You cannot change an organization on paper

You cannot change an organization on paper regarding improving its performance, which many often overlook. While you can’t change an organization’s performance, you can change the behavior of people within it by setting organizational goals, gaining their support for strategies to achieve them, and delegating tasks that align with their strengths. You can read my article to learn more about Leadership. Of course, having an organizational structure and processes is essential. It’s like creating a strategy for a football match – knowing your players’ strengths helps you create an effective team structure and game plan.

 

Why hard deadlines may not be effective

You must set clear goals to improve your organization’s performance, which can be challenging because different goals can conflict. While deadlines are important, focusing too much on them can hinder progress because you can’t predict the future. It’s essential to build in some flexibility for learning, improving, and changing strategies as needed. While deadlines and evaluations are necessary, planning needs to be dynamic rather than static to keep up with the pace of change in today’s world.

 

 

The fallacy of relying solely on hard facts

Many use key performance indicators (KPIs), such as the balanced scorecard, to measure organizational performance. However, it’s essential to recognize that soft factors, like organizational behavior and activities, can’t be measured by themselves. To understand if behaviors support key goals effectively, you need to observe and evaluate them. For example, as a new head of finance, I may need to define a scoring system to ensure my team is accounting correctly. Just looking at a gap in pounds doesn’t explain why it happened or how to fix it. It’s essential to drill down to behavior for better insights and results because hard facts can be overstretched if you don’t consider underlying behavior.

 

Address fear before implementing organizational changes

Many organizations constantly change their processes, structures, and technology to increase productivity. However, this can cause fear, anger, and frustration among employees. Some worry they won’t be able to cope with new technology or fear losing their jobs. Others are annoyed by new processes and changes that make things too complicated. This can lead to employees resisting or complaining, costing the organization thousands or even millions of pounds. It’s important to consider human behavior when implementing changes because employees may not openly discuss issues or criticize for fear of appearing incompetent or losing their job. Reporting issues about changes to one’s superior can worsen the problem, as it may not provide the complete picture of oneself to the manager. This can lead to project delays and repeated steps. Instead, leaders should address employee’s fears and anger toward changes by providing options and working with them to choose and implement a suitable solution.

 

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