Introducing play formats

Question I.

Read the case study of John Smith on the website related to the book and consider Play formats to give this change process a new impulse.

Question II.

Read the case study of the Museum on the website related to the book and consider Play formats to prepare this museum for the future.

Question III.

Do change managers differ in qualities and competences and do you need different leaders in different change strategies and for different interventions?

1. What kind of qualities to you possess to contribute to organizational change?
2. What kind of leader, change agent of consultant do you want to be?

Question IV.

Power and influence are made explicit as possibilities to change power structures and organizational cultures. An overview of these interventions is available on this website.

1. What makes that power and politics are often neglected in mainstream business literature, while power games are all around and within organizations?
2. Using power needs powerful competences that are quite different from creating engagement, developing trust and building commitment. Is the same person able to use power and building commitment?

Question V.

Structural and Instrumental interventions are described to change organizational structures and technologies. An overview of these interventions is available on this website.
Flexible working in open office spaces can be considered as a structural intervention to stimulate interaction and teamwork. Working at home on line is considered as a new way of working offering freedom in timing and balancing work life and private life.

1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of flexible working spaces and how may this be used as a cultural intervention?
2. What makes behavior programs ineffective in realizing cultural change in organizations?

Question VI.

Negotiating interventions are described to handle conflicts in organizations. An overview of these interventions is available on this website.

1. Using humor is a possibility to make the unspeakable part of a conversation. It is like the joker and the troubadour in the middle ages. What are the risks of this intervention and under what circumstances is it better to refrain from using it?
2. Regulating conflicts by mirroring may be positive for the functioning of organizations and the collaboration of people, but the effect may be negative as well. What are the positive and negative effects of regulating conflicts and under what kind of circumstances is this intervention not useful?

Question VII.

Motivational interventions help to inspire people with a clear and attractive vision about the future. An overview of these interventions is available on this website.
Reconsider your university as an institute or an organization you know, and look for artefacts, symbols, core values and imagining futures.

1. Ask yourself where these motivational expressions come from and what they mean for strategy development of your university or organization.
2. How can you make sure that these motivational expressions are not only espoused theory and become real practices?

Question VIII.

Learning interventions are based on participation and involvement of employees. An overview of these interventions is available on this website.

1. 1. When is it useful to bridge cultural differences in a merger or a takeover? When is it more useful to integrate the cultures into one culture and when is it wise to appreciate cultural differences?
   2. Are learning interventions possible in an organization where top management is used to operate and manage based on hierarchical positions?
   3. Are learning interventions useful and do they fit with all employees or do employees need specific competences and qualities to make these interventions effective?

Question IX.

When changing an organization, involving many different interests in the changing process is necessary in order to capture different perspectives on existing issues and more ideas for improvements. The involvement of different interests, however, creates tension, which is an important key driver for organizational change. However, too much tension might pose a threat to the core identity of the organization and its values and can force the change to reach a level that is too far reaching and out of control.

1. As a manager of an organization is seeking change, how do you recognize a healthy level of tension and control it at any time?
2. How is it possible to measure the level of tension?

Question X.

In the event of an organizational change, many tensions and conflicts arise. Chapter 8 highlights the importance of understanding the nature of those conflicts, and for doing so it can significantly help assessing which kind of relationships there are amongst the player groups. Each of the four main relationships, i.e. power-dependency, instrumental, negotiation and social emotional relationship, has specific features, since they overall describe very different strength balances among the player groups.

1. How are these relationships related and how do they influence each other?
2. Imagine that the work is poorly organized, which results in social-emotional tensions between two groups of the same company and creates power games between the two groups who both want to strengthen their position opposite the other group. What would be a good starting point to improve this situation?
3. What kind of Play formats may help in each of the four relationships?

Question XI.

With an increasing importance of technology within organizations being an important driver of innovation, business departments are getting more and more dependent on IT departments when it comes to the realization of changes. While this describes an instrumental relationship, one can observe that this is not the only type of interaction. Business, as well as IT departments tend to develop their own languages, spirit and hence their own community within organizations, thereby building up strong social and emotional relationships. Furthermore, they tend to have their own budgets and projects, thus often negotiating heavily for the use of their budget in common projects. Finally, their different project priorities frequently put them into a power play in which both try to dominate and become the leading change department within the organization.

1. Given this complex interdependency, how would you address activities to manage the conflicts between IT and business departments during change projects?
2. What would be a good starting point to create trustful relationships?

Question XII.

When evaluating the Play formats for a given change process, one fundamental part to consider consists in understanding which is the best depth level to pursue. A play format or supportive action should be deep enough to allow for the achievement of considerable results, but not so much that it leads to too much disruption and paralysis. When we link this consideration to the involvement of consultants, many consultants are not asked to be involved in the realization of a change. Often clients ask for the opposite, because of both financial and business reasons. However, there are situation in which the consultant’s involvement within the execution phase of a change process might be essential.

1. Would it be possible to find and analyze a possible correlation between the level of depth of a change intervention in an organization and the degree to which a consultant direct involvement is needed for its realization?
2. Considering Plat formats, which are the ones where consultants are more effective?
3. Which tensions can benefit the most from an external help?

Question XIII.

In the process of change it is widely recognized that blockages and tensions will always arise. To address such tensions and learn how to deal with them it is important to realize that there are cognitive and social fixations. In some environments, for instance small family businesses, investment banking divisions or accountancy groups, such fixations are so rigid and strong that the only solution is to achieve change through an independent third party.

1. In this case, how can the independent third party truly spur change within the organization without crossing the line of giving the impression of not respecting the organization’s current position and identity, risking therefore even stronger opposition?
2. Should the approach of the third party always involve identifying a player within the organization that will then motivate and promote the change among the others?
3. In the ultimate instance in which the third parties have to come up with the optimal change strategy and then try to push it down in the organization, on the base of authority and power, is there the risk that they will just find such opposing forces that they end up resigning?

Question XIV.

One of the useful activities at the organizational level are search conferences. Although almost completely flawless at the first glance, search conferences gather all groups of people within the organization, as well as the outsiders (customers, business partners, etc.) to share insight on the organization’s work and change-process.

1. Is it possible that, to an extent, this kind of activity may lead to groupthink and wrong insight? How would you handle this issue?
2. What would you do when the people in the conference don’t have a feeling that change is needed because everything is perfect?
3. What would you do when different perspectives on the future lead to tensions and even conflicts between groups participating in the conference?

Question XV.

When involving people in the change process, it is possible that different parties involved have the same perception and belief of what the problem is and have the same idea about the ways of solving it. This could indicate that they are objectively right and that it is truly the main problem. On the other hand, people may just unconsciously copy what more dominant groups are thinking and expressing, or even worse, all of these groups that identify one common problem may just have a certain myopic perspective that is just wrong and cannot be actually seen by non-experts. What can be done to overcome this problem?

Question XVI.

Of the companies listed on Fortune 500 in 1955, only 12% were still alive in 2014. This points out that 88% went bankrupt or merged with another company. The life expectancy of a company 50 years ago was estimated at around 75, it has now fallen to 15. In this context it is clear that changes are on the agenda. If you do not acquire the ability to adapt you end up in the “business graveyard”.
Apple and Samsung are the two largest companies in the field of telephony, with a very high level of innovation. However, Apple smartphones have been more or less similar for some years, while Samsung has brought smartphones to the market with cutting-edge technologies. Assuming a possible merger between the two companies.

1. How would you manage the whole restructuring phase?
2. What kind of strategy do you think the change agents in the merger would use to involve the various employees of these two big companies?
3. What kind of play formats are needed to guide the change in the right direction?

Question XVII.

Look at the change dilemmas described in the chapter about the roles to play and make a well-considered choice how to cope with these dilemmas related to a change process in an organization you are known with.

Question XVIII.

Read the practical example in the final paragraph of the chapter about the roles to play and write a reflection how you think this organization has coped with the change dilemmas.

Question XIX.

Exercise – Designing a team conference:
A large-scale change process has been started up in a company. A project group comprising two project leaders, four junior consultants and three company staff members are responsible for its implementation. One of the project leaders comes from an external consultancy, the other project leader is a company member. The junior consultants are employed by the consultancy but have not worked together on a consultancy project before. The project leaders propose to organize a 3-day conference for the project group. The purpose of the conference is to ensure the project gets off to a good start.

1. Draw up a program for this conference that reflects the purpose, the program, the working method, the resources and the allocation of tasks for each morning and afternoon session.

Question XX.

Exercise – Team development and collaboration:
The municipal executive of a medium-sized municipality has decided to get closer to its citizens and take up a more customer-oriented attitude. The public affairs department is the first project for taking concrete steps towards a customer-oriented approach. New teams are set up that are to focus on issuing passports, driving licenses, and certificates of residence and also on registering births, deaths and changes of address. At a certain point in the proceedings, employees were told to which team they belong. The members of the new teams come from departments that never used to work together: the passports department, the driving license department and the register. Each team member is supposed to carry out all these tasks upon the merge. Soon after the merge tension arises in the new teams. The staff members of the old passport department and the driving license department do not wish to work on the tasks of the old register department. They feel this work is inferior and furthermore, they are not interested in extended opening hours and adapted work hours as was usual in this department. Team cooperation stagnates.

1. Consider this stagnation using the four relationships between people (instrumental, negotiation, social-emotional, power-dependency). How are these relationships related?
2. How would you tackle this problem as a change manager or consultant?

Question XXI.

Exercise – Facilitating a merger:
When a new government is formed, activities are redistributed over the Ministries. The Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Conservation and Fisheries (ANF) is divided into groups during the negotiations between the coalition partners. Nature conservation is allocated to a new Ministry for Environmental Affairs. Agriculture is accommodated as a separate directorate in the Ministry of Economic Affairs. When the policy fields are reshuffled over the ministries, the ‘Automation and Information Management’ department is moved from Agriculture to Economic Affairs. The minister in office at the Ministry of Economic Affairs is a stickler for synergy in the field of information management. He has clearly stated that the ‘Information Provision and Automation’ department (I&A) of his Ministry must collaborate with the ‘Automation and Information Management’ department (A&I) of the old Ministry of Agriculture, Nature Conservation and Fisheries. At the initiative of the Secretary General of Economic Affairs, a work group has been formed comprising five representatives of Agriculture’s A&I department and five representatives of the I&A department of Economic Affairs. The chairman is the head of the I&A department of Economic Affairs.

The A&I department of ANF works with an IBM system. This system is particularly suitable for processing financial transactions and according to the A&I employees is therefore very suitable for processing and checking all EC subsidy schemes for agriculture. The department has developed its own software and is very satisfied with its performance because the software has served the department well for quite some time. Furthermore, the staff members are very familiar with the system and can quite easily make changes to the software, even though the system documentation has not always been kept exactly up to date. Also, it is a convenient system because data can be exchanged directly with EC institutes that also use IBM equipment. The I&A department of Economic Affairs uses a Digital system purchased recently and preferred above all other systems because it is most suitable for word processing, data analysis and data exchange. The Digital system has standard software for office applications for all Economic Affairs employees. These applications are used intensively, and evaluations conducted by the I&A department show that the users are very satisfied with them.

The work group gets off to an energetic start. The chairman of the work group believes that synergy can best be achieved by opting for one computer system for the entire ministry. During the first meeting the chairman explains that synergy is required by the minister and top-level officials and clearly states that he believes it can best be realized by opting for one system. In his opinion, the final choice for a particular system should be based on the most suitable functionality, reliability, uniformity in office automation and expansion possibilities. During the relaxed discussion in the work group, the head of the A&I department of ANF puts forward that as far as he is concerned the functionality of the new system is the main criterion. He suggests that the tasks that are to be carried out by the system are surveyed so that one can examine which system can best perform those tasks. The first work group meeting closes in good harmony with the agreement that two subgroups will work out the tasks and functionality requirements for discussion in the next meeting.

The results of the subgroups are presented during the second meeting. The A&I subgroup concludes that the IBM system is the most suitable for the tasks. The I&A subgroup concludes that the Digital system best fits the tasks and the needs of the users. After both presentations, the chairman summarizes the presentations and announces his preference for the Digital system because it rates better on reliability and possibilities for office automation besides having the required functionality. The situation in the work group quickly results in a deadlock. The two subgroups subsequently collect more and more information to prove the superiority of their preferred system. The atmosphere in the work group meetings is becoming increasingly tense and the work group members meet ever less frequently. In the corridors of Economic Affairs the A&I department of ANF are occasionally referred to as the ‘Apes and Idiots’ department with out-of-date systems that haven’t even been documented properly. In reaction to this, the ANF members speak in their corridors of the ‘Imbeciles and Arrogants’ of Economic Affairs.

Tensions run high when the A&I department is forced to move to the Economic Affairs building and are located on the same floor as the I&A department. Staff members of both departments hardly speak to each other, if at all. The situation threatens to get completely out of hand when rumor gets around that all employees of Economic Affairs might have to work with a different and out-of-date office automation system. This step backwards is supposed to be caused by the fact that Agriculture will take over the support departments of Economic Affairs.

Because collaboration between Agriculture and Economic Affairs appears to be at risk, the Secretary General calls in consultants to help suppress the conflict.

1. Analyze what did not go well and how the problem was created.
2. How would you tackle this problem as a change manager or consultant?
3. Suppose the conflict had been solved, would that have been the end of it?
4. What follow-up activities, if any, do you think should be carried out?

Question XXII.

Read the case of Democracy in the city of Amsterdam.

1. What kind of tensions could you describe between different player groups involved in this change process?
2. What alternative supportive actions could have been useful to guide this change process?
3. What would you have done different as action researcher and consultant in this change process?
4. What kind of actions are useful to stabilize improved collaboration and share success stories for further improvements?

Question XXIII.

Look at the change dilemmas described in the chapter about player groups and make a well-considered choice how to cope with these dilemmas related to a change process in an organization you are known with.

Question XXIV.

Read the practical example in the final paragraph of the chapter about player groups and write a reflection how you think this organization has coped with the change dilemmas.