In this capstone project class, you analyze a real-world case provided by N2Growth, a global firm that helps clients create a culture of leadership through practice areas like strategy, cultural transformation and organizational design. Based on the N2Growth case, you are expected to identify and diagnose organizational issues, select a senior leader and make recommendations in a culminating PowerPoint or Prezi presentation.
Week 2: Tony Morales Interview
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来自 University of Pennsylvania 的课程
Culture-Driven Team Building Capstone
4 个评分
从本节课中
Week 2
与讲师见面
Derek Newberry, Ph.D.Lecturer
Organizational Dynamics
Dr. Aviva LegattAffiliated Faculty
Organizational Dynamics
>> So, forming our own team for each client engagement is very case by case.
Because as you can imagine, the problems that we're approached with are really
different across industries and functions.
What we look to do is staff a team composed of principles, executives and
residents at Inter-Growth.
Staff members, researchers, and importantly, experts.
Now, experts come in two broad flavors, there are functional experts,
so folks that have deep experience in executive search,
or deep experience in culture transformation.
And there are industrial experts, so folks that know transportation and
logistics like the back of their hands.
And working with those different variables, we've put together a team for
this project.
And because there were a few different sub-projects,
our team actually changed over time.
But we got the right people on the job, and we're able to thoughtfully apply
the right human resources to solving our clients' problems.
Yeah, so before we even get to the point of generating ideas for a project,
what we seek to do is understand.
Now, understanding comes in a few different ways.
So, first our research team goes out and does an extensive analysis of
the organization from the outside perspective, the research team looks
to understand the industry, they look to understand competitors.
And they look to see what's going on as far as trends, cyclicality or not,
cyclicality, or any other emerging trends that are applicable to a given industry.
We do all that research on the outside, and then we look within.
So, laying out the process for
an engagement first starts with seeking to understand.
We want to understand the problem that we're going into to solve.
So, in the case of this engagement, we had our research team look to understand
the organization from an outside perspective.
What's the media like around the organization?
What change has been happening?
If it's public, what's going on with the stock?
But that's not the case here.
But just doing our best to understand on an outside basis
what is this organization like?
Then we all seek to understand the industry.
So, what is this broader landscape that the organization's operating in?
How are their competitors operating?
What changes are happening?
And are there any emergent trends that we should be aware of?
So, that first part of the process is just seeking to understand on an outside basis.
Then our process looks within.
So, we seek to say all right, there is a complex organization here, and
it's within an industry.
How can we learn about lived experience, the culture,
the design, beyond what you'd see written in a document?
And a great way to do that is through interviews and assessments.
To the point of interviews, and for
this case, we had our team members go to over 100 client sites in a 90 day period
to interview a bunch of people, collect their notes, and put them together.
Those interviews are often sort of ethnographic.
So that takes on an anthropological skill set.
We seek to not be biasing our guiding, but just say, give me the grand tour.
What's your job like?
What's this organization like?
And putting that together, we get a nice piecemeal picture of
what's happening across levels of the organization.
Then, as far as assessments, Inter-Growth uses this tool called total for
index, which is an algorithmic assessment
that measures a bunch of different variables in lines of leadership,
culture, and experience, capabilities in a lot of cool ways.
The mathy words behind there, is they use a standard normal model and
a relative model.
Put a bunch of data together, and end up with actionable data,
by which we can draw insights from what's happening across the organization,
having heard from a lot more voices than can even be interviewed.
And so, seeking out understanding of those two parts, first on the outside basis,
then on the inside basis, that's the first chunk of the process.
So, when we're deciding who to interview, we have to be pragmatic.
We recognize that there's not enough time to interview the 20,000 employees
that are a part of this organization.
And frankly, we like to even go beyond employees and
say what are the consumers thinking, what are the partners thinking?
What are the competitors thinking if we can get inside there?
And so, because there are so
many people, it's not pragmatic to interview each one of them.
So, what we try to do is draw a diverse sampling from across the organization
to get as much insight, that is relevant, helpful, and
also coming from different perspectives.
So, we seek to understand geographically what are the differences of experience
by seeing the order level?
Well, how were experiences are different?
But then when we look at the top of an organization, and
we look at its executive team and its board of directors,
then we try to really tighten in and get a more thorough understanding.
So whereas, breath is the goal of the base of an organization, depth and
understanding through 360 reviews, and
360 insight around every member of the governance and executive teams.
That's a process we undertake, also through interviews and assessments.
Getting to the point of diagnosing team dynamic's issues
is one that becomes increasingly apparent after you've conducted enough interviews,
and you've reviewed enough assessment data,
because a lot of the problems that emerge will be cited time and time again.
And so, looking for areas of redundancy,
or looking at areas of shared concern that emerged through interviews,
and assessments is the starting poison for our diagnosis.
We say all right, what is, what are different folks pointing to?
Now, there may be some isolated concerns, and some of them may be merited,
some may not.
Some may be red flag that weren't uncovered otherwise.
So, we do our best to really sift through as a team, the Inter-Growth team,
understand what the core findings are, understand what the insulary findings are,
and then use those findings to shape our diagnosis.
So, an organizational design should be fit to achieve the target culture.
And so that creates like a theology of culture, idea that there's something we
can walk to, but oftentimes, that's the case with our engagements.
There really is a culture that exists, and then a culture that's desired, and
we want to help our clients move from where they are,
to where they want to be, and getting to that next step.
So, making sure that the organizational design is aligned with
that desired culture is an important foundational part of our problem solving.
Now, secondary to those culture issues are also very important business
fundamental ones.
So, areas like cost saving, or revenue generation,
are also critical and manifested in organization design.
Top team problems are always sensitive and delicate and
charged with a lot of interest, histories, and ideas.
So, making sure that there's alignment, alignment with strategy,
alignment with each other on the team level is something important for
the function of your organization.
And so, we seek to understand where there are areas of misalignment, or
nonalignment altogether.
And so, that's an important part of intervening with
an executive team board of directors, and making sure that we're
leading them in the direction of a healthy and functioning organizations.
For this case, we found that some members of their executive
team had been in this company for a while, 20 years, in some cases.
Other members of the executive team are quite new, and so
ideas about operational sophistication, what works and
what doesn't, we're all quite deep rooted and challenging problematic.
So, we found that alignment of ideas and
behaviors with the strategy of the organization was
critical to making sure that the team was walking the same direction
I think for an engagement like this,
it's important to never lose sight of the fact that our client is a business.
And as a business, they're looking to maximize shareholder returns.
So, keeping in mind that as culture is very important,
as an organizational design is a critical issue,
these areas should also be aligned toward what's going to help the business most.
What's going to help drive revenues, what's going to help cut costs,
what's going to help maximize the output, the quality,
the leadership of this organization in the competitive landscape.
That's something to keep in mind.
So, like I said, the charge forward to you as you work on this case is
recognize that though there are heated cultural problems that you
could relate to even on a personal basis, on a familial or social basis.
These problems are all existing under the umbrella of an organization,
whose goal is to maximize the return for shareholders.
