At the end of this week, I will be facilitating a day long workshop for the IT department where I work. It's a small group of people--all men--who have been, for awhile, the subject of covert whisperings about their lack of good internal customer service. Some of the group are grumpy or condescending when asked for help by "end users"; they fail to respond promptly enough to problems or tell employees about all the barriers that exist to completing their IT requests. A couple of them admit that they think end users, as all others but they are known, are stupid.
To his credit, their director is keenly aware of the internal customer service and relationship issue and it is he who asked me to facilitate this day. There are specific objectives to accomplish, including creating a set of customer service standards by which the department will operate.
As I read the Block chapters this week, I have thought about data collection and understanding the underlying management problems within the context of this problem that the IT department is bravely facing. At the retreat, we will be jointly interpreting the results of an internal satisfaction survey that about a third of the employees where I work participated in. This may be an activity that will be more difficult than I had anticipated.
Take this piece of data: on Friday, one of the IT staff members approached me and for about 20 minutes, sat in my office and joked about how if there are comments on the survey that say he is evil, then he is doing something right. He then went on to explain (joking of course) that he tries to be evil (i.e. punitive in his responses to people) on purpose.
I am not quite sure what the underlying problems are at this point in time that have supported the continued existence of the customer services issues. However, I anticipate I will have opportunities to respond to resistance on Friday with a group of folks who will feel very vulnerable and exposed. And I anticipate I'll be able to collect more data on what the management problems are that the group will need to take responsibility for in order to make real change to how they perceive and treat their customers!
You’re going to have a wonderful time facilitating that session. Perhaps you will have several opportunities to name their resistance! I am curious as to what sort of value the IT group places on the employees (end users). It should be a difficult path of discovery for the portion of the IT people who see the end users as worthless, as they will be asked to contribute in establishing customer service standards.
ReplyDeleteHave you considered your ORJI cycle (Schein) as you prepare for Friday’s interaction? Here are some ideas on how it could progress. If the Observation at this point is that members of the IT group are feeling vulnerable, there may be an expectation of defensive behaviors and statements on their part. The Reaction to that may in turn be emotions of defensiveness, anticipating that certain members of the group will start arguments about the validity of having customer service standards. Perhaps there is the feeling of walking into a lion’s den. The actions based upon the Judgment could include injecting conclusion-type statements into some of the facilitation dialogues. For example, I would be tempted to say, “Whether you like it or not, the end users are part of this organization…” or “While some of you might think the end users to be stupid, you should hear what they say when describing you….” A more successful intervention would focus to “maintain the spirit of inquiry” by asking questions such as: Who are your customers? What is their value? Why and how do you support them? What conclusions should we draw from this as we consider service standards?
No doubt, you will do a great job facilitating this group and helping them discover how they my position themselves as a helpful resource within the organization.
Thanks Steve! Very helpful advice that pulls me full circle to the ORJI reading this week. I will watch out for my "expectations", biases and resulting behaviors that may be self-fulfilling. I like your open ended questions that are very much in the spirit of inquiry.
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