A Seminar in Solving Problems on the JobAuthor(s): James MarshallSource: Public Administration Review, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Dec., 1962), pp. 209-212Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Society for Public AdministrationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/973942 .

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A Seminar in Solving Problems on the Job

By JAMES MARSHALL New York University

EDUCATION should result not only in knowledge and experience but also in the ability to use them. The test of

classroom learning, therefore, is whether it can be applied by the student in other roles. This is the assumption of all professional ed- ucation. With this in mind the author several years ago devised a seminar in administration, the purpose of which was to enable the student to learn to transfer his learning to the job.

This course requires the students to select problems they have on their jobs and to at- tempt to solve them. They must pursue the problem solving steps of deciding on a goal, collecting data, defining the problem or prob- lems which must be solved to reach the goal, thinking of ideas for solution, testing those ideas by analysis (how will they affect the sit- uation?), selecting one or more ideas for im- plementation, and planning the execution of the idea or ideas.

Most exercises in problem solving (except in a scientific laboratory) stop with this. The course described here goes further. The stu- dents must act on their plans. If within the four months of the term it is possible for them to complete the solution of the problem, they must then appraise their success in meeting their goal (how did it work?). Each step must be reported to the class.

Taking action is the hard part of problem solving. Many of us who can analyze a prob- lem well and conceptualize its solution balk at the last step. For this involves human rela- tions. It involves interaction with other people outside of the protection of the classroom, out- side of the laboratory in which mistakes need not count and where the actor can find sup-

> The author discusses a seminar for graduate students of administration that he has offered for the last five years. The seminar requires students to solve live problems involving introducing change on their jobs. Solving the problems in a living situation requires constant attention to their rela- tionships with the people they work with on the job and with their fellow students who are acting as consultants. As a result, the author contends, the learning experience is more effective in bringing desired changes in student behavior, than the usual teaching technique or type of course content.

port from his associates. What he does on the job he does under pressures of an organization that may not be sympathetic and of persons who may be hostile to the changes he is trying to make.

The Importance of Mutual Consultation Because bringing about change in an or-

ganization involves active relations with oth- ers, the student, in the role of a change agent, is giving and receiving feedback as the result of those interactions. This he must report to the seminar and his interactions are discussed and assessed by the seminar group.

This mutual consultation is important for several reasons. First, almost all the members of this seminar have had a term of study of the human relations aspects of administration, particularly as these bear upon inter-relation- ships with authority and in communications structures. Thus, after only a term of thinking of administration as a complex of human in- ter-relationships, as more than a formal or- ganization, it would be simple and easy to slither back to a mechanistic view of change when facing for the first time the need to ap- ply learning to a field situation. The other

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PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW

students never let their colleagues get away with that.

Secondly, when one is attempting to bring about change in an organization where reac- tions to one's efforts range from indifference to hostility, but are rarely welcoming, one needs support. The "importance of social sup- port for the new modes of behavior" has often been emphasized. The group can support each of its members as he attempts new modes of behavior in problem solving.

Thirdly, we have found that no member of this seminar has solved his problem without drawing upon the suggestions of the others in the group. Finally, the way one engages in consultation, gives and receives advice, is im- portant. For this is a daily task of any adminis- trator who has not the power, the personality, and the technical knowledge, to make every decision. It is helpful to them to engage in consultation as part of their training.

Students Define Their Roles The Instructor opens the course by stating

that it has a two-fold purpose, first to study problem-solving and secondly to get practice in consultation. He announces there will be some theoretical work but that chiefly, the members of the seminar will study problem- solving by attempting to bring about change on the job and to report each step of their progress to the seminar. The emphasis, he states, will be on interpersonal relations in working on their tasks and also in the semi- nar group itself. With respect to the consulta- tion, the emphasis will be on improving the ability of the members to give help to and receive help from others. He reminds the seminar that his behavior will be on the table for analysis just as that of any other member. He then puts before the seminar the problem of how the work should be organized in view of the time limitations.

As the weekly discussions of the proposals to bring about change proceed, it becomes ap- parent that the members of the seminar need help not only in solving their problems but initially in defining them and in defining also their own roles as change-agents. Their roles differ from those of consultants brought into an organization from outside for the specific purpose of working change, as described by

Lippitt, et al.,' Argyris,2 Whyte,3 and others. The trainees are part of their organizations. They may modify their relationships with their office associates, but they are already in- terrelated with them and those relationships have established patterns. Nor do their prob- lems date for them from the time they under- take to bring about a change as part of a course of study. They have been living with them although they have rarely defined them, or collected data adequate for problem defini- tion. Moreover, they will continue to live in their organizations with more or less the same associates after the course is finished.

That this situation sometimes arouses anx- ieties is evident from the unreadiness of the trainees at first to accept or even consider solutions which appear to be threatening to them.

In the last session one year a trainee stated that one of the most remarkable things was that people had seriously tried to bring about changes "which might have gotten them into hot water." They could not have done this had they not had confidence in the group-confi- dence in the members' discretion as well as in their support. Supportiveness and interdepend- ence are the key relationships of the members of the seminar. Thus they learn that group membership can be a motivating force to- wards task fulfillment. And they learn, too, how task fulfillment can contribute to satis- factory group membership.4

Examining the Group Process In every session time is reserved for a dis-

cussion of the group process. Stimulated by the Instructor's questions, tests are made of the group's cohesiveness, member-participa- tion and leadership, how the needs of indi- viduals are being met, how effective they are in their behavior, and also how the Instructor performs his role.

1Lippitt, R., Watson, Jeanne, and Westley, B., The Dynamics of Planned Change (N. Y.: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1958).

2Argyris, Chris, Personality and Organization (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957).

"Whyte, William F., Money and Motivation (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1955).

4 Mann, John H. and Carola Honroth, "The Impor- tance of a Group Task in Producing Group-Member Personality and Behavior Changes" (Human Relations, 1959, 7, 1, pp. 75-80).

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PROBLEM SOLVING SEMINAR

On a number of occasions the Instructor has had to be absent. Such is the motivation of the group that his absence has made little difference in their accomplishment.

Since the class had worked through the problem of authority in the first term, the In- structor no longer loomed as a potentially punitive power figure. "He was acting as one of the authorities rather than as the authority as he did last term." Students spoke also of "the responsibility of all of us (including the Instructor) to each other in the group." The Instructor's participation was that of a mem- ber of the group, his role that of an expert, and his authority of a technical nature.

This account of the seminar's behavior and attitudes does not mean that there were no controversies, for there was frequent disagree- ment in the group about the way to solve their problems. Sometimes there were painful passages when they confronted each other with evidence of avoidance of some of the facts or refusal to search for further data or commented on ambivalent or contradictory behavior of a member of the seminar. Though painful, such criticism was received as in- tended to be helpful and generally proved helpful.

A Variety of Changes Attempted The changes which the members of the

seminar tried to produce have been varied. There have been several cases of newly ap- pointed supervisors whose subordinates were working at cross purposes, were in conflict with each other, or with the member of the seminar. Sometimes this was because they re- sented having him brought from the outside to be their supervisor. Sometimes it was be- cause of the way he was acting and the things he said. Sometimes it was for other reasons. Attempts were made with considerable success to adopt a style of supervision which would develop a cohesive group.

There were also cases worked on in the seminar involving changes in relationships be- tween an operating and service department of an organization; bringing a deviant member of an organization into more cooperative re- lationships with his co-workers; changing the boss's image of a trainee; getting the assistance of a State Employment Service accepted by a school; maintaining production in an industry

while the operators, whose supervisors had been ignored by management, were being trained in a new procedure; extending the service of a private agency by involving an- other community organization, and other situations.

Sometimes the group demonstrated to a stu- dent or helped him to realize that his problem was not in his organization but in his own attitudes. He might be projecting on to his supervisor or associates his own hostilities. He might be refusing to recognize that they were subjected to cross-pressures too or a sense of insecurity or that the student himself was picking on some interpretation of a depart- mental ruling as the cause of his difficulty without realizing that this was a rationaliza- tion to cover his own hostility. In several in- stances recognition of such situations resolved the problems to which the students had ad- dressed themselves.

At the first session of this course trainees fre- quently come with problems they plan to try to solve. Sometimes these are fact-finding prob- lems or problems the solutions of which are to be discovered in the library. These are re- jected because they do not fit the format of the course. Even before the Instructor has stated that such problems are unacceptable other members of the seminar will usually point out that they involve no action to bring about change and no interaction with others. To those who are prepared to engage in a project to bring about change in which they must in- teract, it probably appears unfair for another member to take on a "soft" problem involv- ing no risks and no skills in interaction.

Some students, particularly at the beginning of the term, tend to slur over their interac- tions with others involved in the solution of their problems. Other members of the semi- nar usually bring this to their attention and if they fail to, then the Instructor does. There is a frequent tendency also to omit the names and descriptions of the personalities of the people involved and what each said to each in the course of the problem-solving. A few students even to the end of the course are fearful of giving precise names. But this is rare.

Evaluating the Experience Involvement in action and planning action

consume time and require considerable emo-

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PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW

tional output. In addition to working on their change problems and consulting together about them the students have two other tasks. They must chart the progress of their projects. They must also prepare papers describing what they believe they have contributed to each other and what they think each member of the group has contributed to help them. On the whole there tends to be considerable identity between the aid which a student says he received from others and what they say they gave to him.

The chart of the progress of the change problem helps to clarify and separate each step in the process. There is a general tendency for us to telescope the steps and thus omit a phase of the process which if included might have assured a better solution. For example, we frequently jump to ideas about ways to act without collecting and considering data, especially data relating to the interaction of the people concerned and their sentiments. The chart also permits the student to put in graphic form the forces for and against each step including his feelings as a change-agent. Such a graphic statement of the problem and the forces which effect its solution can assist clear thinking by the student about the prob- lem. It can be used as a worksheet against

which progress can be checked as the work proceeds.

What Is Real Is Meaningful What has been described is a form of field

work which involves the student in a situa- tion which is real and which is meaningful to him because it is something through which he is living. There is nothing artificial about it, nothing second-hand, nothing removed from his life situation. He cannot fantasy about how he might or ought to behave, for he must act. He must act or face with his colleagues why he does not act. To his colleagues, his consultants, his problem is also a viable ex- perience. For there is nothing hypothetical as in the case method, nothing staged as in role playing, when he comes before them to tell his story, to describe his anxieties and the pressures for and against what he is attempt- ing to do. There is nothing contrived in his account of his feedback and how he reacts to it.

This is a way to enable students to learn how to act upon their knowledge and experi- ence. It is not claimed to be the only way. It need not be accepted as the best way. It does, however, offer a reality factor to education which is uncommon.

This Thing Has To Be Done Right

A certain Ottawa official was initialling his morning mail as he read it when he suddenly noticed that one letter should have been addressed to another person, in another department, housed in a different building. He re-addressed it to the appropriate person and sent it on its way. In due course it came back, with a note attached requesting, "As this letter is required for permanent file in our department, will you be kind enough to erase your initials." Another clerk had added a further note, "In order to comply with regulation No. X, will you please initial your erasure."

-M. J. ARROWSMITH, Institute of Public Administration of Canada.

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