Idealized Design for Virtual Teaming: A Modest Proposal This prĂŠcis submits a business proposal for idealized design of virtual teaming at General Electric, a multinational conglomerate that retains more than 313,000 employees around the world and so must synergize a dispersed workforce. Olivier Serrat 14/04/2019
1 General Electric's Setting General Electric is a global high-tech industrial company operating in aviation, capital, energy connections and lighting, healthcare, power, oil and gas, renewable energy, and transportation (General Electric Company, 2019a). With some 313,000 employees worldwide (2017), General Electric serves customers in 180 countries across seven regions and generates more than US$120 billion (2017) in revenues (General Electric Company, 2019b). General Electric's stakeholders include communities and individuals; customers and consumers; employees; the physical environment; and shareholders. Its customers and consumers cut across economy and society, being individuals, companies, and governments. General Electric's competitive climate is characterized by ever-changing technology (General Electric Company, 2019a). For a long time, four strategic principles drove actions: (a) building leadership businesses, (b) focusing on reliable execution and financial discipline, (c) driving growth as a process, and (d) spreading ideas across great people and teams that share common values (General Electric Company, 2019b). But, with precipitous corporate decline and near-meltdown in 2017—when profits were -$5.8 billion and total return to shareholders was 3.8%—General Electric's "back to basics" strategy now focuses on three things: (a) put customers at the center, (b) manage for operational performance first, and (c) set fewer, more impactful priorities (General Electric Company, 2019a). "Back to basics" gives clarity: however, the accent on the chief means with which to deliver the new strategy, that is, employees, has consequently been lost. On Virtual Teaming With cloud-based videoconferencing and other technologies, more and more companies are becoming virtual: the teams they host are geographically dispersed and rely on information and communication technology to collaborate. There are many types of virtual teams: action teams; management teams; networked teams; offshore information systems development (ISD) teams; parallel teams; project or product development teams; service teams; and work, production, or functional teams (Management Study Guide, 2019). The virtual teams in General Electric are not just geographically dispersed: they cross time zones, cultures, and languages. Half of all American employees hold a job deemed compatible with telework (Flexjobs Corporation, 2019). FlexJobs reckons that telecommuting grew 103% since 2009 and expects that 50% of people will work remotely by 2020 (Flexjobs Corporation, 2019). Referencing, General Electric had 106,000 employees in the United States in 2017, or 34% of its workforce (General Electric Company, 2019a). But, the virtualization of work is a global phenomenon. Organizations that are designed for face-to-face interactions face large costs: large returns can be expected from virtual teaming, at least in principle. The key advantages of virtual teaming are lower overhead costs, more satisfied employees, and higher scalability; if they were not addressed early by design, the pitfalls of virtual teaming can be cultural clashes, dearth of social interaction, lack of trust, less cohesiveness, poor team spirit, risk to reputation, and security and compliance issues (Bailey, 2013; Management Study Guide, 2019). However, General Electric's 2018 annual report only refers to personnel in a section on restructuring and personnel, warning (despite its once famed human capital and culture) that the organization is carrying out extensive cost reductions that could impact operations, employee retention, and results negatively without achieving the expected benefits (General Electric Company, 2019a). Indeed,
2 the word "team" appears only three times in the 185-page long document (General Electric Company, 2019a). And yet, expressly so that its global workforce might communicate effectively, General Electric invested early in virtual, instructor-led training curricula on how to lead and manage virtual teams (DeRosa, 2017). For example: • Employees have developed collaboration skills with e-learning and quizzes on virtual teamwork concepts. • Training involves virtual breakout rooms, games, polls, and role-playing scenarios. • Personal feedback has helped identify ways to enhance performance. • Virtual leaders have received training to address cultural differences, indispensable for effective leadership. (DeRosa, 2017) Training such as this can reshape a workforce: but, loss of institutional knowledge and loss of key personnel associated with restructuring mean that General Electric should take steps to retain critical knowledge and—the very subject of this proposal—upgrade and scale virtual teaming.1 In the process described overleaf, General Electric would likely have to examine the advantages and disadvantages, critical competencies, critical success factors, needed degrees of virtuality, and different types of their virtual teams as well as associated requirements for leadership essentials, managing conflict, managing knowledge, managing social isolation, and measuring return on investment, among others. Capacitating Virtual Teaming Design is a conscious effort to impose meaningful order by questioning assumptions about what ultimate state is to be achieved; it is interactive, in decided opposition to being inactivist, reactivist, or even preactivist (Ackoff, 2001). Ackoff, the main proponent of idealized design, saw that "[An organization] creates its future by continuously closing the gap between where it is at any moment of time and where it would most like to be" and his idealized design approach "is based on the belief that an organization's future depends at least as much on what it does between now and then, as on what is done to it" (2001, p. 3). And so, interactive planning for idealized design has two parts, viz., idealization and realization, that are in turn divisible into six interrelated phases: (a) formulating the mess, (b) ends planning, (c) means planning, (d) resource planning, (e) design of implementation, and (f) design of controls (Ackoff, 2001, pp. 5– 7). In brief, idealized design entails: (a) formulating a mission statement, (b) specifying the properties the designers want the designed organization to have, and (c) designing an organization that holds these properties (Ackoff, 2001, p. 8). Systems thinking focuses the mind on the interactions of parts, not on their individual behaviors. To treat a system that functions poorly, idealized design makes explicit the need to plan interactively for a desirable present: therefore, idealized design places great importance on the formulation of a mission statement that would represent the raison d'être of an organization's existence and be the expression of its highest aspirations (Ackoff, 2001).
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The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this précis are mine, with no guarantee of accuracy or completeness. Organizations other than General Electric might have been selected for the illustrative purposes of this exercise.
3 1. Envisioning "Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion," said former General Electric CEO Jack Welch (Tichy & Charan, 1989, para. 7). General Electric's corporate vision is to become the world's premier digital industrial company, transforming industry with software-defined machines and solutions that are connected, responsive, and predictive (General Electric Company, 2019a). General Electric's mission is to invent the next industrial era, to build, move, power and cure the world (General Electric Company, 2019a). Without a compelling vision statement for virtual teaming that encapsulates decided purpose, General Electric will find it difficult to promote enrollment, commitment, and compliance toward shared meaning: it will not get people excited. If General Electric were to sharpen its vision statement for virtual teaming, it would need to (a) demonstrate willingness to change, which would later entail examining what is not working, letting go, and accepting a new paradigm if necessary; (b) appoint a dedicated team leader who promotes openness, rises above office politics, relies on his/her team, and ties closely to stakeholders to appreciate hopes and tend to needs; and (c) follow a structured process to effect recalibration. Underlying the process of recalibration would be questions, designed to challenge participants to the exercise. Core questions would seek a diversity of personal views on: (a) what are strengths and assets of General Electric's virtual teaming? (b) what needs to be changed, (e.g., what major issues or problems should be addressed and what are their costs to stakeholders?); and (c) what would the dream end‐state of General Electric's virtual teaming look like in a perfect world (e.g., what, specifically, would success look like to General Electric's virtual teams and to other units)? As an outcome of discussions, the building blocks of the vision statement would preferably include (in descending order of priority) 4–5 of the following: (a) actions, (b) targeted beneficiaries, (c) services, (d) problems, (e) partners, (f) causes, and (g) time horizon. 2. Formulating the Mess Formulating the mess will be the process of understanding General Electric's current situation, capabilities, and needed changes vis-à-vis virtual teaming. Specifically, a team drawing representatives from the entire organizations will conduct a situational analysis including (a) a systems analysis, viz., a comprehensive description and assessment of how General Electric operates; (b) an obstruction analysis, viz., an identification of features and properties of General Electric, especially—beyond linear cause-and-effect relationships or mere events—patterns of behavior (and related influencing factors) and above all assumptions (or worldviews) that hinder progress; (c) reference projections, viz., forecasts of relevant aspects of General Electric's future; and (d) a reference scenario, viz., a prognosis of what will happen to General Electric if current behaviors and activities do not change and the analyses and projections in (a)–(c) hold (Ackoff, 2001, p. 5). Formulating the mess will be about identifying General Electric's Achilles' heel—the weakness that will lead to downfall—if the organization cannot adapt to changing internal and external circumstances: that weakness is what General Electric must remedy. The compass of investigations to formulate the mess would include markets, services, organization, management, personnel, facilities and equipment, and external affairs and relations, to name a few parameters (Ackoff, 2001, p. 10–13). 3. Ends Planning Ends planning will be the primordial process of defining General Electric's desired present state: the phase will define what the team would like General Electric to be now if—from a blank canvas—it could be whatever the team wanted; it will also identify gaps between the desired
4 present state and the reference scenario, gaps that will be filled by the rest of the planning process. Ends planning cannot be an example of the archetype of Fixes that Fail: crucially, the idealized design for virtual teaming at General Electric will have to demonstrably counteract the self-destruction prognosticated by the reference scenario in the formulation of the mess (Ackoff, 2001, p. 6). 4. Means Planning Means planning will be the process of determining what must be done (e.g., actions, good practices, innovations, programs, projects, policies, strategies, etc.) to close the gaps between the desired present state and the reference scenario (Ackoff, 2001, p. 6). Vitally, however, means planning must obey two constraints and adhere to one requirement: the idealized design will have to be technologically feasible and operationally viable, which ought also condition the scope and scale of virtual teaming, for example subject to industry, function, business processes, etc. because General Electric obviously cannot become an entirely virtual organization; also, the design will have to be such that General Electric can learn from successes and failures and adapt in consequence (Ackoff, 2001, p. 7–8). 5. Resource Planning Resources planning will be the process of identifying what resources (e.g., finance; information, facilities and equipment; materials and services, personnel, etc.) are needed, when they will be needed, and what to do if shortages (but also excesses) occur (Ackoff, 2001, p. 6). In ascribing resources, General Electric will look out for the archetype of the Attractiveness Principle and perhaps also for that of Growth and Underinvestment. 6. Design of Implementation Design of implementation will the process of articulating the what, when, where, who, and how of the idealized design so it might be put into action: taking into account motivational, organizational, technological, and other relevant factors, this will call for the creation of schedules and the allocation of requisite resources to corresponding tasks (Ackoff, 2001, p. 6). 7. Design of Controls Design of controls will be the process of deciding how to monitor the schedules and related decisions of the implementation phase of the idealized design, recalibrating for failure to avoid the archetype of Eroding Goals, accounting for unexpected success, and evaluating results after all has been implemented (Ackoff, 2001, p. 7). Potential Pitfalls and Strategies to Avoid Them "Strategy is not a lengthy action plan. It is the evolution of a central idea through continually changing circumstances," said Clausewitz (Howard, 2002). Notionally, idealized design promotes understanding of what is to be designed (or redesigned), boosts creativity, generates new approaches to what is feasible, expedites planning, and speeds implementation (Ackoff, Magidson, & Addison, 2006, p. 11). However, three potential pitfalls in the process of idealized design for virtual teaming stand out and demand that countervailing strategies be formulated.
5 1. Synergizing Organizational Forms A priori, the relevance of idealized design of virtual teaming is heightened in a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world that increasingly calls for network forms of organizing to complement hierarchies and markets. Virtual teams are more important than ever; this is a strength and clear evidence of the growing power of networks. Nonetheless, the blend of virtual and face-to-face teaming must be determined according to criteria. So, how is one to decide? Virtuality is best understood as a continuum in which pure co-located teams and pure virtual teams represent two extremes and most teams lie between the two extremes (Management Study Guide, 2019). Necessarily, the degree of dependence on the means of communication, the worth of the information provided by the tools, and the need for synchronicity of information exchange are three factors that will condition the level of virtuality in General Electric; that said, the languages and cultural make-up of virtual team members as well as the sheer number of work sites will be other factors (Management Study Guide, 2019). 2. Reconciling Integration, Differentiation, and Fragmentation Martin (2002) distinguishes three perspectives on organizational culture: (a) integration—which interprets culture as what people unambiguously share, viz., the social glue that keeps them together; (b) differentiation—which perceives that culture only exists in islands of clarity, consensus, and consistency (aka subcultures) that may exist in harmony or more likely disagree with one another; and (c) fragmentation—which asserts that culture cannot be described because consensus is both transient and issue-specific and patterns shift all the time. Martin (2002) thinks the three perspectives are legitimate but labors to say they are in irremediable conflict: she reckons this explains why people cannot agree on definitions of organizational culture and what might be the best way to understand that. If so, given the control the integration perspective typically exerts in organizations, General Electric will need to make sure it arrives at a shared vision for virtual teaming that also draws from the differentiation and fragmentation perspectives: a strategy to achieve the consensus that idealized design demands could leverage Future Search conferencing. Future Search conferencing is a 3-day event designed to represent an organization's system in one room; explore the entire system in context before seeking to act on its parts, while focusing on common ground and desired futures and treating problems as information; and take responsibility for action (Weisbord & Janoff, 1995; Serrat, 2012). Toward this, in sessions lasting half a day each, participants bring their attention to bear on the past (highlights and milestones), the present (external trends, responses to trends, and owning actions), and the future (ideal scenarios) (Weisbord & Janoff, 1995). It would help to intersperse the four or five sessions of Future Search conferencing across the six phases of idealization and realization when General Electric initiates idealized design for virtual teaming. 3. Enriching Idealized Design For higher chances of success, General Electric's experience of idealized design for virtual teaming should make the most of such tools as force field analysis, organigraphs, participatory methods, the premortem technique, social network analysis, stakeholder analysis, etc. throughout the six phases of idealization and realization. If not, General Electric will miss out on opportunities for more "outside–in" by not being in greater dialogue with the many interrelated and interdependent components of its very open system.
6 References Ackoff, R. (2001). A brief guide to interactive planning and idealized design. Unpublished Paper, Interact Consulting, May 31. Ackoff, R., Magidson, J., & Addison, H. (2006). Idealized design: How to dissolve tomorrow's crisis ‌ today. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Bailey, S. (2013, March 5). How to beat the five killers of virtual working. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/sebastianbailey/2013/03/05/how-to-overcome-the-fivemajor-disadvantages-of-virtual-working/#1442b78f2734 DeRosa, D. (2017, October 5). 3 companies with high-performing virtual teams. [Blog post]. Retrieved from https://www.onpointconsultingllc.com/blog/3-companies-with-highperforming-virtual-teams Flexjobs Corporation. (2019). Flexjobs. Retrieved from https://www.flexjobs.com/ General Electric Company. (2019a). 2018 annual report of General Electric. Retrieved from https://www.ge.com/investor-relations/annual-report General Electric Company. (2019b). General Electric Company. Retrieved from https://www.ge.com/ Howard, M. (2002). Clausewitz: A very short introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press Martin, J. (2002). Organizational culture: Mapping the terrain. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Management Study Guide. (2019). Different types of virtual teams. Retrieved from https://www.managementstudyguide.com/virtual-teams-articles.htm Serrat, O. (2012). Future Search conferencing. Manila: Asian Development Bank. Weisbord, M., & Janoff, S. (1995). Future search: An action guide to finding common ground in organizations and communities. San Francisco, CA: Berrett-Koehler. Tichy, N., & Charan, R. (1989). Speed, simplicity, self-confidence: An interview with Jack Welch. Harvard Business Review, 67(5), 112–120.