Walking the OE Talk
As a company, Tosan has been working in the field of Organizational Effectiveness for over 15 years. In that time we have gained an immense amount of knowledge regarding human interactions, sociological issues in the workplace, how behavior affects productivity, and systematic approaches to ensuring congruence between strategy, structure and other aspects of the organization. The collective of these experiences has brought us to the understanding that we also need to practice and utilize the fundamentals behind the theories that we espouse. In effect, we need to walk our (OE) talk.
This begins with the behaviors of our principal consultants. One of the building blocks of our approach is our belief that leaders create and define the organization for all other employees. Part of how our leadership models the way is to regularly give lectures on accepted organizational development theories and models, and discuss these in depth with the entire staff. This serves as a method of reinforcing the founding tenants and mission of our organization, as well as maintaining a base level of subject comprehension and applied theories among the staff. Thankfully, even when our travel schedules take us away from the office, we have these sessions using interactive online technology.
As part of a larger employee development initiative, all Tosan employees have taken the behavioral-based surveys we give to clients. This provides employees with an inside knowledge of the tools we use, but it also allows us to see how our own behaviors may be effecting our approach to work and interactions with co-workers and clients. We then use this input to develop personal action plans to strengthen the productive and stop or lessen the unproductive behaviors we each tend toward.
Furthermore, we are encouraged to share the results of our survey openly with each other. This allows us to more effectively implement personal changes that will not only make us better employees, but it can also provide useful insights about how to best engage with our co-workers and strengthen teamwork overall. We have also all taken the “Myers-Briggs Type Indicator” which further allows for understanding of how to best work together as a team. We also periodically conduct team survival simulations, and then we use a team assessment tool to provide feedback real-time as to how we believe we are all working together.
In the office, a standard of collaboration has been established amongst our team. Rarely is one employee given a task that requires solitary work. All projects, programs, clients, and marketing are delegated to a lead person with an expectation they collaborate with and utilize the support of the rest of the staff. This ensures that work is being filtered through different idea chains and work revisions before a final product is given to clients. The major benefit to such a collaborative working environment is that it constantly reinforces our reliance on team while emphasizing the role of the individual in the process sequence. For Tosan, this allows us to create and support an environment of Accountability within our own organization; everyone owns their respective tasks while still providing ample opportunities for everyone to contribute to the firm’s overall success.
Tosan, having less than 15 employees, gains many benefits from our intimate office environment. We have the ability to communicate with each other by simply talking across the room; if we need to have an impromptu meeting to go over a project it is simple and easy to arrange; it allows us flexibility and freedom to work with individual schedules in order to accomplish tasks and prepare projects. However, along with these benefits, also come a few challenges that must be managed in order to work successfully as a unit.
One pitfall is that conflicts are not always dealt with constructively. It is common for teams, especially ones who work together closely, to know each other very well, both inside and outside of work. This can contribute to a tendency for arguments and disagreements to become personal rather than rooted in task orientation. Sometimes avoiding a conflict rather than facing it head on and finding solutions is the easier choice, especially during large projects when there is work to be done. This undermines the effectiveness of the team, and because of the intimate nature of our office the effects of this are greatly amplified. In order to overcome this obstacle we have set a clear expectation of each other. When there is a conflict the staff members who are not directly involved are to address the situation directly; they should encourage and facilitate, if needed, a dialogue between the involved parties to talk through the disagreement.
Another pitfall we have encountered is maintaining good communication while traveling, which can be a difficult problem to tackle in many organizations. An example: Some of us are consulting in Spain, while someone else is conducting a follow-up session in Pennsylvania, still others are at the office in Denver developing new marketing content, and others are traveling from California to meet colleagues in Detroit to set up for a program later that week. Maintaining continuity and good communication regarding ongoing work and projects can be hard with everyone in different locations and time zones. It is easy to overlook or neglect pieces of work, or to forget to include someone in a communication regarding the ongoing projects.
We have begun developing and implementing solutions to this problem. We have set-up shared calendars to track client engagements, vacation schedules, marketing deadlines, and other important business dates, we have set up remote access to a centralized server where we store important documents for project collaboration, we have implemented a cloud based customer database and have developed a process for titling and versioning documents to allow for better collaboration and co-authoring of documents. Even with these technological solutions, we still maintain an agreement to interface with each other when possible, regardless of time zones; as this provides us with the best opportunities to clarify expectations of each other and ask questions regarding the ongoing projects and collaborative efforts.
Every company has a unique growth pattern which aligns with their corporate standards and long-term goals and where obstacles must be overcome or mitigated in order to accomplish tasks. Tosan is not an exception to this notion.
We coach our clients to create a constructive environment within their organizations in order to engage their employees in achieving corporate goals. This requires Tosan to lead by example. We constantly strive to provide superior training internally for our employees by reinforcing the fundamentals of organizational theory, allowing personal experiences and ideas to permeate our culture, and to create a highly supportive and collaborative work environment that supports both our mission as a company and the deliverables we promise to our clients. We are not perfect, and we have many of the same challenges and struggles we see within our client organizations. The key is to be aware of those similarities, and consistently and constantly strive to overcome and work through them together as a team.
