A company’s website says that they have specific values that they are supposed to be living up to each day. However, it doesn’t appear that the company leadership lives, leads, or manages according to these values.
The interests of a company’s management appears to differ from the needs of the customer.
Your company’s management is out of touch with it’s employees.
You have an employee working in a job that isn’t quite the right fit for them.
Your new tools and processes don’t seem to address all of our customer’s problems.
These are all examples of an organization that is out of alignment. It can cause stress among employees, loss of customers and revenue, and contribute to what I like to call an organizational fog. Things just aren’t clear.
Fixing this kind of problem can be tough and requires a systems perspective in order to accurately diagnose the problem areas and prescribe an effective solution. Taking in the whole enables one to see all parts of one’s organization, and see how they relate to the overall goals and objectives of the company. Most importantly you can start to understand how the parts of an organization should be working with each other.
I see five important relationships that need to be taken into account as you are leading an organization:
- Employee-customer
- Employee-role
- Employee-goal
- Employee-team
- Employee-organization
Like a conductor, the leaders of an organization need to ensure that each member, at every level, is effective at what they do, and when you need it. You need to balance this demand, or your needs, with giving your employees time and space to do their job and to be creative with solving emerging problems.
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