The World Has Changed-Have You?

The World Has Changed-Have You?

People come to work committed to contributing and making a difference for their organizations, their teams and themselves. The systems, processes and structures of organizations have evolved over time and mostly in reaction to emerging circumstances. Organizations rarely work from the law of systems that says: “well designed systems obsolete themselves once they have gotten the job done”, rather they stay in place, constraining the freedom and expression of the people who strive for the company’s success.

As a consultant I have encountered many examples of these situations and experienced the resignation and disenfranchisement of the employees who are attempting to do their best work inside of the systems that fail them. Revealing the source of the system and retiring the outmoded conversations that gave rise to them has often freed some of the disenfranchised employees to become the greatest contributors to the organization’s future success.

In our rapidly changing environments there is an increasing urgency to do the work of examining the status quo against the backdrop of the future the organization is striving for. Is what you are currently doing making a difference for the future, or is what you are currently doing being done because that is the way it is always done? That is just the way it is around here, and it has to be done that way.

Some of the outdated systems have been in place for many years and continue unexamined and unrelated to the current needs. Several years ago I worked with a telecommunications company with a 200 year history of being in business. They had a process in place where each character in their yellow pages had to be counted and that number delivered to the printer six weeks in advance of printing. Everyone knew it had to be done that way, but no one knew what difference it made. After interviewing people throughout the organization with the same result, the Vice President of the division went to the printer. He was told that they no longer needed to do that process and had needed the exact number of characters six weeks in advance of printing because back when they used moveable type they had to order lead and it took six weeks for delivery. So, for over sixty years the company had been performing a manual task with a growing army of people to produce a result that was no longer needed. When the process was initiated it was required, but things had changed. The printer had moved to off-set printing but the company continued to follow the requirements established by the printer’s use of moveable type. The telecommunications company retired their outmoded process and realized an immediate savings of $500,000 and they freed up human resources to begin doing work that made a difference to the organization. The employee moral and satisfaction scores improved dramatically as people were being utilized in a way that contributed.

This is but one of many examples where the processes and practices in organizations are working, they were once required and made sense to move the company forward, but organizations are notorious for keeping these in place long after they have served their purpose.

When was the last time your organization communicated its vision for the future, and examined the practices and processes to see if what is currently working actually makes a difference to fulfill on that future?

Retiring practices that have served their purpose sounds like an easy thing to do, however in some instances the situations are not as obvious as the telecommunications example. Without a clear vision and appreciation for the distinctions of Leadership, Management and Development the efforts can result in arguments between different points of view resulting in enough agreement to have another meeting to talk about it. Communication and co-creative sessions regarding the future of the organization are imperative for maximizing resources, eliminating redundancies, and fulfilling on the shared commitments that come to work each day. Eliminating the obviously outmoded processes is a good place to start, but there is much design and development work to be done for our rapidly changing environments to become robust and flexible in response to the fast changing needs presenting themselves each day.

Sharon Sinclair
Presidentr
Synergy and Leverage Consulting
www.synergyandleverage.com