Its all over…

Finally handed my assignment in on time.  Its been emotional but a huge amount of learning has taken place!

B716-TMA07

Thanks to everyone who has provided input – your thoughts and advice has been fantastic.

Productive enquiry tools….

Try to weave in these points may help with context, future cycles and will support reasons for action taken.

– team activity/improving performance
– action research; what new ideas? Assess impact, any un intended consequences?
– evidence; questions, interviews, conversations, artifacts, triangulation

Morgan and Hunt’s – Relationship Commitment and Trust Model….

So here is the model for what i think will be my ‘first’ cycle for the report – one that aims to help mitigate the resistant stakeholder issue.  I’ll update this post as things develop….

Morgan and Hunt

 

Usefulness

– specific areas to target for a messy problem
– I gained a better understanding of the issue and confirmed a need to address it
– raised wider cultural issues to be aware of
– helped reframe the issue and see it from the other stakeholders perspective
– raised awareness of poor communication
– encouraged wider exploration for understanding: investigate stakeholder motivations, current concerns…..

critical analysis

– a superficial approach to messy problems?
– Are relationships or the task the objective of this model?
– Intrusive/inconvenient? Manipulative!
– not necessarily needed in military context due to hierarchy and power structure!
– How would outcomes be measured?
– some of the actions/further cycles required need to take advantage of opportunities (such as informal chats about motivations/concerns) this conflicts with ‘reducing opportunistic behaviour as part of the model!

risks

– stakeholder losing face exacerbating resistance
– over pressing the issue
– testing a theory in relation to personal factors could damage relationships if discovered

evidence to use

– support for stakeholder values and beliefs
– evidence of use of military power to ensure cooperation

further cycles

– take opportunity to apply this planning practically;
– Enquire as to current concerns of stakeholder
– highlight relationship benefits/termination costs/shared values
– seek opportunities for increased communication

wider unit/framework links

– EI supportive behaviour
– my TMA02 about organisational culture
– Conflict signs and management
– JIT/Pull operations?
– TQM the internal customer approach
– Strategic performance objectives as a means to highlight termination costs
– force field analysis on stakeholders propensity to change/cooperate
– political behaviour
– Simons control levers*

Finally I think I’m there….

So it’s been a long time coming but I think I’ve managed to pick two cycles now.

The easy one has been Morgan and Hunt’s relationship Committment and trust model – as a way of mitigating the risk of resistance from a stakeholder. Lots of wider course links that I will elaborate on in a separate post later.

The second one that I am going with is based on a staff turnover risk. Now there were a few issues here at the offset…. 1. I would never be able to mitigate staff turnover in itself, it’s just not within my power so my search for a model was proving difficult from the start. And so 2. The risk is actually one of not managing staff turnover well enough.

Having tied this down and chatting to a few people about it I was able to look at the ‘people’ side of managment, and have a few theories that I can test out in this situation….

– Fowler’s levels of induction linked in with….
– Herriot and his ‘social negotiation; psycological contract building….
– which would need investigation of motivators…Scheins iceberg/Maslow…

And from other units I have…..
– bass and avolio’s individualised consideration (transformational leadership)
– OGC common reasons for project failure ….

And possibly…
– service profit chain
– TQM/lean approaches
– transformation process and people being a key input for the organisation that need to be managed in order to produce quality outputs.

Onward to planning each cycle now….hope to have my assignment plan done by the weekend so that I can get writing sunday/Monday.

Uhhh – actually no I haven’t sorted it!

Have just learnt – and i should have seen it in the assignment brief – that i have to use two cycles of enquiry that I haven’t included in my scoping reports prior to now – doh!

Never mind – a bit of re-framing needed.  And i’m still ok for my Morgan and hunt model and might look at using the stakeholder/staff turnover risk I identified in TMA06 as an opportunity to revisit stakeholder analysis and management.

More thinking needed….

Sorted it….!

Had some really useful help from others and, probably quite slowly, realised that I can get around my issue.

I don’t need to have put a framework to the test in order to complete a cycle of enquiry. By taking a much smaller approach to ‘cycles’ I can take one of my risks, identify a theory that would help me mitigate it, plan how to apply that theory in my Ebi context and cite use of that theory for other situations to support my plan – that should just about cover it I think.

So my assignment may end up covering:

– stakeholder identification, mapping and management.
– surfacing a theory to manage resistance and presenting a plan of how to apply it in context.

Thanks so much to everyone has has helped with ideas – if you hadn’t guessed already it’s been driving me mad.

Don’t let this stop anyone still throwing some thoughts in though – still plenty of time before the assignment is due and besides I’ve for to start planning how to write it up yet!

*Cycle 5 – Résistance is futile! (Unit 5 – marketing)

So the focus now is on the resistant stakeholder and how to overcome this force.

Huge links here to management theory and leadership styles, alongside marketing and generally getting to know your ‘customer’s behaviours, needs and motivations’.

My thinking in being able to understand this stakeholder better is that I may be able to tap into shared values and the like in order to gain some cooperation. With the ultimate aim of making for a successful change.

One key framework here has been Morgan and Hunt’s Relationship Commitment and trust model. Whereby identifying relationship benefits, termination costs, shared values, increasing comms and decreasing opportunistic behaviour will lead to better trust and commitment to the team. Success in this area would be recognised by cooperation, acquiescence,…….

Theories/Frameworks used:

– Morgan and Hunt’s trust model

And on to risk management…..

A change in the Ebi focus…….!

Quick update on the Cycles of inquiry so far….

Why is it a problem? – who’s involved? – where’s the power? – how will I influence those who do have the power? – where is the resistance? – what might a new process look like?…….

It’s important to say at this stage that the customer has now taken all responsibility for addressing the inaccurate info in the current process and taken action to redesign the tool (spreadsheet) that tracks progress so that it contains all the required information for each stakeholder – all done collaboratively of course – a great breakthrough.

It’s for this reason that here my Ebi took on a different form and became an initiative to reduce the resisting forces to the change.

Cycle 4 (Investigating the process further – Unit 5)

This cycle of enquiry was based around Operations. I spent time to map out the current process alongside a more streamlined version.

Doing this highlighted the complexity of the current process and identified areas where the ‘fat’ (mainly duplication) could be trimmed and scope for more detail to be added for internal customers.

The transformation process was also of use here. It helped to contextualise the resources we had at hand to produce the required outputs in our organisation. It also highlighted the unwanted outputs – such as wasted time and effort – that linked to my Ebi.

The process map combined with the CATWOE approach really helped to create a wider view and the larger implications of our inefficient practices.

Theries/Frameworks used:

– process mapping
– transformation process
– CATWOE/Process map

But what of the resistant stakeholder?…….

*Cycle 2….. (Stakeholder Management – Unit 1)

In gaining evidence to support the need for action on the issue, I was also able to identify that all stakeholders agreed with my suspician but more interestingly that all – bar one – were happy to support a change.

Knowing this, and confirming exactly who the stakeholders were allowed me to enter a cycle of enquiry based around stakeholder mapping and management practices.

These tools helped me to identify alliances, where the power was and therefore strategies to bring a resistant stakeholder onside. I found these tools really, really useful as I was quickly able to identify a way to overcome the resistant stakeholder issue in order to continue with my plan.

Theories/Frameworks used:

– stakeholder mapping: interest vs power matrix/ TDA for Schools disposition mapping (Johnson/price)
– Scholes’ nine stakeholder maps (the dogged opponent)