Is Stress Debilitating Your Organisation?

Life is an interesting thing.

Right now you are dying. Your cells are dying. Yet, they are also being born, your body recreating itself every seven years.

Everyday, in so many ways, we are changing. 

We accept that everyday we will grow; maybe in height, width or thinking power.

We accept that everyday we will age. The person you woke up as this morning, will not be the exact same person you go to bed as tonight.

We accept that alcohol will inevitably lead us to say or do very silly things. 

We accept that relationships end, loved ones die and eventually the freezer will run out of ice-cream. All of which leads to despair, irrevocably changing the course of our existence and at the very least, ensuring a late night run to the corner store.

As human beings, we accept that we change, are changing, in every moment. Everyday.

Yet we don't accept organisational change. 

Has anyone, ever said "Yay, we are changing the organisation - again!"??

It fills us with dread, uncertainty, anger, sadness, significantly increases gossiping and reduces productivity. 

That bad rap doesn't just extend from the fear of "being in scope" for redundancy. (Yes, that is corporate speak for "start thinking about how to tell us how important you are and at the same time negotiate a stellar exit package, all the while remaining completely rational and having no emotional response because its just business".)

Why don't we accept organisational change? Is it simply because we hate having our autonomy and certainty taken away from us or is it something deeper?

An organisation is a living system, just like your body. It breathes everyday -  people, customers, products - all cycle in and out of the living system, changing it in some small way. Changes that go unnoticed until they accumulate into something bigger.

That is the curiosity of culture, it both maintains the status quo and equally, is minutely changing everyday.

Start to think of your organisation as a human body, filled with cells, some of whom are getting the nutrients, information and exercise they need, and others that are angry, sick or dying, desperately in need of support.

Yet, just like your body, when you place the organisation under stress, it seizes up. Gripped in the flight or fight adrenaline surge, the blood and nutrients rush away from the core vital functions such as digestion and thinking and into the extremities. Rational thinking ceases, emotional fear-instinctive responses take over. 

Over time chronic stress leads to poor thinking, reduced memory function, an inability to absorb essential nutrients to maintain health.

Similarly, your organisation atrophies and try as you might, getting it back on track requires more than a friendly email and some fireside chats.

I have experienced chronic stress, it is debilitating on so many levels. I have experienced organisations in a state of chronic stress and its not pretty. 

The irony is, we cannot see our own stress. Human beings are extraordinarily gifted at ignoring our own problems. Hiding from the pain, hunkering down to wait it out in the vain hope that our external environment will one-day alter, suddenly alleviating the pain we are feeling.

Except thats a load of baloney.

Stress comes from within not out. We create it ourselves, within our mind and body, within our system. 

Organisations are the same, no matter what the external environment is doing, the pressure we feel is always generated from within the system.

Which means it is within the power of every organisation to think and act differently to get out of survival mode. 

Start thinking of your organisation as a living system gripped by chronic stress and ask yourself - how can I tap into the existing system to shift it out of atrophy?