Imagine trying to push a heavy object: the more resistance you encounter, the slower and more challenging it becomes to move it. That's similar to what happens in organizations when they face organizational impedance. It's the friction that slows down progress and hinders the achievement of goals. It's often invisible to leaders but felt by employees.
Suppose we define employee engagement as making daily progress toward meaningful work. In that case, thousands of instances of micro-resistance in an organization's day can harm productivity, employee engagement, and financial sustainability.
Three Forms of Impedance:
- Misaligned processes: When individual departments operate in silos, information and work get stuck, creating bottlenecks. Territorialism is an inefficient deployment of human resources.
- Communication gaps: When employees don't get clear information for context and understanding of what is expected of them, they lack clarity, resulting in misplaced expenditures of time and energy.
- Unclear goals: Without a shared understanding of what the organization aims for, individual efforts may not be aligned, creating inefficiencies.
Here are some key remediations to impedance:
- Identify the source: Pinpoint where the resistance is occurring and what's causing it. Common culprits include the above departmental silos, communication gaps, or unclear goals. Other less visible causes are a fear-based culture, ineffective supervisors, and misaligned incentives. Front-line employees know the causes of impedance. If psychological safety exists in your organization, they will tell you.
- Promote transparency: Foster open communication and information sharing across all levels. Transparency helps everyone understand the bigger picture and how their work contributes to it. Recognize that the restriction of information is viewed as a power source and that hoarding must be resolved.
- Align goals and roles: Ensure individual and team goals align with the organization's objectives and that each role supports the objectives. Alignment motivates everyone to move in the same direction and reduces resistance. The organizational purpose must be defined explicitly for every role. Alignment takes time, but it is the basis for communicating directional expectations for each employee.
- Invest in context sharing: Rather than spending excessive dollars in generic employee development and education, invest time and resources in educating employees on the context of the environment in which your organization provides value to the end-users. When they have context, they can more effectively self-organize to achieve the expectations of their role.
- Give Permission and Autonomy: Give people ownership and decision-making authority within their roles. Authority fosters a sense of accountability and encourages initiative. Permit them to innovate, ask hard questions, push back on the status quo, and have courageous authenticity.
By addressing impedance, organizations can create a more agile and responsive environment, allowing all team members to adapt to change, move with less friction, and ultimately achieve their goals more effectively.
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