Replying to LO30284 --
Keith,
your experiences are consistent with my own. In a smaller company (200 or
so people) we made the grand experiment and productivity, profitability
went sky rocketing. It lasted as long as the original management team was
in place then petered out as they left. The company eventually ended up
rather smaller and poorer. I am told by former workers that the new
regime got to be more and more of a command and control organization in
order to "sustain" profits. This in turn, drove them down.
Now, in a VERY large company, I am tasked with same types of change. At
the top, we have a bright and caring leader who truly believes in people
and what they can do. At the next level, the same, and then, at the value
center level (divisions of 500 to 5000 people, 100k to 500m) we have some
who 'make it happen', and some who say the make it happen but act to 'let
it happen'. These create mixed results, especially where you have
managers who 'made' it using command and control behaviours. They are
actively against change and create a schizophrenic reality for the change
makers. It is a difficult situation, but one in which change can still be
made, more slowly, less dramatifcally, but made, none the less.
These changes, no matter how slow, and how difficultly they are gained,
will be sustainable, not forever, there are too many variables in the
world of business to project the next leadership team and their governing
principles, but for as long as they are allowed. It is what we allow that
we teach, and as long as we allow both ends of the behavioral spectrum to
coexist in an organization, we will encounter organizational pathologies.
But still, larger proportions of the population are working smarter, not
harder, when they are allowed to.........
John
John Zavacki
systhinc@msn.com
"Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on
the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily
snapped off."
-C. G. Jung, Psychological Reflections
--"Systhinc" <systhinc@msn.com>
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