Bad Mood

There is no doubt that there will be times when we will find ourselves in a bad mood. Sometimes we may know why a funk has descended upon us, and other times, we may have no clue at all. However, even though we all experience such periods, it doesn't mean that we have no recourse for dealing with them. Bad moods are a message we are sending to ourselves. Underneath, we usually find something that is making us uncomfortable… something we need to take action on or shift our energy towards in a more positive direction. Often the very reason we're in a bad mood is that we feel helpless or incapable of dealing with a certain situation. 

If you are having difficulties understanding the root of your bad mood, give yourself some space to express the things about your life that may be bothering or worrying you. Chances are the things that come up will be directly tied to those feelings. The best part about this exercise is that once you pinpoint the source behind your bad mood, you will be in a position to do something constructive about it.

One interesting point about bad moods is that they seem to have a magnetic quality and when we are in one, we seem to attract more negative things our way. That's why some "bad mood" days can seem to spiral even further downhill with problems and annoyances that augment our discontent and frustration. When this happens, I think it's important to do something nice for yourself. Enjoy your favorite beverage or snack, find a funny movie or sitcom to watch on the television, or just go for a walk in the park. By turning your attention to something fun or pleasurable, you can try to break the negative energy and hopefully shift your mood.

Another way to break a bad mood is to go somewhere else. Even if all you do is to get up and go to another part of the office or you switch rooms in your home, it can make an enormous difference. Or getting outside for a few minutes to a calm or natural setting may help to change your mood. Another idea is to get some exercise. Exercise doesn't just build muscle and tone the body, it also helps the brain to release chemicals called endorphins that have a positive effect on our moods.

And when you're in a bad mood don't forget about the people around you. If someone asks, make sure to let him or her know that you are just having a tough day and reassure them that that your mood isn't about them. Sometimes, just telling someone that you are in a bad mood can shift your energy to a better place.

Managing Organizational Change

Organizational change occurs when a company makes a transition from its current state to some desired future state. Managing organizational change is the process of planning and implementing change in organizations in such a way as to minimize employee resistance and cost to the organization while simultaneously maximizing the effectiveness of the change effort. 

Today's business environment requires companies to undergo changes almost constantly if they are to remain competitive. Factors such as globalization of markets and rapidly evolving technology force businesses to respond in order to survive. Such changes may be relatively minor—as in the case of installing a new software program—or quite major—as in the case of refocusing an overall marketing strategy, fighting off a hostile takeover, or transforming a company in the face of persistent foreign competition. 

Organizational change initiatives often arise out of problems faced by a company. In some cases, however, companies change under the impetus of enlightened leaders who first recognize and then exploit new potentials dormant in the organization or its circumstances. Some observers, more soberly, label this a "performance gap" which able management is inspired to close. 

But organizational change is also resisted and—in the opinion of its promoters—fails. The failure may be due to the manner in which change has been visualized, announced, and implemented or because internal resistance to it builds. Employees, in other words, sabotage those changes they view as antithetical to their own interests.

A manager trying to implement a change, no matter how small, should expect to encounter some resistance from within the organization. Resistance to change is normal; people cling to habits and to the status quo. To be sure, managerial actions can minimize or arouse resistance. People must be motivated to shake off old habits. This must take place in stages rather than abruptly so that "managed change" takes on the character of "natural change." In addition to normal inertia, organization change introduces anxieties about the future. If the future after the change comes to be perceived positively, resistance will be less.

Education and communication are therefore key ingredients in minimizing negative reactions. Employees can be informed about both the nature of the change and the logic behind it before it takes place through reports, memos, group presentations, or individual discussions. Another important component of overcoming resistance is inviting employee participation and involvement in both the design and implementation phases of the change effort. Organized forms of facilitation and support can be deployed. Managers can ensure that employees will have the resources to bring the change about; managers can make themselves available to provide explanations and to minimize stress arising in many scores of situations.

Some companies manage to overcome resistance to change through negotiation and rewards. They offer employees concrete incentives to ensure their cooperation. Other companies resort to manipulation, or using subtle tactics such as giving a resistance leader a prominent position in the change effort. A final option is coercion, which involves punishing people who resist or using force to ensure their cooperation. Although this method can be useful when speed is of the essence, it can have lingering negative effects on the company. Of course, no method is appropriate to every situation, and a number of different methods may be combined as needed.

Managing change effectively requires moving the organization from its current state to a future desired state at minimal cost to the organization. Key steps in that process are: 

Understanding the current state of the organization. This involves identifying problems the company faces, assigning a level of importance to each one, and assessing the kinds of changes needed to solve the problems. 

Competently envisioning and laying out the desired future state of the organization. This involves picturing the ideal situation for the company after the change is implemented, conveying this vision clearly to everyone involved in the change effort, and designing a means of transition to the new state. An important part of the transition should be maintaining some sort of stability; some things—such as the company's overall mission or key personnel—should remain constant in the midst of turmoil to help reduce people's anxiety. 

Implementing the change in an orderly manner. This involves managing the transition effectively. It might be helpful to draw up a plan, allocate resources, and appoint a key person to take charge of the change process. The company's leaders should try to generate enthusiasm for the change by sharing their goals and vision and acting as role models. In some cases, it may be useful to try for small victories first in order to pave the way for later successes. 

Change is natural, of course. Proactive management of change to optimize future adaptability is invariably a more creative way of dealing with the dynamisms of industrial transformation than letting them happen willy-nilly. 

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.

Strategic Planning

Nowadays, it is difficult to be successful in business without a road map for success. A   strategic plan would help to provide direction and focus. It points to specific results that are to be achieved and establishes a course of action for achieving them. Strategic Planning is the process you follow to form a Strategy. Strategic planning has become a concept that is  commonly suggested as the "solution" to many business problems. 

Strategic planning is the core of the work of an organization.  Without a strategic framework you don’t know where you are going or why you are going there.  So, then, it doesn't really matter how you get there!

A strategy is an overall approach, based on an understanding of the broader context in which you function, your own strengths and weaknesses, and the problem you are attempting to address.  A strategy gives you a framework within which to work, it clarifies what you are trying to achieve and the approach you intend to use.  It does not spell out specific activities.

A strategy is an overall approach and plan. So, strategic planning is the overall planning that facilitates the good management of a process. Strategic planning takes you outside the day to- day activities of your organization or project. It provides you with the big picture of what you are doing and where you are going. Strategic planning gives you clarity about what you actually want to achieve and how to go about achieving it, rather than a plan of action for day to- day operations.

A strategic planning process is not something that can happen in an ad hoc way, at a regular planning meeting or during a staff meeting. It requires careful planning to set it up so that the process is thorough and comprehensive. When you develop or revise a strategic plan, you are setting the parameters for the work of your organization, usually for two to three years or longer. So, it does make sense to spend some time and energy planning for your strategic planning process.

The strategic planning process helps an organization clarify, consolidate or establish its strategic framework. Embedded in the strategic framework are the values and vision of the organization. Because of this, it is important to involve the whole organization in at least part of the planning process.

In a diagrammatic form, the process of defining the strategic planning framework looks like this:

Most organizations have a structure that has both hierarchical and team elements. A hierarchical structure is one in which people report to someone who has authority over them, and who is accountable for ensuring that other people do their jobs properly. Some organizations are very hierarchical, with many levels, and others are flatter; so, for example, there might be a director, but most other people would be on the same level. This only works in fairly small organizations. Other organizations may decide not to be hierarchical at all, with everyone in the organization at the same level, and everyone equally accountable for ensuring that the work gets done. This can work in a small organization in which people have equal levels of skill and commitment, but it does not work when people have different levels of skill and commitment.


Within a hierarchical organization, it is still possible to work in teams. Teams can take different forms. The most important thing to remember about teams is that they are functional groups. Their reason for existing is to get a specific and clearly defined job done. This may be determined by the strategic framework, or by specific jobs that need to be managed. Each member of the team has a particular role which complements (fits together with) the role of other team members. The successful completion of the work depends on the team members working together.


Within organizations and projects, teams could take the form of departments that specialize in different kinds of work. So, for example, there might be Finance and Administration Department, or a Training Department, or an Advocacy Unit. The teams could, however, also cut across specializations to form multi-disciplinary teams. So, for example, an organization that supported informal sector building contractors might put together a team that had technical expertise, training expertise and tendering expertise to help an association of informal sector contractors tender for a particular job.


All functional teams need leaders. If the people in the team are of roughly equal skill, then it is probably enough to have a coordinator. That person is responsible for seeing that the team meets and that everything is on track. If there are discrepancies in skill and, possibly, commitment, then something more hierarchical, where the team leader has authority, is needed. Team leadership is a way of developing confidence and skills in people who have never thought of taking leadership positions. A team leader’s authority does not cut across a line manager’s authority. The line manager is the person to whom someone reports and who is accountable for his/her performance.  Performance problems that affect a team should be referred back to the line manager.


Organizations strategic planning process may result in some things in the organization changing, either in terms of work done or in the internal structuring of the work. People struggle with change. No strategic plan will be implemented without hitches. Each organization or project will have its own set of problems. Many organizations and projects make the mistake of focusing all their energies on planning of activities. They see the strategic part of the process as “a waste of time”. The process is so simple, so simple that people sometimes prefer to ignore it, and instead, spend too much money to hire consultants to give them the same planning results.