Process
Consultation
&
Team Building
OD Interventions | Vaibhav Vyas

What is OD?
• Planned. OD takes a long-range approach to improving organizational
performance and efficiency. It avoids the (usual) "quick-fix".
• Organization-wide. OD focuses on the total system.
• Managed from the top. To be effective, OD must have the support of top-
management. They have to model it, not just espouse it. The OD process also
needs the buy-in and ownership of workers throughout the organization.
• Increase organization effectiveness and health. OD is tied to the bottom-line. Its
goal is to improve the organization, to make it more efficient and more competitive
by aligning the organization's systems with its people.
• Planned interventions. After proper preparation, OD uses activities called
interventions to make system wide, permanent changes in the organization.
• Using behavioural-science knowledge. OD is a discipline that combines research
and experience to understanding people, business systems, and their interactions.

What is an OD Intervention?
• The term Intervention refers to a set of sequenced, planned
actions or events intended to help an organization to increase its
effectiveness.
• Interventions purposely disrupt the status quo; they are
deliberate attempts to change an organization or sub-unit toward
a different and more effective state.

Criteria for Effective Interventions
• In OD three major criteria define the effectiveness of an
intervention:
1. The Extent to Which it (the Intervention) fits the needs of the
organization.
2. The degree to which it is based on causal knowledge of
intended outcomes
3. The extent to which the OD intervention transfers change-
management competence to organization members.

Factors That Impact the Success of OD
Interventions
• Factors relating to Change Situation: These relate to the
environment of the organization and include the physical and
human environment.
1. Readiness for Change
2. Capability to Change
3. Cultural Context
4. Capabilities of the Change Agent (OD Consultant

Factors That Impact the Success of OD
Interventions
• Factors Related to the Target of Change: These relate to the specific targets at which OD
interventions are targeted. The targets of change can be different issues of the
organization and at different levels.
A. Organizational Issues
1. Strategic Issues
2. Technology and Structure Issues
3. Human Resource Issues
4. Human Process Issues
B. Organizational Levels
OD interventions are aimed at different levels of the organization: individual, group,
organization and trans-organization (for example different offices of the organization
around the globe; or between organization and its suppliers, customers, etc.)

Case: Jet Blue Airways
• JetBlue was incorporated in Delaware (August 1998)
• Founded by David Neeleman in February 1999 under the name
“NewAir”.
• Approach : low-cost travel, in-flight entertainment, TV on every
seat & satellite radio.
• Motto: “TO BRING HUMANITY BACK TO AIR TRAVEL”

Issues
• SOC- System Operations Centre
• Comprised of 4 teams (Maintenance Control, System Control,
Crew Services & BlueWatch-security)
• By fostering an environment that puts crewmembers first
aroused problems:-
• Bad customer services
• Dissatisfied employees
• Other problems:-
• Main competitors
• Culture shift
• Outdated processes

Issues
Organizational Changes
Turnover in leadership
Expansion into international markets
Increased no. of departures
Introduction of a new fleet type
External Pressures
Bankruptcy
Increased fuel prices
Increasing number of low-cost carrier

Intervention
• Partnership between SOC and OD team
• OD team
• Denison Consulting, LLC
• JetBlue University (airline’s centralized learning group)
• Denison Consulting LLC founded by Daniel R. Denison, PhD &
William S. Neale M.A
• Headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, San Diego, Shanghai
and Zurich.
• Developed a research-based model and tools to improve
organizational performance by improving corporate culture and
leadership.

• OD consultant met regularly with SOC leadership team to
educate about role of leadership and develop strategies.
• “Walk the talk” in order to capture the hearts & minds of
crewmembers and bring credibility to the effort.
• Weekly action planning meeting.
• “Roundtable” to get frontline crewmembers – real- involved in
the charge process.
• The Directors took turn facilitating the meeting, symbolizing their
buy-in and commitment to the initiative.

Action Plans Made
• Goals and Objectives
• Crewmember Development
• Customer Focus
• Willingness to Change
• Guidelines

Results
• Created a positive atmosphere in the company
• Met the needs of the SOC crewmembers
• Follow-up with Denison Survey - 6 month after the launch of the
project.
• DOCCMS allows organizations to monitor progress using 4
indexes.
• ADAPTABILITY
• MISSION
• CONSISTENCY
• INVOLVEMENT

Denison Organizational Culture Change
Monitor Survey (DOCCMS)

Comments

History
• Edgar H. Schein developed the concept of
process consultation and wrote a book about
its in various client relationships after 15 years
of experience in organization and
management development consulting.
• He combines a research and teaching
interests in adult socialization and career
development with his applied interests in
helping organizations to be more effective in
accomplishing their tasks with and through
people.
• He a former Professor at the MIT Sloan
School of Management.

Process Consultation
• Process Consultation is the creation of a relationship
• with the client that permits the client to
• perceive, understand, and act on the process events
• that occur in the client's internal and external environment
• in order to improve the situation as defined by the client.
• Edgar Schein, (1969) Process Consultation: Its role in organization
development

Focus of Process Consultant
1. Build a Relationship
• Permit the consultant and client to deal with reality
• Remove the consultants areas of ignorance
• Acknowledge the consultant’s behavior as being always an intervention
• All of the above in the service of giving the client(s) insight into what is going on around
them.
2. Help the client figure out what they should do about the situation
• Clients must be helped to remain proactive
• Clients must own the problems (“monkey always remains on the client’s back,” )
• Clients know the true complexity of their situation and they know what will work in the
culture where they live

Process Consultant Principles
1. Always try to be helpful
2. Always stay in touch with the current reality
3. Access your ignorance
4. Everything you do is an intervention
5. It is the client who owns the problem and solution
6. Go with the flow
7. Timing is crucial
8. Be constructively opportunistic with confrontive interventions
9. Everything is data: errors are inevitable – learn from them
10.When in doubt, share the problem

Process Consultant – Key Assumptions
1. That the nature of the problem is such that the client not only needs help in
making an initial diagnosis but would benefit from participation in the process
of making that diagnosis.
2. That the client has the constructive intent and some problem solving ability.
3. That the client is ultimately the only one who knows what form of solution or
interpretation will work in his or he own situation.
4. That if the client selects and implements his or her own solution, the client’s
problem- solving skills for future problems will increase.

Models Of Consultation
• Expert Model
• Doctor Patient Model

The Expert Model
The expert (or telling and selling) model of consultation assumes that
the client purchases from the consultant some information or expert
service that he is unable to provide for himself.
 The buyer, usually an individual manager or representative of some
group in the organization, defines a need and concludes that the
organization has neither the resources nor the time to fulfill that need.
He will then look to a consultant to provide the information or the
service.
 The client expects expert help and expects to pay for it but do not get
involved in the process of consultation itself.

Examples
 Television repairman or auto mechanic
 Purchase of a market research;
 The hiring of a consultant to develop a computer program for a given problem;
 The hiring of a lawyer to determine whether a given course of action will run into
difficulty or not.
 The essence of the message from the client to the consultant is “here is the
problem, bring me back an answer and tell me how much it will cost.”
 Psychologically, the essence of this relationship is that the client gives away the
problem temporarily to the helper, which permits the client to relax, secure in the
knowledge that an expert has taken it on and will come up with a solution.

Expert Model: Notice
 This model of consultation is appropriate when clients have;
I. Diagnosed their needs correctly;
II. Correctly identified consultant capabilities;
III. Done a good job of communicating what the problem they are actually trying
to solve;
IV. Thought through the consequences of the help they have sought.
 This model is “client intensive” in that it puts a tremendous load on the client
to do things correctly if the problem is to be solved.
 If the problems are complex and difficult to diagnose, it is highly likely that
this model will not prove helpful.

Doctor Patient Model

Doctor Patient Model
 The core of this model is that the client experiences some symptoms
that something is wrong but does not have a clue as to how to go
about figuring out what is wrong or how to fix it.
 The diagnostic process itself is delegated completely to the consultant
along with obligation to come up with a remedy.
 The client becomes totally dependent upon the consultant until such a
time as the consultant makes a prescription, unless the consultant
engages the client in becoming more active on his or her own behalf.
A manager may detect symptoms of ill health, such as dropping sales,
high numbers of customer complaints, or quality problems, but may
not know how to make a diagnosis of what is causing the problems.

Assumptions
 That the client has correctly interpreted the symptoms and the sick “area.”
 That the client can trust the diagnostic information that is provided by the consultant.
 That the “sick” person or group will reveal the correct information necessary to arrive at a
diagnosis and cure, i.e., will trust the doctor enough to “level” with him or her.
 That the client has thought the consequences, i.e., is willing to accept and implement
whatever prescription is given.
 The patient/client will be able to remain healthy after he doctor/ consultant leaves.

Doctor Patient Model: Notice
 This model puts even more power into the hands of the consultant in
that she diagnoses, prescribes, and administers the cure.
 The client not only abdicates responsibility for making his own
diagnosis and thereby makes himself even more dependent on the
consultant, but assumes, in addition, that an outside consultant can
come into the situation, identify problems, and remedy them.
 This model is of obvious appeal to consultants because it empowers
them and endows them with X-ray vision.

Doctor Patient Model: Notice
 Providing expert diagnoses and prescribing remedial courses of action justify
the high fees that consultants can command and make very visible and
concrete the nature of the help that they claim to provide.
 In this model the report, the presentation of findings, and the
recommendations take on special importance in identifying what the
consultant does.
 For many consultants this is the essence of what they do, and they feel that
they have not done their job until they have made a thorough analysis and
diagnosis leading to a specific written recommendation.

Thank You!!