Service Quality

Thinking about the many ways organizations try to change and make themselves healthier makes it nearly impossible to resist a medical metaphor of some kind. Consider the major sources of ideas and energy for change, ranging from self-treatment all the way to getting significant therapy.

Pharmacists. Preferring the self-medication approach, many organizations continually engage in various processes aimed at self-change. They may purchase current management books, videos and training materials -- the counterpart of over-the-counter medications -- but in general they prefer to figure things out for themselves. Many firms are simply more comfortable with this "do it yourself" approach and have little attraction to the idea of bringing in outsiders to deal with their change agenda. Internal task forces, special initiatives, campaigns and focused training programs can be effective forms of self-treatment. If they have a core team of bright, well-qualified internal change agents, they could make great progress.

On the other hand, the self-medication approach can sometimes have limited impact and can even be regressive. With little or no external help or ideas, the "side-effects" of self-treatment can be insular management thinking, stubborn adherence to traditional and comfortable viewpoints, employee confusion and cynicism, and naive attitudes about what it really takes to foster significant change. For the more outward-looking firms, benchmarking trips and executive study tours to interesting organizations can broaden executives' viewpoints. Many organizations provide copies of significant management books to all key employees and use an educative approach to bring in new ideas. Self-medication can work well, but management must be well-informed about the range of effective remedies.

Dentists. Many firms bring in outside assistance, but only for very specific, targeted purposes, sort of like having a certain tooth filled. Here the locus of control is still with the organization's leaders, but they are more comfortable with bringing in certain expertise or methods they don't have. Many of our client organizations ask for help with very specific tasks, such as customer research, strategy formulation, targeted training or business process remapping. In some cases, it is even more narrowly targeted, occasionally even confined to advice on very specific aspects of an ongoing change process.

The dentistry approach, either as a substitute for or in combination with the pharmacy approach, has the advantage of making the latest thinking and methods available to the organization's leaders at a minimal investment. The objectives are very clearly and narrowly specified, which makes it fairly easy to manage the resources to get the desired results.

Of course, success in the dentistry approach depends on choosing a good dentist. Unwanted side-effects of this treatment method can sometimes be preoccupation with fads, superficial understanding of certain change methods or approaches, and a short attention span. This leads to "flavor of the month" turnover of organizational campaigns with little serious thought or commitment behind them.

Chiropractors. Some organizations prefer, and some consulting firms provide, a kind of externally referred approach to change, figuratively like going to a chiropractor to have your skeletal structures rearranged. Until recently, most of the large, traditional consulting firms have tended toward the chiropractic approach. This typically involves a team of experts going through the organization, identifying problems, prescribing treatments for them and presenting top management with a massive report of their findings.

The advantage of the chiropractic approach lies in the completely different perspective provided by outside experts, which is not contaminated by the biases and rationalizations of management's thinking process. Although this approach is falling out of favor, it can sometimes induce leaders to face certain stark truths.

However, a side-effect of going to the chiropractor can be that the leaders abdicate their role as the conceptual architects of the firm's destiny, relying too heavily on the opinions of an outside party. In some cases, a "going over" by one of the big-name consulting firms amounts to a ritual flogging inflicted on the management team by a board of directors or a regulatory body as punishment for perceived leadership failures. There may be little or no real commitment by leaders to applying the recommended solutions.

Therapists. Leaders who see the need for more fundamental changes in their organizations, going to the very culture itself or to the basic direction and mind-set of the business, may seek intensive assistance from outside experts. The therapeutic metaphor is different from the chiropractic one in that it involves a close interactive relationship between the leaders and the assistant they choose. The nature of the change is such that a consulting firm cannot "do" the organization. The change comes about as management gathers information, rethinks, relearns and commits energy to a new mode of existence. The consultant acts as an intellectual partner, educator, catalyst and alter-ego.

Side-effects of the therapeutic approach can be overdependence on the consultant, slavish adherence to the tenets of one particular guru and sometimes conflicting ideologies among leadership team members.

The therapeutic approach can be very successful when the intellectual and personal chemistry is right between the leadership team and the consulting team. When it is not, however, the results will probably fall far short of the hopes. More than any of the other approaches, the therapeutic approach depends critically on a strong match between the world view of the leaders and the change-management paradigm offered by the consultant. In my view, this is usually the single most important factor in the success of a major, externally supported change effort. And, of course, mixed strategies often make sense.

A key factor in any successful change management program is forming a clear idea of the desired outcome. Remember that prescription without diagnosis is malpractice, whether in medicine or management. Understand your therapeutic need first, and then choose your medicine.

About the author . . .

Karl Albrecht is a management consultant, speaker, and a prolific author. He is Chairman of The TQS Group, based in Chicago, which implements his Total Quality Service approach. His 20 books on management and organizational effectiveness include the best-seller Service America!: Doing Business in the New Economy, as well as The Only Thing That Matters: Bringing the Power of the Customer Into the Center of Your Business. His latest book is The Northbound Train: . . . Shaping the Destiny of Your Organization.