Author: naomiorgdesign

I ran the Cambridge Town and Gown 10k on Sunday. It set me wondering about the history of the phrase 'Town and Gown'. Apparently its usage dates from the Middle Ages, when students admitted to European universities often held minor clerical status and wore clothing, including gowns, similar to that worn by the clergy. This dress code made students a recognisably distinct community from ordinary city residents. Thus town referred to the non-academic population and gown the university community.

One article notes that 'Historically, colleges and universities literally walled themselves off from their host communities. This was particularly the case in urban settings … community and government agencies, in turn, have often viewed colleges as pariahs, complaining about their tax-exempt status, physical encroachment, and noisy students. The term town-gown itself typically conjures up acrimony and tension which has frequently played out when academic and community stakeholders have interacted'.

Over time the conflicts have ironed out and the run seemed like a celebration of achieving inclusiveness and diversity in the pursuit of a common goal – in this case fund raising for muscular dystrophy. The 1500 runners included students, townspeople and visitors reflecting all races, nationalities, physical build, ages (if you count the supporting cast of babies, toddlers, elders) and running ability. It was a great event. Making the event successful for the runners was a similarly diverse organisation of volunteer marshalls, police, first aiders, technology people and others.

So what does it take to bridge acrimony and tension (town v gown) and end up with a collaborative event? And does a single event like this reflect a true bridging or is it a one-off example of what could never happen on a day to day basis? I ask because I meet distinct communities every day in my working life: central v regional, head office v product lines, digital v technology, sales v marketing, etc. Alongside these distinct communities are worthy statements about silo busting, or collaboration, or 'one organisation', or multi-disciplinary teams or valuing diversity, or inclusiveness – or all of these, and yet degrees of acrimony and tension seem to be a lot of what is actually in play.

Part of my organisation design work is to get to the equivalent of the Town and Gown run – a fun and productive experience that values participation, diversity and inclusiveness – but I need to design it into the day to day and not just see it arise for a specific event.

Some questions directed towards solving issues of acrimony and tension are asked in The Palace: Perspectives on Organisation Design and these have helped in the work I am involved with:

• How can we transform individual interests into common concerns?
• What are the 'pull' factors that will encourage new ways of working?
• How can we involve customers (internal and external) as co-developers?
• What values do we hold, what interests do we share?
• How can we experiment and involve recipients as co-developers?
• Are we committed to listen, learn and adjust as we go along? Do we need any processes to help us do this better?

With these questions in mind we have collectively developed some guiding principles for organisation design and development that have the active support of the leadership team(s). As we work we see the principles in action are beginning to have some effect in bridging the tensions, defusing acrimony and supporting the more participative, inclusive, diverse organisation we are aiming for.

What are your techniques for bridging tension and acrimony between distinct communities in your organisation design work? Let me know.

The Martian gets my vote for organisation design lessons of the year. Have you seen it? If not get yourself to the cinema. I read a review of it on Friday and was instantly intrigued. First, because NASA got behind it and I wondered why. Second because the science in it is all credible thanks to Weir's (the author) fact checkers – I like things to be plausible. The story of how he wrote the story is, itself an organisation design story – by posting chapters as blog pieces and then refining them. Third because it's about one man's method of staying alive by solving first one problem and then the next problem – yes, he had plans but he couldn't predict the next problem he'd have to solve.

It sounded like a don't miss and I'm really glad I didn't. It's not just about Mark Watney (Matt Damon) and how he survived. It's a whole brilliant case study in organisation design. You have the public facing glossy brochure which paints a glowing picture of the Ares 3 mission. Then you see at many points in the film Annie Montrose (Kristen Wiig) the media relations person desperately trying to find a good spin to put on things as they start to unravel (and to keep the unravelling out of the public eye).

It's got some really strong messages about leaders slipping in and out of agreement with each other as they flex their different styles in the shifting context. Watch Melissa Lewis, (Jessica Chastain) Commander of the astronauts compared with Teddy Sanders (Jeff Daniels) – almost stereotypes of female self-reproach and male arrogant self-confidence. Mitch Henderson (Sean Bean) struggles to act as a balance between the two. I loved leader one-liners like 'Is there a safer way to be safer?' and 'Well he's under a lot of stress Mr President', and 'You are a coward.'

Each leader weighed risk against payoff from different perspectives: the section where there was disagreement on whether to use the battle to save Mark as a ploy to attract funding for the next Martian mission was one of these scenes, as was the discussion on whether to save his life thereby risking the other five lives. (Solution – ask the five).

There were so many other thought provoking scenes familiar in my organisation design life. For example:

Leader: 'How long will it take?' Expert:'48 days'. Leader: 'You have 15'.

Then one about protecting people from bad news in case it deflected from 'mission completion', another about how to listen to a wild card with great (in this case life-saving) ideas – Rich Purnell (Donald Glover) being the young nerdie astrophysicist complete with hoodie and dreadlocks whose 'done the numbers'.

The astronaut team dynamics are worth watching in action. There's a touching scene when Alex Vogel (Aksel Hennie) lost the video link to talk with his children and goes to ask Beth Johanssen (Kate Mara) the computer whizz to restore it. He misses them terribly but is then willing to take an extra 553 days in order to return to Mars to pick up Mark Watney. Each team member relies on the others to deploy their expertise to save all of them.

Mark Watney is a role model for all the recruitment interviews that look for resilience, problem solving skills, a sense of humour, and a suitable scepticism for authority (the last not generally looked for but might be useful – as is illustrated in the film).

There is a nod to international co-operation and the power of the unifying mission (dare I say 'a burning platform'?)

The film is also a paean to science based careers and could well be the powerful recruiting tool that the STEM people long for.

Have you seen The Martian? How does it help your organisation design practice? Let me know.

We have a competency statement we are asked to evidence in our performance reviews called 'Delivering at Pace'. We're urged to 'deliver timely performance with energy and taking responsibility and accountability for quality outcomes.' This came to mind in a discussion I was having with colleagues from the Organisation Design Forum the other evening. We were debating three questions:

• What have you been noticing that's novel or significant in your circles?
• What are the implications you see to organization design?
• If you had a message to the organization design practitioner community right now, what would it be?

One of the things that I'd noticed recurring during the week was the concept of 'mindfulness'. I'd just read a report from Unum on The Future Workplace. In the researchers' view the future workplace is mindful, collaborative, ageless and intuitive. They say that:

'As well as needing to be energised to work for longer workers are increasingly feeling overwhelmed by the tools and means of communication they have to use on a daily basis. … they want to be able to 'shut off' for a while. … 'Overload creep' is a major factor … British workers feel they are expected to be 'always on' … which significantly increases stress levels.' There's then a lengthy section on developing a workplace that is 'mindful, tranquil, sublime and that nurtures the health and performance of the mind'.

I'd also just been invited to 4 x 90 minute sessions on mindfulness being run for a team I work with. It seems that I am expected to attend. My heart quailed and I felt defensive because
a) I had no idea of the content
b) I couldn't choose the instructor/time/place
c) I am too busy 'delivering at pace' and additionally racing to keep up with emails, twitter, huddle, Trello, what's app, snapchat, lync and collaborate (all channels that we use to communicate in order to 'deliver at pace' in my workplace) to attend a mindfulness course and do the 'homework' it requires
d) I do my own mindfulness via running, exercise classes, and journaling.

So in the discussion with ODF colleagues answering the first question my observation was on pace v mindfulness. Are they compatible or do you sacrifice one for the other? Pace is a very significant word in my organisation and is a fairly novel concept in our long history. But now, we are constantly being reminded of the need to deliver 'at pace' often by emails with the word 'urgent' in the subject heading and the high priority red exclamation mark delivery icon. What's significant about mindfulness is the possibility that it's a bandwagon phenomenon albeit with seeds in research and neuroscience but now a big money-spinner. I'm not sure it is 'novel' as it has a long history in meditation but it is novel in the sense that organisations are jumping on it.

In answering the second question I am of the view (at least in my current thinking) that there's an inherent workplace tension between delivering at pace implying very little time availability and mindfulness – which seems to require a lot of time to practice it. Or does the fact that one is 'mindful' mean that delivering at pace takes less time. (Though what happens to the flood of communications which I'm guessing remains the same?). Assuming a tension there is a big implication for organisation design. How do we design both the reflective space and the fast delivery?

Just sticking with mindfulness and pace, in answering the third question there's a message about not responding with a 'quick-fix' solution for a client but with a considered response – but how to do this with what is likely to be a requirement to deliver it right now is about influencing, credibility, expertise (and mindfulness).

What's your view – is mindfulness incompatible with delivery at pace? Let me know.

What box are you in? Is it one where you feel inspired, innovative, collaborative and willing to go the extra mile? I rather doubt it and I wonder being contained in a box would generate that kind of feeling and experience – aren't boxes by definition bounded, confining, claustrophobic, and limiting in their horizons?

This week I've noticed a lot of information flowing my way about the 9-box grid. For those of us who don't know what it is, it's a very commonly used way of categorising an employee's performance and potential on two axes on a 3 by 3 matrix giving 9 categories. There are some variations on what each of the nine categories is labelled, (you can see images of some of them here) but basically each has a 'star performer' category in the top right hand box (high performance and high potential), and a 'poor performer' (low performance and low potential) in the bottom left hand box.

In most organisations using this categorization method there is a mid-year and annual re-calibration of the employee pool – usually not by the employees being boxed. Once all the individual names are agreed to be in the 'right' boxes decisions are made on investment (or not) in that employee.

My observation is that this 9-box categorization of people causes a lot of all-round angst, takes up inordinate amounts of time, is based on rather unclear definitions of 'potential' and indeed of 'performance', runs the risk of marginalizing people who are different from the 'norm', and doesn't result in outcomes that increase an organisation's talent pool or even performance and productivity.

Additionally it seems rather odd that we talk about categories and boxes on the one hand, and concepts of the organisations as being boundaryless, sharing, respectful, trusting and encouraging of 'everyone has a voice', on the other hand. Can I hear banging on the walls, and pleas to be let out of the box, any box?

There is a lot of research on the 9-box grid and its organisational value. Some, like researchers at Lancaster University (2011) take a measured view – it's here to stay let's make the best of it. Researchers at Roffey Park, a management institute takes a fairly similar view with a number of caveats about conversations being the thing that made the grid 'work'.

Given employee feedback on the demotivating effects of being 'gridded' there come a good number of suggestions on doing performance reviews a completely different way. See Fast Company's report on this.

And a BBC write-up notes that 'Microsoft, Accenture and Deloitte are some of the companies that are reshaping their annual performance review processes, moving away from rigid rankings, into more fluid feedback.' This pieces goes on to say that 'one of the leaders of the trend away from annual appraisals is General Electric (GE) … [whose] infamous performance reviews once epitomised the detested process that's been dubbed the "rack and stack" or "rank and yank" system, which called for managers to rank employees, then sack the bottom 10% i.e. those in the bottom box.

Are you for a life boxed or unboxed? Which do you think makes for a healthier organisation? Let me know.

'A pet fence or fenceless boundary is an electronic system designed to keep a pet or other domestic animal within a set of predefined boundaries without the use of a physical barrier. A mild electric shock is delivered by an electronic collar if its warning sound is ignored'.

We were running 'Safe to Challenge' sessions during the week because a survey reveal only a low percentage of people feel it is safe to challenge ways of doing things in the organisation. From the stories people told it seems that they get the equivalent of a mild (or not so mild) electric shock if they challenge current systems, processes and behaviours. Like pets they are confined by an invisible fence to the backyard of 'this is the way we do things': electronic collars are firmly on.

We know we need to take off our electronic collars and turn off the invisible fences because challenge and innovation are the main ways getting to a redesign that will yield efficiencies and increase productivity. (See an article on the connection here). But how to give effective challenge is itself a challenge. Two approaches emerged:

1. Learn how to challenge effectively
2. Learn how to accept challenge graciously and act on it

Effective challenge
There's a good tip sheet for individuals on challenging effectively. It's addressed at psychotherapists in working with their clients but the tips work well in non-therapeutic situations too. I've abridged them here. The full sheet expands with example.

1. Believe in the value of challenge (rather than 'pussyfooting around')
2. Challenge through non-judgmental acceptance of the other person
3. Issue challenges in the other person's interest – not our own
4. Challenge with empathy and compassion
5. Aim for a proportionate, optimal level of challenge.
6. Ask for permission to challenge or to give feedback in order to pave the way
7. Encourage self-challenge towards enabling the person you want to challenge to be more self-aware and take responsibility for choices
8. Challenge unused strengths rather than weaknesses.
9. Issue challenge with gentle shared humour
10. Stay open to being challenge ourselves

These tips work when challenging individuals but more difficult is challenging a system or process. For example – why is the procurement process so convoluted, why do we need so many forms, why are reports produced that are never read, why is it so hard to enter data into a system, and so on? These are difficult because there is often no accountable 'owner' ready or able to pick up the challenge – is a procurement system owned by someone in technology, or procurement, or compliance people, or a third party who procurement is done through or all of these? A NASA article offers some guidance on challenging the system/process status quo.

Accepting challenge
Accepting challenge is as hard as giving it. There's a useful book on this that focuses on the recipient of the feedback. Think of yourself when someone is challenging you. Do you get defensive? Immediately think of a riposte? Or ask curious questions ? Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well explores three triggers that lead us to deal poorly with feedback:

1. Truth triggers. The feedback itself seems wrong or off target, based on incomplete information or poorly aligned with what we're trying to do.
2. Relationship triggers. Regardless of the feedback itself, there's something about our relationship with the person giving us the feedback that is throwing us off. The giver may be colossally ungrateful for your efforts, or not appreciating what we do well. Or maybe we just don't trust their expertise or their motives.
3. Identity triggers. We feel too overwhelmed by the feedback to really engage in the conversation. It undermines how we see ourselves, or threatens our sense of safety or well-being.

You can read Q & A with the authors here . And see a good summary /handout of the book from Focus Consulting Group.

Feeling safe to challenge means taking off our collars, switching off the invisible fences, and being able to receive any challenges graciously. How safe is it to challenge in your organisation? Let me know.

There's a lot of talk about 'being empowered', which is, in the words of the World Bank about a 'process of enhancing the capacity of individuals or groups to make choices and to transform those choices into desired actions and outcomes'.

Recently (July 2015) Satya Nadella CEO, Microsoft sent an email to employees about their new organisational mission 'to empower every person and every organisation on the planet to achieve more'.

The UK's Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) says 'Our mission is 21st century enlightenment: enriching society through ideas and action. Everything that the RSA does is driven by this mission, as we aim to empower more people to apply their creativity to bringing about positive social change'.

They aren't alone in wanting to 'empower' people. Many organisations aspire to an empowered workforce. The UK Civil Service, for example, has a Leadership Statement which firmly states that leaders will be 'Empowering our teams to deliver'.

So is empowerment something that is 'given' to people by other people? It certainly seems that way but suppose people don't want to take the gift of being empowered or fear the consequences if they do take it and it goes wrong, or (and this is worse) accept the organisational statement that people are 'empowered' and when they act on it get reprimanded.

I've watched these situations in action a few times in the last couple of weeks. Here are three typical examples:

• Someone suggested running a lunch n learn session and was encouraged to go ahead and 'just do it', but decided she couldn't because people in her position (junior in the hierarchy) don't run lunch n learns.
• Someone wanted to arrange a large meeting to explore a topic and talked a lot about how it could run and what it might achieve and decided to give it a go but was very anxious about getting a 'good' outcome and not one that was perceived by 'higher ups' as a failure.
• Someone put a poster up on the wall that talked about the types of social media available to try out and was reprimanded by her line manager for not asking permission to put up the poster.

Is empowerment in the gift of leaders? And if so, it is gift-able in some situations and not in others? I wonder if leadership 'accountability' gets in the way of empowerment. In organisations where hierarchical 'accountability' is a watchword a CYA culture may trump the 'empowerment' aspiration. That's when you get the question, 'Who shall I ask?' i.e. get permission from. No-one wants to brave taking a decision, giving something a go, or taking an initiative because the accountable leader does not trust that his/her subordinates will deliver successfully.

An HBR piece discusses 6 myths of empowerment and one of them is 'You empower people', it's not a gift in the author's view. People know what to do and leaders have to trust them to get on with it, and/or support and encourage them in getting on with it. Neither is it a gift in the Marshall Goldsmith's opinion. But how do empowerment and accountability sit together? For Lucy Kellaway's amusing, but biting, take on Satya Nadella's (Microsoft's) mission read this.

What's your view on the relationship of empowerment and accountability? Let me know.

Someone sent me an article that says that 'any public sector organisations developing digital services are guilty of reinventing the wheel missing important opportunities to reduce costs and speed up delivery'. Although it's about digital services what the author points out is applicable to organisational activity in general. As he says 'Almost all systems have some aspect of duplication that can be avoided. Without reuse, we all repeatedly reinvent the wheel, causing massive duplication and waste.'

By 're-use' he means identifying similar stuff that is done in many different ways or parts of the organisation when it could be done more efficiently and effectively in one way if only people would agree to do it in the one way and the organisation was designed to encourage and support this 're-use'.

How much of the activity going on in your organisation could be re-used? Look around. Do you have multiple communications teams, or several systems for collecting data (all of which have difficulty 'talking to' each other), or reports being generated with minor tweaks that mean multiple different versions of the same thing because different compliance/governance bodies require different formats, or several teams of people being asked to do the same task because there is no cross-organisation transparency on what is going on? All of these are ripe for seeing if they are re-usable i.e. being done in the same way – or even once.

But isn't the concept of 're-use' a bit like 're-cycling' – we know it's the right thing to do we just don't do it. Most organisations have recycling bins but how many of us diligently put our stuff in the right bin and/or consciously think how we could re-cycle physical stuff more and better? We get the idea, we just don't action it that well.

What stands in the way of process and system re-use in organisations? There are multiple reasons. Five that I've noticed are:

1. Many organisations work in vertical structures where each function and/or product and service unit is effectively independent of the other and there are few incentives or mechanisms for encouraging horizontal (lateral) collaboration.
2. Lack of clear executive ownership, accountability and proactive executive 'voice' in support of organisational re-use as a way of optimizing savings, efficiencies, and delivery.
3. Political and vested interests in keeping things the way they are. In moving towards re-use the owners of the various systems and processes have to find and agree that collective benefit of a single way is more important than the individual BU benefit of doing it 'my way'. Mentioned in a forthcoming book is a finding from research conducted at the University of Westminster in 2013 that the top three reasons given for lack of organisation design success – which invariably includes streamlining and making efficiency/savings gains – were protecting political vested interests (20%), incomplete strategy (18%), lack of vision of future organisation (16%).
4. Low levels of risk appetite to explore the benefits of re-use because there is often a dearth of data driven evidence that more savings can be achieved through streamlining, configuring differently, and planning for technology enhancements involving re-use that are not yet on stream.
5. Insufficient organisational capability and skill to 'look across' the organisation in order to learn from each other and identify opportunities for re-use. I used to work for 'Silosmashers' – the aim of this consultancy is all about increasing the capability and expertise in ways of bursting through the vertical silos and getting the benefits of synergies and re-use across the organisation.

How good is re-use in your organisation and how do you encourage it? Let me know.

Jon Husband's blog 'Knowledge, power, and an historic shift in work and organizational design' opens with the statement 'Horizontal networking often creates dissonance in the vertical enterprise'. He says that 'there's ongoing dissonance between the Taylorism-derived methods .. the ones behind structured, highly-defined organizational activities forms .. and the growing demands imposed by the world of hyper-linked flows in which knowledge and meaning are built layer by layer, exchange by exchange, resulting in the 'scaffolding' of knowledge to feed continuous improvement and innovation . These are the results which, increasingly, networked social computing enable'.

I agree with this and it becomes very evident in the dissonance created by vertical employee grading systems (in the US Government Agency I worked in there were 21 levels/grades of staff) and statements of inclusion which imply, or state, the requirement for fluid, networked, and emergent activity: One example of an inclusion statement illustrates: 'Inclusion involves the University and its staff in designing and operating flexible services, practices and procedures that take appropriate account of the needs of students, staff and visitors'.

Typically, coming with grading systems are things like 'Senior Leadership Away Days', or 'Leadership Development for Middle Managers', or 'Supervisors' Forum'. None of these types of targeted events are inclusive as each is open only to certain grades of staff and closed to those not in the 'right' grades.

Take a look at the UK CIPD's (2012) report 'Diversity & Inclusion: Fringe or Fundamental?' In the survey that underpins the report, '74% of respondents saw diversity and inclusion as central to people strategy but only 64% had active involvement from board members and senior directors'. The report discusses 6 key implications of its finding. But nowhere is the suggestion that grading people in a vertical hierarchy is a part of the inclusion challenge.

A report from Deloitte 'The Radical Transformation of Diversity and Inclusion: The Millennial Influence' tells us 'Millennials define inclusion as having a culture of connectedness that facilitates teaming, collaboration, and professional growth, and positively affects major business outcomes. Leadership is supportive of individual perspectives and is transparent, communicative, and engaging.' Their findings reveal that '83 per cent of millennials are actively engaged when they believe their organization fosters an inclusive culture, compared to only 60 percent of millennials who are actively engaged when their organization does not foster an inclusive culture.'

Think of a workforce where not only millennials but also the rest of the workforce were participants in an inclusive context, where the world of hyper-linked flows of information and knowledge building/sharing was one where grades and vertical hierarchies were immaterial to the business of problem solving and getting work done. In this environment 'all points of view carry the same weight, and … people have the freedom to express themselves [in problem solving] whether they have 30 minutes or 30 years of experience.' (from Deloitte report).

What could this mean in practice?

• It could mean that development was not targeted at 'grades' but at issues or specific skill/capability building. (I did hear of someone who was promoted for a two week period so he could attend an influencing course that was not open to his grade).
• It could mean that reward and advancement were not through the grades but through skills and capability development.
• It could mean that people stopped elbowing each other to get 'promotion' up a grade ladder, and helped each other learn and develop skills for inclusive, collective and collaborative high organisational performance.
• It could mean fluid structures where people were valued, included and rewarded for their contribution on an issues basis and not for their position in a hierarchy on a fixed basis.
• It could mean that we saw the end of statements like the one I received in an out of office notifier. 'If you have a question please ask one of my Grade 6'. (No names or contact details given).
• It could mean people could show initiative, feel confident, and make suggestions because they are as adult in the workforce as they are in their non-work lives.

I've suggested here is that a vertical grade structure is dissonant with statements of inclusion. What's your view? Let me know.

Someone this week contacted me saying: I thought I would just drop you a quick email to see if you have any useful article or fact sheet on 'self as instrument'. I am doing my Organisation Development core practice programme piece of work on self as instrument. I think this is a useful concept for organisation design practitioners to explore, not least because 'self as instrument', is 'one of the unique trademarks of Organisation Development' and 'By embracing that role [of self as instrument] we fully recognize the fact that we 'ourselves' are the ultimate instrument that needs to be deployed to shift the client system. … We do not think this type of training exists among strategic planners or technical experts in organisation design'. (See p.22 Organization Development: A Practitioner's Guide for OD and HR, by Dr Mee-Yan Cheung-Judge, Dr Linda Holbeche),

I was struck by the last statement. Organisation design is about organisation change and development and needs the full suite of practitioner skills (see my blog on organisation design the organisation development way)

Using 'self as instrument' is just as critical for organisation designers as it is for organisation developers – indeed for any person involved in trying to change an organisation. I am currently working in an organisation that has a vision to 'transform'. This means some big shifts in thinking about the organisation design and then taking bold action to actually transform it.

My simply stating (and providing evidence) that design change is needed is insufficient. This is where the 'self as instrument' concepts are helpful. To support the necessary redesign of the organisation I must model a way of being, thinking, and behaving that is both in line with the organisational members' values and ways of being but that also models challenge to the system. To do this successfully, I have to be at the right level to maintain organisational standing and credibility otherwise I won't be able to help change things. I came across a quote that aptly illustrates the position: 'I am trying to do two things: dare to be a radical and not be a fool, which, if I may judge by the exhibitions around me, is a matter of no small difficulty.'

In exploring the self as instrument concept I found, in the NTL Handbook of Organisation Development and Change, the Perceived Weirdness Index (PWI). (In the new edition of the book it is mentioned as a paragraph but in the previous edition it has a couple of pages – available here). It's a delightfully helpful way of measuring whether established organisational members see a 'change agent' as similar enough to them to be credible: that is the change agent being on the same wavelength, understanding and speaking the 'language' as them, asking informed questions, tuning into their concerns and worries, being empathetic, and so on. Once accepted as competent and credible, the self-aware practitioner can then use him/herself as instrument to 'launch ways of interacting that challenge, provoke, and unsettle the system.'

The author of the index also makes the point that 'Competence breeds tolerance for the eccentric. … a proven track record, or a compelling presence is often expected to exhibit behaviour that is a bit weird'. But as a word of caution he makes the point that consultants whose PWI is too low get absorbed into the system i.e. 'go native', those where it is too high get isolated and expelled.

Is self as instrument just as useful a concept for the organisation designer as the organisation developer and is the PWI a useful way of assessing 'self as instrument'? Let me know.

Wandering around my office last week looking for a functioning stapler I remembered the question from the Gallup Q 12 Survey. 'I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right'. At the same time I was on my stapler quest I noticed that there was a curious feature related to monitor risers. Because we have fixed risers people have made their own adjustments using a variety of 'risers'. Five examples I noted were: a Fox's biscuit tin, 2 volumes of tax manuals, 3 hard-backed novels (stacked neatly with spines facing front), an A4 file-box, and two reams of paper.

Forgetting the stapler for a moment I recalled the Otto Kroeger and Janet Thuesen article 'Fat is a Typological Issue' that suggests that certain MBTI types are better with certain types of diet. E.g. 'For the NF the motivation to diet is relational. They lose for love.' Fleetingly I thought I might be able to guess the MBTI profile of people by their choice of monitor riser. However, that was a side-track or a 'time monster' as Jennifer Louden has it but is it more of a time monster than looking for a working stapler, or getting your monitor to the right height?

Back to the Gallup question about materials and equipment to do the job right, I'm not sure whether it relates to things like staplers, pens, and paper clips or whether it relates to higher order things like good user friendly software: a must have for Millennials apparently as 'Businesses should be careful not to throw clunky, alienating devices or websites at these [Millennial] customers and expect patience or understanding as customers struggle to find a workaround.'

Even non-Millennials in organisations I have worked in have been known to express a meek desire for user friendly software, access to business websites that are blocked by security policies, single sign-on, and to the other technologies that they use in their daily non-work life. And when their meekness is over-ruled by a desire just to be able to do the job, they bring their own device and do work arounds using these, thus (possibly) compromising security and taking other risks.

Having the materials and equipment needed to do work right is a powerful motivator and engagement tool. When I got my first job out of the public sector into the private sector I found it an unbelievable luxury to be able to walk to the photocopier and find it stacked with paper and be able to take the number of copies I wanted without having to pay for either the paper or the copying myself. I know my productivity and motivation rose.

Not having the tools is a colossal time waster (and thus productivity loss) and a de-motivator. Does anyone know of any research or quantitative analysis done on time/money/productivity loss on not having the tools and materials to do the job right? I think it would reveal that investing in good equipment pays off.

Do you think that highlighting access (or not) to the tools to do the work is part of organisation design activity? Let me know.