LLC: A Case Study of Org. Learning - General Lessons

LLC: A Case Study of Organizational Learning at EDS

Chapter Eleven, Analysis

General Lessons

Workload Analysis and Impact

Many participants said they struggled with the work load requirements of LLC which were added to their regular job responsibilities. During the interviews, participant expectations of increased work load, from the LLC program, ranged from a twenty-five percent to fifty percent increase over and above their current jobs. This placed a significant burden on the participants from an operations environment whom indicated they were already at the point of overload. While the staff managers indicated that the work load was heavy, they did not say they were as "stressed" by the issue as the operations managers.

Only one of the participants we interviewed, indicated he went back to his boss and re-negotiated his workload. This process was only initiated after the participant's job responsibilities were increased during the coarse of the program. Some participants coped with the situation by transferring non-LLC work to their subordinates. This activity could easily be positive if viewed in light of "empowerment of the work group". The participants focused more on the fact that they felt they could not do all the work and hence had to push it off as opposed to viewing it as a benefit. No one indicated to us that this hand off of responsibility caused any real problems. One participant indicated that due to the magnitude of the work load, "...you have to choose between LLC and the regular job." He indicated some choose LLC and some choose the regular job. He stressed that if he had a more accurate understanding of the true work load he would have prepared his organization differently.

Another individual told how she was going to refuse the LLC opportunity due to her current work load. Her manager, however, told her this was an opportunity she really couldn't say no to. After careful consideration she said she decided to attend. She indicated she asked her work group for help in "... keeping the place running in her absence." She said that EDS needed to help people understand the time commitment. She mentioned that she was originally told it could take as much as fifty percent of her time. What she reported that she didn't understand was that "...time meant much more than your normal work day."

One participant told us that the "extreme workload" was discussed during the LLC program but the group members felt they could not go back to their managers and complain about the situation. This subject was discussed during an EDS presentation on LLC at a Systems Thinking in Action Conference in 1993. During that presentation one of the LLC participants said, "We talked about the fact that this was the old way of doing business and part of LLC was to learn how to conduct business in an entirely different way. We knew that as a result of the extreme workload there would be times we would not get all the LLC work done (We believe this implies that, at least in most cases, the regular job came first). We had learned new tools dealing with complaints and apologies and decided that in those situations where we were unable to complete the required work we would practice these new tools. It wasn't the perfect solution to the problem, but it was a new possibility and we tried it." 51

In the final analysis, it appears that the people we spoke with all somehow found a way to accomplish the requirements of LLC and their regular job. They reported using different approaches. Some asked for help, some reassigned their work to their work groups. One told of an employee that came to him and volunteered to take some of his work because she saw that he really wanted to focus his attention on LLC and she felt that in the long run, it would be a bigger benefit to the company and to her personally, if he could spend more time on LLC concepts.

Length of Time to Implement

We believe the lesson here is quite simply that the change process is slow and time consuming. The program itself was eight months with a very focused effort for nineteen full days and as much as ten to twenty hours per week, per the participants, dedicated to homework, study groups and business projects. Moll reported that, as his participants tried to teach the rest of his staff, he had to slow down the process in order to keep people on board. He said, "There were times when people started to resist." He felt his best option was to slow down. It appears his plan worked since he reports and we observed, that his staff has endorsed and is now practicing the LLC concepts. The participant charged with doing the training for Moll's group also indicated how slow a process it was. She said they spend approximately twenty-five percent of their staff time together on LLC and it is now eleven months after the end of the LLC program. She commented that the group needs to have "...a common shared understanding of the concepts and it is extremely time consuming to achieve this. People learn at different paces. Some learners are initially more skeptical or a new tool might not feel right for them, so it takes longer to master it."

Given the current pace of implementation, EDS' goal of building a critical mass may take years. However, as mentioned earlier, if the underlying culture is not modified changes will be short lived. EDS' cultural modification and establishment of the capacity to be a learning organization is key to their future success. We believe they must invest the time to "do it right". As Ed Schein tells his students in the Managing Change class he teaches at MIT, "...when you are dealing with change, you must first go slow, so you can later go fast."

Summary

The general lessons called out in this chapter, as listed, represent the major issues or success factors we identified during our study; Performance Improvements, Safety - Support - Structure and Sustainability, Risk, Leadership, The Participants Relationships With Non-Participants, Group Dynamics, Change, Language, Customer Impact, Workload Analysis and Impact, and The Length of Time to Implement. Our interviews disclosed other interesting topics but it was our intent to pick those that were most significant from a general "operating manager" perspective.

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Acknowledgements

The authors hereby grant to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document whole or in part.

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