2. Review Chapter 13A - Consolidated Construction Materials Supply - 2: A Case Study in Dialogic OD and answer the following questions:

a. It's been said OD is an inquiry-based method of change. In what way has inquiry taken place throughout the CCMS cases? Is this really any different from diagnosis?

b. Knowing what you know about CCMS from Cases 1 and 2, are there any other dialogic OD processes that they might have chosen other than the one they did?

c. Using the principles of dialogic OD, propose a way forward for CCMS.

Please include references. Thank you!

After the second Management Team (MT) meeting (see Consolidated Construction Materials Supply [CCMS]l), Chuck Hemsworth, director of CCMS, had a meeting with the director of Contractor Management to discuss bringing together contractors and Regional Warehouse (RW) keepers to identify ways to reduce stress and increase customer service. She was very supportive of the idea but was about to enter into biennial contract negotiations with all the contractors and asked Chuck to hold off a few months until those negotiations were completed. When Chuck reported that at the next MT meeting, they decided to work on the relationships between regional warehouse keepers and the construction crews. Before organizing any such meetings, however, I suggested they meet with all four RW supervisors and Ned, plus a couple of supervisors from Central Warehouse (CW), Ernie, Chuck, and myself, to discuss how best to move forward. At that meeting, the RW managers said that relations with the inhouse crews were pretty good and that most of their problems were caused by only one contractor (a large and significant contractor). They identied that a number of contractors had hired eX-CCMS employees to manage their supply chains, who understood Consolidated's supply management systems and were able to work seamlessly with CCMS's order and procurement procedures. The one causing most of the problems, however, seemed to have no supply management expertise and that contractor's own materials handling processes appeared to be in disarray. It was as if its customer's chaos was causing CCMS chaos. The group discussed what they could do about it, and one of the RW supervisors, Andy, volunteered to spend time at the contractor's ofce teaching them how to order and manage materials. Chuck agreed to rst check with Contractor Management team members to see if they had any concerns and then set up the meeting with the contractor to see if they could get them interested. The RW supervisors felt that most of their problems had to do with their interactions with CW and Ordering and Schedule (0&8). In particular, they had problems with the current system because they would have to order materials for the following week before they received their order for the current week. They believed many of their problems were due to stockouts, partial shipments, and confusion over how to manage back orders. At the next MT meeting, Chuck, Ernie, and Ned lled Dan in on what had transpired. Chuck drew the conclusion that in many ways, stress-free customer service was directly tied to material availability and that should be the focus of our work. They discussed a number of specic challenges different groups face with material availability. In some of the cases, the managers in the meeting had inaccurate perceptions about the actions of other groups related to those challenges. I pointed out that one of the \"root story lines\" (the same story keeps showing up in different ways) used to explain problems in material availability is something like \"downstream thinks upstream takes its eyes off the ball', upstream thinks downstream is hiding/wasting/ losing materials.\" Whenever a specific issue was looked at in depth, however, the real reason was usually more reasonable. I noted that changing this story line would be essential for real change to take hold. The group circled back a number of times to issues around regional warehouses not knowing what is or isn't being delivered. Much of the volatility in a keeper's ability to keep a month's supply of materials in stock could be related to this. The problems with the current software and the amount of manual labor that would be required for any proposed solution resulted in no conclusions. It wasn't clear who was, or should be, the lead on ensuring keepers get advanced delivery notification. At this point, Dan presented some analysis he had done on the nature and volume of materials they managed. While they had to look after over 5,000 different items, each with its own catalog number, there were only about 250 that accounted for almost 70% of the volume of transactions they did. Those 250 were the bulk of what was going through their system on a regular basis. The group got excited about engaging the organization in focusing on just those 250 itemsiwhat they decided to call High Volume Materials (HVM)7and work on making sure those are always in the right place at the right time. Chuck opined that whatever they developed to make that work could probably be spread to other materials later. A few times a year, all the supervisors and managers (see Figure 13.1 in the previous case) had a daylong meeting mainly lled with presentations and announcements. The next one was in a few weeks, and they decided to use that meeting to try out what I had been calling an \"engagement event.\" I described in general terms how we would identify the issues and then allow small groups to form around the issues that most interested them, and encourage them to take the lead on implementing solutions. This garnered varying levels of support from the group. The kind of meeting design I had described was very different from what people were used to, and members weren't sure it would be successful. They were concerned that people would hold back. A discussion ensued about the lack of trust people felt throughout the organization. A culture of \"keep your head down and don't talk out of line\" seemed widespread. Ned said, \"You don't want to share your problems and you don't want to share your successes because around here, if people hear you are having problems, they'll take away your headcount so someone else can manage them, or if they hear you are succeeding they'll say you don't need as many people. Either way, you lose.\" A lot of their frontline employees had seen change programs come and go, and there was bound to be some cynicism. But since Chuck seemed committed, they were willing to give it a try. They wanted to make sure that some time was spent initially explaining the process. In the spirit of \"those who will have to implement the change should be in the conversation,\" the group agreed to invite unionized crew leads from each of the units to the meeting, unsure how many would actually come. Ernie asked if they should hold back and not participate to encourage others to step in. I said no, they should participate just like everyone else; avoid dominating conversations, but also follow their own energy and get involved in those ideas they got excited by. I emphasized that in some ways, holding the event was the easy part; where leadership was required was after the event. But this was a very different kind of leadership from what they were used to. We did not want to use the event to have people make proposals, decide which ones mangers would support, and then turn them into projects to manage. Instead, we wanted to use the event to have people with similar ideas and motivations nd each other, propose changes they were personally committed to, and encourage everyone who had an idea that met the guidelines they had created earlier (see previous case) to go make it happen. We were not there to pick winners; we were there to launch as many experiments as possible. Leadership's job was to \"track and fan\"ind ways to monitor what was happening as a result of the event and then lead in ways that support and amplify successful changes (like fanning a small re into a blaze). Chuck suggested that calling things \"experiments\" would not go over well in their culture, and that we'd be better off calling them \"pilots,\" which was something people were used to. I said we needed a trackersomeone whose job is, after the event, to stay in touch with all the pilots and create a continuous feedback loop so that the managers, and the rest of CCMS, knew what was happening. As luck would have it, an 0&3 analyst, Roberta, who had been lent out on a company-wide project had just returned and had spare time. It was decided to make her the tracker. Since we only had 2 weeks before the meeting, it was decided to forgo any steering committee and leave it up to Chuck and me to design the meeting and to describe Roberta's role to her. The event took place on a Thursday in a very large room in a training facility. Initially, chairs were lined up theatre style facing a screen. This took up less than a quarter of the space in the room. Around the rest of the room separate spaces for 0&3, CW, and RW were identied, with ip charts, markers, and tape, so that they had as much separation from each other as possible. In addition to the 14 managers and supervisors shown in Figure 13.1, about 20 crew leads from all over CCMS had volunteered to discuss how to create stress-free customer service. Chuck started the meeting by introducing Roberta and me and our roles, and then laid out the objectives for the day: Develop solutions that will enable the stress-free, reliable supply of high-volume materials to our customers. Improve cross-functional collaboration across CCMS Chuck described his view of CCMS and what he wanted to do to create an organization able to provide stress-free customer service. He described why they had chosen HVM as the initial focus for change and then invited Dan to describe what HVM was. Dan did a 10 minute presentation on his analysis of HVM and then the oor was opened to questions for Chuck or Dan. There weren't many. I then did a short presentation on why emergent change rather than the usual approach. During this, I described how people in organizations make up stories about what is going on in other groups to explain things to themselves but don't usually check those stories out, and how this creates barriers and mistrust. I gave them the root story line I had picked up as an example and said part of what we are here to do today is check out your stories and understand what really goes on outside your own areas. I also said that the only way things can get better is if people are willing to describe their needs and put them on the table. I said, \"The first rule of building collaboration in organizations is you have to ask for what you want.\" At this point, one of the RW supervisors shouted out \"I want a raise,\" which was met with laughter, to which I said, \"And the second rule is don't expect to get it,\" which was met with more laughter. \"Really,\" I said, \"just because you want something doesn't mean it's anyone else's mission to give it to you, but at least I'll know what you want, and if I we can work it out, then there's a much better chance you might actually get it.\" \"Like what happens with my wife,\" called out a crew lead, again to general laughter. After my short talk on organization theory and change, I went over the following principles for this and future \"engagement events\": Every event has a specic issue to work on (not an opportunity to raise other issues). As much as possible, the people who will have to make any solutions work are invited to the event. Participating in an event is voluntary. During the event, people with ideas and energy propose pilot projects to deal with the issue. Any pilot that meets the guidelines is welcome (the guidelines would be gone over later). After the event, everyone is encouraged to do everything they can to make their pilots successful. Management's role is to monitor and report on pilot progress and look for ways to build on and embed successful pilots. Pilots are useful for testing new ideas and concepts, and it is expected that people proposing a pilot give it some effort. It is not expected that every pilot will be successful; however, those that do not succeed will provide opportunities for useful learning. An agenda that outlined the design for the day was distributed (see Figure 13.2), and the rest of the day pretty much followed it. The following Monday morning, the MT met along with Roberta and me. The mood was exuberant. Chuck: That was awesome! I couldn't believe how much energy was in that room. Dan: Yeah. And the buzz has already started. Friday Ihad people in the O&S ofce telling me they regret not having come and ask me when they would get to attend an event. Ernie: It was great to see people from different groups working together all over the room. It was sort of chaotic but not really. You could see some guys hanging back at rst, but as the day went on, people really did move to the groups they wanted to be a part of. I thought just about everyone was fully engaged. Ned Yeah, by the end I was having trouble keeping track of all the stuff that was going 011. Gervase: And that's one of the reason's we need a tracker. Roberta, were you able to get a list of all the pilots with champions? At this point, Roberta passes out the list of pilots (Figure 13.3) and describes her plan to contact all the leads this week and get some idea of what their strategy is and what they are planning to do next. Chuck: Did any of you see what was going on in the corner with Betty, Alice, Mo, Harb, and Roger? Turns out we haven't been updating the standard package sizes vendors ship parts to us in our catalog, so keepers put in an order for 125 bolts because they think that's how it comes, but they now actually come in boxes of 120. So then a guy in the warehouse gets the order and has to open another box to take out 5 to put in the box that's going to be shipped. Ernie: Yeah, and then puts the box back on the shelf that now only has 115. Chuck: Yeah, and the keeper didn't really need 125, he just ordered that size thinking that was the standard package. Roberta: Since she started looking into it Friday morning, Betty's discovered that more than half of the items she's checked are coming in different amounts than what's in the system. After she's done with HVM, she's going to go over everything else. Dan: Oh, that's what Betty was on such a tear about in the office Friday. Ernie: That one change alone is going to make a huge difference to order accuracy and to the time it takes to pick an order. Ned: That's great, but I'm not sure how some of the other pilots are going to work. I could see at the end of the day some people were pretty confused about what was going to