This article concerns Dr. Eisen's humanistic approach to organization development. Part I establishes the framework and Part II looks at the benefits and the future of human system redesign. - Editor

Redesigning Human Systems: A Holistic-Humanistic Framework

Part I

THE Human System Redesign (HSR) framework guides my practice with clients and my training and mentoring of new consultants. My intention here is to propose it as a way of thinking about the work we do, and a guide for doing it effectively. I hope to raise questions and spark ideas, and welcome correspondence. Human System Redesign is an evolving synthesis of Organization Development (OD). By human systems I refer to a range of configurations, groups and organizations, interacting in a stable pattern around shared concerns or goals. Redesigning such systems is done to reduce the causes of recurring problems, increase the system's effectiveness, actualize values, and be appropriately responsive to the environment. This emphasis on redesign denotes an interest beyond solving current problems, and moves toward changing conditions that create recurring patterns of problems or limit the system's continuing self-improvement.

The HSR Model - Nested Human Systems

THE structure of the Human System Redesign model is based on the Human System Development framework developed by Bob Tannenbaum, Fred Massarik, Newt Margulies and others (Tannenbaum, et. al., 1985) that considers organizations as structures of human systems nested within - and interacting with other - human systems: the individual, the group, the organization, and its environment. I have built on this framework to identify eight levels of human systems that are relevant to the work of consultants:

1. The person as a whole individual
2. The person's own internal dynamics and sub-selves
3. The interperson, composed of any two-person relationship
4. The family
5. The group, e.g., work team, committee, department staff, etc.
6. The organization
7. The community of stakeholders in which the organization exists
8. The society of all human beings on the planet.

The core premise of the HSR perspective is that there is a complex interdependence among these levels; one cannot work on one without affecting and being affected by the others. Conversely, an effective consultation process requires a holistic awareness of that interde pendence. One must use interven tion strategies that address the concerns and opportunities of sev eral system levels on simultaneous tracks.

For the most part, each of these levels has been studied as if it were independent of the others. What follows here is an overview of the roots and historical development of key concepts and methods at each system level. In Part II I will consider how HSR practitioners can use this framework to facilitate stability and change in human systems.

The Person

MUCH of the focus of psychology and related disciplines has revolved around the behavior of human beings as individuals or aggregates of individuals. The HSR model includes this perspective, with several qualifications and special emphases. The first is that this is one important, but not the only, perspective. Further, I emphasize the mutual influence between the individual and each of the other levels in shaping and interpreting behavior.

Another important aspect of my focus on the person in HSR is based on the work of Carl Rogers (1951,1961) and its influence on the thinking and practice of many psychotherapists, consultants, educators, nurses, and other professionals. Rogers' way of working was originally termed non-directive counseling, and later called client centered therapy. This terminology has further evolved to the person centered approach. This approach is based on three elements:

1. the practitioner valuing the legitimacy of each person's own way of experiencing the world,
2. communicating nonjudgmental empathic understanding of the person's experience, and
3. behaving authentically as a consultant, including clear and direct communication of the consultant's own relevant thoughts and feelings.

This approach rests on the assumption that each person has the capacity to make the best judgments and decisions about how to solve his or her own problems. The role of consultants is to help clients to clarify their own goals, priorities, feelings, and behavior patterns so that they can make decisions about how to proceed. This way of framing the consultant-client relationship underlies Edgar Schein's (1969) definition of process consultation with groups and organizations. In one of the seminal publications in OD, Schein distinguished between

• (a) the expert consulting model, in which the client purchases that person's technical expertise,
• (b) the medical model, in which the client gets a diagnosis and a prescribed solution, and
• (c) the process consultant, who joins the client as a partner in learning, problem-solving and improvement.

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Subselves

I find it useful to consider the ways in which a person's interaction with family and work associates is matched and mirrored by an inner world of sub-identities and related intrapersonal dynamics and structures. Several psychologists have used models of the person based on a system of sub-identities. One can refer, for example, to Harry Stack Sullivan's (1953) good-me, bad-me, and not-me; Eric Berne's (1964) parent, adult, child; Stewart Shapiro's (1962) ego states, super ego states, and id states; and Fritz Perls' (1951) underdog and overdog. An awareness of these structures can provide consultants and clients with a rich perspective for understanding experience, behavior, and interaction.

The goal of therapy in working with subself systems is to bring to awareness the character, role, and function of each sub-identity, and to foster more coherent integration among all the subselves into a healthy and well-functioning personality. In HSR work, I include the possibility that the consultant and client can work together to understand the reciprocal influence between subself dynamics and other system levels. A more coherent integration among subselves and among system levels may be a worthwhile goal.

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The Interperson

Herb Shepard used this term to refer to the systemic entity composed of two or more individuals in relationship. If we think of relationships as interpersons, we can then consider those characteristics, structures, and patterns that define its interpersonality. The analog between personality and interpersonality can be a powerful one, both because of what it can highlight about the quality of a relationship, and also because of what it implies about the relationship aspects of personality. Is the interperson extraverted or introverted? How much self-esteem does it have? Is it flexible and well-balanced, or is it rigid and dominated by some parts of itself at the expense of others? Is it open to experience of itself and to external information, or is it unaware of its own dynamics and closed to external influences? Is its energy used to develop and ex pand its capabilities, or is it characterized by internal conflict and depression?

Shepard (1965) proposed that the quality of relationships within organizations determines the organization's character. Relationships that are coercive, competitive, and distrustful hobble the organization's ability to function effectively and to be adaptive to a changing environment. The role of organization development, he said, is to guide a shift toward relationships that are voluntary, collaborative, and trusting. He referred to these two types of relationship as growing out of either a primary or a secondary mentality, respectively. Thus, Shepard conceptualized organization development as working simultaneously at these three levels - individuals, relationships, and organizations.

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The Family

WHILE it is not usually included in models of organizational research and consulting, I believe family relationships and experience are an integral aspect of human behavior, both outside and within the work setting. The HSR model acknowledges the relevance and importance of the family, both as a historical antecedent to current behavior patterns, and as an ongoing (though usually unacknowledged) influence on the decisions and priorities of the participants in each of the other human systems.

Much of human behavior in organizations, for example, can be seen as a reflection of old patterns that were learned in the family. Coworkers aspiring for a promotion may engage in sibling rivalry with each other, patterned after their own early family experiences. Their competition may be mild and relatively appropriate to the organizational reality, or it may take on a meaning beyond the situation, generating strong feelings, distorted perceptions, and bizarre behavior. Similarly, the behavior of a supervisor may be modeled after his/her own early experiences with parents and the role of authority in the family.

Decisions about company expansion or relocation usually have consequences for the family life of organizational participants. The family is thus a key stakeholder in such plans, though it is seldom consulted or even acknowledged in any formal sense. More and more, we are beginning to understand that the organization does not exist in a vacuum, and that ignoring the perspective and needs of stakeholders like the family only leads to unexpected problems. Some businesses are beginning to design company child-care programs and similar support services as a way to respond to these needs.

To assist in the redesign of human systems, one must consider the family as one important focus. The work of family therapy theorists and practitioners like Virginia Satir (1967,1972) and others can be especially useful as a guide for working with family systems as well as other system levels. Following Satir's approach, the HSD consultant "creates a setting in which people can ... take the risk of looking clearly and objectively at themselves and their actions." (Satir, 1967 pp. 160-177). The aim is to develop skills for clear and direct communication as well as improving self-esteem among all members of the human system.

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The Group

EVER since the discoveries by Roethlisberger et.al. (1939) at the Hawthorne plant of Western Electric, we have been aware of the power of groups to influence behavior in organizations. The work of Kurt Lewin (1947) and his many gifted colleagues and students also highlighted the effectiveness of group discussion for changing behavior. Years later Rensis Likert (1961) proposed a model of organizations as interlocking groups connected by managers as linking pins. Almost all organizational structures are composed of groups as building blocks, whether they are department staffs, functional groups, project teams, or self-managing teams.

Several of Lewin's students (Bradford et.al., 1964) were involved in the dramatic innovations that started in the late '40s at the National Training Labs in Bethel, Maine, and resulted in the use of T-groups or (at UCLA) sensitivity training groups for the reeducation of managers. The introduction of T-group methods into organizational consulting led to the use of team building as a powerful intervention to increase the effectiveness of task groups.

The team building method also built on the action research model developed by Lewin (1946). The consultant guides members of the group in generating data about how they are working together toward the group's task or mission. These data are fed back to the group and the problem areas thus identified form the agenda for facilitated work sessions in which the team works toward improving its own effectiveness. As more groups go through this process and then also address any intergroup issues, the effectiveness and adaptiveness of the whole organization improves.

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The Organization

THIS is the explicit focus for organization development, as is evident by its name. The field and the profession emerged from the realization, influenced by family systems therapy, that while T-groups could help individuals to change their behavior in dramatic ways, the back-home organization was even more effective at changing it back. This powerful homeostatic effect led T-group trainers and consultants to wonder whether organizations themselves could be changed in ways that support managers' newly proactive and collaborative behavior. Thus we can trace an evolutionary sequence in theory and practice - from developing managers, to developing teams, to developing organizations.

Underlying much of our work with organizations is an array of research findings and professional experience developed primarily during the last five or six decades in the fields of management, organization theory, and organizational behavior. These in turn are supported by more basic research in the behavioral sciences, especially social psychology, sociology, and cultural anthropology. Managers and organizational consultants must be knowledgeable in areas such as organizational structure and design, power and politics, conflict and negotiation, motivation and reward systems, organizational culture, and leadership.

The importance of the organization level is, of course, rooted in the legal and financial role of the corporate entity - whether it is a business or a nonprofit agency. In our society, it is the organization that hires and formally empowers managers and consultants. Individual managers and groups such as committees and boards are also involved in these activities, but only as agents of the corporate entity as a whole, guided by the requirements of the whole. This has tended to define the client consultant relationship and has framed the consultant's work as organization development.

The emergence of OD and its prolific cousins and progeny (e.g., Socio-Technic System Redesign, Total Quality Management, Process Reengineering) have been part of a revolution in the practice of management and the facilitation of change in organizations. A rich proliferation of organizational behavior theories and management methods has emerged and multiplied, along with healthy debate about their respective merits and efficacy. But the ghost of systemic limitation haunts OD as much as it did T-groups. Effective as OD efforts may be, they are surprisingly vulnerable to shifts in the organization's environment. Emerging approaches, therefore, increasingly place emphasis on an expanded focus to include stakeholders like customers and suppliers, and an awareness of trends in the community and the globalized environment.

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The Community

EVERY human system - person, group, organization, etc. - exists within a community of stakeholders. It survives, perhaps even thrives, on the basis of these transactions as negotiated with a community of stakeholders: vendors, customers, employees, banks, shareholders, and government agencies. As the environment in which organizations function has become more turbulent, managers have learned that they need to maintain the organization's relationship with key stakeholders. Four levels of attention are possible: denial, reaction, anticipation, and co-construction.

Denial is generally a disastrous strategy; except perhaps in unusual circumstances, such as monopoly, or the early implementation of a breakthrough technology, when everything one makes is sure to sell, capital is plentiful, etc. An organization that ignores its stakeholder relationships is not likely to survive long. Reaction is probably the most commonly used strategy. A vendor's price goes up, so the company begins looking for other vendors, or for substitute supplies. A product stops selling, so new sales efforts are employed to return to normal. This is a passive homeostatic approach. Anticipation, on the other hand, is more of an active homeostatic approach. The idea is to monitor the organization's environment for emerging threats and opportunities so as to prepare adequately before they fully arrive. This is the premise behind strategic planning. Although more proactive, this approach is also generally homeostatic, seeking to maintain the balance and character of the enterprise in the face of environmental changes.

Co-construction, the fourth approach, is even more proactive. It seeks ways of engaging key stakeholders in creative negotiations aimed at improving the mutual benefits in each relationship. Often this leads to shared inquiry into the assumptions and premises held by the parties, leading to a fundamental reframing of the nature and structure of their relationships. The co-construction approach underlies newer processes such as dialogue (Isaacs, 1993), future search conferences (Weisbord, 1992) and accelerated redesign (Axelrod, 1992).

This co-constructive approach is a fundamental premise in Human System Redesign, not only at this level, but for all system levels. The consultant facilitates transactions among all relevant stakeholders aimed at a consensual process of deconstructing the shared social reality and reconstructing a new, more coherent, mutually satisfying reality.

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Global Society

WE are becoming increasingly aware of the larger global society of as the ultimate context for everything we do. Business organizations can no longer ignore the intense competition from companies half a globe away that can often produce better quality at a lower price. We are similarly aware of the immense potential markets emerging for our products and services in Eastern Europe, China, and Latin America.

Similarly, we are learning the painful lessons of pollution and degradation of the environment. There is no longer any "out" to throw things to. Our own or our neighbors' practices that appear innocent and profitable in the short run are increasingly understood in terms of the longer term costs and damage they may create - to others and to ourselves.

Communication technologies increasingly blur distances and make any location on earth accessible; any source of information available; any potential market local. Internet links are giving us a foretaste of the information superhighways we'll be travelling in the near future. The distinction between what is local and what is global is beginning to blur as human beings across the planet are learning how they can and do influence each other, compete with each other, learn from each other. What happens to some of us affects all of us, one way or another. And so we are learning to consider the global implications of what we do, and the effects of global events and developments on our clients and ourselves.

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Application
In this second part I explore some implications of the model for facilitating change and stability in human systems.