JUST PLANE CULTURE
consciously committed to a process when the focus is on blind compliance? Blind compliance opens the door for malicious compliance for the actively disengaged employees and permits others to be complacent. “I just do what I’m told, that’s it.” The workforce is made to abide to the policy and rules
strictly, even when they know it is going to cause a problem. “That’s the policy” is their only defense when things go wrong. “That’s what the supervisor told me to do and I have witnesses.” The workforce will use it as protection when things go wrong because they have no other option. Common thought of complacency is that the individual
is working without thinking or thinking about something else. Complacency is also following the rules and policies precisely, with or without conscious effort (blind obedience). Zero tolerance is ultimate compliance with all thought processes removed, building in complacency. Any deviation is a discrepancy and the degree and reason is inconsequential. Zero tolerance is also management’s declaration that they don’t trust a supervisor’s ability to reason and think logically or ethically, so it is removed from the equation. Shades of gray are removed so that everything is black or white.
Management can also contribute to complacency
inadvertently with placement of fear, either real or imagined. Command and control management is directly fear driven — but absent of that, workers might also worry about layoffs, loss of pay and benefits, personal issues, etc. These all affect a person from not being fully engaged in his/her primary activity. Other symptoms from the Dirty Dozen will manifest themselves as well: stress, distraction, lack of awareness and pressure. Again, read the word “symptoms,” not “causes.” Much work needs to be done. The Dirty Dozen just supplies a starting point. Where do you want to be? You want your employees to be committed to the processes, not just compliant. Three forces are in play in every organization: control, culture and climate. The control is your policies, procedures and
LOW-PERFORMING ORGANIZATIONS
processes, and these represent the ideal state. The culture is the norms, values, customs and behaviors, and these represent the real state. Then there is the climate — this is what people feel and think about the culture and control, and it represents the cognitive state. When all three conditions are in alignment, it reflects high-performance organizations. Wouldn’t it be nice to have an organizational atmosphere where the rules and policies are actually ingrained into everyday employee behaviors? What if there was a conscious and collective focus on one vision and concerted effort to improve continually? Unfortunately, this is not a solid state condition, as the organization is influenced by internal and external forces. The alignment state is built with an engaged workforce on a base of mutual respect with a foundation of trust. This alignment is only temporary. Misalignment is the system’s method of signaling that an improvement opportunity is present.
HIGH-PERFORMING ORGANIZATIONS
RESPECT ENGAGED
TRUST
Often organizations try to instill employee engagement and the efforts are miserable failures. The numbers tell the story. I used to be appalled at the Gallup poll results that only 1/3 of employees are engaged in their work (with 1/3 not engaged and the other 1/3 actively disengaged). Those who are not engaged are just not interested, will put forth minimum effort to avoid getting fired, and are a relatively harmless group of people who are non-contributing and not working to their potential. Those who are actively
RUNNING
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