Organizational development, a planned, organization-wide effort to increase effectiveness and viability, can be a challenge. It is difficult to get large numbers of employees to quickly embrace a new process, policy, value, or structure. However, organizations will always have the need for change. Organizational development is most successful when perceived as bubbling up from the grassroots rather than imposed by management. Grassroots initiatives are far more quickly and easily adopted by employees.
There is a proven methodology that allows an organizational development initiative to be perceived as organically arising from the organization. This scientifically-founded methodology includes four stages:
1. Set the Bar. Establish an image of the desired end result of the organizational development initiative, including capturing the underlying passion and commitment that makes the change vitally important.
2. Motivate Change. Present the image of the end result of the organizational development initiative in a way that causes employees to enthusiastically adopt the new attitudes and business processes.
3. Sustain Change. Guide the organization to practice the new attitudes and business processes sufficiently to completely internalize them.
4. Scale the Change. Touch large numbers of people quickly enough to create widespread acceptance and a strong sense of momentum.
This process has shown results faster and more completely than previously thought possible. For example:
- A large manufacturing company went from identifying the need for a new customer service approach to a widely accepted global deployment in 10 days.
- A large advertising company saw a significant cultural change within one week of beginning the motivate change stage.
This approach has been successful in organizations as diverse as a quick service food company and a federal agency, and has been applied in countries as culturally different as Malaysia, Chile, and the U.S.
Set the Bar
Positive deviant wisdom is the foundation of grassroots organizational development because the content of the change comes from highly respected grassroots leaders. Positive deviants are the people in an organization who are consistently more successful than everyone else. As such, they often are the true leaders of a change because they hold much of the real wisdom of the organization and use this wisdom to promote team and organizational performance.
Most importantly, positive deviants are motivated by a passionate commitment to achieving a greater social good. For example, positive deviant sales people for a company that sells advertising to local small businesses focus on helping the owners of these small businesses achieve their life dreams. Positive deviants always look beyond themselves, and their forward-looking perspective usually aligns well with the goals of most organizational development initiatives.
By having the positive deviants articulate a concise, high-energy statement of the greater social good of an initiative, and by presenting this to others using the science of fair process and positive visualization, an organization will quickly embrace the values and importance of the change initiative.
Fair process ensures people feel honored to be included in the initiative and positive visualization guides employees to see great personal opportunities in the initiative. When used together, they appear to cause a release of neurotransmitters in the brain more than promote an increased willingness to learn something new while simultaneously suppressing the natural resistance to change. As a result, engagement with the positive deviant wisdom is immediate and, most importantly, people perceive the change is within their own control. The feeling of the initiative being grassroots begins to spread.
Organizational development initiatives only are successful if they produce long-term impact, yet sustainability historically is one of organizational development's greatest challenges. Given the opportunity, people naturally revert to behaviors that are familiar and comfortable, which makes any immediate impact difficult to sustain.
Recent neuroscience research shows intense practice of new attitudes and actions using diverse media and perspectives cause neural pathways in the brain to rewire. If this practice includes frequent application to real situations and extended intense team interactions around the new capabilities, learning is quickly and completely internalized and the perception of the initiative being grassroots is significantly reinforced.
Scaling the Change
Finally, two additional areas of science, mass customization and persuasive technology, enable organizational development initiatives to guide change for hundreds or even thousands of people simultaneously.
Mass customization helps change initiatives effectively balance the need for economies of scale with the requirement that each person be treated uniquely. When coupled with persuasive technology, technology designed to change what people believe and do, an organization can mass-produce a change everyone feels is unique to them.
Two elements of traditional organizational development initiatives, executive authority and assessments, are not a part of this methodology. Grassroots organizational development requires a minimum of executive support. Executives need only allocate positive deviant time to articulate their best practices, regularly monitor the progress of the initiative, and hold people accountable for learning and using the new behaviors. In every other way, grassroots organizational development functions without a need for active executive engagement.
Similarly, recent neuroscience research suggests assessments may impede an initiative because they tend to focus on organizational deficits, which reinforce the undesirable attitudes and behaviors. Instead, change initiatives always should focus on how to do something the right way, and practicing what is required to perform a function correctly, without diluting the effort with the negativity of an assessment.
For managers who have experienced long, incomplete, or unsuccessful organizational development initiatives, using a grassroots approach may be the answer. Using a grassroots approach to organizational development change initiatives can be management-driven, even while it is actively engaging participants and generating a feeling of self-driven improvement. When a sufficient number of employees perceive the change this way, organizational development can transform an organization faster and more completely than ever thought possible.
William Seidman and Michael McCauley are co-founders of Cerebyte Inc.