We need to rethink our ways of...rethinking.

REDESIGNING YOUR ORGANIZATION

It is estimated that in recent years, companies have spent approximately $7 billion to redesign their "organization": from downsizing to balanced scorecards to result-based management.

THE PROBLEMS ARE ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

Few formulas for organizational reform, no matter how sophisticated, have really succeeded. The main reason for this is that the problems are systemic in the firm, and the models borrowed from organization theory are fragmented and poorly assimilated. Worse still, the problems are behavioral, and therefore of organizational culture, whereas the solutions are technical, and therefore of operational management. The mechanistic approach to business management prevails, where the need for organic management is crying out in all components of the productive organization. Engineering (technology) and numbers (finance) preside over the destiny of the organization. Rarely (if ever!) do we see culture (relations) take over, even if the activity is based first and foremost on an individual commitment to join a collective of intentions to satisfy a human need... and not of economizing on operations. Goods and services respond to human needs, even if they have been recuperated by the economic discourse that translates everything into financial market vehicles. The organization (of work) is a space for self-actualization (end), and not first and foremost a means of production (means), for the person (personnel).

PUSHING ON THE ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE DOES NOT INCREASE THE OPERATING RESULT

Few new business models are proposed to us, although there are dozens, which focus on something other than the financial and technical dimensions of running a business. Almost all the models marketed (by the gurus of the moment) are of the command-and-control type as if the evaluation of the performance of the equipment and resources used were to institute, through magical thinking, improvements in the management system, which is in total the organization of work. What should be favored, and adopted, as a model of internal operation, are precepts based on a reconsideration of the behavior of the actors within the organization, since they are the ones who make the decisions that produce the improved operational result. It is not by shifting the result targets (annual objectives), or by pushing on the production structure, that organizational "performance" is going to be instituted in the company's body of jobs. It is by taking resolute action to cultivate working space and time, which will enable those who are directly involved in the activity and the business being carried out to commit themselves and to surpass themselves because they have the clear feeling that they are being actualized through employment, talent and behavior. Instead of acquiring an insipid battery of system output indicators, organizations that want to perform, and not just talk about it, would be better off relying on indicators of actors' behavior in the workplace. True performance on the job, the only one, is the result of a multiplier:

technical skills X state of mind = task performance.

WE NEED TO RETHINK OUR WAYS OF... RETHINKING

Most managers are convinced that performance measurement is simply a question of higher output, when in fact it is more a matter of better-adapted modes, methods, and practices for managing the capacities, potentialities and opportunities of the productive organization. What needs to be stimulated in the organization are the commitments of the actors, hence the intelligence in the treatment of employment conditions and the intelligence in the operating structures of the activity and business. Performance improvement frameworks must be set for the overall resource committed, not annual result targets to be achieved. Experience shows that what is evaluated is delivered. So, if trajectories of improvement in task performance were evaluated, rather than staff decisions and actions, this would result in more application on the part of staff to find ways and means to innovate at work. Unfortunately, we evaluate production units, one person at a time, so we are witnessing a painful race to exceed the volume of work released, at the risk of a reduction in the quality of goods and services offered... not to mention the rise in the level of dissatisfaction of the staff (those directly connected to the customer). We must thoroughly rethink our ways of rethinking the organization, and especially its management.

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