ODCL – 19: Evaluation of OD and Change, New Developments in OD

Case Analysis Questions

Group 4
Shreyansi
Shruti
Harsh
Vaseem
Sanjay

Berkeley-Haas School of Business

This case details a culture change initiative at a leading university. For the analysis purpose we
will focus on the Defining Principles (DPs) and culture initiative.
1) What is the strategy of the Berkeley - Haas School of Business, and how is the
proposed changes aligned with the strategy? (10%)

Answer: “Strategic alignment is important to organizational performance because an

organization’s strategy is the basis of its value proposition to customers and the
foundation of many of its core goals and processes.”(1)

In the case of Berkeley-Haas School of Business the strategy should be most appealing
to its faculty and students who are the central stakeholders and at the heart of the
change initiative.

The strategy of the Berkeley is how to make itself distinct from others , to develop a
distinct brand of leaders . Haas School of Business engages itself in the codification
of culture which had been latent in the school for generations. “To become the most
distinguished-by-culture business school,” was at the heart of the strategy. The
change that is taking place is they want to ‘become the most distinguished by
culture business school,’.How they align the change to strategy is by defining the
culture into 4 defining principles namely-
1. Question the Status Quo: We lead by championing bold ideas, taking intelligent
risks, and accepting sensible failures. This means speaking our minds even when it
challenges convention. We thrive at the world’s epicenter of innovation.
2. Confidence without Attitude: We make decisions based on evidence and analysis,
giving us the confidence to act without arrogance. We lead through trust and
collaboration.
3. Students Always: We are a community designed for curiosity and lifelong pursuit of
personal and intellectual growth. This is not a place for those who feel they have
learned all they need to learn.
4. Beyond Yourself: We shape our world by leading ethically and responsibly. As
stewards of our enterprises, we take the longer view in our decisions and actions.
This often means putting larger interests above our own.
 Further what is interesting is that how they work towards the complete process of
integrating this strategy of codifying culture in each and every process right from
admission of the students to culture fit to the classes that are being taught. This would
actually lead to the sustenance of their culture.
For eg. The BILD – Berekeley Innovative Leadership Development which had 10 capabilities
which define how they are unique.
Lyon goes into depth to the extent of finding the exact words which will resonate with the
audience ( students and faculty).
Lyons emphasized that much of the culture has been integrated into business processes:
“If someone wanted to get rid of the culture, they would have to actively undo 180
business processes such as changing our interview assessment form, changing the
questions on our recommendation letters, paint over words in the Innovation Lab,
extract tiles that have our principles on them from the courtyard [put in place in
2013], take things out of the staff performance evaluation process, take out the
interview questions when we hire staff, take the principles out of the onboarding
process for staff, and more. All these things are the most natural ways to keep some
of the momentum going.” (2)

2) Who are the stakeholders of this change initiative? How do their interests
differ? How have each of these stakeholders adopted the DPs? (45%)

Answer : Lyon’s idea of bringing a culture a culture in Berkeley-Haas school of business

was buildupon 4 Defining principles and they were:
1) Questions the status quo.
 2) Confidence without Attitude
3) Student always
4) Beyond yourself

Berkeley –Haas Business School has a strong association of 86 Ladder faculties, 150
professional faculties which possess a great challenge for Lyons to implement the change
and being accepted by all stakeholders. There were various stakeholders with varying
degree of power.
Stakeholders involved for this Change initiative are:
1) Internal Students
2) Prospective Students
3) Alumni’s
4) Faculty (Ladder faculty and Professional faculty)
5) External Constituents

Interest of different stakeholders in Defining Principle:

1) Internal Students: Defining principles were also celebrated through awards such as “Service
& Leadership “award that recognise three to six graduating students who not only best embodied
a given principle but also made an outstanding contribution to their MBA experience. Faculties
which included the ladder faculty and professional faculties started designing the component of
their courses taking in picture of these 4 defining principles .Current students were marked and
recognised on the qualities shown by them in these 4 principles.

Building on these defining principle , the team set up on a bigger goal to redefine the business
graduate program which was centered around the idea of developing “path bending innovative
leaders “to make changes in a challenging world.

2) Prospective students:

Lyon’s started a Defining principle implementation plan where they embedded these principles
in everything from admission, orientation, curriculum, career service.

The admission process of the college was changed after introducing Defining principle in the
college .Prospective students were closely marked on bases of the qualities possessed by them
mapped with 4 Defining principles.

The small question” How the candidate fits into Haas culture” changed the whole conversation
during the interviews. The prospective students were asked to choose one principle and explain
why they believe that they embodied that principle in them. The assessment based on the
designing principle forced candidates to measure them on these 4 principles and understand how
they fit in this culture. With recruiters gaining interest in these principles and showing interest
for the colleges , the no of students applying for the college were increased.

3) Alumni: Lyon’s plan for outreaching this initiative also includes the note from Dean , where
alumni were informed about these principle which their institution carried for years but never
able to articulate . Many alumni started posting the qualities there course mates possessed and
mapped with 4 principles defined. Alumni network team asked alumni to nominate other who
embodied certain principles.

4) Faculties: As part of defining principle implementation plan , lyon’s included defining

principle during orientation for staff, ladder faculty and professional faciulty.He also launched
defining principle in staff performance evaluation and staff were provided with ‘guiding
behavious.Also started annual outstanding staff awards were altered and were based on the
principle and interview questions for prospective staff with guiding behaviours. 4 defining
principle was made part of the teaching curriculum. Made part of hiring interviews for staff and
discussion in classes among students.

5) External constituents: Lyons received many feedbacks from recruiters and other Venture
capitalist where they appreciated this concept and mentioned that the students which suit these 4
defining principle category are the students they want to work with. With coming up of Berkeley
Innovative leader development program where the major focus was to create future leaders for
challenging roles. Recruiters and various potential hiring firms looked Berkeley as the source of
great talent and leaders who can run their organization.

Various client of the organization were impressed by the culture setup in the college and were
excited to be part the growth journey set up by Lyons 4 defining principle. With the increase in
no of application to the college and development of various different programs attracted the
attention of various components of society .

How do their interest differ:

How have each of these stakeholders adopted the DPs:

1. Internal students: Students experienced principles through their courses. The
defining principles were also celebrated through awards such as the “Service and
Leadership” award that recognized three to six graduating students who not only
 best embodied a given principle, but also made an outstanding contribution to the
MBA experience.
2. Prospective students: For those students who aspire to be part of this esteemed
institution, the institution designed the process in such a way that every student
who wishes to join the Berkeley Haas describe himself or herself, how they have
demonstrated defining principle in their career.
● Identification of innovative leaders at the entry during the admission
● Defining principle appeared on the application form
3. Alumni:
● Alumni who had graduated prior to the advent of the defining principles
learned about them through Berkeley Haas communications, themed
events, and awards.
● The alumni association made defining principle an integral part of their
alumni programme and embraced it in various ways. Culture cards and
created regional chapter programme labelled ‘Student Always’ or ‘Beyond
Always’ where alumni could do an activity in the community that matched
the relevant skill.
● Through alumni reunions: Frost and her team embedded the principles into
alumni reunions where alumni were asked to nominate others who
embodied certain defining principles. The alumni association were taking
every step to make the defining principle basic principles in the work
alumni of Berkeley Haas do.
4. Faculties and Staff: It was very clear to Lynos that faculties and staff are the
major influencer for the internal students
● Presenting the defining principles during orientation for staff, ladder
faculty, and professional faculty.
● Making defining principles a part of performance evaluations and staff
were also provided with guided behaviors to achieve performance
measures.
● Annual outstanding staff awards were altered and based on the principles.
● Interview questions for prospective staff members were also modified, so
to better understand the fit of the staff with the organisation and also to
understand their prior experience with the defining principles.
● Community town hall meetings were held on each principle by offering a
toolkit to help managers, how they can embrace defining principles and
could translate them into practice.
● Faculty were communicated these defining principles into three asks
And these ask were requests made to faculties by Lyons.
First ask was, faculties were not forced to embrace the defining principle
but at the same time they cannot undermine or diminish the defining
 principle.
Second ask was to encourage the faculty to integrate the principles into
their classrooms if they see an opportunity.
The third ask ‘when to push the faculty and when to pull back’ and the
level would be putting such principles into research faculty performance
evaluations and this is where expected push might be seen, so the final
approach would be reaching our cultural goals without going to level three
because the stakeholders who are going to be affected in third level are
very important to make this system run and make the intervention
systemic.
5. External Constituents: During the evaluations and measuring performance of
the change initiative, Lynos got feedback from different stakeholders and in one
such feedback a Venture capitalist mentioned that defining principle of Berkeley
Khaas describes the kind of people they like to fund.

3) Review Dean Lyon’s approach to identifying, codifying, and cultivating the

Defining Principles at Berkeley-Haas. (45%
a. What worked well?
b. What could have been improved?
c. How well do you think the Defining Principles contribute to the end goal of
developing “Berkeley Leaders?”

Ans 3) a.

Beginning to Defining the Culture

Lyons and Berkeley-Haas’s advisory board decided to start 18 months long journey to develop a
new strategy for cultural change. They initiated the idea of differentiation of Berkeley-Haas
Business School’s leadership & it’s leaders with other business schools & leaders about the
perception of graduated from the school. They also wanted to address other board issue, the idea
behind it is that leaders would thrive in the changing business world and develop innovative
solutions for their organization and the world.
As part of the strategic planning process, Lyons wanted first to focus on the core values but not
as the traditional way. Because he have only one chance to get it done and realize that once the
method of defining the values set, it will stay longer and become the tradition to set the values in
the school.

Lyons new that school has a very distinctive culture but it was not there on the website so he
couldnot codify the culture of the school. He searched for the values of other top rank business
school and find that they have very well codified their culture and values.

Codifing the Culture: Four Defining Principles

Lyons and his team felt that the values should not be written which doesn’t soot the current
existing culture otherwise it would feel inauthentic to people. So values would be easy infusing
in students as well as staff. They decide find the values from the existing culture rather than
creating the new which would be different from the existing culture. During the process of
evaluation and team found that their culture stemmed from 3 things: Place, People and Culture. It
seems that students are much resonated with these 3 things. Once the team has identified the
aspect of unique culture aspect of its unique culture, they leveraged some of those elements and
articulated as the “Defining principles”. As I understand why Defining Principles because
culture word feels like more related to the corporate organizations and culture and values are to
be seen as two different term but here in the Berkeley-haas school, the culture is more related to
the set of values and norms of the school.

Lyons and team has defines the 4 Principles for the school that, taken together, sharply defined
them relative to their peers. These principles school performance, student’s capability, and set of
values within the school:

· Question of status quo: talk about the maturity and intelligence

· Confidence without attitude: talk about the confidence, trust and collaboration

· Student always: talk about the growth and learning for those keen to learn

· Beyond yourself: talk about the agility

Strategy to Defining and Cultivating the Principles

Leveraging expert
It could not have happed without any support those who know about the culture very well. as
case shows that Lyons and team has consulted with two experts Rick Cronk (retire president of
school) and Jennifer Chatman (professor of management). Insights about the culture and values
given by both, were helpful for the Lyons and team.

Throughput the process, Lyons also reaches out to many tough leaders those who had the strong
influence on the school, David Akaer known as the “father of branding”, Larry Johnson who
helped lyons to determine what execution of Defining Principles might look like.

Involving Constituents

He started the “campaign and strategy working group” in which he composed mostly of ladder
faculty member and some senior staff.

As part of the focus-group study Lyons and team conducted the focus group with the all
stakeholders to identify the initial cultural norms and principle for Berkeley-haas. The idea
behind to involve the all stakeholders to make them involved in the process of finding something
which is lying among them and when they find, it will resonate with them for long. Indirectly it
could be a process of finding as well as cultivating the values and principles within them. After
finding the principles, Lysons sent the draft to the all stakeholders for the feedback again which
create the feeling of belongingness to those values.

Anticipating and Staying Ahead of Faculty concern

He has listen to the one of the close faculty concern about the culture and he gave the positive
response to him. He started using the word culture less because it sound corporate word instead
he started using the principle word. Because the word culture could be different for person to
person.

Avoiding the hackneyed phrases

Lyons and his team did not want to use the common phrases and also not to choose common
values that sound corporative. They wanted the unique words for their principle which make
them unique from the other business schools.

Gaining the Consensus

After 18 months Lyons has met the most of ladder faculty individually to discuss about the
remaining concerns before the voting, it should not be the forced voting. I believe those ladder
faculty would be those who had the more influencing power within the students and might
change or having some concern for strategy.
Cultural Change can only be successful when the communication goes from top to bottom of any
organization and goes through the different stakeholders.

B. What could have been Improved:

Let's look through the PHASES of EVALUATION:

Pre Intervention Evaluation (seeks to understand the current state of the organization &
changes it hopes to achieve; used to set objectives for the rest of the intervention)

1. Layons objective of intervention was inspired by his study of an article ‘Leading by

Leveraging Culture’ - Where he saw a firsthand account of how profoundly powerful a
culture could be in helping organization achieve its goal. (2006 – 2008; CLO stint at
Goldman Sachs)

2. Layons return to Berkeley Haas as Dean in 2008 – It was he who saw a huge cultural
opportunity sitting right in front of them. According to him his understanding and
Identification of the need was based on his observation (“Berkeley Haas had a culture; no
one knew how to talk about it and had no integrated narrative”) & not a decision taken as an
outcome of a need analysis. Therefore, he missed identifying the pressing need that he
needed to address as the New Dean of Berkeley Haas - the root cause of what the
organization as a whole needed to improve/ change.

3. In this phase he perceived and assumed that the need of the organization is what he
thought would be an opportunity to prove his competence as he was directed by his own
recent experience i.e. his in-depth study on the article “Leading by Leveraging Culture” a
past experience that inhibited him from seeing/ perceiving the whole picture. He rather did
not take into account the fact that a need analysis emerges by taking into account the voice of
the stakeholders and not what the Individual merely perceives to know and can do best w.r.t
to his/her expertise (a one size fits all approach). Thus, a clear absence of need analysis in
terms of what the stakeholders of Berkeley Haas needed was seen.Identifying the pressing
need of Berkeley Haas was overlooked by Layons expertise and observation at a Leadership
or Individual level of understanding and identifying what needed to be done. His evaluation
strategy was ‘Precise’ but not ‘Comprehensive’ considering the Rigor and Scope of his
intervention.

4. The decision to work on Culture seemed to be launched as a siloed initiative devoid of

the participaction of the stakeholder who would be impacted by the intervention as far as the
details mentioned in the case study (a Misinterpretation in terms of determining OD needs).
Therefore, the years spent by Layon and his colleagues on culture, launching a strategic
planning process culminating in “Defining Principles'' in 2010 during Layons tenure as a
Dean was driven by a ‘Process variable’ at leadership level by Layons leadership
characteristics determined by his attitude and values. That could be one of the reasons why in
the beginning of the case study we see him being weighed by a major question (w.r.t the
Action Research model - the output where the refreezing happens) – “Would Culture and
defining principles codified during his deanship outlive his term as a dean? And what could
he do in his last year to increase that likelihood?” & the hope that the “Culture would remain
malleable and would evolve as Berkeley- Haas evolved long into the future”. This fed to the
question of buy ins & resistance, something Layon was encountered with a number of times
due to absence of accounting for stakeholder participation at an early stage this made Layon
question the sustainability of the outcome of the Intervention made.

Intra Implementation evaluation: (check in on the progress of the intervention at

appropriately selected times in order to make intermediate adjustments; reduces delayed
knowledge of an ineffective or off-track change process)

1. Berkeley Haas had about 86 Ladder faculty or Tenured track faculty and 150
“professional faculty. Where the Professional faculty taught approximately half the credit
hours in typical Berkeley Haas MBA program, with no voting rights related to school
governance; thus, the ladder faculty being the most powerful considered influencers and
Mentors. This divide was though accounted for but not appropriately accounted for during
the implementation of the strategic plan for culture Intervention.

2. System of Shared governance which led to consensus driven decision making and
individual blockers an accepted norm of “group of freelancers” vs. “Cohesive group” this
inturn led to a cumbersome & slow decision making process & practices at Berkeley Haas.

3. Potential culture carriers were clearly the students (who held long term connections and
loyalty to the school and program as they transitioned) and the long term staff members. Yet
the campaign and strategy working group did not consist of students or alumni who were the
focus of the strategic plan idea (for creating a brand of leaders) to construct one narrative.
(Also taking into account the existence of differences in faculty, staff and alumni listening
mentioned in the case study)

4. In their phase of consulting a lot of ideas were borrowed from best practices (external)
which undermined Berkeley Haas focus on Academic rigor (Internal). The process of
implementation plan could be better structured in terms of well-defined outputs and
outcomes aligned with both Internal and external focus. As a result major resistance from
ladder faculty was witnessed during this phase of Intervention Implementation.

5. Integration of core value in the practices and process involving the faculty lacked
Rigor and was too slow. E.g. Omri Even Tov lacked exposure to the principles when he
joined in 2015 as ladder faculty. The defining principle during on boarding were not
 communicated enough, despite Layons address to the incoming faculty during orientation
attendance was not 100% and nor any supporting written materials to help communicate or
emphasize the importance of the Defining Principles for new faculties.

6. The failure of the BILD Program (lacked evaluation design) – developed jointly by
faculty. However did not include the staff or Alumni closest to contributing towards
identifying, defining and building a structured program to address the Leadership capability
building need. Output of the strategy was abandoned without considering the participation of
stakeholders who could help administer formative evaluation & summative evaluations (The
voice of the alumni and professional staff was not taken into account to improve the program
post 2012 evaluation).

7. Applied innovation to give students an experiential learning exposure again seemed

fragmented in its approach as it lacked structure and parameter to measure its success and
ROI.

C. How well did the Defining Principles contribute to end Goal of Developing
“Berkeley Leaders”

Post Intervention phase:

Layon and the advisory board worked on developing a new strategic plan (during Layons first
term as dean) stemmed from the team’s belief that-

a. The school needed to define its brand of leadership, relative to that of other
top ranked business schools

b. Redefine business leaders and change the perception that Berkeley Haas
graduated excellent analyst while other schools graduated leaders.

c. The idea was that Berkeley Haas leaders (graduates) would both thrive in
the changing business world and develop innovative solutions for
organizations and the world.

Looking at the strategic planning process with Layons focus on Core Values &
elimination of the BILD program in post 2012 and 2014 evaluations may not have
addressed the above mentioned objectives which according to Layon and the advisory
board were the objective of the strategic plan. Thus, a lack of strategy alignment and
absence of change effort evaluation directed the team in a fragmented manner.
Experiential programs later to be called '' Applied Innovation” also didn’t clearly have a
plan in terms of how the experience will help students build leadership capabilities.
Therefore, without the capabilities, it was felt by Morgan that there was now a “gap”:
“We have these Defining Principles that are embedded in the organization with the staff,
 the students, and to some degree the faculty, and this idea of a Berkeley Leader (the
current incarnation of BILD and the innovative leader concept) and we’ve tried to assign
certain attributes to Berkeley Leaders. I think the next dean could fill this gap. We know
a lot about the characteristics that are important in selecting individuals we bring to
Berkeley-Haas, but what are the leadership characteristics we celebrate when they come
out—when they’re transformed? What happens during the transformation?”

Specifically, Morgan and other faculty were worried about the future of business school
education where costs continued to rise and new innovative models, where “others could
provide 80 percent of what we offer at 20 percent of the cost,” could disrupt the industry:
“Can the Defining Principles be a path to long-run competitive advantage in a market that
is under threat of being commoditized and disrupted? Not by themselves. I think they are
a necessary condition but not a sufficient condition. Until you fill in the blanks about
what this magical transformation is, where is the unique value-add, the Defining
Principles alone are a great start, but they’re not the end of the road and they won’t be
enough by themselves.

Important Instructions:

When analyzing and responding to the case questions please remember that you are not simply
being assessed on how well you understood the case. You are also graded on how well you use
and incorporate the course material discussed in class regrading evaluation. A high-quality report
will meaningfully relate the case situations with the course material.
Please remember that this case was exclusively developed for a course on Change Evaluation.
You will in some cases need to be creative to see how they apply.

This is a team assignment. There will be one submission per team. You will need to submit your
team’s report in a Dropbox created in Moodle.