Familiarizing Other Staff in Different Reefs
The new PD was trying to create a trusted and caring organizational culture at RSX-
SZ. One of the ways he did this was to organize many sports clubs so that the staff
could play together. In May, I joined the Tuesday evening badminton games organized by the
Badminton Club, where I could play badminton with the team members and get to know
some of them. I had the opportunities of talking with them while we were waiting for our turn
to play. In the first game I got to know three general staff of the Operation department and
one new staff who just joined the Finance department. It was the first time that I actually
participated in the group instead of just being an observer.
I joined the Tuesday night badminton game as long as I was not traveling elsewhere. So,
the regular players began to notice me and to play with me as partners or opponents in
matches. I usually play tennis for my regular sports, though I could play badminton at novice
level. It took me a while to adjust to the game and to pick up my rusty skills. After several
games, I improved and played better. The group seemed to enjoy playing with me more. By
mid-June, when I began the shadowing exercise with the two DHs, I met some of those
badminton players whom I only got to see on Tuesday night games. We smiled at each other,
and they seemed to feel comfortable with me being around observing the DHs and their
interactions with team members.
Attending the management team meetings, departmental team meetings, and
one-on-one supervision meetings could only allow me to observe their interactions in those
meeting settings. Moreover, team meetings were only one of the many meetings that they had
in the organization. Participating in lunch conversations with the DHs and in badminton
games could allow me to understand the DHs and other general staff at a superficial level. At
best, I was only able to take a snapshot of the many interactions and conversations that
happened during the day of the DHs. I knew that I needed to engage the DHs to understand
their perspectives and experiences of organizational change and the leading change processes,
through individual interviews or conversations. Moreover, I needed to observe more deeply
and at a longer period, the leadership-as-practice of the DHs through shadowing exercise with
two selected DHs.
Chasing the Fishes by Individual Interviews With the PD, DHs, and VP
In April and May, I conducted the first individual interviews with the PD, the Big
Five, the CFO-North Asia, and the Finance Director. I also had some less formal individual
conversations with those supportive DHs and a few managers (N-2). The first interview was
mainly designed to get to know their work history with the organization, the main
organizational changes that they had experienced and managed in the past 12 months, the
challenges they had encountered thus far and expected in the near future, how they had coped
with or managed those changes, and most importantly, their plans or thoughts to face future
challenges.
I could do audio recording with the PD and two of the DHs during the interviews.
Those important conversations, captured verbatim, gave me solid data for further and deeper
analysis of their organizational changes, their thoughts, and to some extent what they
reported their leadership practices to be. For other DHs, I wrote my interview notes at once or
shortly after the interviews. Their levels of trust and disclosure surprised me, and again, I was
deeply grateful to them. Two of the DHs who were relatively cautious in their coaching
relationship with me two years ago could also open to me about their deep thoughts and
feelings concerning the organizational changes and their personal career issues. I felt that
after the first interviews, my relationships with the PD and the DHs had gone deeper.
The PD, Joseph, was always prepared for coaching sessions when I did leadership
coaching with him two years ago. Before the first interview, I told him about the purpose of
the interview and the key questions that I would discuss with him. At the first interview
Joseph was very ready to share with me his experience of change management in the
organization as well as his career development. He was definitely under intense pressure to
excel and perform as the new PD as well as to work with the VP and the management team to
drive and sustain the business in a highly VUCA business environment. Leadership transition
and people management were two of his biggest challenges because he felt he had many
things to learn about leadership and people management, while he could pretty well manage
those operational and technical issues at the RSX-SZ site (he was operation director).
A few of the DHs told me about their initial struggles after the reorganization of the
departments. Gaining the acceptance, trust, and respect from the new teams, which were
integrated into their departments, was very challenging to them. Since they were not familiar
with those new production lines or the work nature of the new teams, they needed to work
very hard and learn very fast to catch up. On the other hand, the pressure from the top
management to drive performance and productivity brought about great stress for the DHs.
Almost all the departments had experienced some kind of staff turnover problems. The DHs
could not control the compensation and reward policies or the budgets of their departments;
they found themselves totally helpless in staff retention and staff engagement. Some of the
DHs also shared with me about their career development cross-roads at different stages of
their career at RSX-SZ as well as their disappointments and frustrations in some setbacks in
recent months. They were willing to show me their other sides, which they did not normally
show or tell the others at work.
I had deliberately delayed my interview with the VP until I had finished all the team
meetings and interviews with the PD and DHs. First of all, I needed to understand the
organization, the integration issues, the PD, and the DHs better before I could talk to the VP
who could ask me very direct questions about my study. Secondly, I knew that I could only
talk to the VP once or twice during the whole six-month ethnographic study because he was
remarkably busy handling the global business and crisis brought about by the Delta COVID
virus in India and other countries. Lastly, I needed to know what specific questions I should
ask him to understand the macro and meso levels of the organization.
I extended the invitation to interview the VP in early June, but he did not reply. Then,
in the next week, he suddenly showed up at my cubicle at 10:30 a.m. and asked me if I could
talk to him then. I responded that, of course, I would love to. I had a 35-minute conversation
with him because he told me that he had a meeting at 11 a.m. It was not a structured interview
because I only had 30 minutes and I only could ask him a very general question about change
to start the interview. Then, the VP started talking freely about the global business, the RSX-
SZ organizational changes, the people management issues, and his impressions about
some DHs and managers. It was the first time that I heard from the VP about his perceptions
of the DHs. That helped me to understand the interactions and dialogues between the VP, the
PD, and the DHs in the context of leadership transition and organizational change. The
ethnographic puzzle seemed to come into place with more information revealed by the VP
from macro and meso levels.
Being the Invisible Observer Through Shadowing Two Department Heads
When I was about half-way through my ethnography, I realized that I needed to go to a
deeper level of immersion so that I could observe the direct interactions of the DHs with their
significant others in the organization, to see their leadership-as-practice in action. I proposed
to have a 5-day shadowing exercise with two DHs who were most affected by the integration
and reorganization. The plan was to shadow (follow and accompany) the DHs during the
office hours, to see and experience what they actually did in the five different workdays of
the week (Monday to Friday). Then, I could gain a better view of their normal work week and
their interactions with different parties throughout those five days. That could be the only
opportunity for me to totally immerse into the operation and production processes of the
organization. Hopefully, I could see their leadership-as-practice in the shadowing process.
I made the request to the two DHs and explained the purpose, the process, and even
some possible benefits to them (one of them asked me what she could get out of the exercise).
Both of my target DHs agreed to do the shadowing in mid-June to mid-July. Then, I sounded
out the idea to the VP during my conversation with him and he did not object (I did not ask
for his permission; I only mentioned to him that I was going to do the shadowing exercise
without any specific details). In my second interview with the PD, I officially asked for his
approval, and he gladly approved the exercise. With the PD’s approval, I could get the high
security pass to get into the shop floors in those five to six weeks. In those five days of
shadowing, I had the opportunity to observe the interactions and dialogues of the two DHs
with their superiors, their peers, and their respective team members as a group as well as
individually. The only interaction that I did not get to observe was their communication
meetings with the corporate office.
Shadowing the Operation Director. On June 15 I started the first shadowing exercise
with David, the Operation Director. His daily routine was to have briefing meetings with all
the operation teams in the three different floors. David and I got dressed up with those
protective clothes and shoe covers on the fourth floor. The briefing with the seven
high-tech production leaders was carried out at a meeting corner in the shop floor. They
gathered standing up, around a small, tall roundtable surrounded by many dashboards with
charts and figures printed on the displace folders. David greeted his team and briefly
explained that I was accompanying him these days for observation. I nodded my head to greet
them and then stood behind, outside the circle. Each team leader took turns to present some
technical issues, which they wanted to inform David and the team. They briefly discussed the
issues and made some quick decisions about the matter. There were operation, process, and
quality people in the briefing meeting. I reckoned that they always used a
multidisciplinary approach to tackle technical problems. They always kept the meeting to 30
minutes (because they arranged meetings at the 1st or 30th minute of the hour).
David then led me to the first floor. On our way there, he was explaining to me that the
PD, Joseph, could be leading the briefing meetings on the first floor and the third floor
because they were still in the leadership transition. Joseph used to look after those two floors,
while David was in charge of the operations on the fourth floor. After Joseph’s promotion, the
three operations were integrated under David’s supervision. However, the technology and the
operations of those two floors were altogether different from the high-tech operation that
David was responsible for. Therefore, from October 2020 until June 2021, Joseph was still
involved in the briefing and operational issues so that they could allow David to have
sufficient time to pick up the operations and ensure business continuity. Occasionally, Joseph
might not show up at the briefing meetings; David took the lead whenever Joseph was not
present. Such overlap of roles during leadership transition seemed to be a practice adapted by
both Alex and Joseph in the organizational change. I will discuss more about that in the next
chapter.
Ten people were waiting, and they had started their discussion on some technical issues
concerning some printing products. Joseph was not at the meeting and, thus, David, took over
the meeting and asked the leaders to report. The place was very noisy, and I could hardly hear
what they were talking about. During the meeting I noticed that Joseph was on the first floor,
and he was talking with a line supervisor five meters behind the dashboards, but David and
the rest of the team did not realize that. Joseph did not join in the briefing; he left shortly after
he finished the conversation with the supervisor. I guessed that Joseph probably wanted to let
David take the lead to brief the printing team on the first day of my shadowing. I remembered
Joseph telling me about Alex’s (the VP’s) involvement in the operation briefing and the
management team meeting in the initial months of the leadership transition, and that Alex
eventually let him take the lead without attending those meetings anymore. I thought that
Joseph was doing the same with David for leadership transition. Letting the new leader be
and letting go of the old team that the leader used to lead, at the right timing, could be a very
important leadership practice in leadership transition management.
At 10:30 a.m., David and I arrived at the briefing meeting on the third floor. Joseph
was there, together with 10 operation managers and engineers, and he had already started the
briefing (Joseph always started meetings on time). They were discussing about some
technical problems in a product. David was standing next to Joseph, listening and taking
notes on his operation notebook. After all the operation managers and supervisors reported
about their problems, Joseph made some general remarks about the market situation and the
coming production schedules. Finally, he reminded the team leaders to take their annual
leaves, lest their outstanding leave could be written off by July 1.
At 11:30 a.m., David and I attended the management team meeting. After lunch at 2:00
p.m., David had one-on-one supervision with his operation manager on the fourth floor and
with an operation engineer on the third floor. Both meetings were about some technical
problems with the production lines or certain products. At 3:00 p.m., David rushed to the HR
meeting where the PD and the DHs were present to discuss about recruitment, training, and
other HR issues. I got to meet with the new HR manager after the meeting, whom I did not
usually see at the management team meeting at 11:30 a.m.
At 4:00 p.m., David went to the first floor to meet with the Graphic Manager to review
some operations and processes. They also looked at the organization chart and manpower
issues, including the career development paths of the team and promotion recommendations.
David mainly listened to the manager’s report and comments. He asked a few questions in a
very gentle way to clarify some issues.
At 5:00 p.m., David had a meeting with a process engineer to review a certain process
improvement project. Productivity and performance improvement was the prime purpose of
the improvement project. David reminded the engineer that any recommendation had to be
evidence-based and data-driven. They also needed to assess the risks of the different
approaches. If the project was successful, they could shorten the “order to production”
waiting time. David showed his appreciation to the engineer’s effort and progress.
Shadowing the Quality, Process, and Product (QPP) Director. On June 16, I started
the first shadowing exercise with Judy, the QPP Director. Unlike David, Judy started her day
later in the morning because she usually worked very late after the normal office hours
because of the teleconference with Europe corporate office, which is six hours behind. She
had her daily briefing at 11:00 a.m. with the QPP engineering team at the conference room on
the third floor. There was a big and tall rectangular table. Judy had the meeting with four
process engineering managers. She briefly introduced me to the team, and I recognized that
one of them was the organizer of the badminton club. He and I looked at each other and
smiled. Another process engineer was also playing badminton the other night when I got to
know his name, but I did not know that he was working in Judy’s process engineering team.
Like other briefing meetings, the QPP engineering team meeting was talking about
highly technical issues concerning certain processes and products. I knew that the
engineering team used to report to the ex-Operation Director, Joseph, and that Judy did not
have the engineering background to be able to solve their technical problems, but she was
familiar with processes and products after many years of working in the Quality department.
According to what Joseph and Judy told me in the individual interviews, during the initial
months of the reorganization and integration, the engineering team did not accept the
organizational change and they doubted whether Judy was able to lead and manage their
engineering tasks and projects. It was the first time that I could observe how Judy interacted
with the QPP engineering team leaders.
The QPP engineering team were all male engineers around 30–40 years of age. They
looked rather formal and sober at the start of the meeting. When Judy had engaged the team
in some discussions about some technical matters and projects, I noticed that she was quite
relaxed and smiled with the team. The rest of the team were also smiling while they were
discussing on some issues. The atmosphere of the team meeting was quite relaxed and
productive to my surprise. In the subsequent shadowing exercise on the other days, the same
interaction pattern was observed.
In the individual interview, Judy told me about her frustrations in dealing with the
engineering team because they did not seem to respect her, and they often went directly to the
PD or even the VP to solve those technical problems. Joseph also told me about the
objections of the engineering team to Judy’s leadership over their team, partly because of her
lack of engineering qualification, and partly because of her management style. He had tried to
mediate the new working relationship between Judy and the engineering team through
personal coaching with some of the team leaders. So, after the shadowing exercise, I thought
that perhaps Judy had gained their acceptance (if not respect and trust) as their leader, though
she might not have all the technical knowledge and expertise that they expected their leader
to have. In the next chapter, I will explore further Judy’s leadership practices in dealing with
such difficult team dynamics during the organizational change.
During the immersion, I realized that the department heads, the managers, and other
staffs recognized me as their teacher rather than a research student. The previous training and
coaching experience two years ago had given me an easy access to the organization, as well
as recognition and trust from the department heads and the managers. I came to accept that
fact but, in the meantime, I knew that I had to be careful about the boundary issues so that
they did not misunderstand my intention and my role as researcher instead of their teacher or
coach. I will discuss more about the boundary issue in the last section.
Defining the Boundaries as a Researcher
To set the boundary as a researcher, whenever I sensed that the DHs or managers began
to seek for my coaching about some issues, I immediately stated the purpose of my study and
the importance of staying neutral and impartial as a researcher. I recommended them for
coaching service from other coaches. To conclude the ethnographic immersion chapter, I will
tell the story of the lunch celebration gathering of the Operation department.
On June 30, it was the end of the H1 (first half of the year). The Operation Director,
David, was hosting a lunch with the PD, all the managers and supervisors of the Operation
department (all the three floors) to celebrate the good results and performance of the team.
David invited me to join with them (we were in the shadowing exercise on that day, but
usually I was not invited in those lunch meetings).
Joseph, David, and I were walking together under the hot weather to the restaurant.
When we arrived, the whole group had already been present, and the second table had started
their lunch. Joseph, David, and I went to the head table. I was waiting to be seated because in
Chinese culture the seating at the head table had specific meaning, depending on the status of
the person to be seated. The norm is that the host sits in the middle of the head table. The
most respected guest would sit at the left-hand side of the host. In that occasion, David was
the host because he was the DH of Operation department. Joseph just went ahead to sit on the
side. David asked me to sit on the left-hand side beside him. I was honored and grateful for
their respect and recognition.
I was struggling whether I should include this tale in this chapter because I was not
being invisible or behind the scenes as an ethnographer ought to be. Nevertheless, I included
this part as the conclusion of the immersion chapter because I reckoned that my relationship
with the organization played a significant part in the immersion process. Denying that or
deliberately down-playing the impact of that relationship would not do justice to this research
and the readers. The whole organization, from top management to shop floor workers, did not
see me just as a student or researcher, though they knew that I was doing research on
leadership at the plant; they recognized me as a teacher or a consultant who had taught and
