<<PREVIOUS
Establishing a Sense of Urgency
Complacency is one of the obvious reasons why organizations don’t change.
Complacency prevails in the organization for the following reasons.
-
There are no signs of visible crisis. For example, the firm
may not be losing
money; it may not be bankrupt at that point of time. As a result managers and
employees feel comfortable and do not take change seriously. But if one looks
closer, there certainly could be a crisis. The company might be gradually but
consistently losing its market share and margins. As this is not an immediately
engulfing issue, the sense of urgency may not be apparent.
-
Employees and managers work in an office environment that still reflects past
glories and not current realities. As a result, they are not constantly reminded
of where they are, and where they are headed.
-
The structure of the organization defines performance in terms of functional
goals only, and not in terms of goals at the organizational level. In such
organizations all the departments have their own indices to rate their
performance. But none of these indices reflect the overall performance of the
organization on parameters such as total sales, return on equity, and net
income. This mechanism breeds an environment where none of the employees
are concerned when the organization goes down in terms of these parameters.
-
Managers and employees manipulate
internal planning and control systems. They not only change objectives but also
the way the organization sets its objectives. At one organization, Kotter
observed that an objective was to “launch a new ad campaign by June 15.” But
neither this objective nor its subsequent objectives were concerned with the
results of this campaign. Results means responsibility, and accountability for
their actions.
|
|
-
Managers and employees seemed to want
to avoid these. When managers in the organization do not accept responsibility
for growth, naturally a sense of complacency prevails.
-
Lack of appropriate performance feedback owing to faulty internal systems.
Even when the company is losing its market share because of the poor quality
of its products, the company hardly receives any complaints from irate
customers because of the absence of a mechanism for receiving complaints.
Further, when some responsible employees try to get down to work and
address the problems, they are either ignored or discriminated against.
How can one create a sense of urgency?
Creating urgency demands bold and risky actions. Such actions
might include
drawing up a balance sheet reflecting losses accurately. Other hard options
would
be to sell luxurious headquarters, which the firm can no longer afford. Or to
tie
50% of top management salaries to the organization’s meeting its market share
targets or ROE targets. To establish a sense of urgency, the leadership in the
organization needs to remove the factors that breed complacency. Some steps that
can bring in urgency in place of complacency are:
-
Establishing systems for evaluating managers based on their
contribution to
broader performance of the organization, rather than on a narrower definition
of their function.
-
Promoting interaction between unsatisfied customers, unhappy suppliers, and
disgruntled shareholders on the one hand, and employees on the other. Such
interaction wakes employees up from the slumber of complacency.
-
Distributing data on customer satisfaction, particularly data that
concentrates
on the organization’s weaknesses compared to the competition, to as many
employees and managers as possible.
-
Asking consultants to participate in managerial meetings, so that the managers
at the meeting get to know a different perspective from their own.
-
Highlighting future opportunities, and the current inability of the firm to
capitalize on those opportunities.
Earnest steps in this direction can
minimize the levels of complacency in an organization.
MORE>>
© Icfai Press. Global CEO •
December 2003, All Rights
Reserved.
|
More Classifications...