change agents or consultants;  working with colleagues provides us a wonderful opportunity to get feedback during a client engagement – it’s a way for us to correct course, and to improve our effectiveness.

What about getting feedback as participants, about our impact on the group?  I’m thinking of workshops or professional development groups, particularly for facilitators and OD consultants. Can we include the opportunity to get feedback for participants in a group?  I think this is more readily done in a multi-day workshop, or in an intact group.  If we’re going to include this, we need to establish an atmosphere of trust and set the context for asking and giving feedback.  We have to set parameters and have people contract with one another.  One rule might be: ask for permission before you give feedback.  Contracting questions include: Are you/ Am I, open to receiving feedback?  From anyone?  Or from a specified person or support group?  Should we set aside a certain time for that?  If we are careful about the contracting, I think this can be done successfully.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

What do they hire us for?

I often ponder the gift that I/ we as Organizational Development (OD) consultants bring to our clients and to groups.  Some consultants come from "the expert" angle, where they think they have the answers.  But I’m convinced that it’s the quality of questions that we ask – skilled OD practitioners bring a talent for drilling down, focusing and helping the client get clarity.  So I was thrilled to come across this blog:

“This makes me think we look to experts more to frame conversation.  Experts ask questions similar to those that are burning in our own heads, but the experts ask sharper questions; the answers we can take or leave, but the questions change us.”

One of the groups that I convene is called “OD and Social Change”, in which we OD consultants discuss a current case from an organization – we kick it around and ask lots of questions, so that we can offer some useful suggestions.  The purpose of the group is mutual learning – for the client organization, and for us practitioners – we learn from the way that we each approach a problem, and from the questions that we ask.  This week we conversed with a non-profit director about his program, and as I reflect on this quote, I realize that we were doing that “asking sharp questions” piece.  What a gift to be able to ask good questions!

Friday, March 12, 2010

Music and Social Change!

We need inspiring stories to stoke our hearts, and these two fit the bill!  These two conductors are using music to promote peace and understanding.  Luis Szaran is a Paraguayan musician who is changing the lives of poor children by teaching them to play music. Daniel Barenboim is the famous pianist and conductor, who created an orchestra of Arab and Israeli young musicians, the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra.  Their concert in Ramallah in 2006 was an achievement that confounded logistics and expectations.  Some of us were lucky enough to hear the Orchestra when it performed in Providence in 2007.
from Daily Good

In "Sounds of Hope," FRONTLINE/World reporter Monica Lam journeys to Paraguay to meet Luis Szaran, a famous musician and social entrepreneur who has dedicated himself to helping redeem the lives of poor and neglected children through music.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

What if they held a Civic Summit and... People Came?

Two years ago, the president of the City Council convened the Boston Civic Summit, with the builder of the Boston Convention Center, whose center has increased visitor traffic to Boston.  It was an exciting event with 400 attendees, and could have been a kickoff for energetic action.  It was wonderful to see people get excited, brainstorm and share their vision for the city – the kind of discussion that generates great energy that can be funneled into action teams.  Unfortunately, there were several problems, with the design and with the follow-up, that could inform future efforts of civic engagement activities.

For example, the Summit wasn’t sponsored by the city, nor by the city council, nor by the mayor – so it didn’t really have legs: No money, no ongoing support, no connection to projects other organizations were already working on. While the event generated 4 action groups to work on 4 identified action items, those groups needed ongoing support and guidance, not to mention resources. They needed to identify their goals, prioritize them, figure out how they were going to work together, and so on.  Without that support, 3 of the 4 groups did not continue to meet, and the fourth group lost participants as they continued to hold meetings.