The True Clichés of High Performing Organizations

Clichés and stereotypes can often get us into trouble. The actual definition of each is an “over-simplification of a viewpoint or belief.” However, for the sake of this conversation, let’s also agree that clichés and stereotypes do hold a note of truth or insight. The fact that they exist also means that the scenario was likely experienced by enough people, that it did in fact become a cliché or stereotype in the first place.

So, perhaps we can learn from them as well. And, the business world is full of them.

 As we continue working with progressive leaders in traditional organizations and start-ups alike, we see many proven Organizational Effectiveness ideologies still being the key factors at the core of a competent, innovative and competitive company.

These ideologies have stood the test of time so well they’ve become clichés of the business world. Do any of these ring true for you? Can you add any others?

Here's a few to get us started:

 “Can't see the forest through the trees.” - We see this play out organization wide, as well as with business groups and teams. In this instance, the “trees” are the immediate, short-term tactics that we rely on every day to move our work forward. However, when we only take the short view, we may not succeed in achieving the longer- term goal because we lose our agility to adjust. In this case, the “forest” is Strategic Perspective - the systems view that lets us see the interdependencies and connections at play in our environment to better understand our decisions and manage change. If this wasn’t difficult enough, we see that the key to sustained performance is linking the trees to the forest. What types of trees are where in the forest? What role do they play in a healthy, growing, resilient forest?

"Change is the only constant.” - We all inherently know this to be true, but we also know how bad we are at change. We know each day will be different, but we all want it to be like the day before (at least if it was a good one). We often think if we just get this process implemented, or this platform installed, we’ll be perfect. Only to be waylaid when things change again and yesterday’s solution doesn’t fit the problem anymore. What we see today is that being more open to change is not enough to remain competitive. The rapid pace of change today is so extreme, organizations must proactively work to not just keep up, but to discover, produce and deliver tomorrow’s new way of doing things before their competitors. Often times, it’s not just about implementing new processes or technologies, it’s about becoming entirely new companies in the blink of an eye.

“The early bird gets the worm.” - In line with change is innovation. We are in an age of “disruptive” changes where new approaches and ways of thinking can completely re-define a product, service or entire marketplace. Think of today’s Electrical Utility. What will tomorrow’s transmission and distribution company look like? What will utilities do when everyone has rooftop solar panels charging their long life batteries in their own garages and the utility is buying back kilowatts from the customer? What ever it is, those that realize it first are best positioned to set the standard and survive massive change. This notion alone has century-old organizations needing to act like start-ups more than ever before. Everything’s on the table and nothing is protected.

“Work smarter, not harder.” - This edict continues to grow in relevance, but was really targeted by the LEAN, SixSigma and now Agile approaches to work initiatives. In addition to reducing errors and waste, continuous improvement is the discipline of learning from our work and continually increasing our effectiveness by applying learning. We’ve seen companies make significant sustained advances in performance when reoccurring problems were properly dissected and eradicated rather than our habitual generation of “really great workarounds.” Workarounds may elevate and symptom of an issue, but they add to the complexity, inefficiency, and ineffectiveness of the work initiative, sub-optimizing the effort while masking it with faux success and innovation. By continually assessing how we work, what can be better, and what waste can we eliminate, we continually minimize variability. This is a major advantage when we do have to rapidly change course, as there is less to alter.

“Two heads are better than one.” - Inline with smarter working is collaboration. The topic of collaboration has been getting significant ink in the past few years and it is likely espoused as a critical trait for performance by most any organization. However, we still see companies struggling to foster collaboration and then manage it as the true Knowledge Management resource it can be. Remembering to reach out to others for ideas and learning can be difficult when we have come to sensationalize “busyness” and continue to reward managers for solving problems on their own rather than through people.  Again, these behaviors are understandable. The “Busier” we are, the better we feel about our roles, despite inefficiencies - we’re checking the box, putting out the fire, and meeting customer needs - even if they’re the wrong ones. And as discussed in my other post, Managers Handbook, it is natural for managers new and old, to quickly return to their individual contributor ways to put out the fire. That’s why they’re managers - they were great performers.

To reap the benefits of collaboration, we not only need to build the habits in which we bring people together, but we need to build the skills and use the tools that make the most of these interactions to capture, develop, scale and formalize new ways of working and innovation.

“Do unto others as you’d have others do unto you.” While a trite cliché, and maybe even stereotypes to a point, there is truth and validity in these over simplified, sometimes misconstrued statements. However, it we take a moment to dissect these phrases, alongside today’s evolving business operations landscape we can actually identify a number of human-based norms that are re-surfacing as the critical factors for business success.

As our firm continues to expand our experiences working inside organizations to facilitate culture change, we know in theory and are seeing first hand, that organizations with aggressive management tendencies drive passive working cultures. This solidifies a company’s inability to react, innovate and evolve. In today’s speed of business, this is accelerated failure.  

Conversely, those organizations that have, or work to cultivate cultures where the expected behaviors are focused on achievement, learning, collaboration, as well as, true trust and respect are proving capable of agility, ingenuity, and creativity - all stemming from highly engaged employees contributing to performance in respectful, accountable environments. 

“Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater." - Rapid and sweeping changes or the implementation of automation platforms based on limited information or gut feel rarely turn out well. Oftentimes, we see organizations sacrifice entire programs, platforms and sometimes personnel to later realize that only a small percentage of the factor was the true issue. Strong problem analysis and root cause solutions can efficiently target key areas, removing issues for less cost. We see companies that reach out to those actually doing the work solve problems faster and with more accuracy, all while engaging employees in solving their own headache.

“You Can’t Manage What You Can’t Measure.” - We couldn’t have this conversation without mentioning this cliché. This one should be quite evident with today’s embrace of Big Data, Infographics, and connected systems. Many companies actually seem be getting better at tracking metrics. However, what we track, where we house it, and most importantly, how we aggregate it and achieve a “single truth.” Tracking data to manage performance is a simple discipline that must be built in today’s no-bones-about-it performance driven nature. 

All of these ideologies still make sense. However, they have stood the test of time required to become a worn out cliché and deserve our attention. The lessons within them have been hard won, and lost, by those in business before us. Take what you want, we hope this helps, and please leave your feedback in the comments.