Dysfunction Number One: Over-reactivity

In my recent article on organisational dysfunction, I called out a number of behaviours that, in my experience, should ring alarm bells for any organisation. You’ve probably encountered most of them on your journey. The question is, when those alarm bells start ringing, should you, as either a leader or an employee, run for the hills?

No.

Ultimately, the responsibility lies with all of us to try and break these destructive behaviours. After all, wherever you move next is likely to have its own issues, too. Learning to call out and combat these problems as you find them will improve the experience for you, your organisation, and your customers.

Today, I’d like to explore the problems inherent in an overly reactive organisation.

Reactivity is often construed as a negative behaviour. But, think about it, many proactive behaviours are really reactivity in disguise. Does your organisation, for example, conduct an employee survey and then set up programmes of change based on the results? You could call that reactive. Does your organisation monitor customer satisfaction, and respond to the scores? While the existence of a CSAT programme is considered proactivity, the very action you take on the basis of the results is reactive. And yet, noone would argue that either of these initiatives has a negative impact.

There are ways to mitigate the apparent knee-jerk reactions to these outcomes. Moving from a cycle of massive periodic retrospective to more regular micro-reviews is the simplest and probably most effective. Talk to your team and customers frequently. Build relationships. Have an open-door policy. Be available. And don’t wait for the opportunity to implement improvements. Have small conversations, frequently, and act as soon as you identify a need. You might not be able to implement huge changes in this manner, but you can certainly identify them sooner, and prioritise the bigger initiatives accordingly. It goes without saying, that small improvements can, and should, happen in the blink of an eye.

This process of regular and frequent retrospectives can feel like it ties nicely in with an Agile-focussed organisation. To a degree, you can certainly employ a lot of those principles in a world beyond software development. However, even on a two-week cycle, some news can be old. Why wait? 

Another danger inherent in assuming that regular retrospectives or reviews are all you need to be proactive and improve is the misguided belief that the very review process itself is all you need to identify gaps, and then move on. Processes are not a replacement for real communications on a human level. Talking to your team, your employees and your customers about their experiences on a regular basis builds relationships and trust that no review process will ever replace. Allowing people time to build those relationships, and placing value in them, is vital to the success of the organisation.

This is often where organisations fail. By not putting sufficient value on human relationships and the small efforts that go unseen every day, a leadership team is at the mercy of an inaccurate big picture. The hottest potatoes get thrown around at the expense of all else. This is where a cycle of over-reactivity begins. The customer (or employee) who shouts the loudest. The technical situation with the biggest impact. The budgetary issue that seems intractable. Leadership teams are blown from one crisis to the next and respond in expansive (and often expensive) ways to the situation, instead of considering the best approach collaboratively, or trusting their team to resolve the issues. They pull in every resource possible. They break something to fix something else, and in doing so, they interrupt those relationships and initiatives that ultimately will improve the effectiveness and happiness of all involved - customers, team and processes alike. 

The solution, as I see it, is to place value in your people. Trust them. Let them expand their relationships and their roles. Let them identify gaps on the fly and fill them. Let them innovate. Don’t overreact. You’ll all be happier for it. 

Have you any stories of organisational over-reactiveness that you’d like to share? Jump in on the comments!