This post is postmortem documentation to my past employment at a contracted service provider to a care organization, previously discussed here:
https://create.twu.ca/pierreflorendo/2018/10/16/strategic-leadership-teams-hc1/ and here: https://create.twu.ca/pierreflorendo/2018/10/17/response-to-samsons-response-to-strategic-leadership-teams-hc1-post-leader/. For the sake of clarity, I will focus on the contracted service provider, as I had the most knowledge and power within that organization.
My previous posts outlined the relationship between the contracted service provider and the care organization. I will now discuss the details of the provider organization, including its structure, processes, and culture.
Background Information
The contracted service provider was composed of three owners: two sisters and the husband of one of the sisters. The company considered itself a small business with 200 employees spread over the previously mentioned four sites. At the time, the company only had the one customer – the Executive Director in charge of the four facilities. Therefore, our identity melded with the care organization. This identity had positive aspects, as the Executive Director had a reputation of being tough to the point of unreasonableness, so other care organizations knew we had high-quality service and tenaciousness. However, this same identity made contracting with other care organizations difficult, as some were uncomfortable with the closeness of the bond. Some organizations declined our proposals, not wanting to deal with the Executive Director in sector meetings.
Another quality of the service provider’s identity was our pricing. Many contracted service providers compete on price, with some providers providing a very low quote, and then filing incremental requests to increase service when problems would occur. Our company instead offered a higher ratio of staffing but at a premium price. Our identity of a high price for quality service provided us with an excellent reputation in the community but a low uptake for service due to budget constraints with other care organizations. We were desperate to keep our one customer, so our bonds tightened.
This closeness between the organizations results in the care organization strongly influencing the operations of the service provider. Service providers, as a rule, follow the policies and procedures of the care organization where applicable, as if the frontline employees were directly employed.
Further, the service provider should have had policies and procedures to follow. Sadly, its policies and procedures were barebones. The service provider heavily relied on the care organization for policies and procedures.
This reliance on the care organization extended to human resources, although the owners had independent challenges with HR. Previously, I said 90% of the frontline staff were of the same ethnicity (Florendo, 2018). This bias in hiring did not appear to be due to overt racism, as the owners did hire people of other ethnicities. Instead, this bias seemed to be in-group/out-group bias. Johnson & Levin (2009) say this bias “is more likely when there is strong categorization into groups, large actual or perceived inter-group threats and low information flow between groups.” My previous post discussed the mistrust, hidden agendas, and poor communication between the care organization and service provider. The care organization also had an indirect say on who could work in the facility – they could not directly terminate our staff, but they could refuse to have certain staff members work in their buildings, effectively firing them unless we could have them work in our head office.
Finally, the care organization had a profound effect on the culture of the service provider. As expected, the service provider placed a heavy emphasis on loyalty to the service provider, not to the care organization. My previous post talked about the culture of “family.” This type of culture extended to disparaging the care organization’s leadership and maintaining silence and solidarity in the face of their questions. The culture also reflected the dominant ethnicity concerning saving face and avoiding blame. As I mentioned before, the culture was not all bad; the sense of family meant a closeness within the service provider organization (as well as boisterous annual celebrations!)
IMPLEmenting change
I have provided more background on the structure, processes, and culture of the service provider organization. There are some parts of the organization that could be improved. I will use the Liberating Structure method developed by Lipmanowicz & McCandless (n.d.) based on TRIZ to determine which organizational actions would make things worse.
Thought Experiment: Make Things Worse
First, I would continue to cater to the whim of the Executive Director at all costs. Because I believe our organization should be customer-centric, I would continue “searching for more customer needs to satisfy” (Galbraith, 2014). Ungerer, Ungerer & Herholdt (2016) refer to this as a dependency thinking stance, identifying the organization and its employees as just a pair of hands. Staff would become even more passive-aggressive and would complain further. Striving to meet the Executive Director’s every demand could also result in setting unrealistic goals and all but guaranteeing failure.
Second, I would continue to misuse power. Johnson (2018) says leaders cast shadows, or harmful responses to the challenges of leadership. One shadow comes from the misuse of power. Examples of inappropriate power use include inequity due to favoritism, disregard for employee’s lives outside of work, and creating a master-servant relationship. Casting this shadow of power would contribute to worsening employee morale.
Finally, I would continue to fail to hold any employees accountable. Lepsinger (2010) says “lack of accountability creates and reinforces a culture of blame – which, in turn, generates other problems.” Holding no one accountable would result in unclear performance standards and would, therefore, lead to chaos. I could also choose to hold certain people accountable while ignoring the poor performance of others. This behavior would undoubtedly contribute to torpedoing the company’s efforts!
THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: MAKE THINGS BETTER
The Liberating Structure thought exercise shows me the practices contributing to the negative output produced by the company. Stopping these actions would halt the decline. Further, I feel doing the reverse of the above-listed actions would result in positive results.
Instead of catering to the Executive Director, I would advise the company to define its values. Johnson (2018) lists characters strengths such as “courage, temperance, wisdom, justice, optimism, integrity, humility, and compassion.” After defining these values, the company would be able to discern when requests run contrary to the organization’s values, and would seek solutions that would be more palatable, or would choose to decline the request respectfully.
Instead of misusing power, the company would let go of the old economy of coercion and would instead embrace the new economy of collaboration and co-creation (Ungerer et al., 2016). Leaders would seek to give away power to “empower others to do great things” (Ungerer et al., 2016). Empowering employees has an indirect influence on employee engagement (Cai, Cai, Sun, & Ma, 2018), and engaged employees are satisfied and committed workers (Moura, Orgambidez-Ramos, & Gonçalves, 2014).
Lastly, I would hold all employees accountable, including myself. Ulrich & Smallwood (2013) say accountability for leaders includes consistency with personal values and brand. If I define my values, I will be able to hold myself accountable to those values. Similarly, I can hold others accountable by clarifying objectives and identifying progress measures. Further, being clear on consequences helps the employee understand their responsibilities and guides them to make the right decisions.
Three “Threes”
This final section of the post briefly describes steps I am taking within my practice, broken down into positive, negative, and corrective categories for renewal, execution and organizational design principles.
The three positives:
- I support and welcome innovation from all employees within the organization. Ungerer et al. (2016) describe innovation as new connections leading to new insights. Atha (2018) says “systems cannot be fully perceived with one set of eyes,” so I encourage input from all staff members. Frontline staff bring valuable insight invisible to me and can implement small changes which may lead to significant paradigm shifts.
- I consistently coach to follow the company’s mission, vision, and values (MVV). Hughes, Beatty, and Dinwoodie (2014) say MVV helps employees understand the company’s purpose, goals, and beliefs. I frame every action toward the company’s direction, and help staff members align their efforts in that direction. Empowering the staff increases the likelihood of commitment.
- I create a supportive environment. Lepsinger (2010) says “a supportive environment encourages people and makes them more comfortable with trying new behaviors and taking on challenging assignments.” This supportive environment increases the chances of innovation, connecting to my first action above.
The three negatives:
- I do not set challenging goals for my staff. I am still learning to trust my staff and to find out what their capabilities are. I am also afraid of losing influence or of burning out top performers. Lepsinger (2010) says I can express confidence when I gave people a chance to work on big things, so I can work on giving meatier tasks to more of my staff.
- I tend to “dump and run” (Lepsinger, 2010). When I delegate, I fail to provide essential details, mostly because I assume everyone thinks the same way I do. I also wait until the last minute to delegate, because I get overwhelmed and haven’t mastered the art of appropriate delegation.
- I do not always communicate well. With the previous negative, I have trouble communicating at times because I believe employees “should” know the answer. Lepsinger (2010) says one mistake in communication is failing to do a comprehension check, making sure other people know how I understand things.
The three corrective actions:
- I continue to engage in self-reflection and think on how I can change. Ungerer et al. (2016) say the leader’s previous behavior heavily contributes to the reason for required Kraemer (2015) notes the importance of self-reflection in increasing self-awareness and in turn becoming the best self as a leader.
- I continue to seek understanding regarding my employees’ thoughts, feelings, and values. Listening and empathy are servant leader characteristics (Northouse, 2016). Ungerer et (2016) note an employee’s needs “to be valued as a human being, to be respected by others, to be taken seriously and to understand the rationale behind specific decisions.” Fulfilling these needs can even persuade them to go against their self-interest. I used to consider employees as machine cogs, not considering their circumstances.
- I continue to develop employees. People development is a TSL leadership competency aiming to foster employee growth to meet company needs better and to increase employee satisfaction (Mitchell, Strong, Willaume, & Wu, 2017). Ungerer et al. (2016) note the importance of mindsets and behaviors concerning Previously I felt employees should be good enough to do their jobs and did not consider their growth.
References:
Atha, D. (2018). Unit 3 learning activities. Retrieved October 23, 2018, from https://create.twu.ca/ldrs501/unit-3-learning-activities/
Cai, D., Cai, Y., Sun, Y., & Ma, J. (2018). Linking empowering leadership and employee work engagement: The effects of person-job fit, person-group fit, and proactive personality. Frontiers in Psychology, 9. Retrieved October 23, 2018, from https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01304
Florendo, P. (2018). Response to Samson’s response to strategic leadership teams – HC1 post leader. Retrieved October 23, 2018, from https://create.twu.ca/pierreflorendo/2018/10/17/response-to-samsons-response-to-strategic-leadership-teams-hc1-post-leader/
Galbraith, J. R. (2014). Designing organizations: Strategy, structure, and process at the business unit and enterprise levels.
Hughes, R., Beatty, K. & Dinwoodie, D. (2014). Becoming a strategic leader : your role in your organization’s enduring success. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Johnson, C. E. (2015). Meeting the ethical challenges of leadership: Casting light or shadow.
Johnson, DDP, & Levin, SA (2009) The tragedy of cognition: psychological biases and environmental inaction. Current Science 97 (11): 1593-1603.
Lepsinger, R. (2010). Closing the execution gap: How great leaders and their companies get results. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Lipmanowicz, H. & McCandless, K. (n.d.). Making space with TRIZ. Retrieved October 23, 2018, from http://www.liberatingstructures.com/6-making-space-with-triz/
Mitchell, K., Strong, H., Williaume, D. & Wu, T. (2017). Leadership competency framework. Unpublished manuscript. Master of Arts in Leadership. Trinity Western University: Langley, Canada.
Moura, D., Orgambídez-Ramos, A., & Gonçalves, G. (2014). Role stress and work engagement as antecedents of job satisfaction: Results from Portugal. Europe’s journal of psychology, 10(2), 291–300. Retrieved October 23, 2018, from https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.v10i2.714
Northouse, P. G. (2016). Leadership: Theory and practice. Los Angeles, Calif: SAGE.
Ungerer, M., Ungerer, G., & Herholdt, J. (2016). Navigating strategic possibilities: Strategy formulation and execution practices to flourish. Randburg: KR Publishing.