Page 111 - Communication in Organizations Basic Skills and Conversation Models

Communication in organizations 100

subgroups and ‘separation of spirits’. The obstructions that have been
mentioned are:

• people do not feel involved
• the programme scarcely meets the wishes of a single group
• the day is too loosely structured
• the programme does not consist of any parts whereby people get to know one another.

Phase 4: Thinking of strategies
During this phase the whole group should be able to name all the possible strategies to
remove the obstruction in order to reach the desired situation. By ‘strategy’ we mean a
plan to tackle the problem. This is the most creative phase of the whole decision-taking
process and it is important that no single value judgement is iterated about the strategies
proposed. The more strategies that are thought up, the more chance that new and unusual
ideas will be developed:

During the committee meeting of the staff association the following ideas
are brought up: occupying an uninhabited island together; organizing a
survival course; hiring two-man canoes and alternating the crews with
people from all levels within Dinner Ltd; hiring barges without skippers;
organizing a Mafia party; organizing a sixties party; organizing a step-in
programme; a dinner dance in which partners, children and dogs
participate; abandon the personnel day.

In the last part of this chapter we examine three methods which can be used during this
phase.

Phase 5: Testing strategies on the basis of criteria
When all the ideas have been exhausted and all the strategies to reach the desired
situation have been listed, with the help of a board or flipchart if necessary, then it can be
investigated which strategies or possible combinations of strategies come into
consideration for further development. At this stage criteria must be set by which
strategies can be tested. The criteria must be such that the chosen strategies fulfil the aim.
Moreover, a number of practical criteria can be named which the strategy should meet:

Bert Berman has written all the mentioned strategies on a flipchart and
named criteria which the strategies must fulfil:
• feasibility: to what degree can the strategies practically be carried out?
• profits: to what extent does the strategy contribute to the raising of the
obstacles? Is the strategy effective?
• costs: what are the strategy’s costs, in time, money and energy?
• do the costs balance against the profits?