Organizational transformation principle

Core Competence of the Organization

The five competence forces that change Organization

How to motivate employees?

Every person has different reasons for working. The reasons for working are as individual as the person. But, we all work because we obtain something that we need from work. The something obtained from work impacts morale, employee motivation, and the quality of life. To create positive employee motivation, treat employees as if they matter - because employees matter. These ideas will help fulfill what people want from work and create employee motivation.

Some people work for personal fulfillment; others work for love of what they do. Others work to accomplish goals and to feel as if they are contributing to something larger than themselves. The bottom line is that we all work for money and for reasons too individual to assign similarities to all workers.

Employees need respect, to be members of the in-crowd, to impact decision making about their jobs, to have the opportunity to grow and develop, and access to reasonable leadership. The following describe what employees want from work: 

• Respect is the fundamental right of every employee in every workplace. If people feel as if they are treated with respect, they usually respond with respect and dignified actions. Part of respect is praise and feedback so people know how they are doing at work. 
• Employees want to feel as if they are members of the in-crowd. This means that they know and have access to information as quickly as anyone else in your workplace. 
• Employees want to learn new skills, develop their capabilities, and grow their knowledge and careers. Making developmental opportunities available to each employee demonstrates your commitment to helping them develop their careers. They appreciate this. 
• Employees want to have an impact on decisions that are made about their jobs. Employee involvement and employee empowerment help to create engaged employees willing to put forth their discretionary energy for the business. 
• Employees do want leadership. They want a sense of being on the right track, going somewhere that has been defined and is important. They like being part of something bigger than themselves. Employees like to know that someone, who is trustworthy, is in charge. 

Motivation at work is a choice employees make. No matter how hard managers try or how supportive company policies are, there is a bottom line for motivating employees. Employees choose to exhibit motivated behavior at work.

Passive-Aggressive Organization

"Everyone Agrees but nothing changes"

Passive-aggressive organizations are friendly places to work: People are congenial, conflict is rare, and consensus is easy to reach. But, at the end of the day, even the best proposals fail to gain traction, and a company can go nowhere so imperturbably that it's easy to pretend everything is fine. Such companies are not necessarily saddled with mulishly passive-aggressive employees. Rather, they are filled with mostly well-intentioned people who are the victims of flawed processes and policies.

Commonly, a growing company's halfhearted or poorly thought-out attempts to decentralize give rise to multiple layers of managers, whose authority for making decisions becomes increasingly unclear. Some managers, as a result, hang back, while others won't own up to the calls they've made, inviting colleagues to second-guess or overturn the decisions. In such organizations, information does not circulate freely, and that makes it difficult for workers to understand the impact of their actions on company performance and for managers to appraise employees' value to the organization correctly. A failure to match incentives to performance accurately stifles initiative, and people do just enough to get by. Breaking free from this pattern is hard; a long history of seeing corporate initiatives ignored and then fade away tends to make people cynical. 

I've experienced passive-aggressive behavior in corporate settings, but it's an entirely different experience depending on your view of the playing field: employee, supply partner or consultant.

At first blush, team members looked to be one big, happy family. No one disagreed during meetings and members never directly discussed concerns or asserted their needs. Instead, they would come at you from behind or attack in pairs like nimble. If I asked the right question in just the right way (and the stars were aligned), I would get the needed answer. If I asked some data and give some deadlines, they will commit that they will give it on time. But when the deadlines comes they will give you many reasons and ask for extension.

Although we successfully launched the project but I'll always remember what the company was leaving on the table by embedding this passive-aggressive behavior into its culture. It doesn't take a math wizard to see how this experience multiplied hundreds of times could negatively impact the business.

Empowerment

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." – Elber Hubbard

In an empowering organization, the command chain is short, people from the lower levels of the hierarchy come with suggestions, ideas, improvements that are passed upwards to higher management which acts upon them. After all, engineers know best what is capable from the technology they have at hand, have ideas on what should or can be improved, designers and marketers know more about the latest trends on the market and thus know how to innovate in their areas, and so on. Competitive edge lies in the hands of people who are passionate, eager to perform and have the power to act upon their knowledge. From this comes motivation, trust, commitment, involvement, attachment, and self fulfilment. 

How does an organization become empowering? 

First of all, it all starts with a company culture that has trust in their own strength and is willing to trust its workforce. From such a culture emerges a trend to focus more on strategy and future and let go the control on people. Management then focuses on improving the processes and removing the impediments from the face of their men and women, so that everyone can concentrate on what they know and love to do.

Instead of giving directions, managers will ask their people how they can help them achieve higher performance. People will feel that they have the power to control the outcome of their work and will want to prove that they are up to the trust they are given. The more they have control on their own work, the more they will get aware of what their impediments and limitations are and they will want to improve on that. A creativity and learning loop is then created that propagates throughout the organization - better products, happier workforce, more innovation, better processes, better strategies, more awareness and more involvement. 

Instead of having one brain working for the entire team to define what each one does, you have the benefit of having 10-15 brains working all together and cooperating. This comes from trust and it is all ignited by a culture in which people have faith in each other, have the power to define choices and choose for themselves, a culture in which manager's role is to propagate awareness and communication throughout the organization. Unfortunately, it  takes a lot of courage for an organization to change as the process of changing a culture is painful and will trigger a defense reaction in most of its employees who may feel that their security and privileges may be compromised.

Organizational Change

During the recession, many companies are forced to make changes in their organization. It can be a withdrawal from a market, the closing of a subsidiary or a deep change in the way of the company is managed.

In each of these cases, the manager faces people who resist the change. This resistance can be wrenching for the project and create an immobile situation.

 Most of the time this resistance is due to two main factors:

-         Employees do not know why this change occurs

-         Employees are afraid to lose some acquired work conditions

The worst solution is to try to force change, solution which can lead to a direct conflict.

The key tactic to manage this inter organizational resistance is communication. From the first steps of a change, employees need to be aware of a potential modification within the company. However the manager needs to go further and explain the different reasons of this requirement. 

Nevertheless, a global meeting is not recommended as a first step. Indeed the manager needs first of all to establish a strong pro change basis which will help him to face the resistance. To do that he needs to find employees who will accept this change and who will relay the message. Those people are easily identifiable by function of their personality. People who are audacious and have initiative will be more disposed to accept the change.

The purpose of this pro change attitude is to make employees feel that the change originates not only from the upper hierarchy but also bottom up from employees. Of course people from the same level of hierarchy can also be more efficient to convince them.  It is better to list the different advantages that the company and thus employees can benefit from.

A good way to guide employees toward the change is to integrate them in the change. The involvement of employees in the process of change can solve the problem of resistance because they will become protagonists of this change. The delegation of tasks is the best way to establish this strategy.

Managers vs. Leaders

If we had to make a choice between working for a Manager and working for a Leader, we should, first of all, consider working environment. If the business is stable and the company needs mostly organizational administration, then a Manager can be the best type of the superior. Managers are perfect in organizing people for achieving organizational and personal goals.

Managers can direct the work of their subordinates according to the plans and strategies, which are already established by someone else. Managers are great in performing routine activities, as well as supervising and controlling the work of their organization. Finally, managers are usually the bosses, who prefer autocratic leadership style and like discipline at work. Certainly, this is very important for a successful organizational performance.

But in modern times, business usually develops in a complex, dynamic and rapidly changing environment, which requires making a lot of risky decisions and looking for new directions all the time. In such situation, I think, it would be preferable to work for a Leader. Unlike Managers, Leaders know how to set up goals, motivate the employees for achieving organizational goals and initiate changes

Leaders can inspire their subordinates for personal improvement, support them, help them to find own place in the organizational structure and to break a deadlock. Finally, the subordinates become their followers, who trust and understand their Leader and are ready to do the right thing. Therefore, in the majority of the situations working for a Leader brings more job satisfaction, favors personal development and can be a good challenge for ambitious employees.