Prevalent behaviors that we observe in workplaces today are
- Use of power of the position and title by authoritarian leaders and manager to push decisions and get work done,
- Intense competitiveness amongst the peers at all levels,
- People with knowledge withholding information & creating barriers,
- Favoritism and bias in promotions, rewards, and recognition towards some select people,
- Subjective and lack of transparency in individual performance management,
- Organizational performance is not regularly & openly shared with employees
Organizations are found busy solving internal conflicts far more than they are addressing customer concerns.
It looks quite astonishing that though the goal of the organization as a unit is common, but the parts of the unit are almost at logger head with each other most of the time as though they are working towards different goals. While constructive debates and conflict resolution is necessary, but a lot of the conflicts that organizations busy are internal & are only draining energies, increasing differences and disengagement. In short, highly damaging.
There is a general tendency of protecting oneself, one’s department, one’s function, one’s division against the other in the same organization.
I am sure you can relate to the sentiments of the top management and the workforce from the picture (see inserted picture) that captures how disconnected the layers of the organization are.
There are very few countable organizations which in my view can be truly called productive workplaces (or dream workplaces to use a more fashionable term). Let me elaborate.
Dream workplace is NOT just about
- having a plush office space in a blue glass building,
- about having an impeccable dress code,
- about having a five-star cafeteria,
- about giving more holidays per year,
- about having an office in the central business district of the city,
- about having fancy job titles,
- about having a garden within the office,
- just about getting the work done,
- about where hierarchy gives you the power,
- only about profits,
- about being work-centric, it isn’t about working together.
Dream workplace is where
- people can fulfill their dreams and grow,
- people feel they belong,
- people speak their minds fearlessly and are not penalized,
- people smile,
- people come together whole heartedly to fulfill the needs of their customer and consumer,
- work is not felt a burden and a waste of time,
- about having practices which are reinforcing a collaborative & trusting culture every day,
- about having a fair and objective performance management mechanism,
- people feel energetic and alive,
- is cause driven,
- are people centric,
- is where imperfections of human workforce are understood but not at the cost of accountability,
- is about cohesiveness, collaboration & open communication,
- is where someone else’s strength is seen as complementing your weakness and not a threat to your position, job, or authority,
- is about having a trusting and dependable system.
Dream workplace is about a culture where people love to be part of!
Such workplaces are not built in a short period of time. It takes careful and consistent effort over a long period of time. The culture cannot be developed by workforce itself. It must be cultivated, carefully nurtured by the leadership of the organization. One of the main reason why very few organizations have these attributes as part of their workplace is because in the current times, the leadership of the organization changes every few years and this change of guard often brings with it changes in the working style, management practices, introduction of new policies and procedures and often done without much communication of the rationale. Such changes force the organization workforce change their orientation to the new way of working without clear understanding and acceptance of the basis or reasoning.
This is then a beginning of the new cycle of resistance, conflicts and organization gets busy again with same wine in a new bottle.
Nobody else but leaders need to fix this for the organization. They need to consider this question with a long term in their mind ‘how to manage & sustain change’? while introducing new way of working.
Managing change is inevitable for every single leadership in the current fast changing VUCA business environment.
