| Topics: Work/Empowerment & Families/Gender (cross-referenced) Re-Linking Work and Family, continued Index Part I: Background and Historical Context
Part II: Linking of Work, Family & Community, & Gender Equity
Part III: Making and Sustaining Change
Notes, Suggested Readings, Appendix, Appendix Notes, Research Teams Contents Part III: Making and Sustaining Change
Notes, Suggested Readings, Appendix, Appendix Notes, Research Teams Part III: Making and Sustaining Change Introduction The agenda of our project is to investigate the barriers that stand in the way of work-family programs achieving equitable arrangements for men and women, and to experiment with changing them. This was accepted as a joint goal by top management in each corporation. To accomplish this goal, we identify, at every local site, the work practices that stand in its way and then link them to a relevant business need. As is obvious from the preceding section, we try to make changes in work practices that will mutually benefit organizations and employees. By work practices we mean all those assumptions and mind sets, those ways of thinking and acting, that have made it difficult to cross the boundary of work and family. When we seek to change work practices, we are not talking primarily about individual behavior. Rather, we mean collective patterns of action, informed by collective values and goals, and deeply embedded in societal structures and norms. Making significant changes thus requires an intensive method that actively engages the way people think and act. This method—which we have called Collaborative Interactive Action Research (CIAR)—is action research because it involves learning by doing. Our goal is both to increase knowledge and to effect change. We need to work from where people are, and research is necessary to properly identify this state. But it cannot be done only by asking, which provides information on what is espoused, not on what people actually do in the setting. And so we are necessarily in an action research mode—an attempt to change even as we try to understand—in order to surface actual work practices and to allow them to be questioned. Research and intervention are intertwined in the process. But it is a particular kind of action research, one that includes an interactive collaboration. What this means is that we are in a continual state of mutual inquiry with our action partners in the sites. It is not only we who are learning something about how the system works, but they are as well—both partners become aware of existing disconnections. Nor is it only we who plan the changes to be introduced: this is done in full collaboration with our partners. In this state of mutual inquiry, critical knowledge flows back and forth between the researchers and the action partners. Neither one is the sole expert. Both are needed, in interactive collaboration, to surface the structural or cultural barriers that make it difficult to connect work, family, and community, and thus to meet the double goal of aiding both the organization and employees. Both are needed to examine old assumptions, to make the new connection, to consider alternatives to accepted work practices, and to design relevant changes. The method we use is not linear—it does not start with a diagnosis and end with a series of recommendations. Rather it is cyclical: it begins with data and involves a mutual and collaborative exploration of these data; this may lead back to the mutual search for new data or to joint designs for experimental interventions; these, in turn, provide more data for mutual interpretation. And so the cycle continues. This process, we believe, has led to the results reported in Part II. However, it is important to emphasize that what we want to leave behind is the stance of ongoing inquiry (rather than only the particular changes at the experimental sites) that connects work to family, to community, and links work-family to the way work is accomplished, and does all this in a manner that is equitable for both women and men. This link to gender equity is sometimes the most difficult of all. In this part of the report, we present the key tenets of the CIAR method as it has evolved in our experience. Though we hope that organizations will find it useful to incorporate these ideas when they engage in change, we have to say that the approach is not always simple and smooth. Outsiders can help to overcome some of the resistances that are bound to be encountered, and we present our understanding of this resistance with some suggestions about how to engage it for effective change. Finally, we discuss some considerations about sustaining the changes made. Making Change with CIAR There are three key aspects to the method as we have used it in the corporation context. First, we look at work through a work-family lens, something not usually done in corporations and therefore likely to be greeted with some astonishment if not outright resistance. Second, we link what we learn about work in this way to a salient business need. Making this link is a critical step in the process. Finally, we push for change at each step of the way: during inteniews with individual people, in group sessions, and also in the jointly designed experimental interventions already described. Although the project described here took place within large international firms headquartered in the US, we believe the process used can be adapted and made applicable to many different kinds of organizations—large corporations and small businesses, non-profit organizations, small public agencies, and even large government bureaucracies. The important condition is that our partners in the organization recognize that current practices are problematic for achieving the goals of gender equity and work-family integration and are willing to join in a process of mutual inquiry, exploration, and action oriented interventions to address these problems. Addressing the problems in this particular way can lead to multiple benefits. Goals of equity and integration can be met with no loss—and great potential for gain—in productivity and effectiveness. Viewing work through a work-family lens Using a work-family lens to surface assumptions about work practice requires collecting data about the nature of work in a particular setting. Often the first step is a survey, in order to convey the extent of work-family concerns in the site. Such a survey can also serve as a base line measure to evaluate change. The task of understanding work practices, however, depends on conducting individual interviews not just with women or those with dependent care responsibilities but with all types and levels of employees: managers, supervisors, line workers, support staff, etc. The focus of the interview is to engage people in a process of reflection on aspects of the work culture and structure that make it difficult, either directly or indirectly, to integrate work and personal life. It is during the interviews that the systemic link between work practice and work-family integration is first made through asking the following three open-ended questions: - How does work get done around here?
- What is your personal story of work-family integration?
and then making the link between the two by asking: - What is it about the way work gets done around here that makes it difficult (or easy) for you to integrate your work and personal life?
The systemic issues revealed by this interview protocol deal with such things as how work is structured, what skills and behaviors are rewarded, how one demonstrates competence and commitment, how time is valued and used, and where one experiences pressures and stress. This is what we mean by viewing work through a work-family lens. A further step in the process is to collect observational data about work culture and work practice by shadowing different employees within the work group, and attending a full range of meetings. These observational data are key to the next step, which is to conduct group interviews or roundtables. The purpose of the group discussion is to make these issues discussable and to create a shared understanding of the ways in which individual experience is influenced by systemic work factors. We believe this reflection process is facilitated when led by someone outside the immediate work group, who can question and probe assumptions about work that are usually taken for granted. An outsider, whose presence is legitimated by management, not only has the ability to break the usual silence around these issues and give people permission to talk about their feelings and their personal dilemmas but is also in a unique position to help make the connection between individual experience and systemic conditions. Applying the findings to a salient business need How work and family issues play out at a given site or in a given work group is a local issue, dependent on the nature of the task, the size and composition of the group, and the specific pressures and resource constraints the group may be experiencing. It is important to make the connection between these issues and concrete salient business needs the particular group is facing. Making this link is crucial. It establishes a mutual agenda, marrying individual issues of work-family integration with business goals in ways that can potentially benefit each. The role of the outsider here is to hold up a mirror for the group, to reflect the work norms and assumptions that are barriers to work-family integration in a way that highlights the consequences of these barriers for other business needs, such as time to market, quality, or customer responsiveness. This mirror is based on putting the observed data into an analytic framework. It reflects back to the group the patterns and themes that have emerged by using a work-family lens, and highlights the gaps, contradictions, and dilemmas that have surfaced. It is our experience that a work-family lens identifies work practices that are so taken for granted that they do not get questioned in the usual approaches to work redesign. Thus, the connections that can be made tend to be unexpected and new. Though this may well be greeted with doubts by the people involved, it also creates the condition for thinking creatively about possibilities for change. Pressing for change Interventions take different forms. Some engage individuals to think about these issues in new ways. Others are spontaneous, small scale interventions undertaken by individual group members to restructure the work practices associated with their own jobs. Still others are planned pilots, sanctioned by management and clearly labeled as "experiments." Making connections and pressing to change people's assumptions and mind sets occur at all stages of the process. In talking with individuals, for example, we found they could only go so far in questioning the systemic factors that determine routine work practices before they began to feel hopeless that anything could really change. So we would "push back" on denial of connections and question assertions about unchangeable conditions. Discussing these factors collectively, however, created a different dynamic. Here we could pose hypothetical conditions, e.g. about how to get work done in a reduced number of hours. The role of the outsider in this situation is to help the work group come to a collective understanding of the systemic implications of their individual experience and how it can be brought to bear on whatever business need the group is facing. In roundtables, individuals challenge each others' assumptions and previously unquestioned limitations on what is fixed and what can be changed in work practices. It helps people believe fundamental change might be possible and encourages out-of-the-box thinking and solutions to addressing assumed constraints. The collaboratively designed experimental interventions, described in Part II, build on this new understanding of all those involved—the employees at the work site and the action researchers. Ensuring Success with CIAR We have outlined the main steps in the process we used. Their success in achieving mutually satisfactory goals, however, depends on a number of specific conditions, namely, to create safe conditions for individuals to participate in the change, and to provide an appropriate structure that enhances joint ownership of the process. Creating safety and minimizing individual risk It is important in the process of designing planned, local interventions to give voice to different perspectives and to air conflicts about the findings and their implications. This means sharing and discussing the findings in a spirit of openness and collaboration where fears and concerns can be raised and new possibilities entertained. By giving people permission to talk about their feelings and their personal dilemmas in the context of redesigning work, we found that a surprising level of energy, creativity, and innovative thinking gets released. However, it can be risky for employees to suggest work practice innovations that link work with family because these connections are rarely made or discussed. Raising these issues may be problematic for those who fear they will be branded as less committed or dependable if they acknowledge these difficulties. By the same token, managers, who are used to seeing these issues as zero-sum where gains for the family mean productivity loss for the business, may fear they will bear all the risks of innovation. Although our findings indicate that these fears of productivity loss are unfounded, we believe that collaboration and sharing the risks across levels of hierarchy are important aspects of the process. In concrete terms, this means getting some sign from upper levels of management that they are willing to suspend, at least temporarily, some of the standard operating procedures that have been identified in the work groups as barriers both to work-family integration and productivity. Such a sign from upper management is another critical component of the process as it helps people believe that change at the cultural level is possible and protects individual managers from bearing all the risks of innovation. At our sites, these signs took different forms. At one site it was the suspension of a complex operations review process; at another it was the suspension of work rules that narrowly defined how customer needs could be met and the granting of a grace period to accommodate possible short-term productivity losses; at a third site it was the suspension of rules about how functions relate to one another. The point is, for this type of intervention to work, people need concrete evidence that they are truly empowered to control some of the conditions that affect their own productivity and managers need some assurance that they will not be penalized for relinquishing this control. Creating appropriate structures to enhance joint ownership Joint ownership is critical. Unless the organization accepts the learnings as something they have achieved, the central discovery of the project—that employees' lives must be valued and legitimated and made part of the central core of the business—will be difficult to sustain. It is for this reason that the partnership exists from the very beginning. This partnership requires strong internal sponsorship. One form would be an internal steering committee that, as closely as possible, replicates the organization's structure. (This structure was used at Tandem Computers, Inc.) This means membership on the committee should include senior level representation from all functional areas, including Human Resources. However, because work-family issues are closely aligned with personnel concerns, it is important to note that the presence of Human Resource personnel is not to oversee the intervention but, as a full participant, to support the systemic exploration of the connection between work structure, work-family integration, and gender equity in the organization. In working with such a committee, it is important to sustain close relationships to ensure their participation in what is happening at the local sites. Only with such continued involvement can ownership be achieved and the process be sustained. Finally, to ensure mutually beneficial change, it is important that productive gains be shared by the organization with its employees. But even when all these conditions exist, there are many points in the process that generate resistance among those involved. Engaging Resistance Using a work-family lens to promote change in organizations requires a process of reflection that raises some difficult and emotional issues. Assumptions about work that drive organizational practices and norms touch core beliefs about society, success, gender roles, the place of work and family in our lives, and hence are resistant to a process of reflection and change. We found, however, that such resistance—both within the organization and among research team members—almost always points to something important which needs to be acknowledged and worked on collaboratively. Engaging with this type of resistance means listening and learning from people's objections, incorporating these concerns or new ideas, and working together to establish a mutual agenda. This process of learning together and exploring possibilities led to creative options none of us had foreseen. Ironically, this collaborative approach of learning together was a source both of energy for the project and of resistance. We were repeatedly pushed to act more like traditional consultants—to come up with solutions, action items, or a "six step" plan. Offering collaboration in place of "expert" advice was often met with anger and frustration and a sense that the process was taking too long.[12] Research team members also exhibited resistance: they would shorten the process by simply telling people in the organization what to do, or resist collaborative discussion about their own limitations in engaging in the process. But it is not a process that can be short-changed; it requires trust, openness, and a willingness to learn from and be influenced by each other. Resistance surfaces around a number of issues. There is resistance to the connection between work-family issues and core business goals. People continually asked us during interviews, during feedback sessions and roundtables, what work-family had to do with work. Undertaking pilot experiments that would change ways of working with antcipated benefits to employees was similarly challenged: how would the change in the workplace affect people's lives? These are difficult connections to make. When people talk about making it easier to integrate work and family life, they talk generally about changing the culture of long hours but are puzzled about how to do it: "We could never deliver the product if everybody worked fewer hours." Our suggestion is that we all explore the possibility of changing the way the product is delivered. Roundtables are an important resource for engaging resistance on the connections between work and family issues. They engage people who are often closest to the issues and thus yield many ideas for new arrangements that had not been previously considered. Our position as outsiders allowed us to help re-frame old ways of thinking and to enter into a dialogue about what to learn and do as a result of the findings. It also enabled us to validate divergent opinions and to model and facilitate disagreement and dialogue among group members. The goal was always to shift the discussion from what is, to what could be in order to agree on possible experiments. This collaboration was necessary to allay the fear and engage the resistance associated with experimenting with change. As can be seen, resistance takes interesting forms on both sides. There is both dependence and counter-dependence. On the one hand people looked to us to provide answers and were often frustrated when we continually turned to them to work with us on interpreting what we Iearned and on designing pilot interventions. At the same time, the mirrors we held up and the proposals we made for experimentation and for how to disseminate the learnings were often abruptly rejected. We had our own resistances as well. The role of expert is a comforting position and we found ourselves falling into it. Similarly the role of researcher just gathering data is much less controversial than pushing back on people's assumptions which can make these discussions more contentious. We struggled to keep the focus on the collaborative interaction where mutual learning could occur on both sides. Having the support of a team and an outside consultant were invaluable in dealing with these resistances, ours and theirs. We found that dealing with resistance is a central feature of our method. It is a signal that what is happening is affecting people and the organization. In this sense resistance is positive even though we may have to keep reminding ourselves of it. But recognizing the successes in the project and sharing them with different parts of the organization contribute to institutionalizing the process and how to carry it out. Sustaining Change The collaborative interactive action research method produced notable operational local successes, which have continued past the experimental phase at a number of sites, though at different levels. For example, at the administrative center, the system as a whole continues to this day. At the product development team, it is mainly the changes in managerial behavior that persist. In the sales environment, the remaining change applies to an individual: the manager, despite the fact that his group has been disbanded, continues to work in a very different way; he now works on the assumption that he is at the office from 7 to 4 and takes no work home, and he pushes back on people who make arrangements that do not fit these constraints. The next challenge is how to sustain these efforts and to diffuse them beyond the local sites. Innovations are fragile; existing systems continually threaten to overwhelm and/or wipe them out Sustaining the local changes means that the innovations must spread further and deeper into the organization. Our approach to this challenge is to extend the underlying model, that is, to use collaborative processes and structures to enhance the possibility that local changes will be sustained and that the learnings from them will spread. Before we discuss the varied ways that we try to sustain and diffuse the changes we began, it is important to be clear about what it is that we are trying to sustain and diffuse. We hope to leave behind a process that enables the organization, in its totality and parts, continually to use a work-family lens to inquire into assumptions about work and then translate the ensuing insights into real changes in work practices. What changes as a result of this process is the mind set of individuals, groups, and the organization about the connections between work and other parts of peoples' lives. No longer is this seen as a concern to certain individuals (mothers) but rather as a systemic issue whose solution lies within the organization. There is a second part as well and that concerns the dual agenda of the work reported here. Benefits that accrue to the organization as a result of these work practice changes must be shared with employees if one is to ease their lives and to promote gender equity as well as organizational effectiveness. To sustain and diffuse the desired changes, mutual learning needs to occur at all levels: the individual, the group, and the system as a whole. At the individual level, it is important to establish meaningful relationships in order to enable mutual learning. We do this by encouraging people to talk about their family and work experiences. The opportunity to open up about these issues is often the first time people have had a chance at the workplace to talk about things that matter to them deeply. Further, we have these discussions and establish these relationships throughout the organization, from top management to front line workers. During these interviews, we challenge assumptions people make about the impossibility of change. We and our partners are thus able to explore resistances in a collaborative setting. Such discussions can lead to change, as evidenced by one Vice-President who opened up his organization to experimentation after a series of such meetings. At the group level, through roundtables, individuals see that they are not alone. The resulting collective understandings about experiences and possibilities energize people and help them believe that change is possible. Thus, the collective mind set begins to change. It is here one begins to see that boundaries can really be challenged. These groups become advocates for change. No longer do we have individuals making separate arrangements but we have blocks of people pushing for change. Expectations have been raised. At the system level, these ideas are translated into actual experiments and pilots. This step is also crucial to sustaining the change. There are always choices as to which pilots to undertake. Our experience suggests that the pilots need to be ones that promise, if they succeed, to bring significant benefits to the business and to employees. When they succeed there are demonstrable results that cause others in the organization to notice and at least be curious about what happened. In this way, the seeds of diffusion are spread. Work groups that undertake these pilots are always taking risks. Continually spending time with management and others engaged in the pilots, listening to their problems as they experiment and adjust, supporting them, giving them courage, are the kinds of relationship building and cultivation that make these pilots possible and sustainable. The process does not end with a pilot, but rather continues as individuals, groups, and management engage in new cycles of the process. Because employees' personal issues are so rarely connected to broader business goals there is a danger that once new work practices become routinized, benefits to the family and other parts of people's lives might recede in importance or lapse altogether. Since the success of the interventions depends on capturing the synergy between individual and business goals, this lapse would seriously undermine the potential for continuous learning and improvement. As work practice innovations become routinized, it is important to continue to keep the double agenda on the table and ensure that benefits continue to accrue to employees and their families as well as to the organization. If the beneficial effects of changes at work are not translated into benefits for personal and family life, the individual energy that is unleashed will dissipate. If local changes are to be sustained and if the learnings from them are to be diffused, the work needs to be legitimated in the organization. Given the tendency to marginalize and individualize work-family issues, the overt support of senior management is essential to sustain and diffuse the change. That support reinforces "work-family" as a business issue and as systemic and owned by the organization. But none of this will help if benefits that accrue to the business are not shared with employees. Legitimation can take a variety of forms. It can be structured into the project design. In one corporation an Executive Council of senior management was formed at the outset. Through its quarterly meetings, the group not only learned about what was happening elsewhere in the organization but also became itself a site for mutual learning. Having a sponsor or champion who is held in high esteem in the organizadon helps to legitimate the effort. In another corporation, less formal means of legidmation evolved. Meetings with the CEO, other senior officials, and representatives from different layers of management legitimated the efforts at various times. As pilots began, we met with senior management in the corporation and business units. Based on these meetings, they in turn gave support to the risk takers in the local sites. As the positive results of the interventions came in, we met with senior management and encouraged them to visit sites. Those experiences helped them to frame an organizational story about the pilots and results that could be broadcast widely to the organization. While legitimating the process may help the organization take notice of the operational successes, it is also necessary to plan an infrastructure and to design a process to carry the Iearnings and methodology to other parts of the organization. In one organization, an operations-based steering committee worked hand in hand with the action research team during all phases of the project. This committee is now positioned to carry on the work in other parts of the corporation. Membership on such a committee and its functions need to be carefully considered. People who have links to various parts of the organization and who are sympathetic to the agenda of work-family and gender equity are the natural allies who could populate such a committee. However, there are a number of caveats. It may facilitate the long run potential of these changes if blockers as well as allies are on the committee because they represent forces of resistance in the organization that will need to bc engaged. There is also the danger that such a committee will come to "own" this agenda, will fail to keep the dual agenda on the table, or will itself become isolated from important potential collaborative partners. Our experience suggests that there need to be multiple points of diffusion. We look for opportunities to present our work internally in the organizations as part of special events as well as operational reviews, in addition to looking for internal allies. These are people with significant line responsibility who are willing and able to engage us in a collaborative experiment. We also have discussions and meetings with people involved in organizational change and transformation in the corporation, with people involved in research and development on work and organization structures, with people who have been referred to us as interested in organization learning and continuous improvement, and with outside consultants. In order to sustain the changes we try to help people appreciate that it is important to diffuse the process or method in order to achieve the concrete results. As people reflect on how the business needs were met through the different operational pilots, there is a tendency to want to pass on to other teams the results that yielded the productivity gains, rather than the method itself. Exporting only the innovation shortchanges the process and seriously undermines its chances for success and sustainability. It is by looking at work through a work-family lens and reflecting on the way that group members' personal experiences can be brought to bear on business problems that encourages innovative solutions to local business needs. The energy to implement these solutions and to persist in working out the inevitable problems that arise, comes from understanding how collective success can also translate into personal gain. * * * * * One final point. It is important to note that the re-linking of life and work is not something that can be accomplished simply by wishing it were so, or by pointing out the negative consequences of separation. It is something that touches the very core of our beliefs about society, success, and our own masculinity and femininity. The assumed separation of the domestic and non-domestic spheres of life is not only a question of difference, but of inequality. Present practices, structures, and policies—at all levels of society—favor the economic sphere more than the private. As a result, employment concerns are assumed to take precedence over other concerns; achievement in the employment sector is assumed to be the major source of self-esteem and the measure of personal success; and only employment skills are highly valued and compensated, and thus dominate government, educational, and organizational policy. So the goal of re-linking is not simple and it is not just about being "whole." It is about shifing to a more equitable society in which family and community are equally valued with paid work, and where men and women have equal opportunity to achieve in all domains. (Maureen Harvey from the Xerox team and Barbara Miller from Artemis Consulting contributed to this section.) Notes [1] A different kind of blurring occurred in corporations where wives of high level employees were sometimes interviewed, as part of their husbands' selection process, to ensure their adherence to corporate expectations of appropriate behavior. This kind of blurring was labeled the two-person career by Hanna Papanek in 1973. [2] Anthropologists conceptualized the separation of the public and private sphere, the distinction between culture and nature, but they did not deal with the workplace and families until considerably later. [3] A different 3-way model, linking work, family, and leisure, was postulated by the Rapoports at about the same time. Also, in 1980, Paul Evans and Fernando Bartolome reported the results of a study of successful male managers which showed that they concentrated on work and family sequentially until late in their careers, when integration became possible. [4] In 1963, Alice Rossi introduced the term androgyny into this debate - indicating an emphasis on sameness. She later pointed to important differences, which have been explained structurally by Rosabeth Kanter and as dependent on essential differences in socialization by such theorists as Nancy Chodorow and Jean Baker Miller, and, from a different perspective, by Sandra Harding and Evelyn Fox Keller. Critical legal scholars such as Joan Williams and Nancy Dowd have been perhaps the most perceptive in discussing this distinction, and in linking work and family to gender equity. [5] By 1989, more than 70% of women between the ages of 18 and 50 were in the labor force, including more than half of all mothers with children under the age of 1. [6] Leading corporations are often more willing to grant flexibility for employees' community involvements than they are for those needs more directly associated with domestic affairs—a result of the logic of separation and of a narrow view of what constitutes a corporate benefit. [7] A term used by Eric von Hippel in his study of innovation. [8] Joyce Fletcher's 1994 Doctoral Dissertation details this work and approach. [9] Robin Johnson's 1994 Doctoral Dissertation gives the details on this site. [10] Leslie Perlow's 1995 Doctoral Dissertation provides a discussion of time and the time experiment. [11] This site is described in detail in the appendix. [12] Though this is not unusual for consultants who deal with process, it was particularly difficult in this case because of the deep emotional responses that are elicited by crossing the boundary between work life and private life. Suggested Readings Aldous, J. (ed.) (1982). Two paychecks: Life in dual-earner families. 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A Descriptive Example The purpose of this appendix is to describe the method used in this project in the context of a specific site. In telling the story, we want to highlight how the work-family lens can be used to elucidate a business issue and how work on it can promote the dual agenda of benefiting the business and employees' work-family concerns. We want to describe in some detail what we did, how we tried to create structures that fostered these connections, in what way we encountered and dealt with resistances, and how we worked with the people in the site to carry out a variety of experimental changes in work practices. In sharing these insights, we want to capture what we think worked well and what problems were encountered. The Site The site [1] we describe is a sales and service district of the Xerox Corporation. At the time of the research, approximately 600 employees worked there in three functions. These employees sell, lease, install, upgrade, and service the company's equipment. The sales organization, with roughly equal numbers of men and women, is organized to serve different product lines and types of customers. The service technicians, mostly men, are responsible for servicing equipment in different geographical areas. Administrative workers, primarily female, process orders and schedule installations. The district is jointly managed by a senior management team, which includes managers from each of the three functions. One of the sales managers acts as senior manager of the team. The district has a company wide work-family benefits program. The program has, on paper, provision for flextime, compressed work week, and job sharing—among other provisions. The program, however, was not widely used. Some managers were willing, off-the-record, to arrange short term accommodations for people who needed them, but these existed outside the formal systems. With few exceptions, the major users were women in the administrative function on flextime. Gender equity was an issue that was rarely discussed openly at this site, but often debated informally. In addition to the work-family issues which were the focus of our work, such problems included the role of women (mothers) in the work force and the challenges women managers face. There also were problems arising from the differential impact on women and men of apparently neutral work policies such as close monitoring of attendance and hours, and requiring full-time and continuous presence (i.e. not taking a leave or a reduced schedule) to be eligible for the promotional track. Looking at Work Through a Work-Family Lens The project began with data collection. We conducted more than 60 interviews with men and women at all levels in all three functions. Sometimes these took place in an office, at other times, on the road with a service or sales person en route to a customer. To the surprise of respondents in these interviews, we focused not only on work-family issues, but more broadly on their work and how it affected their ability to do what needed to be done and still have time and energy for outside interests. Talking with employees and managers about this boundary was sometimes an emotional experience. People talked about the stress in their families and how that affected their work. One sales manager, who had the highest employee satisfaction ratings during the previous year, talked about how devastating his divorce had been and how he worried now that his ratings were below par. Some took the opportunity to tell us that the work-family problem was merely one of greed for an elevated life style. These interviews, and indeed the entire data collection process, not only offered us opportunities to discuss these issues, but to push back on people's assumptions. We discussed other reasons, beside greed, why mothers might want to work. When a manager suggested that a man's divorce was not a work-family issue, we explored the basis of that reasoning as well. From the interviews and other informal discussions, we discovered that few employees were able to work out flexible schedules in spite of available work-family policies. Employees and managers found it difficult to make individual arrangements within the context of existing systems. Employees worried about face time and the possible consequences of being seen by their managers as less committed. Managers saw these benefits as potential problems. If they permitted a few people to create a flexible schedule, many more might request it. Would they have to grant requests to everybody? What would happen when poor performers made a request? They also felt constrained by head count requirements, benefit policies, and rigid scheduling traditions, and feared that granting flexibility would inevitably result in reduced productivity. As we were learning about these concerns and the barriers they created to using the policies that were in place, we questioned the underlying assumptions and provided alternative scenarios for managers to think through some of these dilemmas. These initial interviews were only part of the data collection. Given changes in the management of the district and the time that elapsed between our visits there, we were repeatedly challenged to show that work-family issues were a continuing concern for employees. We undertook a survey of employees, in part, to legitimate the issue in the eyes of the new senior management team. Thc survey confirmed our initial findings that work-family issues were a concern for men as well as women, managers as well as front-line employees, sales people as well as service or administrative workers. Many people felt stressed. The dual concerns of work and personal life competed for peoples' time and energy with negative consequences for both. At the same time that we were talking to people about work and family, we were also learning about the significant business issues engaging the district. A recent survey of customers revealed that relations with customers were deteriorating and that improving these relationships could translate into higher revenues. In response to these findings, the district had recently adopted a new strategy of selling systems solutions. This strategy required close partnering with customers in order jointly to diagnose their needs and concerns and then to create, again jointly, solutions to these issues. Further, the strategy had consequences for internal structures and processes. A high degree of collaboration and coordination among sales, service, and administration would be required. When we looked at these issues through a work-family lens we found that this strategy of customer focus supported by internal coordination was being undercut by work practices within the district, practices that also made it difficult for employees to integrate work and family lives. Although the district was managed by a cross functional management team, we found that the separate functions were insulated and competitive with each other. Each function had its own reward, reporting, and measurement systems that tended to promote functional goals over those of the total district. The culture was a competitive and stressful one. Sales budgets were increased every year without input from the field. Endings (monthly, quarterly, and yearly) were highly stressful times. Service techs were increasingly called upon to provide 24 hour service with a two hour response time. Beepers meant that new calls came in while they were working on old ones; they were never really away from work. Communication was also a problem. Information was tightly held and finger pointing and blame were common. Service technicians did not know when installations were a realistic possibility and they blamed sales representatives for inflating these estimates which then wreaked havoc with their own schedules. Sales representatives blamed the service technicians for poor customer relations that made their selling job more difficult and blamed the administrative staff for delays in their pay checks. Administrative staff blamed both sales and service for the delays in getting them the information they needed to schedule orders and deliveries. These connections between business issues and work-family concerns were captured in our diagnosis, the "mirror" we held up. Cross functional collaboration, we reported, was not a reality at the district. This had negative consequences for the business and for employees. Operating in an increasingly competitive environment, existing work practices and organizational culture led to a lack of coordination and communication across functions, which meant that groups worked at cross purposes and the customer was suffering. The individualistic culture also meant that people were reluctant to help each other at work and in meeting other responsibilities. These same barriers to collaboration affected employees' abilities to integrate work and family. Not only did this culture mean that everybody's work took more time, but also that people felt unsupported. They were left on their own to attend to work-family concerns. Some, in fact, described situations where others seemed deliberately to make things difficult for people with families. We held up the mirror first to the senior management team. They resonated to our findings about the business but were more skeptical about the connection to employees' work-family concerns. They were even more resistant to the specific proposal we made. We suggested that a cross functional team that sold, serviced, and supported one significant customer could be a pilot to develop collaboration across functions and the benefits for doing so. We called this proposal a "customer slice." The leadership team challenged us. They wondered why we were proposing an experiment about work rather than helping them implement the work-family policies that were in place. We worked through our analysis with them to show that it was current work practices that made using the work-family benefits so difficult. They were still not ready to proceed with an experiment and they asked us to test the mirror and the customer slice idea with employees. We brought the customer slice concept to employee roundtables. They were bewildered by the idea. "We are all separate groups who do our own work. There is no overlap." But as they talked about their work and work-family experiences, they discovered that they were not as separate as they thought. The groups shared their concerns about their own work and were pretty honest in pinpointing the shortcomings within and across functions. Sales reps said that there was no back up or coverage possible for their accounts when they were out on vacation or had family emergencies. Similarly service techs felt that they were always in a reactive mode which made it very difficult to take control of their work. Administrative employees felt scapegoated for breakdowns in the system which occurred because the other functions failed to provide them with the information they needed to process orders and work. To their surprise, roundtable members concluded that a cross functional team organized as a customer slice might make their work easier and they believed this would help them gain control over their lives more generally. The roundtable participants were genuinely excited by the possibilities. Armed with these insights and the excitement they generated, we returned to senior management. They were still skeptical. That a pilot might help the business, they were willing to accept. That there would be benefits also to employees' work-family concerns was harder for them to see. Further, they did not like the idea of a customer slice. The district was not structured by customers and so such a group would be expensive, disruptive, and time consuming to put into place. We were concerned about this resistance, especially after we had met the conditions they had placed on us—the survey, the roundtables. We tried to understand their reasoning, but at the same time we were unwilling to forfeit our agenda and confine our activities solely to policy and procedural adjustments. We pushed back on their objections. Finally, the senior manager turned to one of the team and said, "you really want to do this, don't you?" From this discussion emerged the possibility of the Offset Group [2] as a pilot for the project. Although this group, a product group, was not exactly a customer slice, it did meet the requirements we thought were critical—that sales, service, and administration work together with a common set of customers. The Offset Group was originally a separate company that had never been fully integrated into the district. An important product and potentially a source of high revenues, the group had performed below expectation for several years and had poor customer service ratings. The proposal that we work with the Offset Group was thus low risk from management's perspective. The group was in trouble, maybe we could help. Skepticism about the work-family implications continued. In consultation with the senior management team, a service manager was appointed as the internal project manager. He had a reputation for innovation with his own work group. We agreed to work with him to convene the group and keep senior management apprised of progress. To meet other concerns about existing policies and procedures, we also planned to meet with individual members of the senior team to help them on specific issues. The Offset Group and Other Associated Experimental Changes The Offset organization included approximately 75 people. In collaboration with senior management, we decided to begin with a core group of managers and involve the entire organization later. The original Offset Group included three managers from service, two from sales, and one from administration, but over the nine month period of our involvement, members of the group brought in other people who were connected in some way to the same product. The accomplishments were considerable. Sales exceeded planned targets, customer satisfaction improved, and group members implemented innovations in work structures and planning. Further, a number reported feeling more supported, more in control of their work and work-family issues, and less stressed. These successes had their roots in the early work with the Offset Group. We worked closely with the internal project manager to define roles and responsibilities and to find ways to support him and make his efforts visible. The first meeting with the group was critical. We had agreed that the internal project manager would run the meeting, but after introducing the agenda, he turned to us to define the purpose. As we had done with other groups, e.g. the roundtables, we repeated our diagnosis (the mirror) and explained the rationale behind our suggestion of the customer slice. Again we were met with similar responses. They expected assistance in implementing flexible work policies in their own functions. They felt they were separate functions and had no reason to have another meeting to talk to each other, they were already stretched doing their own work. Though we did not define an agenda for them, we and the project manager pushed them to talk about their work to see if a purpose would emerge—which it did. One of the service managers mentioned that he was about to lose four experienced service technicians at the end of the month in the first voluntary reduction in force. The sales managers were alarmed; not only were they unaware of this but they also saw it having a negative impact on their ability to sell and install equipment. This recognition of interdependence began to build their commitment to the idea that a cross functional group could benefit them. At the end of that meeting they planned to meet again in 3 weeks, and later scheduled monthly meetings which continued for almost nine months. We agreed to attend these meetings as a way to track progress in the pilot and to keep the dual agenda on the table. At subsequent meetings, the group continued to find areas of business collaboration. They developed a strategy for their project and looked at the connections among the business functions during a time when the district was going through significant downsizing and restructuring. An early success was important. One of the service managers was able to save a major sale to a large customer who was frustrated because of poor performance resulting from overworked older equipment. Even though the service manager got no official credit for this sale, it helped service informally because sales managers began to share actual sales data (as opposed to projections). By sharing these data, service could plan scheduled maintenance and have a qualified team ready to handle the actual installations. The group also engaged a variety of other problems—e.g. improving the paper work flow or discussing how to accommodate higher installation demands under downsizing and limitations on overtime. As the group became more cohesive, and because of our presence, discussions of work-family issues became more legitimate. In fact, on one occasion when a senior manager joined the group, he was asked to keep this as "our meeting" so that they could "talk about personal things here." And members did bring specific problems to the group. For example, we worked with sales managers to consider how part time work could be managed, and helped service managers benchmark alternative work schedules. Benefits also accrued beyond the group itself. Members of the Offset Group and others in the district began to appreciate the close connection between business issues and work-family concerns. People felt that it was now safe to propose new approaches. The Service managers created an innovative scheduling system. To cope with reduced staffing and more 24-hour call contracts, the service groups developed an informal system where employees could trade weekend work for days off during the week. [3] Changes occurred in sales as well. One sales manager encouraged his people to propose new approaches. A task force of employees, with senior management endorsement, developed new meeting practices: starting times for all morning meetings were moved later and ending times for afternoon meetings were moved earlier to incorporate employees' work-family commitments. During this time, an innovative but controversial proposal for a job share that had previously been rejected was approved. Nine months after the beginning of the pilot, the district surveyed employees. Work-family emerged as one of the three key issues. This was important because it signaled that work-family issues were now legitimate topics for individuals to discuss at work. Although defining our role as work-family experts might have made the group more comfortable, especially at the beginning, we saw our role more as supporting their effort, trying to insert the dual agenda whenever possible, and being there for the team in the ways they needed us. We attended almost every meeting, frequently interviewed members individually while we were on site, and did a formal survey at the end. Each time we visited the site we met with the project manager. We helped the group track its progress by analyzing and reporting back the many opportunities they had created for collaboration. The survey, which we fed back to the group and to the senior management team showed that the group felt that it was working well together and had improved its abilities to serve customers. On the work-family side, some members reported feeling less stress. Service managers took the lessons and the "out of box" thinking from the group back to their own people and experimented with alternative schedules. Nonetheless, keeping the dual agenda on the table turned out to be more difficult than we had anticipated. First, we decided that it would help jump start the team if they could find business successes to organize around. While this proved useful, it also meant that the connection between work concerns and work-family issues was not clearly apparent. Although we did introduce work-family considerations into the meetings, they were not as closely tied to the business issues as we would have liked. Second, we could have used the process that had been successful in the earlier phases of the work to keep the dual agenda more firmly in mind. That is, we could have interviewed members, diagnosed their connections between work and family, and used this mirror to examine work with as much attention to family benefits as to business concerns. Limited in the time we had, and anxious to get the group going, we did not explore this option as fully as, in retrospect, we could have. Throughout the process, we maintained close ties to senior management. Each time we visited the site, we met with top managers to keep them informed about progress and to continue the process of advocating the dual agenda. We also helped them on specific work-family issues. The senior sales manager asked us to meet with sales people to learn about work-family issues that needed to be addressed. These meetings led to the formation of a sales task force that looked at the barriers to work-family integration in the sales organization. We met with the senior service manager around such specific problems as scheduling flextime in the face of customer need. Some of the managers in the district were involved in truly innovative experiments of their own. We made these successes visible by reporting them across functional and hierarchical boundaries. Over time, we also developed a close working relation with the human resource manager. She kept us informed, and helped us interpret the major changes that were occurring in the district. Late in the process we learned that the district had previously tried a cross functional approach on this same product group which had failed. Senior managers were curious why the Offset Group was a success when previous efforts had failed. There are a number of reasons we could suggest: a talented project manager, our operational support of the team, their identification early on of problems that could be worked on, several quick successes—all of these surely contributed to the success of the Offset Group. We believe, however, that there is another more important reason. The members of the group, and indeed others who were aware of what was happening, came to believe that the group would not only make a real difference to their work but that these differences would translate into specific changes to make their lives at work and at home more manageable and more under their control. This relation to their own personal lives, we believe, is what engaged their creativity and energized them to make the group work. When we resumed to the District a year later, much had changed. Downsizing, restructuring, and the move to "virtual" offices had altered the business environment dramatically. Not surprisingly, many of the innovative links forged in the Offset Group were no longer evident. As is often the case in times of uncertainty and instability—ironically, times when creativity and innovation are most needed—people had reverted to old patterns and ways of thinking. Rather than continuing to think of using the link between work and family as a source of energy and creativity in meeting the new challenges, the focus moved once again to separating the two and giving precedence to work. So, for example, the idea of cross-functional teams had survived and formed the basis of a unit-wide reorganization along these lines, but the link back to the family was no longer being articulated as part of the strategic agenda or recognized as critical to the continued success of the innovation. Our experience here helped us articulate one of the key learnings from this project: a synergistic approach to work and family challenges so many deeply held assumptions about organizational success that it is unlikely that one or two interventions, no matter how successful, can change them. These old assumptions and cultural beliefs are likely to surface over and over again, undermining the transformative potential in this new approach. Rather than cause for dismay, we believe this is encouraging evidence of the power of these ideas and points to a strategy of small wins. Indeed, many of the team members from the Offset Group who are now dispersed in different areas of the company have told us that they took valuable lessons from their involvement in the project and are using them to organize work in different ways in their new work sites. * * * * * * The goal of this detailed example is to make more concrete both the value of rethinking work practices by means of a work-family lens and the problems of making and sustaining change. Though the story relates only to one particular site, we hope it nonetheless conveys, in a more vivid way, the lessons from this project. Susan Eaton and Maureen Harvey wrote this case, based on the work they did. Appendix Notes [1]. During the period of the research, there was considerable turnover and turmoil in this site. These changes included three shifts in management, consolidation of the service districts, downsizing, and other restructuring. Not only did this complicate the actual work of the project, but it had a demoralizing effect on employees and group members. Indeed, visiting the district to do the work was sometimes diffcult because employees felt overwhelmed by what was happening and discouraged about the possibility of linking personal needs to work practice change during such a period of instability. [2]. This is a fictitious name. [3]. When such a system was formally proposed, it was rejected at the corporate level because it would require revising existing computer programs for record keeping. Research Teams In Collaboration with Xerox Corporation; Tandem Computers, Inc.; Corning Inc. Rhona Rapoport Consultant- Coordinator Xerox Team
Lotte Bailyn
Deborah Kolb
Joyce Fletcher
Maureen Harvey
Susan Eaton
Robin Johnson
Leslie PerlowCorning Team
James A. Levine
Dana E. Friedman
Ellen Galinsky
Julia Faulcon-Gary
Dina RoldanTandem Team
Barbara Miller
Jerry Garfield
Roy Jacques
Amy Lyman
Joyce Ortega
Erica Pelavin
Suzanne Van Stralen Index Part I: Background and Historical Context
Part II: Linking of Work, Family & Community, & Gender Equity
Part III: Making and Sustaining Change
Notes, Suggested Readings, Appendix, Appendix Notes, Research Teams | 
