Turning around the Organizations – Indicators for Change

In late seventies, when I was given the opportunity for the leadership of an organization with a hundred and fifty employees, it was indeed a matter of pride for a young man to start with, until I found in the next few days that there were over a hundred groups within this number. It was difficult to guess who belonged to which group with multiple messages intersecting in the audio-space creating more noise than sound. The low productivity of this organization could be easily linked to low self-esteem of the people, trust deficit and lack of freedom among the qualified and skilled members of the organization. Trust deficit further nurtured by fear of authority, absence of good HR policies contributed to the organization being rated low in public view though it had an outstanding history. The journey of six years was difficult but gave me a lot of insight into building an organization and turning it around from a Low performing to a High performing organization.

High Performing Organizations do not necessarily have a big brand value and even if they have one, that hasn’t happened overnight. A number of organizations with proven track record of a high growth and profitability do not fall into this classification for several other reasons. The HPOs, immaterial of their field of operation, carry certain core values which reflect their functional profile and ethical standards beyond the descriptions of profitability. In business terms, these organizations are not impacted by mild shock waves in the stock market or by the bullish or bearish trends in share markets as they organize themselves to standardize their health profile over a reasonably longer period of time. Their core values define their existential norms and hence their rate of acceptability, credibility and sustainability in a competitive environment is high. They display healthy norms of running an organization and provide certain peer models for reference and adoption.

Some of the indicators of High Performing organizations are:

1. 

       People are Assets.

They consider people as their core assets. They care for the quality of the people they recruit and nurture them to certain basic standards that will communicate the value of the organization. They tend to mentor the thought architecture of the people and ensure their continuous competency empowerment to keep them alive and sensitive to current and futuristic challenges. They consider investment on people as fundamental to long-term gains of the organization and to build their confidence profile in the organizational environment. The overall respectability of the individual employee is valued, immaterial of their placement and domain of operation. In short, they focus on increasing the “Asset value” of their individual employees which in turn promotes their self-esteem and level of belonging to the organization.

2.    TRUST AS A CORE VALUE

Building a “Trust” system is critical to the philosophy of an organization that seeks to turn around. They believe that the performance and productivity of the employees increase when they are trusted. To build the trust system, the operational structure provides scaffolding policies and practices. Trust builds a healthy employer-employee relationship and is an effective instrument in ‘Relationship Management’. Trust eliminates doubt, suspicion, fear, anxiety and any unhealthy peer competitions. Trust promotes self-respect, organized behaviour, discipline and work ethics. The leaders of such organizations invest time and money not only in building an environment of trust but continuously work on deflating exercises whenever situations develop or in places where there is scope for mistrust. Trust enhances productivity, thereby reducing wastage and ensures healthy work environment.  Of course, the leaders in these organizations have to work their way through to achieve this end.

3.    HAPPINESS INDEX IS MENTORED

An organization with a maximum number of happy people working with them ensures high productivity, good delivery and execution procedures and secured safety concerns. HR policies of the organization should incorporate supportive strategies that would promote the holistic happiness of their employees. Organizations who deem employees as “paid staff” for carrying out certain detailed professional obligations will soon find issues relating to loyalty, team-building and shared concerns. The organizations need to understand and differentiate “Entertainment” from “Happiness.” Periodical interventions to keep people happy through meets, dine and dance practices, sport and out-door trips have only a limited value and may be good enough to be timely ‘stress-busters’, but not as value additions to happiness. Possibly “happiness’ and ‘wellness’ have to be interwoven as a concept meaningfully to meet the employee aspirations. Promotion of self-esteem, responsibility with respectability and scope for learning opportunities leading to growth may be attractive happiness packages. 

4.    FREEDOM WITH RESPONSIBILITY

Trust without freedom is essentially academic. Unless the standard operating procedures reflect the scope for freedom to function, it defeats its essence. In organizational network people are not considered as numbers but as living organisms exercising thoughts, opinions, views and displaying skills and talents. Hence organizations provide in-built opportunities within the large frame work of SOPs. Freedom is not arbitrariness, but a respectful communication of the individuality to influence a concept, a thought or an operation. As such, freedom is a disciplined communication of a rightful opinion or a view or exercise of an action. Hence it goes with responsibility. Organizations seeking to turn around need to train their employees to the narratives of this philosophy and help them to exercise their freedom in a responsible manner. Exercise of freedom in a given operational spectrum should not, however, infringe on the simultaneous and similar exercise by other individuals both in the lateral and vertical hierarchies.  This kind of freedom censors the ego of the individuals and celebrates collective leadership.

5.    Everyone Listens

Organizations seeking transformation should have sensitive ears. They should have people who are willing to listen, listen attentively, listen patiently and accurately. Listening helps the “hot spots” to steam out whenever necessary so that normalcy returns from an 'excited state' to the 'ground state' alienating personal and working pressures. Listening helps to understand situations, needs and problems and to take corrective measure on time and to avoid unnecessary build up of negative energy in the system. The mechanism for listening ensures that the employees can trust and mediate in the operational structure in an open manner. Listening, however, is a meaningful structured exercise which eliminates personal criticism, negative remarks and emotional outbursts born out of individual conflicts. Listening is a time sensitive close-knit exercise which promotes self-assurance for committed employees.

6.    Long-term vision Matters

Many organizations which don’t scale up to the level they deserve to, in spite of latent potentials appear to focus more on their short-term goals, immediate turn overs, current marketing trends and routine machine operations. They enjoy current competitions and to position themselves in the race, thereby missing the possible opportunities for leadership in the future. While one cannot build a future without ensuring current financial and organizational health standards, it is important to envision the long-term goals and structure strategies that would drive the organization towards them. Continuous empowerment of the core team to emerging technologies and futuristic markets is vital for a turnaround operation. It is equally important to address to and invest in R&D who could mentor the game safely. “The vision Management” is a dynamic process and is not to be restrained to “Visions” captured a decade or two before, as some of them may have outlived their purpose and life and they many not help the organization to turn a new leaf in emerging societies.

7.    Organization as an organic system

Leaders seeking a turnaround need to consider the entire organization as a single organic system. Hence ‘system engineering’ is taken as a core organizational practice. Various verticals in the organization, while functioning independently mutually communicate to the core purpose and defined goals. The organization develops a ‘shared vision’ among all its stakeholders so that the inputs from all corners address and contribute to the organic structure and dynamics. Isolation, aloofness and compartmentalization gives way to synthesis, participation, togetherness and ownership. Organizational concern and loyalty become an attribute of employee engagement. Diversity in functional practices doesn’t create continents in the universe of organizational thought architecture. Problems are handled before they become perilous to any organ of the system.  The health of organization is viewed as holistic and wellness of its individual organs is put as a priority.

8.    Ownership moves from “I” to “We”

Leading organizations have a broad spectrum of managerial practices. With every employee gainfully and meaningfully engaged in the conceptual design of the larger purpose of the organizational dynamics, the ownership symbolically moves from “I” to “We”.  The members of the organization move to a higher pedestal of ownership from just remaining ‘employees’. This is facilitated by participation and engagement. Everyone feels ‘the pride’ of being there and celebration of their identity in the organization. Dissents, conflicts and disapprovals are resolved at the native stage of their existence through peer efforts and do not find much opportunity for a fertile growth. Transparency is evident and conversational readiness with verticals facilitates developing healthy belief systems that leads to the expansion of ownership space.

9.    Transformation happen, not changes

In most high performing organizations, impending changes are sensed much earlier before then walk in. The organization not only gets ready for welcoming changes but is ready to set the agenda to accomodate them. Willingness to welcome the change helps to prepare the mindsets both cognitively and emotionally. This helps in transformation of precepts and practices rather than mere acceptance of change.  Oftentimes, changes have superficial impact, are reflected through cosmetic changes and are done to influence customer mindsets, to maneuver marketing advantages Transformation leads to holistic re-engineering and re-positioning of the organization and helps in ushering fresh energy to the entire system. Transformation impacts the functional dynamics of the entire organization and the members feel like the re-emergence of a phoenix to newer opportunities and challenges.

10.  Success is an event and not a journey

Success in terms of achieving targets, peaks of excellence, market breakthroughs, new product interventions are deemed as events in the progressive path of the company. The organizations consider them as energizers to scaling up performances with redefined goals and they are considered as markers in the runway for the flight to take off. Celebrations apart, the next dawn marks a new page in the life history of the company. The members of the organization engage with ‘karma’ as if nothing adventurous has happened. The think tank of the company starts revisiting their learning curve to incorporate new learning points so that the curve doesn’t become linear and the progress or learning stagnates.

And back home..

Six years later, when I was ready to move out of the organization, I had many leaders in the organization who could shoulder the challenges of the future with conviction and confidence, but I heard from them one single voice “Thank you” and not a ‘good bye’; and they left that communication to me! I learnt that leadership is not only a challenge, but a learning experience.