On Consulting To New, Changing, or Innovative Organizations Alan Sheldon, M.B., B.chir., D.P.M., S.M. (Hyg.).*

ABSTRACT: This paper reports the experiences of a community mental health team engaged in consulting to a Job Corps camp. The characteristics of the camp are described and salient aspects of its evolution delineated: in particular, the issues of growth, change, and phase. The problems of consulting with a radical changing organization are noted and some general and particular facets touched upon. Finally, the need for critical self-examination in consultants is emphasized.

This paper is based on the experience of a community mental health team which provided consultation from some 54 months to a job corps camp, Fort Rodman. It reports what became a major learning experience for the consultants, since the majority of their prior work (and much of the consulting literature) was based on association with stable organizations and with traditional methods and goals. The community mental health consultants were confronted with a new and rapidly growing organization in considerable flux, with innovative goals and methods. Mental health consultation has tended to emphasize the relationship of the caregiver to the client, and to give skills (education), to clarify themes (improve performance by decreasing blocks), either in one-to-one or in group settings, (Caplan, 5970 ), or to model processes (Berlin, 5956 ). The goal is to increase the coverage of mental health professionals by enabling care-givers to perform their jobs for them, or to function more effectively within their own framework. There has been a growing emphasis on the importance of helping the organizational system function more effectively (Caplan, 5970 ). However, there has been little mention of the problems inherent in working with rapidly changing organizations where the leverage is minimal. The work on this topic has been done largely by organizational consultants, (Davis, 5965) and the literature is sparse.

*Dr. Sheldon is with the Laboratory of Community Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, 58 Fenwood Road, Boston, Mass. o2II 5. Further documentation of the process described is available in the form of a film, One Day a Week, directed by Dr. Edward Mason, i6 mm, 33 minutes, black and white, sound. Distributed by the Center for Mass Communication, Columbia University Press, 562 West ii3th Street, New York, New York ~oo25. 62

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BACKGROUND The Job Corps was set up in i965 in an attempt to solve the problem of the high school dropout, who, lacking adequate training, faced a life of underemployment and deprivation. It was one leg of tripartite organization under the aegis of the Office of Economic Opportunity. Based in part on the conservation camp experience of the 30% it was proposed to be an intensive retraining opportunity for those between the ages of 26 and as who had failed, and in a widely distributed advertising program was labeled "a second chance," but was more often seen by the enrollees as a last chance. From the outset it was embroiled in controversy and pressure whether from Congress or the local communities. While the community development aspect of OEO came in for greatest abuse, many Job Corps camps soon became isolated enclaves in a hostile environment. For a time at least, the fort at Fort Rodman was an altogether appropriate if unwanted symbol. Camp Rodman was started in the fall of i965 on a part of the site of an army base, attractively situated on the edge of the town of New Bedford near the water. The contractor to OEO who undertook to run the camp, was a subsidiary of IBM, Science Research Associates, who develop educational systems. New Bedford, with a long and proud history of whaling, had been a relatively depressed area for many years, although the influx of new light industry had begun to improve the economic circumstances of the area. The Job Corps camp provided an important influx of new jobs and of capital into the area. The camp was intended to provide a specialized opportunity to acquire office skills leading up to printing and data processing. In the two years following its institution, the camp grew to provide training for 55 ~ boys, and employment for about 25o staff members. In that time it also became apparent that a basic education program was needed, and this led to a new focus on consumer service skills. THE CONSULTING TEAM In the spring of I966, the Laboratory of Community Psychiatry was approached through OEO by senior managers at Rodman to consider the possibility of providing mental health consultation to Rodman. The Laboratory for some years had provided consultation services to a variety of clients, both professional and organizational. The initial meeting to discuss the nature of the contract was attended by a senior manager, the head of the counseling department, and the consulting team. At this time the major need of the camp was felt to be in the area of counseling, but the contract was negotiated on a basis of the provision of consultation to the total camp staff on a wide variety of issues. It was made clear at the time that the philosophy of the consulting team was that, in general, it would not provide direct services to boys at the camp, though they might be seen from time to time if appropriate. The contract was with the camp, and, in line with their requirements, brief (four months) and renewable.

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The initial arrangements were that two mental health consultants (both psychiatrists) would visit the camp, each for one day a week, and together would meet with a senior consultant (also a psychiatrist) once a week to discuss the team's work. The two consultants decided that in order to facilitate communication, they would visit on the same day and where possible, travel together. Work at the camp was sometimes done jointly, sometimes in a complementary fashion, and sometimes separately. As it turned out only three to four hours of the sixteen hours a week spent at the camp were directly concerned with mental health activities, and the rest of the time was spent more on organizational and program consulting. A major task, in this regard, was the darification of basic issues and helping the camp work on them. Some of the characteristics of the camp and the problems related to these are now discussed. THE NATURE OF THE SYSTEM AND ITS ENVIRONMENT The environment of the camp was complex. The major structural elements were: 5) the Federal Government through OEO; 2) IBM through SRA; and 3) the community of New Bedford. While only the former two had any degree of formal control, the latter became the prime constraint with which the camp had to deal. Essentially the links through which influence originated and was felt were: 2) through policy statements, 2) through staff appointments and policy, and 3) through political pressure. The essential nature of this environment was demanding and hostile. The demands were frequently made on short notice, were often mandatory, and sometimes in apparent conflict with camp priorities. The hostility was based on the traditional New England suspicion of newcomers, politics (an upcoming election), fear of the unfamiliar, and reoccurrence of untoward incidents. The camp was a new organization. Most familiar organizations, hospitals, schools, etc., are old or have at least traditional if not standard operating procedures. This organization was new in every sense; no established modus operandi, no shared goals with the exception of a concern to help the students (and a multitude of views on how to implement this), no body of experience except the life histories of the individuals working within it. Roles, botl~ organizational and professional, were as often as not undefined, unclear, or ambiguous. The camp was constantly and rapidly changing in response to internal and external pressures. The constant influx of additional students, the need for information feedback, curriculum development, j o b placement, required frequent changes--so much so that adequate data was never available to the consultants about any phase of the operation. This emphasized the need for the team to work on basic issues and processes. The camp was under strong central direction where responsibility was delegated but authority not. The potentially catastrophic repercussions of local incidents led the camp to be highly responsive to feedback from outside. The

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camp tended to be crisis or short-run oriented, a function of both its projected short life, its unstable future (the very existence of the Job Corps was constantly in question), and the uncertainty of or lacks in organizational function and planning. In particular, the unstable future was a constant problem hindering long-range planning whether at an organizational or individual career level. Some of these factors were a function of the early phase of development of the organization, some turned out to be enduring traits. Some were amenable to change, and some were eternal problems. It proved to be tremendously difficult, for instance, to help staff to see the need to take time to develop adequate processes with regard to functioning and planning when the constant rewardpunishment system operated on current events. CHANGE, GROWTH AND PHASES OF DEVELOPMENT The first two years of the camp were essentially a prolonged building phase, at the end of which the camp had barely arrived at a viable stability. During this time there were three major processes going o n - change, growth and phase differentiation. There were many changes in the camp. These ranged from a change in director (and a philosophy of treating the whole man to one of teaching specific skills), through a radical alteration in the proposed length of the program from two years to nine months (for reasons of cost), to major changes in the nature of the relationship of the camp with OEO (greater autonomy) and the comrnunity (from ambivalence through rejection to acceptance). The camp grew both in the number of personnel required, the budget, and the number of students--from 2~o to 550 in the 24 months. Growth carries with it necessary alterations in organization which are independent of change. Growth and age alone necessitate organizational formalization and specialization. (Starbuck, 2965). The number of formal subunits increases, standard operating procedures develop, reports are routinized and specialists evolved in needed areas. Eventually bureaucracy may become the end product. All these formalization processes were visible in the camp. In early days a major concept in the program was that of tutor-counsellor. This was the role filled by the young, recently graduated staff member with major contact with students. He supposedly was to be the means through which both behavior modeling and counseling would occur and education be imparted. During the course of time, particularly as the educational program developed a formal curriculum, the concept was altered so that there were separate teachers and counseling specialists. Further differentiation occurred within the counseling area where three specialties merged: orientation, dormitory, and general. The academic curriculum was hammered out from a haphazard but innovative and informal approach to the imparting of information to a highly standardized but flexible set of standard operating procedures.

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Each aspect of this formalization process was fought tooth and nail as staff, recruited originally for flexibility, creativity and skepticism towards authority and society, felt that freedom was being taken away from them. Time and again it proved to be difficult to communicate to them that formalization, while threatening bureaucratization, could also mean the routinizing of the least enviable aspects of any job with the desirable result of freeing staff to be truly innovative and creative. In addition there were clearly two major types of phase change: phase change associated with the necessary development of procedures to deal with a sequence of formal tasks, and phase change associated with the developmental aspect of interpersonal relationships. With respect to the former, the sequence of tasks that the camp had to deal with ran through recruitment, selection, training, the setting of standards, the obtaining of jobs, and seeing that students stayed in jobs. One problem was that there were no guide lines to any of these task sequences, until such time as there were sufficient students who had completed the process to provide some kind of feedback--assuming that the information was available and fed into the system. Thus the subsidiary task of developing an adequate information system about the sequence of tasks itself and the eventual outcome became obvious. With respect to the latter the major interpersonal phase change occurred about 22 to 58 months after inception of the camp. The issue was a shift of emphasis from the staff accepting students to the staff changing the students. The questions raised early in case conferences and seen as underlying many of the problems on both sides were, "can they like us, can we like them, can we communicate together, can we accept each other." Students tested the developing trust with behavior which was questionably acceptable to see if the new relationship would endure it. The behavior during this phase was frequently of the acting-out, drinking-too-much, sexual-aggressiveness variety. Their proof was discovering that they were acceptable and loved. The issues for the staff during this phase, as they resonated with the problem, were questioning their own prejudices, especially racial, and their own identities. There was also a certain amount of ambiguity in the staff's handling of authority problems until their own uncertainties with regard to the developing authority in the camp were to some extent resolved. On the part of the students, the subsequent phase became one of, "can they really change us and do anything for us." The acting-out behavior began to take the form of the presentation of problems to the staff. For example, the students came to complain of the amount and extent of homosexuality in the camp. They directly challenged the staff to act on their complaints. Direct proof of effectiveness came when it was possible for the staff in fact, not in conversation, to do something about the many problems of the students, whether by solving them or by promulgating policies which dealt with the relevant issues. The main problem for staff during this phase was one of questioning

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their competence and skills, both skills they already possessed and those they needed to acquire. These developmental and organizational contingencies had to be taken into account when any behavior on the part of an individual or a group within the organization was considered. Behavior took on different meanings depending on the developmental phase in which it occurred. A further consequence of this set of contingencies was that the maturing of the mechanisms of the organization was happening at a time when the total environment of the camp was constantly unstable and in flux, and therefore in the worst possible circumstances. This seems to be characteristic of many of the urban Job Corps centers. Unlike the usual organization, Job Corps camps had very little control over inputs, whether of money, students or policy. For example, the input of students was evened out to a regular and predictable flow of relatively homogeneous quality only in the latter stages of the camp, selection and recruitment being controlled by OEO resources and not by the camp. Furthermore, the output of the camp--particularly the undesirable and problematic output of acting-out students--tended to result in wild oscillations of policy as the feedback process was highly unstable because of the lack of "damping" mechanisms such as a reservoir of goodwill which could absorb periodic fluctuations in output quality. THE WORK GROUP AND THE INDIVIDUAL At the work group or divisional level, there was relatively little that was unique about the situation. In view of the developing nature of the organization, functions were frequently adopted by default or seizure. In many instances the functions of some groups were very much in question-indeed their very existence was questionable. Thus, for example, much of the time the existence, let alone the therapeutic role of the counseling department was in question. Those functions they did perform were as much dictated by the demands of other departments as by the counsellors themselves because they defined them as desirable and necessary. There were frequent shifts in allocation of responsibility and accountability also--the organization chart shifted from week to week. At the root of both the successes and failures of the Job Corps camp was the individual. While in another bureaucratic organization the occupant of a role or position is less important than the existence of that role, in this organization much depended on the individual staff member's relationship with the student because of the ambiguous role definitions. A student, more often than not, presented a clinical picture outside the range of experience of most of the staff. This complex and depressed picture included one, sometimes all, of the following: fright, aggressiveness, disease, deformity, and a family history which with few exceptions would make the average psychiatrist shudder. For their part, the staff who were recruited to deal with this formidable array of problems were themselves professionally or personally problematic. It soon

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became clear that with the exception of those few managers seconded from Science Research Associates, many of the senior staff had come to the Job Corps camp from positions where they had considerably less managerial responsibility, even to the point of being relatively ignorant of supervisory skills. Even in the first flush of idealism which lasted throughout the initial year of the life of the camp, there was rarely the time, the opportunity, or the climate for a confrontation of the need to develop such skills in a systematic fashion. The junior staff bore the brunt of the impact with the students. These junior staff were for the most part recruited directly from college. For many of them, the experience in the Job Corps camp was dictated by an idealistic desire to do something for kids less fortunate than themselves--an alternative perhaps to the Peace Corps. For some it was an opportunity to test out a career direction, for others a time out from their personal problems or uncertainties. Inevitably problems centering on the junior staff developed. Organizationally it was clear that the junior staff would be staying one or two years before they resumed their own career lines. While their enthusiasm and commitment were invaluable, they lacked the skills needed to perform effectively. The salient themes emerging in the course of case discussions were related to two major areas-the uncertain and unresolved identity problems of the junior staff as they resonated with those of the students, and the concern and antipathy they shared with the students for authority and organization per se. As the camp became more stable and more organized, the junior staff felt less involved and more overwhelmed by what they felt to be the weight of formality and bureaucracy.

THE CONSULTING PROCESS

Clarification of Roles and Provision of Training Most consultation is performed with organizations whose roles are formally defined by professional and organizational requisites. A professional role is defined essentially by the training period during which the neophyte acquires specific skills and the legitimation and recognition of these skills within the profession by other professions. Furthermore, the professional has a defined area of competence which is recognized by others. An organizational role is learned during an assimilative period, when areas of responsibility and authority are delineated for the role occupant by others in the organization. While role conflict and ambiguity may present problems (Kahn et al., 5964), it is frequently possible for the mental health consultant to recognize that ineffective professional behavior within an organization may be the result of the intrusion of personal problems. These can be dealt with by a variety of techniques. One such technique is that of theme interference reduction. Essentially the nature of the intrusive problem is defined by the consultant as the consultee describes his cases, and then dealt with indirectly through case discussion rather than through a direct discussion of the problem with the consultee.

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While such themes were clearly present in many staff at the Job Corps camp (for example, their ambivalence about dealing with authority problems when they themselves had not resolved similar problems), by far the bulk of ineffective functioning was attributable to the lack of formulation of professional and organizational roles. This appears to result from the newness of the organization, the explicit attempt to create new roles, and from the attempts to avoid the mistakes of traditionally structured institutions--most particularly the classical school system. In fact, an organizational theme that ran through the first 28 months of the camp's life was an utter rejection of all the experience with school systems--whether good or bad. The primary task of the consultants was to bring to the attention of the organization the need to define organizational and professional roles and to help provide the appropriate education and experience so that skills could be acquired. During this process two further issues became apparent. At times the consultants were sucked into adopting an organizational role rather than maintaining distance as "outside experts." This was used as an opportunity to demonstrate the need for clarification of roles and further training, while at the same time encouraging the development of appropriate administrative action. Thus, for example, the consultants at one point functioned in a supervisory and educative capacity within the counseling department, a job which belonged to the senior counsellors. This offered the chance to meet with the senior staff and help them look at their supervisory roles and need for training. A second issue emphasized the need for the consultants to help with professional training. The tutor-counsellor role was originally created so that untrained college students could bring to this innovative role their idealism, their natural talent for directness and concern, and a healthy skepticism towards traditional ways of operating. However, it became clear that these talents were no replacement for specific skills in changing behavior. Eventually there was a separation of function into the more traditional roles of teacher and counsellor which served to emphasize the inadequacy of their preparation.

Clarification of Issues and Problem Solving Frequently the Job Corps camp became exercised about specific social or pseudo-clinical problems. It became apparent that a resurgence of concern had to be considered in the light of a specific manifestation of a general unease or tension. There were recurrent concerns about homosexuality, drug taking, drinking, and aggressive behavior. While these certainly were problems in their own right, frequently the concern was more the issue than the actual content of the protests. During the first phase of the camp, one way of dealing with these issues was to help the staff understand the relevant etiology and dynamics so that they no longer served as blocks to communication with and concern about students, but could be seen as issues in their own right. In later phases when the task was problem-centered, the focus of the consultants was more upon appropriate delineation of the camp's responsibilities and

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the development of relevant programs. At the same time in either instance attention was drawn to the fact that concern could be, and often was, a manifestation of organizational tension and disequilibrium.

Some Specific Problems The lack of stability of the organization tended to emphasize the problem of resonance. Thus relatively minor changes in the organization, when associated, however loosely, with underlying and irresolvable problems, frequently had outsized effects, particularly on morale. For example, in the later phases of the camp when insecurity was a major problem for many of the staff both with respect to the camp's continuing existence, as well as their own position within it--many relatively small changes were frequently interpreted as threatening termination of a job. Another problem was the pervasive need to have the organization function badly (Menzies, 2960 ). Very often working groups preferred to blame other groups, rather than to confront their problems squarely. When solutions were examined, they were rarely implemented. It was easier to take this course than to solve problems, perhaps because of the fear that an effectively functioning system would uncover staff inadequacy and lack of competence. A third dilemma was that of the conflict between training and operating. Over and over again the need for time to have the staff engage in training programs became apparent. At the same time the immense pressures on time generated by day-to-day operating and activities were overriding. Clearly, this was not the type of organization which could easily justify the kind of investment of resources and capital in personnel that any major training program would require. However, many of the activities of the camp desperately needed more adequate personnel, and these could not be obtained by recruitment. A last dilemma was that of the conflict between creativity or innovation and "playing it safe." In a "sensitive" organization of this kind, where a single adverse incident threatened bad publicity at the least or a major setback, there was constant pressure for people to reduce risk. This proved to be a tremendous deterrent to many types of creativity, especially where these took forms of taking risks with student behavior. The consulting team, in addition to its function as community mental health consultants dealing with the clarification of clinical issues and education relevant to them, also helped to identify and find solutions to such problems and dilemmas. REFLECTION IN RETROSPECT The major concern in this concluding section is to give a brief account of a particular problem raised by this type of consultation. This may be summarized as the problem of time structures and time processes. Mental health professionals have tended to assume that any of the phenomena that they hope to change are occurring in such a way that any time they may choose to intervene is equally effective. This assumption is questioned most

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particularly by the notion of crisis intervention, which suggests that there is indeed an optimal time for intervention. There is still, however, a tendency to deliver services in a fashion that is convenient for the medical system. Thus most mental health professionals perform their services on a regular week-byweek basis making appointments nicely on the hour. To some extent this pattern was adopted in the relationship with Camp Rodman. The two psychiatrists visited on a regular day each week, for the day. The fact that the phenomena of most intimate concern might not occur on that day, but at night, or might occur over time periods extending beyond a day, or might require an intensity of relationship extending beyond the daily routine, did not occur to the consultants until late in the experience. Even then it proved to be difficult to alter the systematic structuring, and to take time off to come down on other days, or to spend two or three days clown there, or to work at night. Yet many of the major problems probably required a degree of intensity of relationship which could never be obtained on a weekly visit, during which an hour might be spent with a crucial person over a crucial problem, with irregular followup. This issue is crucial. A consultant who hopes to affect a process must examine this process over time and then address his intervention to the nature of the phenomenon as it extends over time. A secondary, but no less important consequence, is that such an approach helps establish credibility and trust in the consultant's concern for the client. This is but a single instance of the kind of flexibility and questioning of one's own assumptions (as well as those of others) which are an essential part of the experience of the mental health consultant. POSTSCRIPT Camp Rodman has ceased to exist, a casualty of changing political philosophy, economic paring, and its inability to solve its problems and to meet OEO operating criteria. The lessons for consultation remain salient. Credibility can only be gained by the critical examination of the assumptions and modi operandi of the consulting team, and their modification in relation to the client system. Effectiveness is a function of identifying behavior (whether of consultant or client) in its context and working with its relevance to that context. REFERENCES Berlin, L N. Some learning experiences as psychiatric consultant in the schools. Mental Hygiene 1956, XL, 2, 215-236. Caplan, G. Theory and practice of mental health consultation. New York: Basic Books, 297o. Davis, S. A. The organic problem solving method of organizational change. (mimeographed), i968. Kahn, R. L., Wolfe, D. M., Quinn, R. P., Snoek, J. D. & Rosenthal, R. A. Organizational stress: Studies in role conflict and ambiguity. New York: Wiley, 1964. Menzies, I. E. P. A case study in the functioning of social systems as a defense against anxiety. Human Relationships, 196o, 13, 95. Starbuck, W. H. Organizational growth and development, in Handbook of organizations. Chicago: Rand McNally, i965,