The Center – OIT Project

Second Year I/O Students Courtney Austin and Jodie Watford

Beginning in the fall, four interns from The Industrial & Organizational Psychology Center were given the opportunity to act as external consultants for a local technology company. In alignment with The Center’s mission of bridging the gap between science and practice, we worked as consultants and researched the topics of organizational culture and change before developing workshops to present to the organization’s Directors and line managers. Our team worked to develop tools to help the leaders to identify and understand the organization’s culture by collaboratively establishing the company’s values, as well as creating a vision and mission statement.

The process began with an assessment done by a consultant from an outside company who identified the current environment of the organization as a whole. Each Director also took a similar assessment to see how their individual leadership style aligned with the organization’s current environment. This information provided a baseline for our team to understand the current state of the organization. Individual coaching sessions were held with each Director to discuss the results of their assessment, their leadership style, and their thoughts about the direction of the company. Pre-work was assigned to the Directors, requiring each to list the values that best represent the organization as well as the values that guide them as individuals. Our team integrated these responses and the information was used as a starting point for the development of the organization’s values system. Two workshops were facilitated by our team which enabled the Directors to successfully identify a set of values that will be the driving force behind the development many other important organizational initiatives.

            Our team spent many hours researching, brainstorming, creating and presenting these workshops. The quality results created by the organization leaders we worked with were exactly what we hoped to achieve. We learned that the development of quality results from workshops cannot be rushed, but that appropriate time must be allocated in order to ensure thoughtful deliberation and consensus.

            It is difficult to jumpstart the process of organizational change; however, a handful of themes emerged throughout the project. In the workshop developmental phases, it became clear of the importance of understanding the client. Each internal stakeholder may hold very different assumptions about “why” the organization behaves as it does, and “why” decisions are made. These assumptions influence the stakeholders’ perceptions of what the organization strives to be, (i.e., the organization’s vision); hence the need for the client and the consultant to explore these assumptions together. By understanding each stakeholder’s unique perspective and by feeding these perspectives back to all of the stakeholders, the consultant can begin to find a common ground within the organization. 

          Another valuable lesson learned from this experience is that you can plan and prepare extensively, but things will rarely unfold exactly as you expect. Throughout this project, our team devoted numerous hours into the development of these workshops and not one of them proceeded without some surprise. The biggest challenge was allotting the “right” amount of time to the given tasks. We were fortunate that our client was an active contributor who partnered with us throughout the whole process to accomplish the objectives. Being a part of the consulting relationship, and having the opportunity to be a hands-on contributor to an organization’s development and success, was truly a great experience.