Growth: By Design or D-fault?
Growth happens itself or requires conscious efforts. Find out..
“If you always do what you’ve always done, then you’d always have what you’ve already got.” Sounds familiar? Heard of it before? That’s absolutely right. I am not talking of anything that you haven’t heard before. Samuel Johnson once said “people need to be reminded more often than they need to be instructed.”
This article throws light on why the growth of many organizations is sluggish. What conscious efforts the leaders need to put in order to achieve success for their organizations.
Furthermore, if you like it, leave your comments/inputs with your email id and I would be happy to share a rare model for transforming any organization into an extraordinary one. This model was once proposed by Marvin Bower, Founder, McKinsey.
Let’s first examine if the organization’s success is a set of conscious (design) efforts to achieve the desired result(s) or leaving it on what’s known as a ‘by default process.’
For example, take two organizations A and B.
– The leaders of A recruit for the key players of each function, so do the leaders of B.
– Leaders of A clearly define the vision to its staff and the values that it stands for, communicate with key manager over a fixed weekly schedule and solve their problems. On the other side, Leaders of B also lay out clearly the visions and values, they too emphasize greatly on living those values, but it’s merely a lip service, and trust me, employees understand it all.
– Leaders of A focus on developing organization internally (improve the products & the services it offers to its clients, the skills that are required to serve the customers well and even how to behave and carry yourself in the organization. A is completely an adaptive and learning organization. Whereas B focuses on only two aspects; one is to keep delivering/doing the good work and the happy customer will give more business or perhaps recommend them further (definitely true, but not always), and second putting pressure on its staff to generate sales (note: leaders have never invested developing the sales forces yet expects the employees to generate sales. It’s like sending a soldier to the battlefield without providing the combat training. Remember, the soldier is going to die and leaders are going to lose the battle).
– Leaders of A very carefully examine the overall health of the organization every quarterly, look at every nut & bolt present in the system, if needed, take corrective actions. B is only focusing on those two aspects (deliver good work, and ask the unskilled staff to generate sales).
– Leaders of A push it hard to understand and develop the right culture and norms so that employees’ values and behaviors align completely to that of the organization. Whereas, top guys at B think they don’t have any culture, and thus, don’t bother much to cultivate one either. Trust me, these guys all have good intentions, want good for their employees and customers, it just that they have their own set of blind spots. All of us have.
– B hardly ever fired anyone, that’s means they either had a great team or they were bad decision-makers.
Note: We all know a good employee takes the organization high, and it is equally true that a bad one does a greater harm to the organization.
As a result of it all, the employees at B complained about the system, the bosses, the culture, the people, even take out their frustrations at clients.
I don’t think you need to be Einstein to understand what’s going on here. This lack of openness to trying new idea at workplace and completely turning your back on many red-flags is resulting into de-motivated and demoralized teams, the poor functioning of each function, projects falling apart, the unhappy customers, is all eventually leading to a sharp decrease in the revenue figures. This could typically be referred to as a case of what John Kotter described as the System Ignorance, and it requires a higher level of consciousness to solve this, like Einstein once very wisely said:
“Problems can’t be solved by the same level of consciousness that created them.”
Albert Einstein
Like in the past, please feel free to share this article further with your bosses or senior leadership team. Hopefully it rings a bell!!
Let me know if:
1. you ever encountered a similar situation in your organization or somewhere else?
2. What is it that you think could be done?
Leave your comment with your email id, will forward you a unique model proposed by Marvin Bower, founder, McKinsey, which still holds greatest value in solving organization challenges and aligning any organization to the path of extraordinary success.