Short term gain, long term pain

How does an organisation get into a downward cycle of long term pain by making short term tactical gains?

I recently had the misfortune of having back pain and visited a physio'. I was fascinated by the explanation of the pain cycle and couldn't help start to draw analogies with work and some further thinking on a couple of articles I have written recently. In particular the one about Crisis Management, in which I discuss symptoms of failure, I also talked about 'demands' so what causes these demands and what triggers folk in an organisation to behave in a manner that ultimately causes organisational pain?

The pain cycle can be triggered at any point so,

Tension- this is caused by either trauma or a perceived threat. In an organisation this could low profit, production losses, shareholder or client pressure / withdrawal.

Reduced circulation- cash, data, information and knowledge is the blood of an organization in tension this flow is reduced by protective behaviour (creating silo's).Investment stops or is seriously reduced in an effort to mitigate the tension and improve short term gains.

Inflammation - once the flow of cash and information is inhibited, decision-making is based on perception and misleading data. production slows along with the symptoms I describe in my previous article.

Reduced movement - the organization becomes stagnant and lacks the ability to move and innovate. Improvements to the business all but cease.

Pain- profits fall, people leave, clients and stakeholders go elsewhere, and so we enter the cycle...

When I looked at this I realised that some organizations look to achieve a short term gain by bandaging a symptom rather than treating the source of the pain. All this does is mask what is really happening which leads to long-term and repeat crises.

The answer is to review the strategy of the organisation. Simply, if you can't make enough profit to invest in improvement you should seriously think about exiting!

I'm happy to report that in my own case it took several visits to resolve the physical and a further few months to get to the real source of my pains. I had a good look at my (life) strategy and values and realised that I had gone off plot. Correction complete and all is well!