In our years of consulting work, we have conducted numerous organizational assessments. In that work, we have found that one question reveals more about an organization’s culture than almost any other. The answer employees give to it often tell us all we need to know about the workplace they face. The question has to do with the use of organizational …
Much is made of workplace culture and the effect it can have on organization dynamics, functioning and performance. But what about when culture is overlooked or ignored? What happens then? One way we have tried to help the leaders we work with is to imagine culture as a leader’s back yard. With attention and effort, this land can be developed …
Think about a business you think is fantastic, a place you not only patronize, but evangalize for. Two things are almost invariably true about such an organization. The first is that its service is outstanding. Things like prices, policies, and selection can distinguish a good organization from a mediocre one. But sticking out as really great is almost impossible without …
In our consulting work, we regularly tell leaders that organizational improvement begins with them, individually and personally. Don’t look down at your employees, we tell them. Don’t look up at your supervisors. It’s all about you. Is this an ego boost? A pretext for self-importance? Actually it’s the exact opposite. For pointing the finger at others becomes impossible when we …
Leaders are almost universally judged on their ability to generate revenue. A prospering business must generate enough income to support development and growth. Even nonprofits must secure donations, user fees, grants, or similar streams of revenue to retain talent and achieve real-world results. But how do leaders best secure that revenue? Years ago a group of Harvard Business School faculty …
The responsibility for addressing the imperative challenge of creating unity rests upon two different but overlapping groups. First, it is essential that managers and supervisors, those people invested with formal organizational authority, commit themselves to forging the required unity, both between themselves and between the people that report to them. The unity of management is a prerequisite to …
In the landscape of today’s working world, organizations are the fundamental and defining structures within which we work, produce, and get things done. Very few people now work outside of an organization. The pervasiveness of organizations in our society is now so complete that we take them as a given and no longer question the rationale behind their existence. In …
Think organizational culture is limited to the formality of dress and the length of coffee breaks? Think again. Culture shapes innumerable aspects of workplace functioning, everything from how information is shared and news is spread to how mistakes are handled and questions are received. But almost no facet of organizational performance is more impacted by culture than interpersonal interactions. The …
What exactly is a job? A person could work a lifetime without ever explicitly considering such a question. But its importance should not be underestimated, for actions are guided and shaped (as well as constrained and limited) by below-the-line understandings of what one is actually doing day after day. In the most basic formulation, a job could be described simply …
The data were clear. Three supervisors were doing a great job. Three others were struggling or failing outright. The CEO instinctively approached the survey results as a tool to pinpoint deficient managers. But our experience suggested that the problem lay less in any one individual’s failures than in the overall variation of leadership within the organization. For such a wide …