It was the rich organizational culture at Bittersweet, which made it so appealing for this practicum. Culture is to an organization what personality is to an individual (Shafritz & Ott, 2001).
The atmosphere at Bittersweet is one of comfort, exuding a sense of community that only exists in an environment of goodwill.
My colleague’s continuous desire for improvement in his business and selflessness in sharing with his dedicated staff made it an inviting and fertile ground for this work.
The paradox for organizations is that OD may be needed even if the organization is not struggling with the work environment or the bottom line. It is not only for businesses with leadership, communication, and internal conflict or morale issues.
OD consultation will benefit any organization as it simply brings clarity and awareness. It is not uncommon in thriving businesses, those recognized in the media as being “smarter” organizations, to understand that opportunities for improvement exist as often as technology changes–daily. Unfortunately, the organizations which need OD most are often the ones with the most close-minded leaders who lack awareness, and make unfounded assumptions daily.
The success of this work at Bittersweet is two-fold. First, it is the result of excellent leadership–my colleague has never avoided change, and has always recognized that it is inevitable and good. So it comes naturally for those companies with visionary leaders that continuous improvement is an on-going journey. Second, this OD intervention succeeded due to the commitment to obtain accurate and authentic information from the organizational members, particularly the Hispanic staff whose blank stares provided the first clue to what was really occurring at Bittersweet–people weren’t really hearing and understanding each other. The breakthrough occurred when the language barrier came down, and the value and appreciation for cultural differences took place.
The multiple attempts to quash the communication barrier was the application of action research (Coghlan & Brannock, 2001), which eventually led to the discovery of key information and helped guide the process to a successful conclusion.
In addition to uncovering the many misassumptions, it revealed a commonly held, but unspoken belief among the staff: The ineffective manager needed to go and to be replaced with someone sensitive to the needs and expectations of the staff, and most importantly, one who was bilingual and bicultural.
What Can Be Learned By All?
After three unsuccessful attempts to interview the Hispanic staff, very significant and unknown issues had became apparent–an assumption that management was clearly communicating with the Hispanic staff, an assumption that the staff understood management as well as each other, and an assumption that management understood the needs and expectations of its staff.
The epiphany for Bittersweet and this graduate research is not just about discovering these assumptions, but the awareness it created for management and staff who suddenly understood the relevance–how the differences in language coupled with the differences of culture did impact their organization’s effectiveness and efficiency.
It is the intertwining of the two, this combination of culture and language, which was obviously taken for granted. It took an OD assessment to identify and validate that these assumptions were occurring. Surely if this was happening at Bittersweet there must be other organizations where fellow Hispanics and their co-workers were experiencing the same. So, not only with highly Hispanic organizations might this information be applicable but in other multicultural organizations in general, where cultural and language differences affect the ability to operate effectively.
Sharing this experience may induce many organizations to examine their assumptions, and may benefit a wide range of constituents. Perhaps for Hispanics, the largest working minority in the United States, valuable differences may be recognized and better understood in the future. Similar service oriented organizations that find a mirror in the Bittersweet example, may see that they make routine unsafe assumptions about their abilities to communicate effectively and understand their own staffs. And last, under a much larger and inclusive umbrella, all multicultural organizations as well as all multi-diverse organizations–which in today’s global economy includes just about any organization–may find that they can relate and learn from this experience.
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