Profile Your Organization
1. Which of the following four “eras” is your company
in? How are you as a leader fostering or inhibiting what you feel
is most appropriate?
Man/Machine Era
We primarily hire hands and backs and motivate with “behavior modification” programs.
Our outside help is often from time management and efficiency experts.
We use standards and procedures to ensure productivity and reliability.
We strive to meet consistent goals with predictability. Our training is
operationally focused.
Human Relations Era
Our executives set direction and then our human relations department handles
training and development with input from managers - also working with third
parties like unions and regulators. Each function is responsible for an enriched
work environment. HR brings in a variety of programs from compliance training
to team building, profit sharing, job enrichment, etc. We provide good reward
and recognition programs as well as incentives for good work. Role modeling
is taught and encouraged. Levels do their own work and pass information down
the chain of command.
Performance Era
Our company is performance driven and managers are highly responsible for
results and empowered to hire and fire quickly with legal and procedural support
from HR. We are constantly focused on doing better, correcting the shortfalls
of our last period and setting high, reachable goals for the coming period.
We are paid for performance. Technology helps us communicate appropriately
with a busy, far-flung group – some is mass communication, some is intelligently
cascading.
Regenerative Era
Our company views all improvement efforts as being simultaneously about growing
the worker (top to bottom), the work (what we produce and how well) and the way
we work (what we do and how) and we use wholistic ways of thinking to develop
collaborative decisions in a way that broadens the understanding or impact/implications
of actions. This produces radically different—more systemically connected— answers
and possibilities. We focus on a clear compelling strategic direction that represents
our uniqueness and distinctiveness (rather than on competitive action which tends
to disperse direction). Our culture and strategic direction is about making our
customer’s and markets increasingly effective and up-valuing the systems
we touch as well. On a visit it is obvious, the work is much less anxious and
mechanical than at the usual company - but is highly fulfilling and rewarding
at all levels and in all business performance parameters.
2. What kind of System is your organization?
Closed
Closed systems don’t easily allow feedback or changes and are often
used when stablization is the only goal. Often times Supply Chain, Lean
Manufacturing and Manufacturing Excellence programs operate as closed systems.
Cybernetic
Systems that accept and seek feedback -mostly on their terms - and react
automatically to such feedback are Cybernetic systems. A thermostat manages
such a system, as does the car manufacturer who calls to collect standardized
answers to a customer service survey. Culture surveys inside the organization
fall in this arena.
Complex Adaptive
Does your organization collect feedback from and track trends on multiple
sources and make dynamic decisions about how to respond to the present and
the future? This describes a complex adaptive system, which is more responsive
to the marketplace than a Cybernetic system but tends to become highly sensitized
and reactive as well.
Developmental
Does your organization believe that everything can be improved and invest
in the development of people and the organization as a whole? Does the view
include more than the immediate business – the community? The whole industry?
Does a lot of the energy come from that view? Do you see everything and everyone
as having a uniqueness and finding ways to contribute as the prime driver of
motivation and contribution.
Evolutionary
Is your organization penetrated with alignment and connectedness to the markets,
communities, operators and all other stakeholders simultaneously? Does your organization
invent itself and its industry forward with no negative wishes for the “competition”?
Do you see yourself as accountable to all entities you impact and seek to build
a better field in which you and all stakeholders can play? Do the most audacious
goals seem worth pursuing and does it seem critical that the resources be found
to do what needs doing?
You are welcome to consider your answers on your own, or if you’d
like to discuss them, please drop
us an email and tell us which era
or eras your organization seems to be operating in and what kind
of systems thinking might be happening in your organization. You
may find our published works on these Kritis Business Methods helpful as you consider
your answers.
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