I belong to a family that likes to put puzzles together. Mom and Dad were avid constructers. My sister and her husband frequently have a table in their living room with a puzzle underway. And my brother could search for hours to find a key piece.
I too have a puzzle table in my home—but it’s for my relatives.
Over the years, puzzles have changed: number of pieces was increased, 3D structures were introduced, and Jim Christensen’s unusual piece shapes were created. There is even a company that creates puzzles from pictures. I had a group photo of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir at Mount Rushmore made into a puzzle—more than three hundred members, including my dad, plus the four presidents.
In a group constructing a puzzle, each person brings a different perspective on how to achieve the end result:
- A three-year-old can get any two pieces to fit—by force.
- One person will work to complete the borders first.
- Another will sort the pieces by color or context.
- Some will have an intense focus on finding one key piece.
- Frequently there is an observer who professes to be developing a master plan.
- At some point there is an onset of paranoia that a piece is missing. (Once there was a piece that was put through the washer and dryer.)
Each individual’s behavior makes a contribution toward completing the puzzle, but the interaction of behavior is rarely explored.
There is a process involved in every activity—whether creating a puzzle or an event. Fitting together the component pieces for an effective process in specific organizational contexts has the features of working on an ongoing puzzle. Organizational processes have captured my attention across my research interests, course topics, administrative roles, and citizenship responsibilities. I believe the effort to improve organizational processes is extremely important for our common good.
Yes, there will always be important organizational goals, impressive mission statements, well-charted projects, and assigned tasks. These are like the puzzle picture on the box. There will also be decisions, frameworks, and actions. These constitute pieces of the process—how we actually work together.
Lockheed Martin’s company ad campaign captures the role of process. It says:
Between the idea and the achievement, there is one important word: how. And it is the how that makes all the difference.1
Years ago as the newest member of a lay review committee for the research evaluation staff of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I helped review research projects requested by General Authorities. I was the lead reviewer for a study in which our subcommittee agreed that one particular request for research should not be done. “What is the process for telling a General Authority no?” I asked innocently.
“There isn’t one,” joked a committee member. But we created one.
In the mid-1980s I was asked to take responsibility for the Executive MBA program, which was in a pilot stage. I was warned that my involvement would be too much administrative responsibility too soon. I was among those who raised the question: “What is the process for integrating a new program that secures value for faculty and students while preserving the integrity of the MBA degree?” When the answer was, “We don’t know yet,” I was enticed by the challenge to collaborate with colleagues to change our own organization. And we did.
How questions continued to hold my interest: How best to learn about the experiences and frustrations of minority students? How can faculty colleagues be in each others’ classrooms to learn in addition to the required peer review time? How should BYU’s Women’s Concerns Committee convey recommendations to the President’s Advisory Council? How can students be involved in on-site research or consultation? How can managers value learning about differences and achieve an equitable, inclusive organizational culture while meeting business goals?
Each person in an organization can be as convinced that his or her way of getting things done is best. But the collective ability of a team to examine and value improving its processes may be relegated way behind completing a specific task or getting the final results. I am not suggesting an either/or choice. I have learned the importance of examining both content and process so that one develops a range of appropriate knowledge and skills.
In our many organizational contexts, each of us is contributing to the underlying process. If you are like most of the graduate students who have been in my group dynamics class, the process pieces you are contributing are anchored on your active behavior—what you say or do. However, not doing something, such as being silent in a discussion, also contributes to how the group works together.
I have learned that, one way or the other, we shape the process in which we participate—there is no neutral ground. When the puzzle is on the table, everyone can experience both the picture and the pieces. When the puzzle is the how of organizational process, one has to find and make the pieces visible then determine if others actually see the process and how the pieces fit together.
During my years at BYU, each of the three main areas of my research and teaching—dominant group identity and diversity, small group theory and practice, and organizational development and change—have enhanced my citizenship and administrative roles. These roles required improving organizational processes and our contributions to them.
From decades of work on the puzzle of effective process, I offer a brief description of three key pieces.
Who Are You?
Know the process implications of your identity—both personal characteristics and social categories. Who are you as a contributor?
In How Can I Help? Ram Dass shares the experience of a medical intern meeting a very ill patient:
I remember one guy distinctly . . . who was altogether different. I think this guy changed my life. . . . One night there was an emergency, and I took the initiative and went to see him alone. He looked pretty bad. He gave me a grin and said, “Well . . . ,” sort of like he’d expected me. . . . I imagine I looked a little surprised by the “Well . . .” but we just laughed a minute, and I stood there just so taken by who he was. And then he hit me with a single remark, half a question and half a . . . something else. “Who you?” he said, sort of smiling. Just that. “Who you?”
I started to say, “Well, I’m Doctor. . . .” And then I just stopped cold. It’s hard to describe. . . . What happened was that all kinds of answers to his question started to go through my head. They all seemed true, but they also seemed less than true. “Yeah, I’m this or I’m that . . . and also. . . but not just . . . and that’s not the whole picture.” . . . The thought process went something like that.
It must have shown, because he gave me this big grin and said, “Nice to meet you.”2
So “Who you?” as a contributor to effective process? Do you know how your personal influence adds to the quality of the process for your team? Or in your family?
Is it your style to repeat a point hoping it will fit—symbolically the same strategy of putting pieces together by persistent pressure? If you are a big-picture thinker (you do the borders of a puzzle first), when is that emphasis needed? If you think that the key piece of data is missing, what do you do? If you avoid saying anything, how is that perceived?
We each also have identities from the social categories we represent. It is easier for many individuals to note, “I’m the only faculty here from my department” than to notice who in the room is influenced by the dynamics of gender, race, ability, age, etc.
Early one fall morning, I flew to Paris to make a forty-five minute presentation to a diversity task force for Royal Dutch Shell. When they told me that I was selected, they also told me that some members of the team had given me the first ten minutes to demonstrate that I was not just a “U.S.-centric academic.” I had thought about how perceptions of my identity would affect the presentation process. After all, “it is the how that makes all the difference.”
How we work together defines us as much as what our task is. “Who you?”
Your effort to improve how things get done always adds to the opportunity of creating value for you as well as the group or organization. It enables you to test assumptions and take responsibility for your contributions. Quite possibly, your efforts will provide the process leadership to discuss how effectively we are working together as easily as we offer ideas about our task or the topic.
Among you are peers, colleagues, and relatives who know who they are and the importance of their process contributions. Find them. Watch how their efforts create effective processes in meetings or families.
Creating a Process
The second way to improve our organizational lives is to know how to design a task-appropriate process. This means having both an emphasis on being able to be creative and also making sure the process (how you approach the task) is relevant.
The ability to design ways to work together does not always reside in the leader of the group, and there are ways to suggest process improvements without undermining the authority of the designated leader.
One of my favorite phone calls began with a simple request to join a group for an off-campus lunch; the main topic discussed was how to influence the planning process for the new Tanner Building Addition. And we did. It was a privilege to be a part of a process that matched the required tasks with what needed to happen and who needed to be involved.
Whenever you hear someone complain about a meeting, listen to the participant and look for the missing process pieces. Some tasks require enough time to develop trust; sometimes a vote is a better tool than consensus. I once made an assumption; I thought, “It will take someone with more authority than I have to influence this process.” With that assumption operating, I failed to be effective.
Over the years, I have come to believe that designing effective processes is a significant form of service. Engage in it. It is the modern equivalent of the Good Samaritan parable. Only instead of one person suffering by the roadside, a group or family is hampered by an ineffective process, and we can be too busy, be uninterested in their plight, or excuse our ability to respond.
President Spencer W. Kimball taught: “The more we serve our fellowmen in appropriate ways, the more substance there is to our souls.”3
I gave some of my students an intentionally ambiguous assignment: “Help each member of your quartet develop group-member skills.” They placed a significant amount of time and insight in service to each individual in their group. Their process changed lives. To place what you have and who you are in service to enable another to develop his or her abilities adds substance to our souls.
Guiding Principles
A third key piece needed to complete the process puzzle is the capacity to articulate guiding principles for effective processes. How we treat others and why we are proposing a certain course of action in the process matters.
You are or will be faced with conflicting processes and priorities. Articulating your theories, skills, or beliefs will help build a shared foundation for working together. Since information is now abundantly available and time is often calibrated by individual attention spans, your reasoning for when time needs to be spent in group work and how value is added from effective organizational process must be sound. Your voice will be important. Our capacity to examine the way something is being done, to raise concerns without inviting a contentious spirit, and to not seek individual gain at the expense of fair and appropriate process is increasingly important.
We live in an era when our collective attention to why things happen is more and more needed. You will be involved in providing the “why” for a process that supports new forms of organization and ways of working. Someone will say, “It can’t be done.” Your commitment and skills will make a difference. Invest in them. These three pieces—knowing who you are in how things get done, being able to design a relevant process, and being guided by sound principles—can make our combined work on the puzzle of process more effective.
For me, evidence of my effort to live a Christlike life should show up in my daily interaction with others. Gospel beliefs can be expressed as guiding principles for effective ways of working together—in ways that those who do not share the same religious practice can understand.
As I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the gospel is my living process guide. Sorting through the stacks of paper in my office, I came across an article from 1991 by John Tanner titled “Not a Mind without a Soul.”4 This was an address delivered to the Hinckley Scholarship recipients. He states: “I commend and honor you for your accomplishments. . . . But because you are already academically accomplished, I want to remind you of other ways to measure achievement. I do so in the spirit of the Hinckley Scholarship, which has always aimed at rewarding young scholars committed to goodness as well as greatness. . . . It is fitting to recall that ‘character is higher than intellect’ and that there is no true greatness without love.”
He goes on to say: “Doubtless, God rejoices in our achievement; but above all He regards our hearts.”
I am grateful for opportunities to serve, for a program of study that contributes to effective process, for the lives that have blessed mine, and for the generosity of the Dyer family that supports the William G. Dyer Distinguished Alumni Award. I suggest that if we are among those who hear, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant” at the end of our mortal process, it will be the how that made all the difference.
About the Speaker
Kate L. Kirkham is an emeritus Marriott School faculty member. At the time of her retirement, she was the OB/HR faculty group leader in the Organizational Leadership and Strategy Department. This article is adapted from her remarks upon receiving the William G. Dyer Distinguished Alumni Award on 9 April 2009.
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Article written by Kate L. Kirkham
Illustrations by Philippe Lardy
Notes
- Lockheed Martin Corporation. Retrieved April 2009 from www.lockheedmartin.com/how.
- Ram Dass and Paul Gorman, How Can I Help? New York. Alfred A. Knopf (1985): 29-31.
- Quoted in Dieter F. Uchtdorf, “Happiness, Your Heritage,” Ensign 38:11 (November 2008): 119.
- John S. Tanner, “Not a Mind without a Soul,” BYU Today 45:2 (March 1991): 27, 44.
