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The Diagnostic Process 155

THE HAZARDS OF THE PROCESS

Broad participation and group problem solving do not automatically strengthen
your organization’s renewal process. There are a number of hazards that can
undermine the broad-based support you are trying to build.
One major difficulty is that of heightened expectations. Inevitably, some-
one’s ideas will not be solicited, or his or her ideas will be solicited but not
heard, heard but not heeded, or heeded but assigned a low priority. People will
make suggestions that are not adopted. Hopes that pet ideas or suggestions
will be adopted are dashed as decision-making committees sift through all the
ideas and recommendations.
Unrequited expectations can defeat the process. If people begin to feel that
they are not heard, or if they feel the process is a ploy to build support but
that you’ll do what you want anyway, your staff will feel used and manipu-
lated and lose enthusiasm for the project and the process, and you will lose
credibility quickly.
Endless task force meetings without decisions or a feeling of closure also
sap energy. People begin to question why they are meeting. Participation
becomes a burden. Task force meetings must have deadlines and milestones,
and they must be conducted with purpose and an end in mind. They should
give everyone time to be heard and to develop a consensus.
Another related cause of failure is the leader’s overemphasis on process, to
the detriment of results. To overemphasize process is to meet, participate, and
deliberate without coming to conclusions and action. It is talk without action,
participation without closure, deliberation without decisions. It is problem
solving without solutions, without action. Nothing ever goes anywhere, and
nothing ever gets done.
Leadership is the ability to set in place a change process for the group and
to give employees an overall direction and vision without prescribing all the
details. Leadership is setting deadlines, upholding your standards and expec-
tations, and insisting on well-conceived results. It is being willing to confront
or criticize when the outcome is not up to standards or is seriously flawed. It
is also being willing, for the overall good of the organization, to accept good
ideas with which you disagree. In Chapter 7 we will explore these issues in
greater detail as we introduce the nine-target model for assessing organiza-
tional health.