I’ve been scrounging through some old, musty, dusty files lately and found something that you, our dear readers, may gain some value from. It’s an old quote from an old dead guy that always gets me thinking…
“Every organization is perfectly designed to achieve the results it gets.”
Say what??!!
“Every organization is perfectly designed to achieve the results it gets.”
So said the semi-famous guru of total quality, W. Edwards Deming. Deming’s the engineer that the War Production Board used to win WWII. Then, our manufacturers dissed him after the war. So he went to teach the Japanese how to rebuild with quality and, well, you know what happened to post-war U.S. manufacturers of cameras, watches, radios, TVs, consumer electronics, automobiles, computer displays, LCDs, and a bunch of other product categories.
The Japanese were hungry, and we looked a lot like sushi.
Anyway, have you ever thought about how to get better results from YOUR organization?
Dr. Deming would tell you that you have to CHANGE (uh oh, there’s that word again) some element of your strategy, your structure, or your culture before you can expect any change in results. Why? Because…(see paragraph 2 above).
If you’re unwilling to CHANGE, you’ll be perfectly designed to achieve those results you want to improve, but can’t, since…well, see paragraph 2 above again.
That’s why BUILT TO LEAD likes to home in on the three cultural keys to GREAT performance–TRUST, ENGAGEMENT, and ALIGNMENT.
TRUST in management, trust in the leadership’s vision, trust in our collective ability to pull it off, trust in ourselves, and trust in EACH OTHER are essential. TRUST is the key to fast, fluid, and focused performance. MISTRUST is a tax upon the entire organization. Things take oh-so-much longer to do in an environment of mistrust. Without trust, you pay. Big time.
How are you measuring trust? Do your employees trust you? Do you trust them? Do they trust each other, across departmental boundaries, to deliver? How do you know?
ENGAGEMENT harkens back to vision, and strategy. Why does the organization exist and what must it do to succeed? Unless your people understand that, deeply, really “get it” and BUY IN to it, performance will suffer. Study upon survey upon finding of American businesses points to the dismal fact that, on average, only 30% of employees have bought in and actively break a sweat to pull the strategy off. Another 50% are coming in to get a paycheck. Upwards of 20% are disgruntled malcontents busy undoing the good work of the top 30%. Sound familiar?
How clear, concise, and compelling is your vision? How often do you communicate your strategy? How do you know if your employees care? Do you know who your malcontents are? When was the last time you asked them what they’re so pissed off about? Some of them may be your truth tellers in disguise.
ALIGNMENT is the hard work of ensuring that your organizational structure, rewards and recognition systems, people, processes, and information flows support what you are trying to do strategically. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don’t. Lots of companies we know struggle with yesterday’s processes that never seem to go away, even when the people who set them up are gone, and the challenges they were designed to meet have faded away. Outmoded policies. Poor information and reporting. Unclear lines of decision making. Political infighting.
Houston, we have a problem.
In our current world of economic uncertainty, “BUILDING” in the context of our way of doing it may seem like the “soft” stuff. But let’s get real. You want better performance? CHANGE your design. Attack the critical issues of TRUST, ENGAGEMENT, and ALIGNMENT.
Only then will you be perfectly designed to achieve the results you WANT.
BUILT TO LEAD 