Midlands Business Profiles
What is Really Wrong With Organizations Today?
What's Really Wrong With Organizations Today?
By Jonathan Marcy, Human Resource Dynamics
June 25, 2007
What's really wrong with organizations today? It all comes down to leadership and adaptation. As South Carolina businesses are forced to compete in an increasingly global market, most companies recognize the need for change. But how we cope with change will be the deciding factor in our long-term viability. After all, pursuing change purely for the sake of change is as detrimental as ignoring a shifting economy.
As business leaders, the burning questions that wake us up in the night tend to reflect impending changes. How can your organization reach its full potential? Do your people have the skills and tools they need to advance the business? Can you even say in all honesty that you, as a "leader" in your organization, really even know who you are?
Almost all business problems today boil down to two key issues: 1) Do you have the courage to proactively pursue change? and 2) How do you implement it in a lasting way?
Let's face it — change is inevitable, whether you're a victim of external circumstances or you choose to drive it internally. Some organizations blindly ignore the inevitability of change; others accept change as reality and try to deal with it, albeit in a reactionary way. Then there are the true visionaries: those that recognize that change (through growth, advancement and innovation) is the only way to remain relevant in today's global economy.
Regardless of their basic approach to change, most companies assume they must somehow infuse learning into the organization. At the very least, they might try to force upper level management to embrace new thinking with expensive seminars in subjects like strategic planning, leadership and organizational development.
Unfortunately, most businesses forgo the initial groundwork necessary to understand the company's existing culture and desired culture, let alone determine the resources required to build an infrastructure that supports proactive change.
In a training scenario, the first group goes to a seminar and comes back excited about what they have learned. They begin to implement changes but quickly back down under pressure from the status quo. In these cases, a critical failure of leadership results in the absence of a cultural shift to accept and embrace new ideas. Consequently, these new thinkers gradually quiet down and go back to their usual way of doing things. The second group goes to training, comes back and talks to the first group (which says the changes don't work), so they don't even try to incorporate new ideas. By the time the third group is ready for training, they don't even go. They may have registered for it, but they always seem to find something more important to do.
Then there's the problem of trying to "program" change into the organization, which results in a similar recurring pattern. The company decides it needs to improve. It hires a consulting firm that introduces key staff to the latest new concept (Quality Circles, Re-engineering, TQM, Continuous Improvement, Six Sigma …. you get the idea). The trainings proceed, costing the company an enormous amount of time and money, but within a year the books are collecting dust on the shelf and the company is back to "business as usual."
Over the years, I have observed several of these cycles. In my role as Vice President of Human Resources, I actually participated in a similar process. However, as I interacted with fellow executives, I became increasingly aware of a subtle phenomenon. What we were actually doing was looking for a substitute for two missing components: adaptive leadership that promotes intelligent change and effective communication to share, discuss and install new adaptations.
Is your organization pursuing a "shot in the arm" strategy from a big consulting firm to tell you how to run your company for the next couple of years? If so, I challenge you to consider this: the latest program de jour, installed as such by an outside agency, will become merely an end in itself. And like my illustration above of the groups going away for training, your company's lack of a solid foundation or infrastructure (leadership and relationships) will cause it to react to the new fad as an end in itself. That is, since it won't be perfect, or fit well into your existing culture, it will soon be rejected, just like an organ transplant in an unwelcoming body.
Instead, I encourage you to follow a process of understanding your culture, assessing leadership capabilities and proactively managing relationships. Then if you decide to implement a change, it will serve as a lasting tool for advancing the organization toward a strategic objective instead of serving as a useless exercise.
How does this happen? The three-legged stool that must be built strongly to hold up the organization is composed of a compelling purpose, effective relationships and excellent leadership. This may seem like a tall order, and it is. However, without this infrastructure in place, your company will fall victim to the lip service of change, only to see your investment disappear under the layer of dust on the bookshelves of your most valuable investment—your people.
