ENVIRONMENTAL
PROCESSES

Team Product 7

	THEORY INPUT

H
igh performance systems regularly and actively solicit feedback from their external environments and use the information to help them maintain a good “fit” between their products and services and their stakeholder’s needs and wants.  Healthy relationships with the environment insure that customer needs are heard and action taken for the organization’s survival and growth.  Organizations that want to become high performing need to develop effective processes for obtaining and using environmental feedback.

	OBJECTIVE

The purpose of this task is to have your team learn how to solicit and process feedback from your environment and use it to better satisfy environmental needs and your team’s purpose.

	DESIRED OUTCOMES

!	Identification of who your team’s key stakeholders are, and determination of what demands and expectations they place on your team.

!	Understanding of whether there is a balance between these environmental demands and your team’s purpose and internal processes.

!	Discussion on how well your team is managing this balance by examining your activities in satisfying the external needs in conjunction with your team’s needs.

!	A strategy for making the changes needed to improve this balance and your team’s ability to manage its environment.

!	An overview of what you learned as a result of accomplishing this task, and a working theory to effectively understand and interact with the external environment.

!	A means to help other members of the Workshop benefit from what your team has learned as a result of having performed this task.
	SUGGESTIONS

Before you begin working, reach agreement as to the objective and outcomes your team expects.  Once this is done, design a process for accomplishing the objective and producing the desired outcomes.  You may wish to consider the following helpful hints:

!	Draw a picture depicting your team’s environment, indicating the environment’s external stakeholders.

!	As a team, identify what you think the key demands and expectations are that each  stakeholder has of your team.

!	Evaluate how your team is responding to these external demands and what effect these responses are having on your team’s purposes and objectives.

!	Devise a means to solicit feedback from your team’s key stakeholders to determine how well your team is fulfilling these demands and expectations.

!	Review the guidelines for soliciting and providing feedback.

!	Solicit the feedback and determine what gaps exist between what your team assumed versus what is actually expected.

!	After the first solicitation, pause briefly to determine the effectiveness of your process and make whatever changes might be needed to increase its effectiveness.

!	Analyze the feedback and decide what, if any, changes your team should make to better respond to the needs and expectations of your environment.  Plan to make the changes needed.

!	Summarize your conclusions.

!	Devise a means to help other members learn from your experience.
(Each team will be allotted up to 10 minutes for this purpose at the beginning of the next general session.)

ENVIRONMENTAL FIT

Actions to Clarify and Exist in the Larger Environment

	!	Identify relevant external environments:  educational, economic, social, political, etc.

	!	Define major trends for each environment:  global economy, search for quality, educational reform, etc.

	!	Identify key stakeholders outside your organization/team:  Staff, facilitators, other teams, customers, owners, etc.

	!	Specify relevant demands, expectations, and needs of each key stakeholder.

	!	Verify stakeholder needs and expectations through visitation, questioning, discussing, etc.

	!	Adapt your organization/team mission and purpose for existing along with its vision for the future.

	!	Re-evaluate the last five STS core processes your team’s developed for possible revision.

FEEDBACK

Guidelines for Increasing the Quality and Quantity of Feedback

WHEN SOLICITING FEEDBACK

!	Let the providers know what kinds of information you want—be as specific as you can.

!	Avoid defensive or punishing kinds of responses.

!	Show appreciation for the information.

!	Ask clarifying questions so you can be certain you understand.

!	Get several viewpoints.  Don’t rely on one source of information—others may have a different point of view.

!	When you have received all the information you need, let the provider know—avoid data overload.

	WHEN PROVIDING FEEDBACK

!	Supply the information that is solicited; volunteer additional information when it’s requested.

!	Be as specific as you can.  Avoid generalities or vague statements.

!	Provide first-hand information that is based on your own observations, reactions, or feelings.

!	Avoid judgmental statements that are critical and will provoke defensive reactions.

!	Focus on providing information that will be beneficial to the receiver, not yourselves.

!	Be sure the receiver understands what you are saying and is able to receive the information.  Be careful not to overload the receiver with more information than he or she can handle.

ENVIRONMENTAL
SYSTEMS

The Organization in Harmony with its Environment Will Thrive

N
o organization is an island, complete unto itself.  Like any other living thing, the organization exists only in the context of its larger environment.  All of the organization’s needs are drawn from this environment; all of its products are returned to the environment.  To recognize this is to see transparency of all rigid distinctions between “us” and “them.”

The boundary that separates inside from outside is permeable and open.  It is a door more than a wall; a bond, more than a barrier; a concept, more than a firm reality.  Across the invisible boundary that divides them, transactions between the organization and its environment are governed by a set of natural laws.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand these laws.  Think of biospheres, ecology, bees, and flowers.  Think of organisms, rather than mechanisms.  The organization and its environment are living entities, united in time and space.  They are inseparable, interdependent, and mutually-creating.  Like two sides of the same coin, each is required for the other’s existence.

The organization exists by the “consent” of its environment.  The environment, in turn, is defined and changed by the action of the organizations in it.

Purpose is the central value that unites inside with outside.  The right purpose, rightly understood, radiates vitality in both directions.  The organization’s central purpose, and the way that purpose is pursued, must be wanted and supported by its environment.

In the pursuit of its purpose, or “core mission,” the organization may identify any number of particular objectives.  Many, if not all, of these will be imposed by the environment.  And all of these objectives must be defined, integrated, and acted upon in ways that are both internally congruent and—externally—compatible with the environment’s own many demands and needs.  In short, the organization that lives in harmony with its environment will thrive; the organization that is unresponsive will wither and die.

All of this is so obvious it hardly bears repeating.  It’s a given.  A set of basic assumptions to be taken for granted.  In times of relative stability, there is no pressing need to elaborate on the required “fitness” between the organization and its environment.  Not much is happening out there.  So the organization’s adaptive response capability goes untested.

In times of chaos and turbulence, however, the organization’s very survival depends on  its ability to respond quickly and well to the new environmental demands.  These are such times.  Consider the massive changes reshaping the face of the whole world today, and the increasing speed, complexity, and unpredictability of all these “megatrends.”  Consider the impact of this tidal wave on the particular environments most relevant to your own organization and on the technological, economic, social, geographic, and other fields in which you operate.  Consider, too, how vastly different are the expectations and demands of your many stakeholders now, compared with those of times past.

Customers, suppliers, lenders, owners, workers, and every other direct participant in the enterprise has shaped and been shaped by those same still-rising rivers of change.  Organizations that choose to ignore these developments do so at their own risk.  The pressures mount.  The questions persist.  Where are these new trends taking us?  What kind of organizations must be designed to master these turbulent times?  These are the questions that must be asked and answered by every kind of organization today—questions of adaptation and survival, transformation or decay.  These are big questions, even ultimate questions.  But they can be answered.  Organizations are human inventions, structured and managed for the conditions of the times.  They can be reinvented for new times, even for times that demand continuous adaptation.

It’s no easy task.  All of the organization’s seemingly inseparable pieces must be taken apart, examined, and put back together again—refitted to a new pattern.  The process begins with a careful look at the organization-environment “set” of the past, its features in the present, and the choices available for the future.

LEARNING JOURNAL
ENVIRONMENTAL PROCESSES

Teaming Skills and Learning Checklist

(Check the areas in which you excelled)
(Circle the areas you wish to improve in next session)

	Growth Values

Empathy

Authenticity

Spontaneity

Courage

Open-Mindedness

Intuition

Teaming Skills

Meeting Effectiveness

Brainstorming

Problem Solving

Planning/Organizing

Decision Making

Assessing Results

Conflict Resolution

Giving Feedback

Receiving Feedback

Decisiveness

1.	What did I learn most around Growth Values and Teaming Skills:

2.	Our most important and effective response to the feedback was (or should have been)...

3.	Receiving the external feedback had the following impact on the maturity of our team:

4.	How should we use the “product marketing” and feedback to help us better account for our performance?

5.	The things I learned that I most want to be able to use back home are: