We all know and believe that having strong leadership is paramount for an organization to thrive, become successful and stay successful. Having a strong leader and effective management is indeed critical to the organization’s success, but if you don’t follow through on the organizational development protocol you could be hurting the organization and potentially risking failure. We will discuss how leadership impacts the organizational culture and effecting organizational cultural changes. Leadership defined is honesty, integrity, courage, strength, and faith, also having a defined and committed vision for the organization. I cannot think of any successful business or organization where they do not have a corporate mission statement.
According to French and Bell, for organizational development to flourish, top management — CEOs, the board of directors, top executives, including the Human Resources executive— and Organizational Development consultants must place a high value on strong individual, team and organizational performance coupled with people oriented values. In order to effectively implement organizational development, we must first examine the organizational culture. My own personal experience with leadership experiences are varied, from inspiring to downright dismal. Most recently I have seen my husband’s leadership through his Army career develop and become stronger. I can say with confidence, within the military, he is the type of officer that others look up to and will follow his orders. He will always take the moral high ground, will listen with patience and is very diplomatic. I can not think of an organization where strong leadership and clear goals would be more important than the United States military. I will share one particular experience which was not what you would want in a leader; this particular leader was brought on board as a superior of a unit and not only did she not know the job, she relied blindly on incompetent individuals who she had personal relationships with, individuals where she felt the need to promote and seek their advice for mission critical operations. Not only was this a poor management strategy on her part, but it absolutely impacted all others with the most detriment to those who were not in on her inner circle. In showing favoritism she hampered continuity of efforts and morale. This type of management could have potentially cost lives.
Not all the decisions made by management have the same impact as this example, but nonetheless could be devastating to the organization, and to individual careers. The potential for bad leadership to devastate the viability of an organization is real, and costly. Was this simply one bad leader or an issue with the culture within the organization. My hunch and critical opinion is that it is an organizational cultural issue. Our text has told us that individuals, teams and organizations are not realizing their potential, OD can improve the situation”. Cultural changes are said to take a long time, at least one year, but in most cases between three to six years. I presume that the set changes can take place the opposite direction too, as in my example of poor leadership, it takes time for that cultural shift to take place. So at some point, they ran a unit that was successful, and morale was high, as was productivity. A leader like this empowers like minded people, therefore setting the ‘norm’, setting the stage for potentially disastrous results. Changing culture is ultimately concerned with leadership and power issues. In order to effect cultural changes, one must understand organizational development. Organizational development is “an effort, planned, organization wide, and managed from the top, to increase organization effectiveness and health through planned interventions in the organization’s processes, using behavioral science know”.
The. Need for Organizational Development runs much deeper than just improving productivity and job functionality, it can create a workplace environment in which employees find job satisfaction and upward mobility. Organizational Development should begin before we get to the point of dissatisfaction in the workplace. Once employees get to that point it will come across as a last-ditch effort and there is a higher probability of resistance from the employees and low morale. So, we need to take a step back, what is the catalyst for an organization to bring in an Organization Development specialist? Our Rouda & Kusy text talks about our “current rapidly-changing world”, they speak of maximizing resources, from human capital to financial capital. What is even more fascinating is the articles were written over twenty years ago, just when computers on every desktop was coming around, and automation was just a bit more than an idea. So why is Organizational Development more dominate in the workplace now, than it was twenty or thirty years ago? I believe that there are many factors. For one, we see more employees hopping from one company to a different company for a myriad of reasons, could be benefits, commute time, or they simply did not like the corporate culture. This was not the case in our parents generation, once you went to work for a company, you usually stayed until retirement. We also have companies expecting more from their employees, we need to do more with less resources. Most organizations today are in a constant state of flux as they respond to the fast-moving external business environment, local and global economies, and technological advancement.
This means that workplace processes, systems, and strategies must continuously change and evolve for an organization to remain competitive. My boss recently told me that in 2019 we will see some big changes, and I jokingly said, yes, more work, less resources. She smiled and said yes, that pretty much sums it up. Though I tried to see the humor in it, I do believe that this is a significant issue with most employers and employees. You see, I work for a very large corporation, but within the corporation I work on a team, a growing team, in the past twelve months we have doubled in size. Though this may be great for the ‘upper management’ and their pockets, they have not looked at the whole picture, nor do they have the ‘buy in’ of what our team stands for and our own corporate culture. The head of our team has very strong work ethics and morals. He will always do the right thing, even if it costs him money out of his own pocket. To me and the other core members of the team he is an inspirational leader, and in that we will also make the right choices for our clients, and put the extra effort forward to make other team members, and our clients happy.
However, with our new team members, it seems that they do not run their practices in the same manner that we have historically, and this appears to be a huge risk to the entire team. It can be simple things such as one of the other team members taking a day off work and not communicating to other team members what they have pending for clients, to larger issues such as talking about how they think they should be paid more for different client relationships because they feel they are not making enough. These are things that should have been communicated prior to a ‘marriage’, and now that they are presenting as a problem the conversations about them will prove to be more difficult. There is bound to be some hard feelings on both sides during and after the conversation. These types of negative actions within an organization, or a team such as my own experience can spread slowly like rust on a classic car, the unfortunate side to that is even when you fix it, it may never be the same as new. Culture really does matter. How an organization does things makes the difference in the competitive world. The culture of the organization is the most significant strategic variable that executive leaders need to manage effectively. Can a leader make or break the culture of an organization? The long and short of it is yes, yes they can. True enthusiasm for a business, its products, and its mission cannot be faked. Employees can recognize insincere cheerleading from a mile away. However, when leaders are sincerely enthusiastic and passionate, that’s contagious.
Whether it’s giving proper credit for accomplishments, acknowledging mistakes, or putting safety and quality first, great leaders exhibit integrity at all times. They do what’s right, time and time again, I see my leader at work put his own needs above what is right for the clients and those who work for him. Great leaders possess great communication skills, in this day and age of text, and emails with emojiis, this trait is not easy to accomplish, especially in large corporations. A good leader isn’t simply empowered to make decisions due to their position. They are willing to take on the risk of decision making. They make these decisions and take risks knowing that if things don’t work out, they’ll need to hold themselves accountable first and foremost. I have seen my team leader turn down accounts, even the most profitable ones if he feels that the business does not align into our wheelhouse. Charisma is another desirable trait in a successful leader, simply put, people are more likely to follow the lead of those they like. The best leaders are well-spoken, approachable and friendly. My own boss is the kind of guy that you would love to hang out with on a Thursday night and talk about sports and politics, he is funny, caring and generous. So if anyone could right the ship in terms of some growing pains that our own team/organization is experiencing right now, he can do it through his strong leadership skills. As Lawler writes, we should put talent first, businesses have changed, and automation has created more efficiencies, but we are now realizing that human capital is paramount in having a successful business. We need to not only look at the job, but take a more holistic view point and see how that job impacts the entire organization when it comes to talent development. Shaping the Future of Business was a fascinating article to me in that it really simplified employee and organizational development into three concise steps. Step one, Asses strengths and weaknesses, once that is done, you can develop training to enhance and build on competencies. Step two, they called ‘Feel It’, this is where we communicate the vision for the organization, to bring the employees into the folds of what management sees as the future for the company, this is where an inspirational leader is essential, if you have a leader that employees love, and want to be like, they will for sure want to follow him or her.
Step three takes the plan and vision to execution. But in order to make this a success, you must not skip the first two steps. I often feel that it is not as simple to execute as it is to come up with the idea, and believe that all employees will buy in. Doing the right thing is not always the easiest, or most profitable thing for a leader, but it will transform the organization, as well as those you are leading. Former GE CEO Jack Welch once famously said, “The soft stuff is the hard stuff.” This from my experience and studies that have been done find that this couldn’t be more true, the ‘soft stuff’ being people, culture, attitude is the most delicate balance in organizational change. Change is often a word that people cringe at, most people don’t care for change, we are comfortable and complacent, and change often means more work. Google recently went through a large scale change where they essentially reorganized, what I found interesting was how simple they made it seem. They asked and answered the four questions that we all learned when we were younger. Why? What? Who? and How? This four question approach may eventually be found in our text books. Google management did an analysis of all the leading change management processes )Kurt Lewin’s Model of Change, and Jeff Hiatt’s ADKAR model) and determined that they needed to create their own. Why is the change necessary? Being clear on the WHY turns resistance into a resolution, this is the question and answer that will show employees the benefits to the organizational change. Step two, What is the outcome we are looking for? What are the alternatives? This step is important as it will become the checks and balance, the what, is ultimately the goal of the change.
Step three, Who, this can become a barrier, as the article from Inc. states, people want to weigh in before they will buy in. we all want to feel valuable, and that we have a voice. Step four, many people want to skip ahead and look at the How? When you are clear on How you will implement change and execute it in a thoughtful fashion, it increases the adoption rate dramatically. From Inc. article, “In fact, following the combination of all these steps improved the adoption rate of change at Google dramatically. One hundred percent of managers understood a tested change while 80 percent of their employees understood it (up from 50 percent). The net result was a 90 percent adoption rate”. That is an amazing adoption rate, according to Harvard Business Review, studies show that in most organizations, two out of three transformation initiatives fail. The more things change, the more they stay the same. In summary, it is still my belief that change can be successful, and I still strongly believe that an inspirational, transformational leader is the key. You need a person at the helm who can be relatable, is a good communicator, as much as we like to believe that corporations are not hierarchical any longer, that the staff and support people have a say, it is still a fact, that upper management pulls the strings. And we must adhere to their wishes for the direction of the organization. If indeed 70% of change programs fail because of resistance from employees as according to Carsten Tams, Forbes article, then the ticket to being successful is the buy in from all employees.
