A Client Clore-Up: Bank of America

Aunque uno de los valores fundamentales del Instituto Adizes es la confidencialidad del cliente, ha pasado suficiente tiempo y se ha concedido permiso para permitirnos compartir este acercamiento al cliente que describe nuestro trabajo con Bank of America.

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Mont McMillen no se apresura a abrazar las teorías de gestión de moda, ni se deja llevar por consultores externos. Pero en los últimos meses, el vicepresidente ejecutivo y jefe de la División Norteamericana (NAD) ha estado aplicando activamente en toda la NAD los principios del Dr. Ichak Adizes, un destacado, y a veces controvertido, asesor de gestión.

“Adizes doesn’t come into an organization claiming he can solve its problems”, says Mont. “He has a methodology that allows groups of people to identify and solve their own problems. The method isn’t terribly unique or mysterious, but it is sound, and we need some fresh, sound ideas to help us cope with the dramatic changes we face”.

When he first heard Dr. Adizes present his ideas last January, Mont says he saw a good fit between NAD’s needs and what is called the Adizes method.

“His concepts on how to harness conflict, how to bring people from different units, with diverse skills, styles, and points of view, and how to create teams that could combine the authority, power and influence needed to turn theoretical answers into practical solutions that get implemented-all struck a responsive chord”

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Fundamental to the Adizes method is the theory that an organization (or a division for that matter) has four primary roles or duties it must perform effectively. It must effectively produce the results for which it exists. It must be administered; that is, its decision must be made in the right sequence, with the right timing, and with the right intensity. It must be entrepreneurial, which requires creativity and the willingness to take risks. Finally, an organization must be integrated, which means that individual goals must be harmonized with group goals by unifying people around a common cause.

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Estas cuatro funciones principales de una organización (productor, administrador, empresario e integrador) son también las cuatro funciones principales que debe desempeñar un directivo. Y, sin embargo, un principio fundamental del método Adizes es que ninguna persona puede desempeñar estas cuatro funciones con eficacia. Además, un directivo individual rara vez tiene todo el poder, la autoridad y la influencia necesarios para llevar a cabo las diferentes funciones de estos roles.

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Says Dr. Adizes: “I claim that the ‘textbook manager’, who is knowledgeable, organized, detailed and thorough and also a charismatic, creative, risk-taking leader, who is good at interpersonal relations, sensitive to human needs, and a team builder - doesn’t exist. We’re all looking for some genius, some incredible human being who will have no faults. And, because of our level of expectations, and because no person can fulfill them, we’re continuously frustrated by all the people around us, above us, and below us”‍

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En resumen, Adizes parte de la base de que todos los gestores individuales son -casi por definición y ciertamente en la práctica- malos gestores. Es decir, son deficientes en sus capacidades para desempeñar una o más de sus funciones principales. La solución a esta crisis de mala gestión es la gestión de equipos, y una idea central del método Adizes es que la combinación adecuada de diferentes personas con diferentes estilos - productor, administrador, empresario e integrador - producirá una buena gestión.

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Unfortunately, this combination of managers with divergent skills and styles creates conflict. This fact of human nature leads to Adizes’s second major principle: “Never resolve conflict” he says. “Harness it”. Channel it, but never resolve it. The only time you need to resolve conflict is when you’re dead. And how do you harness conflict? By basing relationships on mutual trust and respect.

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La creación de equipos de directivos que puedan trabajar juntos para producir, administrar, actuar empresarialmente e integrar una organización es el núcleo del método Adizes. Pero mejorar las relaciones interpersonales no es su objetivo. Ayudar a resolver los problemas de la organización y a adaptarse al cambio sí lo es.

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Los principales problemas de NAD, según Mont, tenían un tema común -el mismo tema que Adizes sonó-: la necesidad de trabajar en equipo. "La mayoría de nuestras dificultades tenían que ver con la forma en que NAD y sus clientes debían interactuar y trabajar en cooperación con otras unidades dentro de la división y con el resto del banco", dice. "Algunas unidades del banco pueden actuar con relativa independencia. Pero nuestros clientes utilizan regularmente no sólo nuestros servicios, sino, a través de nosotros, los servicios de las unidades de World Banking, así como las operaciones corporativas y minoristas de California. Para nosotros, la coordinación transdivisional es una necesidad empresarial porque estamos irremediablemente vinculados al resto del banco. Por desgracia, esta coordinación, por no hablar de la comunicación, no siempre existía, y no teníamos capacidad para resolver el problema solos porque algunas de las soluciones estaban fuera de la autoridad de NAD. Lo que más necesitábamos como división era una metodología lógica para identificar nuestros problemas específicos y atacarlos uno por uno. El método Adizes llegó en el momento oportuno y, en mi opinión, encaja a la perfección".

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En junio de 1983, los altos cargos de la NAD se reunieron para escuchar al Dr. Adizes presentar su concepto y formar lo que se denomina, en el lenguaje especial del método Adizes, un conducto organizativo participativo, o POC, para abreviar. Un POC es un grupo permanente de personas que representan a una unidad organizativa. A continuación, el POC realizó un diagnóstico sinérgico de la división. Se trataba de un examen exhaustivo de tres días de duración sobre la misión de la división y las áreas que podía mejorar. Los oficiales superiores que participaron identificaron un gran número de problemas de la división o, de nuevo en el lenguaje de Adizes, puntos de mejora potencial (PIP). Las preocupaciones iban desde la coordinación entre divisiones, las políticas de personal y el proceso de planificación, hasta las decisiones de precios y los productos de la competencia. Los problemas se clasificaron según su prioridad para la división, y los que encabezaban la lista se asignaron a equipos especiales para su resolución.

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Dado que el POC no podía tratar todos los temas, el NAD formó otros POC, para centrarse en áreas concretas de interés. Tom Cleveland, Vicepresidente y Director de la Oficina de Banca Internacional (IBO) de Los Ángeles, y un miembro del POC de NAD formaron un POC de IBO. ¿Cuántos PIP produjo el POC del IBO?

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“I wouldn’t want to list them all”, says Tom. “After all, PIPs are potential improvement points. I’d rather focus on results”. One of the problems Tom’s group identified was the long delay processing telephone remittance orders. “Each day our office in Los Angeles takes between 300 and 600 international money transfer requests from as many as 500 California branches. On the average, a branch officer would be on hold 30 minutes before being able to process a money transfer. That was simply not acceptable service. It was poor performance as far as we were concerned, as far as the branch was concerned and as far as our customers were concerned. So we formed a special team to address that specific issue. The team was a multi-discipline group and included people from California Division, the Audit department - and from IBO - two officers from Money Transfer and three Telephone Remittance operators. The assignment we gave the team was to make sure all the calls were answered within five minutes and not to solve the problem by increasing staff. Those were the criteria we imposed upon them, and, frankly, the task seemed impossible. But at the same time, we also gave the team the freedom of thought and action to find an innovative solution. And they did”.‍

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Tom credits the members of the team for the solution - primarily a matter of scheduling, coordination, and minor equipment changes - but he also acknowledges the Adizes method made the solution possible. “I was a skeptic when I first heard about Adizes. I think most of us were. It takes some time to get comfortable with the method; the rules can be strict; and there’s too much jargon. But the results we began to get - not just on the problem I’ve told you about, but on several others - changed my mind”‍

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How does the Adizes method help people solve problems that proved intractable before? “It makes you bleed a lot”, says Tom. “I’m serious. When you’re in that three-day group discussion in which you identify all your business problems, you’re concentrating every moment on everything you’re not doing right. But the experience - in fact, the strict rules of the meeting - force you, maybe for the first time, to really listen to what other people are saying. And when you do begin to listen, you begin to realize that maybe you don’t have all the answers, and maybe you do need someone’s help. You stop judging people’s ideas on the basis of whether you like the people or the cut of their hair, and start judging their ideas on whether they make sense. You also become a little more objective about your own abilities. At some point you helicopter out your entrenched, personal point of view and see issues objectively. You gain the distance, the intellectual honesty, the maturity, to stop seeing issues as turf battles and start seeing them from the point of view of what’s good for the organization. It’s a painful process - honesty hurts - and that’s what I meant by bleeding. But from that experience, which every member of the group under-goes, comes a great deal of mutual trust, understanding, and respect. And you begin to work as a team”.‍

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La reunión especial, en la que se identifican los problemas, es el primer gran paso. El segundo, la resolución de los problemas, es tarea de los equipos individuales.

“The Adizes method takes a very logical approach to solving problems", says Tom. “It assigns the PIP to a team that is made up of the people who actually know the problem first-hand. Traditionally, managers try to solve problems by themselves. They sit in corner offices behind closed doors and try to come up with solutions. Often, they didn’t have any direct experience with the problem; they may not even precisely know what the problem is; and they frequently don’t foresee the real consequences of their decisions. They end up producing memos rather than solving problems. An Adizes team, on the other hand, is made up of people directly concerned with the issue - officer, non-officer, it doesn’t matter.” Such a team bears some similarity to a quality circle, but the differences are significant. An Adizes team is assigned a specific task to perform or problem to solve, always within a set period of time. When the problem is solved, the team disbands. Most importantly, this team has what Adizes calls “capi”, which he defines as the coalesced authority, power and influence sufficient to make decisions and implement them.

“Giving people the responsibility, as well as the ability, to solve problems that directly affect them is a powerful motivator", says Tom. “People have the opportunity - for many it’s the first time - to solve their own problems. What you’ve given them is ownership and the chance to exercise their own intelligence. As a result, the environment within an Adizes team can be dynamic; the ideas just geyser up. And the people involved become very positive about change because they have been able to contribute and derive the benefits from it. There’s nothing particularly special about the method, except that it actively employs some basic logic of human nature.”

Tom dice que varios otros equipos han estado trabajando en el seno del IBO POC. Algunos se han concentrado en los procedimientos operativos, como el seguimiento y el cómputo de los costos de las transacciones y la mejora de la precisión de los sistemas de contabilidad, ambos de los cuales, dice, pueden potencialmente ahorrar enormes cantidades de dinero. Otro equipo está trabajando en una nueva estructura para el Departamento de Banca Personal del IBO que consolidará las funciones, aumentará la eficiencia y nos ayudará en nuestras estrategias comerciales para 1984 y más allá.

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The NAD and the IBO POC’s are only two of the five POC’s that have been formed in the bank. Len Linden, Vice President of Special Studies and overall coordinator for the Adizes method at the bank, says that when NAD formed its own, as well as an IBO POC, a Treasury POC was also created. "This Treasury POC was the first of our truly multi-discipline groups," he says. “Its members came from NAD, Cashiers, and from Bank Investment Securities Division. You can see that NAD first looked at the division wide concerns with the NAD POC, next focused more narrowly on the IBOs, and then concentrated on cross-divisional issues in the Treasury POC.”‍

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Pero muchos de los problemas que planteaban los tres primeros POC no podían abordarse sin la participación de otras unidades del banco. Por ello, el siguiente POC formado -el Wholesale - U.S.A., o POC WUSA- tenía una base aún más amplia. Sus miembros procedían de NAD, Global Systems Services, World Banking Administration y de Retail Financial Services. Por último, se formó un POC Corporativo, cuya misión es abordar aquellos problemas que requieren la participación de todo el banco.

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Len says it’s too early to tell how many more POCs will be formed or to what extent the rest of the bank will use the Adizes method. “I think the response, on the whole, has been very positive, and I am sure we will be using the Adizes method where there is a clear need for it. But this is only one of several ways the bank is trying to bring about change.” Mont agrees. “The Adizes method isn’t a panacea but is filling a need at a particular time. Today, the bank is faced with a difficult period in our history, and we must change in order to survive. Any catalyst for change, any method that helps people manage change as a natural part of their job, is a good one. And this is a good method. It promotes mutual trust and responsibility. It helps create teamwork. And, to me, it has at its core an important tenet-tenacity. It says, if you’ve got a problem, don’t let it go until you’ve resolved it. It’s not an easy discipline, but one of the results is great: It gets everyone to pull their oars in the same direction.”