To what extent do you think that your organisation is firing on all cylinders?
If you aren’t sure, you can ask yourself the question:
Do I find myself, buoyed with enthusiasm, bounding into work each day keen to make things happen and get stuff done?
There are several widely prevalent phenomena which underpin suboptimal levels of individual job satisfaction and organisational achievement:
- A sense of disempowerment – which is harmful to employees’ self-esteem
- Apathetic attitudes – which are harmful to employees’ self-respect
- Mindless proceduralism – where people progressively lose the use of their minds
- Excessive emphasis on organisational structure and control mechanisms – which disempowers employees so debilitating the possibility of progress
If these counter-productive tendencies habituate they become normalised and develop into an integral part of the organisations unconscious mindset (paradigm). When people feel that they can’t make progress, either for themselves or for projects to which they are supposed to contribute, initial frustration leads to apathy and ultimately develops into a passive aggressive blame culture. If peoples’ self-esteem isn’t maintained by a sense of achievement they start to pick on one another in an unconscious effort to try and make themselves feel better.
On an individual level there are notable and worthy counter-examples. Employees with outstanding levels of determination remain proactive and continue to think effectively outside the apathetic paradigm which drives the organisational stagnancy. These are the people who are best placed to lead the organisation, but who often leave to go and work elsewhere hoping to find a role where people are more receptive to innovation and proactivity.
I have spoken to several organisations recently who report significant leakage of their top talent, which only serves to progressively downgrade the organisations’ culture and output. The employees who stay in these organisations are sometimes those who would not be chosen for roles elsewhere. The implications for the organisation’s culture and its bottom line are pretty obvious.
But happily all is not lost, if you are an organisational leader (either by job title or by temperament) looking to enliven your projects, outputs and culture there is a solution. If you equip more proactive employees with the skillset to upgrade delivery rates and transform the paradigms which lead to stagnation you can reinstall valuable energy into all aspects of the organisation’s performance.
The benefits of addressing delivery and cultural issues by equipping people with empowered paradigms with which to bring about change has benefits for everyone. Top talent that would leave the organisation is retained and, equipped with a deeper skillset to bring about change, they achieve necessary progress and experience the personal satisfaction of being a major contributor to a job well done.
Relief from the low-grade depression caused by organisational stagnancy means that people start to come back to life, delivery rates rise and the culture is set on an upward trend.
If you are someone who wants to equip themselves with the skills to bring about fundamental change one option is to attend Momentum’s Systemic Business Improvement (SBI) Facilitators programme which equips you to:
- Reverse organisational paradigms that hinder progress.
- Use delivering the task to bring about behavioural change.
- Encourage accountability and optimise team output.
“I’ve always been pretty confident in my ability to find solutions. Through the SBI Facilitators programme I feel much more confident to unlock the problem-solving power of a group. In principle it is easy – get everybody to agree on what the actual problem is, then harness the expertise in the room without egos getting in the way. In practice, well, it takes practice. A lot of practice. And feedback. And more practice. The SBI Facilitators programme has given me the confidence that I don’t need to find my own solutions, and the capability to facilitate better ones from others.”
Matt Metcalfe, Executive Director, Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham
You can view the SBI Facilitators programme brochure here.
The SBI Facilitators programme has been designed and will be delivered by Ashley Bookman, Momentum’s CEO, you can find out more about the major transformation achievable by flexing organisational and individual paradigms here.
