2. Review Chapter 9A - Where Do We Begin? Selecting an Intervention at the Springfield County Office of Economic Development and answer the following questions:

a. Based on what you know about the early stages of the organization development process (contracting, data gathering, diagnosis, and feedback), how would you evaluate the work that Christina and Gilbert have done to this point? What would you have done differently?

b. Summarize Christina's and Gilbert's proposed courses of action. How does each explain the rationale for his or her approach? List the advantages and the drawbacks of each course of action.

c. Do you find yourself agreeing more with Christina, or do you agree more with Gilbert? Why? Is there a different course of action you would propose?

d. How would you propose structuring the feedback meeting with Maria?

e. How do individual and team interventions relate? When do you think the intervention should be directed at the individual level, and when should it begin at the team level?

Please include references. Thank you!

The Springeld County Office of Economic Development (OED) is responsible for attracting businesses to Springfield County and establishing a friendly climate for new and existing business owners. The OED advocates for out-ofstate businesses to establish satellite offices in the county and thereby grow local employment opportunities. The management team consists of 12 managers who supervise regional departments in offices located throughout the county. The regional department staff works with potential client businesses to help them with land use planning, site selection, local tax incentives, and more. The management team reports to Maria, the division director. Christina and Gilbert, organization development consultants from the county's human resources division, have been asked by Maria to work on a team development intervention. In their initial meeting, Maria gave an overview of the organization and described the presenting problem to Christina and Gilbert. She had some concerns about the performance of her management team, and she wanted their help in developing an OD intervention to address her concerns. Specically, she noticed the following: Team members were highly intelligent, experienced, and competent in their jobs. Most had a tenure with the division of more than 10 years. Team meetings had become awkward, with only a few members speaking. Some team members did not participate at all. Team members on multiple occasions had made commitments that they did not keep. When confronted about this behavior, team members became resistant and dogmatic. Maria used the words passive-aggressive to describe the team. Maria had one-on-one meetings weekly with each of her managers, and these meetings were very pleasant, even enjoyable. According to Maria, the team's past performance had been quite good on an individual basis, with each region \"doing just fine,\" as she put it. However, Maria explained her concern that in the future, team members would need to work more closely together than they had to this point, and she questioned their ability to do so effectively. In the past, economic development managers would work on projects in their own regional area, but increasingly this was becoming a challenge. More projects were crossing geographic boundaries, and were thus involving two, three, or even four different regional jurisdictions, causing confusion as to which manager was responsible for the project. There had been instances of managers making conicting decisions on a project, resulting in delays and frustration to the client businesses. Maria had proposed to the team several months ago that they reorganize, with members holding responsibility for a portfolio of companies to target by size and industry, independent of region or geography. She reported that the team's reaction was unambiguousithey did not like the idea of organizing differently and saw no need to disrupt the current structure of the team. Maria told Christina and Gilbert that she dropped the issue after that but was still considering it. She was anxious to get Christina's and Gilbert's help in improving the performance of the team. THE DATA GATHERING PLAN After their initial meeting, Christina and Gilbert proposed conducting hour-long individual interviews with each member of the management team. In their interview guide, they developed the following questions based on Maria's description of the team. They sent this in advance to Maria, who enthusiastically agreed to both the data gathering plan and interview questions: Tell us about your role and responsibility on this team. What is the team's purpose? What are the goals of this team? Do you think everyone on this team shares an understanding of the team goals and purpose? What are the team's strengths? In what areas do you think this team could improve? How well does this team currently perform? Is the team meeting its goals? How well do team members work together? Over a 10-day period, the two consultants shared responsibility for conducting the interviews. They each attended every sessionone would ask questions and continue the conversation while the other was responsible for taking notes. They captured verbatim quotes where they could and combined their notes into a document that resulted in almost 80 pages of single-spaced notes for the 12 interviewees. Next came the challenge of trying to sort through the mountain of quotes to nd the themes that came across consistently in the interviews. They organized the data by creating four categories that appeared in the majority of the participants\" statements. These four issues directly addressed the concerns that Maria had shared with them, they were specic enough to take action on issues the client could inuence, and they were selective (Christina and Gilbert quickly realized that they could not include everything, particularly themes that appeared only once or twice). They prepared a document that listed the following themes followed by exact quotes from interviewees. As they had committed, interviewee names remained anonymous in written reports, with sources of the quotes known only to them. Past team conicts and the inability to engage in conict effectively causes team members to hold back. \"We had some shouting matches in the past. Now we just avoid it.\" \"The larger the group, the more dysfunctional it becomes. If we bring everyone together we get passive agreementpeople say one thing but then go off and do their own thing\" \"When there's conict, sometimes people shut down because of the disagreement\" Generally, team members do not describe their work as highly interdependent on others (i.e., one cannot succeed unless a peer also succeeds). \"What we've struggled with is that we've never had a common Vision, goals, or set of objectives for the larger team. We've been very free in allowing the teams to set their goals and objectives.\" \"Around here, the feeling seems to be that we're a bunch of people doing the same thing so let's be a team.\" Team members frequently mention distrust of team members as a problem in team dynamics. \"I think trust is an issue. I feel that I can trust [team member A] and [B], but Itake everything [C] says with a grain of salt.\" \"I think there are two or three people I could never trust. I think they would stab me in the back without a second thought.\" Team members appear to collaborate when needed but on an as-needed, ad hoc basis. \"We collaborate when there is a crisis or urgent need for action, but there has to be something that instigates it.\" \"We don't generally need to coordinate our work very often. I have my own region and that's it. But when the opportunity arises, sure, we collaborate.\" \"When we need to get two or three people together, we collaborate very well.\" Christina and Gilbert agreed that prior to the meeting with Maria where they would present the data, they would rst meet together to decide what interventions might be appropriate for this team and agree on a recommendation. Christina: I felt that the interviews went well. I was really surprised that team members were forthright, honest, and not hesitant about sharing their opinions. Gilbert: I agree. I had assumed, based on Maria's comments, that the group might be a bit inhibited about speaking up, but that didn't seem to be the case at all. Christina: And often I run into at least one interviewee who either puts off the interview or cuts it short, but everyone seemed to genuinely want to be interviewed. Gilbert: Ithink our experience echoes what Maria was saying about how easy it is to talk to the team one-on-one, but when they get together, things seem different. We certainly heard that from them directly as well. Overall, Ithink Maria's explanation of the team dynamics was fairly accurate. Christina: Yes, there are clearly some close relationships among participants, but some awkward and distrusting feelings among some of them. It's not that they don't know each other well, but no one wants to be the dissenting voice, so they just don't say anything. Gilbert: Now based on all that we know, I'm wondering what we should propose in terms of interventions. Based on what we've learned, I think this team will never come together as a team unless they understand how they are interdependent in their roles. Christina: I don't get the impression that this team is really feeling like they are a team. They don't feel a responsibility to one another. Gilbert: They don't seem to share a team vision, either. And without a shared team purpose, vision, and goals, I don't think they have the foundations of being a team. Christina: I feel the problem is that they don't know enough about how to interact effectively to make any vision a reality. I don't sense that they respect each other as peers. I think we should start by using an instrument such as the Myers-Briggs, where they could learn more about themselves and their own assumptions and approaches, and truly learn how to engage with their peers as individuals with their own unique talents, skills, and styles. Then I would use a conflict instrument so they could start to identify their own individual patterns in conflict and learn how they can more effectively "storm" when conflict occurs. Gilbert: I don't agree. I would never start with an individual instrument with this team. They already have plenty of experience as individuals. This is already a collection of individuals. It's barely even a group. They need to learn to stop acting as individuals and become a team. If we start with an individual instrument, we reinforce the idea of being solitary at the expense of the collective. Christina: But they can't change as a team until they change as individuals. I would always start with some kind of individual learning or development first so they can bring that knowledge of themselves and their own style to the team intervention. Then they can approach the team mentality with confidence about their own contributions. Gilbert: I would work with this team on team issues first. Define a team vision, clarify the team purpose, and set team goals. The team goals should involve everyone, and the goals would be phrased in a way that they can't be met unless everyone contributes. They would have metrics to check the team's progress, and they would learn that they can't act as individuals but have to help each other out to accomplish the team goal.Christina: Eventually they need goals, but if they can't work together and deal with conflicts when they inevitably occur, wouldn't we just be setting them up for failure? They would have goals they can't meet because they don't have effective working relationships. It would just feed the distrust and frustration they all feel. Gilbert: I can see what you're saying, but overall, I have bigger questions. Will this team be able to make progress on converging as a team and becoming interdependent if they think Maria is going to reorganize them soon? Will they make progress on trust and conflict if they think this team is a temporary endeavor? Christina: This is a tough one. Where do we begin