Making sense of what occurs in human systems or how they change or the most effective way to lead them or which design is most productive is fraught with difficulty. Yet, nothing is more important in today’s world for creating healthy organizations and healthy people. Because we lack a lot of convincing evidence, based on solid multi-case, empirical data, we often rely on qualitative, limited case explanations to guide behavior and decisions.
When attempting to understand what works or why something works in practice (in the field of human systems) we are challenged in numerous ways. Existing research is difficult to come by. Most field research is plagued with practical and methodological issues. Thus in many human performance and change endeavors we often have scant valid evidence to turn to and regularly hear people use anecdotal and belief-based statements to support their work.
The nature of human systems and field-based practice leads to many challenges for practitioners, such as:
- When something good happens, which factor influenced, caused, supported, intervened or will sustain it?
- When something doesn’t work so well, is it the idea (action, program, plan), the execution or other factors intervening?
- With so many variables operating in the organization (or community, group, etc.), how can one measure enough to “control†for other (than your chosen actions) explanations of results?
- How can one control for “time†as a variable? When is the right time to measure for change or results?
- If we are measuring at relatively long intervals, how has “maturity†affected respondents? Do they respond with the same mental framework (their yardstick) as they used before?
We have a lot more correlation information (eg two things happen together and vary in tandem) than causal information (eg, one variable cause the other to vary). When we can cumulate information that approximates similar actions with similar results in similar conditions, we come closer to valid information and can speak with higher confidence. That still doesn’t give us good theory with replicable causal relationships.
And so the journey continues, academic studies with inherent flaws (but always getting better) and practitioners (both managers and consultants) either doing the same thing repeatedly or experimenting with minimal guidance. Some of this gets published, but many experiences are not. Our learning could be enhanced with more integration across both successes and failures and some common ways of classifying situations and collecting data. Maybe someday…..
David Jamieson
Dr. Jamieson is President of the Jamieson Consulting Group, Inc., an Adjunct Professor in the Master of Science in Organization Development Programs at Pepperdine University and American University/NTL and a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Benedictine’s Ph. D. in OD Program. He has over 38 years of experience consulting to organizations on leadership, change, strategy, design and human resource issues. He is a Past National President of the American Society for Training and Development (1984) and Past Chair of the Management Consultation Division and Practice Theme Committee of the Academy of Management. Dave is co-author of Managing Workforce 2000: Gaining the Diversity Advantage (Jossey-Bass, 1991) and co-author of The Facilitator’s Fieldbook, 2nd Edition (AMACOM, 2006). He serves as Editor of Practicing OD, an OD Netwok on-line journal; Editor, Reflections on Experience Section of the Journal of Management Inquiry and on the Editorial Boards for the Journal of Organization Change Management and The Organization Development Practitioner. Contact information: david.jamieson@pepperdine.edu; 2355 Westwood Blvd., Ste 420, LA, CA. 90064; (310)-397-8502.
