Fostering a Continuous-Learning Mindset in a Federal Research Organization

Organization Development Journal, Summer 2007 by Elstein, Kenneth, Driver, Kathy

Introduction

The mission of the Office of Research and Development (ORD) in the Environmental Protection Agency is to provide the EPA with sound scientific support for regulatory decision-making. In 2002, ORD concluded that in order to become more responsive to the needs of federal and state regulatory decision-makers, and more accountable to Congress and the public it serves, it had to transform its culture from one characterized by the traditional hierarchical model to one in which all employees feel empowered to initiate both innovative research programs and fundamental operational improvements. Having had only limited success in previous years with traditional problem-focused (deficit-based) approaches to organizational change, it began using the strengths-based approach of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) to inspire its workforce and utilize their knowledge and expertise to envision more innovative and effective ways to meet client needs.

While two previously conducted large-scale AI summits promoted collaborative dialog and a shared vision of ORD's future, staff lacked the knowledge, skills and ability to routinely apply the underlying appreciative philosophy in ways that would further this cultural transformation in their organizational units. To enhance staff understanding, we as internal OD practitioners developed a model that distinguishes the current ORD traditional deficit-based, perfectionist mindset from the appreciative, continuous-learner mindset we aspired to achieve. To implement this "to be" model, we use four approaches:

1) as trainers, we conduct a workshop we developed to explicitly introduce the model and provide our participants with tools to practice its application in work-related settings,

2) as consultants, we apply the model when designing and/or facilitating formal meetings and retreats,

3) as coaches, we help managers and staff apply the model to their particular situations, and

4) as catalysts of change, we continue to build an expanding, disseminated network of model practitioners to parallel the distributed power base of our organization.

While we have been using this multi-pronged approach for only two years, these efforts are fostering closer cross-organizational collaborations between scientists, promoting stronger team dynamics, and contributing to faster, better informed decisions with greater stakeholder support, and a reduction in the conflict-promoting dialogs that stifled progress in the past.

The Business Case for Change

Since its formation in 1972, the mission of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Office of Research and Development (ORD) has been to provide the EPA with sound scientific support for regulatory decision-making. However, in 1994, an independent, congressionally mandated assessment concluded that "the discipline-based organization of ORD's laboratories was not optimal to support the mission-based organization of the rest of the agency" (National Research Council, 2000, p. 45) and recommended a functional reorganization. The ensuing ORD reorganization in 1995 involved approximately 1400 researchers, 200 managers, and 400 administrative personnel, and created 7 consolidated organizational units (3 "National Laboratories," 2 "National Centers," and 2 "Offices") in 14 locations around the country, all focused on quantifying and managing the risks that environmental pollutants might pose to human and ecological health. In turn, each of these consolidated units included 4 to 10 divisions, each of which comprised 2 to 7 branches or staffs.

In addition to this major strategic structural change, the ever increasing complexity of environmental protection issues (e.g., assessing the cumulative long-term health and ecological effects of multiple pollutant sources vs. the acute effects of single sources), technological advances in monitoring (e.g., satellite imaging, genetic markers), and budgetary and political pressures required that ORD, as a knowledge-based organization, become more responsive to changing environmental-research needs of regulatory decision-makers and more accountable for demonstrating results to Congress and the general public.

For any hierarchical organization, fostering innovation, flexibility, and responsiveness can be challenging. In the public sector, several additional organizational realities further increase the challenge, most notably, the lack of business metrics, a diffuse power structure, constraints in attracting and retaining talent, and lack of a profit motive (Collins, 2005). In essence, in a Federal agency, one cannot rely upon the"executive leadership"that empowers CEOs, and the profit motive that drives metrics and underlies employee motivational structures. Rather, effective managers must employ"legislative leadership," which Collins (2005, p. 11) defines as "persuasion, political currency and shared interest to create the conditions for the right decisions to happen."

Indeed, the consequences of ORD's diffuse power base became readily apparent when middle and first-level managers resisted executive-level efforts to identify and correct organizational impediments and deficits, resulting in increased staff cynicism when anticipated workplace improvements did not materialize. By 2002, ORD's most senior managers concluded that to fully inspire and utilize the knowledge and expertise of its workforce, ORD needed to transform its culture from one characterized by the traditional hierarchical model to one in which all employees feel empowered to initiate both innovative research programs and fundamental operational improvements. Given its limited success with past problem-focused (deficit-based) approaches to organizational change, ORD began using Appreciative Inquiry (AI, see Whitney, 2003) to design two large-scale summits. This pair of summits was designed to co-develop inspiring images of its future and fundamental principles of operation, and to initiate pilot projects to help the entire organization move toward that future (McCarthy et al., 2005).