Jody Hoffer Gittell

Transforming Relationships for High Performance (eBook, ePUB)

The Power of Relational Coordination

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Whether from customers, supply-chain partners, policymakers, or regulators, organizations in virtually every industry are facing calls to do more with less. They are feeling compelled to provide higher-quality outcomes, more rapidly, at a lower cost.

This book offers a road-tested approach for delivering these outcomes through positive organizational change. Its message comes just in time, for too many companies have gone the way of low-road strategies, such as cutting pay and perks, and working harder not smarter. Drawing on her path-breaking research, Jody Hoffer Gittell reveals that high performance is fundamentally relational-rooted in both human and social capital.

Based on this insight, she provides a unique model that will help companies to build meaningful relationships among colleagues, develop smarter work processes, and design organizational structures fit for today's pressure test. By following four organizations on their change journeys, she illustrates how "relational coordination" unfolds in real-world settings. Tools for change guide readers as they learn how to implement this new model in their own workplaces.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 320
• Erscheinungstermin: 3. August 2016
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780804797047
• Artikelnr.: 48420513

Autorenporträt

Jody Hoffer Gittell is Professor at Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management. She is Executive Director of the Relational Coordination Research Collaborative and author of The Southwest Airlines Way (2005) and High Performance Healthcare (2009).

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
1Meeting Performance Pressures with a Relational Response
chapter abstract
Organizations in virtually every industry are facing pressures to do more
with less. Whether these pressures come from customers, supply chain
partners, policy makers or regulators, organizations feel compelled to
provide better, higher-quality outcomes, more rapidly, and at lower cost.
As always when facing performance pressures, there are critical choices to
be made. Namely, will we pursue low-road strategies that rely primarily on
the reduction of pay and the degradation of working conditions? Or will we
instead pursue the high-road strategies that produce positive outcomes for
a broader range of stakeholders? High-road approaches to high performance
are fundamentally relational, requiring not just human capital but social
capital to integrate across difference, thus creating new value rather than
simply redistributing it.
2How Relational Coordination Drives High Performance
chapter abstract
Relational coordination is simply coordinating work through relationships
of shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect. Together, these
relational dimensions reinforce communication that is sufficiently
frequent, timely, accurate, and problem-solving rather than blaming when
things go wrong. Relational coordination is extremely practical, supporting
a wide range of positive performance outcomes-efficiency, financial
performance, quality, safety, client engagement, worker engagement-as well
as the ability for organizations to learn, innovate, and adapt. Relational
coordination works especially well under the challenging conditions of
uncertainty, interdependence, and time constraints.
3Engaging Clients in Relational Coproduction
chapter abstract
Relational coproduction happens when workers and their clients produce
desired outcomes together by engaging in high-quality communication
supported by relationships of shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual
respect. Rather than workers telling clients what they need, relational
coproduction involves reciprocal interrelating between workers and clients
regarding what should be done and how best to do it. Obstacles to
relational coproduction include lack of accountability, lack of knowledge,
and excessive attachment to professional autonomy. Traditional
professional-client relationships may not even consider the possibility
that clients have knowledge enabling them to contribute in a fundamental
way to the achievement of desired outcomes. This chapter proposes a new
model of professionalism based on "power with" rather than "power over."
4Engaging Co-Workers in Relational Leadership
chapter abstract
We know from decades of research that leadership is instrumental for
achieving organizational change, whether through the exercise of power or
through the exercise of influence. In this chapter we explore relational
leadership as an alternative to hierarchy, based on "power with" rather
than "power over." More specifically, relational leadership is a process of
reciprocal interrelating between leaders and those they lead. Relational
leaders create influence in two ways: by developing shared goals, shared
knowledge, and mutual respect with others-and by developing shared goals,
shared knowledge, and mutual respect among others. Relational leadership
requires that leaders have the courage to move beyond the
divide-and-conquer strategy to purposely build connections among others.
5How Structures Support-or Undermine-the Three Relational Dynamics
chapter abstract
Managers and frontline workers often develop relationships at work that
enable them to get their jobs done. But these personal ties are not
sufficiently reliable to achieve the performance outcomes that are at stake
for their organizations, especially organizations that must deliver
promised outcomes to multiple stakeholders without missing a beat, whether
or not a particular individual happens to be present. Structures are needed
to enable reliable performance outcomes, yet existing structures tend to be
bureaucratic, creating strong ties within one's area of expertise and weak
ties at critical handoffs. This chapter introduces organizational
structures that range from selecting and training for teamwork, to shared
protocols and shared information systems, designed to reinforce and
strengthen relationships across the boundaries where they tend to be weak.
6A Relational Model of Organizational Change
chapter abstract
A Relational Model of Organizational Change proposes that three types of
interventions-relational, work process, and structural-are needed to
transform role relationships in a positive and sustainable way. Relational
interventions enable participants to transform the way they see themselves
and their role within their organization. Relational interventions include
building a safe space within which to experiment with new ways of
interrelating. To achieve positive sustainable changes in relationships,
work process interventions are needed to apply the new dynamics to the work
itself, enabling participants to visualize the work they are engaged in and
identify opportunities to redesign that work to achieve the desired state.
Even this is not sufficient however. Structural interventions are also
needed to redesign existing structures to support and sustain the new ways
of working together.
7Relational Coordination at Group Health
chapter abstract
Group Health Cooperative gives us a chance to explore, up close, efforts to
enhance relational coordination for the purpose of achieving high quality
performance outcomes more efficiently. In the face of financial and
system-level leadership challenges, Group Health's primary care leadership
team decided to build on previous successes with lean process improvement
by measuring and strengthening relational coordination among frontline care
workers. Even though frontline workers and frontline leaders embraced these
efforts, the challenges they faced were many, and successes were mixed with
failures.
8Relational Coproduction in Varde Municipality
chapter abstract
Promoting health and wellness in the community means moving away from a
narrow focus on treating illness to a broader focus on fostering wellness.
It is both more holistic and smarter from the standpoint of shifting
investment from downstream consequences to upstream causes. But investing
upstream creates a need for relational coordination and coproduction across
a greater number of sectors. Varde Municipality of Denmark provides an
opportunity to explore efforts to build relational coordination across
multiple sectors as well as relational coproduction with citizens
themselves. With leadership support from the mayor and the municipal CEO,
and a focus on leadership development at the frontline, this change effort
was on a path to achieving sustainable positive outcomes.
9Relational Leadership at Dartmouth-Hitchcock
chapter abstract
The Dartmouth-Hitchcock health system in central New Hampshire has long
enjoyed a sterling reputation for healthcare delivery and innovation.
Despite its impressive resources and accomplishments, there were some
challenges as well. The Department of Surgery was facing tremendous
performance pressures due in part to the shift toward accountable care. To
respond to these challenges, the chair of surgery proposed two distinct
change initiatives-building relational leadership among his surgical
chiefs, and building relational coordination among frontline staff. We
follow their journey closely, learning from its successes and its
limitations.
10Bringing It All Together at Billings Clinic
chapter abstract
What does it look like to build relational coordination among workers and
relational coproduction with your customers, while supported by relational
leadership throughout your organization? While no one organization can
perfectly exemplify this integrated approach, Billings Clinic was moving in
this direction with strong leadership support from frontline workers, unit
leaders, middle managers and the CEO. In addition to assessing and feeding
back relational coordination metrics, this change initiative used positive
deviance and games of positive recognition such as RC Bingo. We observe
frontline efforts to redesign structures including payment models, team
meetings, and information systems. After starting in an area of existing
strength, this change initiative begins spreading to other parts of the
system through positive contagion.
11Relational Interventions to Create New Ways of Relating
chapter abstract
Relational interventions are informed by process consultation,
organizational development, and positive psychology. The underlying
philosophy is that participants can assume a proactive role in transforming
their role relationships with each other, their clients and their leaders,
and that ultimate responsibility for change rests in their hands. In this
chapter, we learn about relational interventions and the tools associated
with them, such as safe spaces, relational mapping, the relational
coordination survey, and facilitated dialogue. Interventions informed by
relational coordination improve participants' capacity to self-manage their
interdependence: to understand their common goals, to understand how their
individual work fits into the larger work process, and to carry out their
work with a mindfulness of how their actions affect the work of others.
12Work Process Interventions to Create New Ways of Working
chapter abstract
While relational interventions are focused on transforming relationships
among those doing the work, work process interventions are focused on
transforming the work itself. Process improvement and relational
coordination are often seen as competing approaches. For decades, however,
sociotechnical systems designers have seen the two as complementary
approaches for organizational change. This chapter introduces tools from
popular methodologies, such as lean, and microsystems for carrying out work
process interventions in three phases: assessing the current state,
envisioning the desired state, then experimenting to achieve the desired
state. Once participants use relational interventions to begin changing the
way they communicate and relate across key boundaries, they are better able
to use these tools to change the work itself.
13Structural Interventions to Support and Sustain the New Dynamics
chapter abstract
Structural interventions are new structures introduced to support and
sustain shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect between workers,
with their clients, and with their leaders-such as new forms of team
meetings, or protocols to clarify roles and the connections between them,
or boundary spanners whose role is to coordinate work, or hiring and
training for teamwork, or revised structures for accountability and
rewards, or newly designed supervisory roles, or shared conflict resolution
practices, or shared information systems. While these new structures can
support new relational dynamics, they cannot create these dynamics. When
participants' sense of self is defined by the old relational dynamics,
these new structures will feel unwelcome. These new structures are
implemented successfully only when participants themselves see the need for
them and participate in their design and implementation, having understood
the principles of relational coordination, relational coproduction, and
relational leadership through their own direct experience.
14Bringing It All Together in Your Own Organization-and Beyond
chapter abstract
With the Relational Model of Organizational Change we have identified three
types of interventions that together support sustained positive relational
change: relational interventions to give birth to new patterns of
interaction, work process interventions to diagnose and improve the work
itself, and structural intervention to reinforce and sustain the new ways
of working together. We have learned that these three types of
interventions are quite synergistic. Given that they come from different
"thought worlds," however, it is easy for change agents to become siloed.
Perhaps the most powerful learning from this book is the critical role that
change agents play in creating organizational change through small actions
that have cumulative and transformative effects. The key is to carry out
these small actions with intention, with awareness of one's power, as well
as deliberate planning with others to create collective impact for positive
change.