Organizational cultures vary, just as human personalities vary. Many are embracing methods and tools that bring all voices to the table. Participatory, inclusive decision-making practices and use of collaborative tools and technologies, along with social media platforms to level the playing field are becoming more common, facilitating our capacity to be more experimental, productive, playful, and engaged.
Impetus for Change
Still, in most organizations, the starting point for change is to focus on what is broken and then call for change or a training program only when leaders or managers perceive employees are not performing. “It’s a training problem,” they complain. How many of us have been brought in to fix many “training problems” after a major change implementation failed to include informing (let alone including) the employees of new strategies, organizational restructure, new technologies, systems, processes, policies, or procedures. The expectation is that employees will slot into whatever the new design is and keep the organization running smoothly without support or strategies for transitioning to the new.
Learned helplessness
Psychologically, one of the ways of coping with the feelings of anxiety and frustration is to defend against them by regressing to learned helplessness, and with that come dependent behaviors and downtrodden, discouraged emotions and keeping one’s mouth shut.
Organization Chart – boxes or circles?
Years ago, I led a team of twelve training consultants for a leading global professional service firm in Melbourne, Australia. My boss called me in one day, a little frustrated that I wasn’t managing my team as tightly as he wanted me to. He handed me the marker pen, pointed to the huge whiteboard that hung on the wall in his huge corner office, and asked me to draw my organizational chart and reporting structure. Somewhat surprised at his request, yet without hesitation, I drew a circle and placed myself between the center and the edge of the circle and consciously placed my various team members within the circle, as I perceived them to be in relation to each other and to me. I placed my boss at the circle’s edge. [click to continue…]
{ 0 comments }
