Polarity Management, Essay Example

There are often situations in which a person responsible for a change has to take into consideration multiple opinions, goals and interests. This situation is inevitable in a large organization when one decision or a single alteration may affect several groups of people that are connected within the organizational structure in a pre-determined way. When introducing such an influential change it is impossible to ignore the interests of one group and to be guided solely by the goals of another one. It is evident that a compromise to a certain measure has to be achieved, so the goal of the change agent is to find it by managing polarities in interests in a constructive and efficient way – in other way the problems that exist within the company will be aggravated and will lead to emergence of a conflict:

“They are what we call polarities (dilemmas, paradoxes) which are inherently unavoidable and unsolvable. The on-going, natural tension between the poles can be destructive and debilitating or can be managed, and channeled into a creative synergy that leads to superior outcomes” (Polarity Management, 2009).

Such practices gave the emergence of such management phenomenon as polarity management (PM). The essence of PM is to combine all interests of groups in such a way so that they were taken into account in a comparatively equal measure and as a result enabled the change agent to produce a well-reasoned, objective decision:

“When dealing with polarities, the clearer the communication, the greater the resistance generated. Some people, seen as resisters, are unwilling to sacrifice the benefits of current ways of doing business and only too clearly see the downside of the proposed strategy” (Jacobs, Johnson and McKeown, 1999).

The situation discussed in the present paper concerns the introduction of change in the customer service project that has to include the interests of patients, practitioners and the administration of the healthcare institution that are surely not aligned and at some places even oppose one another. Patients need better service and lower costs, physicians need flexible working hours with their patients, and the administration reasonably wants to achieve the best distribution of patients among physicians.

The presently discussed situation has many polarities that can be observed, for example, cost and quality, planning and taking action, or stability and change. Nonetheless, it is necessary to choose one of them for discussion, and the present work will be focused on cost and quality as juxtaposed notions. From a thorough examination of the groups involved in the situation it is obvious that the patients are surely anxious about cost reduction most of all, the administration is eager to improve quality, but retain costs because of their direct influence on the budget of the institution, and physicians want to find the compromise between quality, cost and their personal time expenditures not wishing to lose their profits. So, the following polarity map worksheet shows how this situation can be handled and how the solutions will be arrived at (see Fig. 1).

Now it is necessary to decide how to implement it in the group in which the change agent works and how to lead the discussion to achieve the stipulated goals. It is clear that patients put cost reduction as the number one priority and want to minimize their expenditures. The change agent should show them that it is possible, but they will have to sacrifice something to get something else instead. Clients can thus reduce their costs by agreeing to attend their physicians only in the fixed hours – this change will bring the indisputable benefit to the physicians who ask for flexibility. As soon as doctors will start to work only for a certain period of time, it will be easier to structure the work of the whole healthcare institution and to reduce costs for their salaries that will depend on working hours. Physicians will get what they want, but what they will have to refuse from will also be a small part of their profit that will help them obtain the desired schedule. As a result of this change, the healthcare institution will receive such results as patient satisfaction, physician satisfaction, optimization of working hours and reduction of maintenance costs.

Figure 1. The Polarity Map Worksheet.

It goes without saying that the polarity map worksheet and PM on the whole contains not only good traits but has some drawbacks. The polarity selected for consideration is a contradictory one because the consensus that is achieved as a result of this discussion also includes certain pitfalls and neglects some interests for the sake of others. All people want to get much for little money paid, which is a utopia according to the basic economic rules that dictate reasonability of economic exchange of goods and services.

Thus, the polarity of cost and quality cannot be managed to the fullest extent – in this situation the reduction of costs will inevitably bring about reduction of quality etc. But still the polarity approach in this particular situation will help reduce the tension between these two factors and find some really compromising decisions. To draw a conclusion for the present work it is possible to say that PM is a genuinely efficient tool to manage polarities within an organization, so the present case is a vivid example of those wishing to implement change and arrive at some sort of consensus regarding the highly incompatible goals.

References

Jacobs, R.W., Johnson, B, & McKeown, F. (1999). How to Add Value in Continuing Strategic Change. HR Professional magazine. Retrieved December 26, 2009, from http://humanresources.about.com/od/changemanagement/a/value_change.htm

Polarity Management^TM: A Concept Whose Time Has Come (2009). Retrieved December 26, 2009, from http://www.polaritymanagement.com/

Welp, M. (n.d.). Polarity Mapping Worksheet. Retrieved December 26, 2009, from http://www.equalvoice.com/polrty_map_wrksht.pdf