Recently I was in Mali working with a women’s rice growing cooperative
to help them improve their accounting.
During this period, I had a chance to assess and become familiar with
their situation and their desire to be more profitable. Their lack of profitability is a concern for
them. They want more profits, more wealth
generation.
A conclusion that I came to is that the cooperative needs to
be run more like a business, needs to incorporate sound business management
practices, in order to become profitable.
Because it seems to me a change is needed, I decided to learn more about
force field analysis by writing this blog and apply the concept of force filed analysis
to the suggested change for the cooperative.
At the risk of over-simplifying, force field analysis evaluates
the forces that promote a change and the forces that oppose the change. The analysis tries to identify all those relevant
forces that promote and those that oppose the change
Here is a list of factors that I came up with that promote
the cooperative in Mali to being more like a business:
1.
Lack of profit as a cooperative – 3;
2.
Recognition that as a business, profits are more likely – 4;
3.
A better work environment, and other benefits, for cooperative members when
the cooperative is run more like a business. – 3.
For these three factors that promote the change, I have assigned
a weight to the importance of the factor in promoting (leading to) a
change. The weight is on a 1 to 5
scale, with 5 being of the highest importance.
The total weight of factors supporting a change is 10 (3 + 4 + 3).
Here is a list of factors that oppose the cooperative being
more like a business:
1.
Lack of business skills and practice know-how – 4;
2.
Traditional practices and habits of behaving as individuals in decision making
and action in rice growing versus company decision making and behavior – 5;
3.
Lack of concepts on assigned roles and company organizational structure –
3.
The total weight of factors opposing a change is 12 (4 + 5 +
3).
Now for some analysis on the above lists and what they might
mean and what they suggest.
First, the above lists are based strictly on my experiences
while in Mali teaching the cooperative accounting and evaluating their situation. The correctness of the above lists is therefore
constrained by whatever skills and experiences I have in the evaluation.
I believe the first obvious conclusion to reach from the above
lists is the cooperative is not going to change to being more business-like on
the basis of the current forces for and against that are in place. The against forces are stronger then the for
forces. So, actions and interventions need
to occur if a change is to take place.
The above lists can help guide on what these actions and interventions
might be. An approach is to create a
greater weight for each of the for factors and a lesser weight for each of the
against factors.
The factor with the greatest weight (5) and therefore draws
the most attention is the against factor - traditional practices and habits of
behaving as individuals in decision-making and action in rice growing versus company
decision making and behavior. How do we
reduce this weight? Like many of the
other factors, both for and against, training is an important action to
take. But, now we recognize one type of
training should relate to the advantages of group decision-making; collaboration;
team building; advantages of group versus individual performance, and similar concepts. Such concepts relate to changing traditional practices
and habits of behaving as individuals.
Training is also important to reduce the other against
forces. Through creating the lists, we
now know better what the training should focus on.
For the factors that promote change to being more like a business,
training on what profits are, how to measure them, for example, by using
correct accounting and creating income statements, should be emphasized. An accounting system should be implemented
with the goal of showing annual profits.
Using an accounting system should help the cooperative to be more business-like.
Company organizational structure can bring benefit to the participants
in a company versus when the members go alone, which a
problem with the current cooperative situation. Such
benefits include: specialization of duties, which promote greater success for
the organization versus when individuals act alone and better collaboration and
coordination on the use of the available resources, easing the burden that can exist
when individuals go alone. Specialized
training should be planned and presented demonstrating these concepts and the results
of these benefits to members.
Force field analysis strikes me as a relatively simple but powerful
tool to help in implementing a needed change.
Hopefully, the above has demonstrated this.
More can be found about the concept and use of force field analysis
at the MindTools website. Click here to go to this website.
