Organizational Health Part 1 - "People Make It Go"

- From the kitchen table of Michael Legut, Ph.D.

Key Takeaways

• A company’s culture has a strong influence on an organization‘s health because it establishes the norms for what is expected in the organization – “what it is like to work around here”. 
• If the company culture is viewed as negative or toxic, you often see low employee morale, declining productivity, under-used talent, poor retention, autocratic leadership styles and employee disengagement.
• In a toxic culture, employees often feel stressed, burned out, and the work feels like drudgery. 
• We all have talents and skills that energize us when we use them.When we use out talents, we feel joy, energy and fulfillment. 
• Achieving better organizational health may be as simple as identifying those strongest talents and competencies and then assigning employeess to work that fit sthose unique talents.

People Make It Go

We have all heard that company culture is about “what it is like to work around here”. You can feel culture in employee behavior, attitudes and values, and it shows up in company outcomes such as employee morale, productivity, goal achievement, employee retention, internal politics and leadership style. We know that product value, revenue and costs are important to a company's success, however culture is how the work gets done because people make it go.

A company’s culture has a strong influence on an organization‘s health because it establishes the norms for what is expected in the organization – “what it is like to work around here”.  If the company culture is viewed as negative or toxic, you often see low employee morale, declining productivity, poor retention, autocratic leadership styles and employee disengagement. In a toxic culture, employees often feel stressed, burned out, and the work feels like drudgery. These are all signs of an unhealthy organization. It is useful to think about these outcomes as sort of a thermometer indicating the health of an organization. We all know what it is like when we feel sick and when we feel healthy. We can apply this same concept to our jobs and the company we work for.

Why Does Organizational Health Matter?
It is interesting to note that as we emerge from the pandemic and experience a stronger job market, the demand for products and services is exploding. However, many companies are struggling because they can’t find people to fill their jobs and support the demand. Why do some companies struggle to attract employees while others are not having this problem? Most business owners and leaders know that if you can’t attract and retain the right talent, you will likely be on a slow decline to being out of business or getting eaten by a bigger fish. Yes, wages, work environment and life situations have some impact but my guess is that company culture, and health of a company, are factors that also impact employee attraction and retention. The bottom line is,  “people make it go”.

So what does a healthy organization look like? Let’s look at what it might be like to wake up on a Monday morning feeling energized and excited about the work you do?

Let’s Dream A Little.  
Good night zzzzzz. It’s Monday and I’m getting ready for work. I grab a cup of coffee, send the kids off to school and head to my home office. I’m excited about the day as I review my To-Do list and the next steps in the project I’m working on. It’s a great opportunity to work with our HR team to build a leadership development program. This is different work for me, but my manager and I agree that it is an area of HR I want to learn and develop. I have a Zoom meeting with my manager from home. We have a brief conversation about how I can bring my creativity to this project. After our discussion, I feel energized to meet with the working team to begin brainstorming some ideas. When I arrive at the work office, I head over to the team brainstorming meeting. I can feel the energy in the room, as the team begins to share some ideas. Every idea is being listed on post-it notes and we begin to group those ideas together. Soon some creative categories of leadership development options begin to emerge. Near the end of the meeting our HR Manager walks in, observes our work, and asks us to bring in some current company leaders to hear about our ideas. The team begins to suggest a few leaders and we arrange a time for the next meeting. The room is buzzing as we prepare to leave the meeting. Some team members are volunteering to transcribe the white-board while others are assigning themselves to contact the company leaders. Before we leave, our manager lets us know to reach out to her if we hit any obstacles.

Back To Reality and Possibilities
O.K. It’s time to wake up. Now let’s think about how different the dream is from our work reality. I’m thinking that for many of us we are not living the dream. Why is that? How could our real work be something that brings us more joy, excitement and fulfillment? How can our work team and leaders work differently to make “living the dream” possible?

We all have talents and skills that energize us when we use them. In fact, you know when you are in that zone, you are fully engaged, time goes by quickly and you feel very productive.  So how can employees,  teams and leaders pursue better organizational health? It may be as simple as identifying those strongest talents and competencies and then finding or assigning the right work to fit those unique talents.

While there are many approaches to this, Lencioni has one approach that seems to be very practical and achievable. He suggests that work activity can be grouped in to six categories. Each of us has unique talents, and competencies that fit with different parts of our work. The work we do either energizes us or drains us as we do those tasks. This makes practical sense because as we all know when you do some types work activity, time flies and you are in the “zone”. With other tasks, time drags and you often feel frustrated. From his research, Lencioni suggest that typically we all have two strong talents, two strong competencies and two big frustrations. When we use out talents, we feel joy, energy and fulfillment. The two strong competencies are skills we are good at and can do well for a short period of time. The two strong frustrations are work activities that we dislike, cause frustration and feel like drudgery. 

 Here is a brief description of the six types that Lencioni labels as “working genius”.

Ideation

• Wonder - asking questions and considering how to make the work effort better
• Invention – providing new ideas, creative solutions and novel approaches

Activation

• Discernment – vetting and refining ideas
• Galvinizing – inspiring and rallying others to get engaged with the ideas

Implementation

• Enabling – providing resource and other support to make the idea a reality
• Tenacity – finishing the work or project to specification and closure

You can probably see your own talents, competencies and frustrations in these “working geniuses” as you think about the work you do. Now, what if you and your team could reorganize your work and task so that each of you had the opportunity to apply your unique working genius to the work and goals of the team? Obviously, not everything may be perfect fit, and your team may need to borrow, or hire some new employees with a particular genius to fill a gap. But as you work to achieve better “working genius” alignment, you will likely find that you, and other team members, are more energized, less stressed, more productive, and have a better attitude about the work they do. Can this lead to better organizational health? I think you will have to decide that question as you try this approach. Here are a few tips to get the ball rolling.

Tips For Achieving Organizational Health
While I can’t go into extensive detail on all the steps needed, here are a few ideas that teams and leaders can do regarding work planning, job structure and work assignments, that can help achieve more effective task-to-talent alignment and improve the organizational health of your work environment.

Idea #1 – Identify your strongest talents, best competencies and work frustrations. Using the 6 types of Working Genius definitions could be one way to try this. There is an assessment tool that is available for $25 at Lencioni’s Working Genius site

Idea #2 – Ask your team members to identify their unique working genius using similar categories as the 6 types of Working Genius. Create a visual map of each person’s talents, competencies and frustrations. Using these common categories of work activity can help with creating a visual map and allow discussion that can help improve alignment of work assignment with each person’s best working-self.

Idea #3 – Identify misalignments and gaps in the work and the goals that the team needs to achieve.

Idea #4 – Reorganize meetings, work assignments or hire/find/borrow employees who have talents and competencies to fill the gaps.

Your Next Step
None of this can be done overnight. This change requires on-going focus and willingness of team members and leaders to commit to the change. However, as you take action to make this change, the positive energy that individuals experience from the change will become a powerful motivator to drive momentum for additional change. If you engage in a sincere and on-going effort, you can help yourself and your teams achieve a healthier organization where everyone is more productive, has positive morale, understands their goals and are less frustrated or burned out in their jobs.

As always my goal is to help leaders understand how to improve their leadership skills, build effective work teams and contribute to their organization’s health. I can be reached at www.leaderimage.com or on my LinkedIn page.