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组织健康：说起来容易做起来难 《优势——为何组织健康在商业中胜过一切》是美国作家帕特里克•兰奇欧尼最新出版的商业畅销书，早前他撰写的《团队协调的五大障碍》、《开会开到死》也都销路颇佳。 在书的序文中，兰奇欧尼首先以自传的形式，讲述了从童年看到父亲为工作而烦恼，自己上学后做了兼职（餐厅杂役、银行支票员），以及大学毕业后在一家管理咨询公司谋得第一份工作的经历。 兰奇欧尼通过观察发现，很多公司的管理模式都面临着一个严重的问题。他试图让自己的老板也来关注一下他的发现，但他们却并不感兴趣。于是，兰奇欧尼和几个志同道合的朋友自立门户，组建了管理咨询公司。本书就是他们工作实践的结晶。 作者认为这本书是一本全面而实用的指南，有助于实现他所谓的任何公司都能实现的唯一最大优势：组织健康。他提醒说，这个优势简单易行，唾手可得，但却常被大多数领导所忽略。 兰奇欧尼说这个核心前提——即组织健康的绝对重要性——也是他在职业生涯中孜孜以求的最基本的管理经验。 他指出，人们一旦了解并置身其中，组织健康将超越其他一切商业行为，成为自我完善和提高竞争实力的最大机遇。 他列出了组织健康最常见的标志，即企业内耗和混乱极少，员工士气和生产力高，骨干员工流动率低。 大多数领导都注重对战略、营销、财务、技术等传统领域的改善，因为这些东西更易掌握，运用自如，并且可以衡量、可以用数字驱动。 兰奇欧尼注意到，成功企业与平庸企业相比，最大的区别通常在于组织健康，而不是对传统商业秩序的有效掌控。 健康的组织会随时间推移而平添智慧，因为大家能够互相学习，审时度势，迅速从错误中恢复。这样的组织由于内耗和混乱较少，所以与那些内部纷争不断、停滞不前的对手相比，能更快地接近问题，找出对策。 “很多组织只能对现有的知识、经验及脑力资本进行零散的利用，但健康的组织却能全面加以利用。” 但凡有过工作经历的人几乎都遇到过在不健康组织内工作的困扰，每天都在为企业内部的冲突、人浮于事、官僚主义和杂乱无章头疼不已。相关的经济影响也毋庸置疑：时间和资源的浪费、生产力的抑制、员工流动率的攀升以及客户的流失。 兰奇欧尼认为，解决问题的第一步是要让领导班子更加团结一致，这就要求在团队作用上做出战略性的决定。还要在建立信任的同时，改革薪酬和奖励机制，除对个人业绩表示认可外，还要对团队成就的重要性予以肯定。 随着信任的加深，管理风格也要相应转变，要把包容分歧和异议作为有效决策的重要步骤，而且要在领导团队中建立起相互当责的机制。大部分人都认为领导应该是主要责任担当者，但这既不切合实际，也不会有任何效果。 领导们需要明白，自己有责任去勇敢面对其他同事难以衡量的表现问题，例如行为问题。 当然，在反馈意见或考评时，依赖量化标准会更为轻松和简便，这也是为什么大多数领导都宁愿规避那些难以应付的行为问题。但兰奇欧尼却认为，这些问题才是经常导致企业绩效下滑的直接原因，所以必须要纳入对话。 兰奇欧尼在书中用四个核心章节阐述了他的观点：打造团结的领导集体、创造透明度、加大透明度的宣传、强化透明度。 “创造透明度”归根结底就是要实现组织的协调一致，必须从领导班子作起。大多时候，透明度和组织协调总是被处理得很肤浅，口号喊得山响，轮到如何落实、当务之急是什么、如何分工这些重要具体问题时就没了下文。 “加大透明度的宣传”意指优秀的领导要把自己当成首席提醒官。很多领导错误地认为只要自己对员工发表了一通优秀的演讲，员工自然就会理解、消化并接受自己想要传达的信息。 “强化透明度”重申了坚持不懈地进行内部沟通的重要性，旨在实现企业文化的制度化，去除官僚主义。 兰奇欧尼这本新书好就好在为我们展示了一个显而易见的、直观的方式，可以立竿见影地改善组织的现状，而这正是很多组织及其领导没能做到的。这个方式适用于任何组织，无论公司大小、私企还是上市公司皆是如此。 但是，如果将显而易见的事和轻松容易的事混为一谈，那就错了。 虽然书中提及的改善步骤几乎对任何组织无疑都是适用的和有效的，但领导们接受起来的困难程度却因各自的文化背景而天差地别。 那些有愿望、有决心成功的人更有可能从中获益，并形成强有力的竞争优势。 该书的另一大益处与职业规划有关。兰奇欧尼围绕自己年轻时关注的话题，不懈追求，建功立业，并最终沉迷于此。这种兴趣甚至产生于他接受正规教育或具备管理经验之前。 年轻人，请切记，伟大的事业往往源于我们所热衷的追求，和正规教育之间不一定有什么必然的联系。 |
Easier Said Than Done: Taking Advantage of the Obvious "The Advantage -- Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else in Business" is American author Patrick Lencioni's latest best-selling business book. His previous best-sellers included "The Five Dysfunctions of a Team" and "Death by Meeting." Lencioni's introduction to this book starts on an autobiographical note, beginning with his childhood observations of his father's frustration with his job, and then his own experience as he transitioned from part-time jobs (busboy, bank teller) in his school days, to his first job after university with a management consulting firm. His observations convinced him that companies faced a big problem with the way they managed. He tried to interest his bosses at the management consulting company in taking a closer look at the issues he was focusing on, but they were not interested. Eventually he and some like-minded friends started their own management consulting company. This book is an outgrowth of their work. The author states his intention that this book be a comprehensive, practical guide to realizing what he calls the single greatest advantage any company can achieve: organizational health. He cautions that this simple, free, and widely available advantage is ignored by most leaders. Lencioni states that this core premise -- the overriding importance of organizational health -- has also been the most fundamental management learning of his career. Once understood and placed in context, he argues, organizational health will surpass everything else in business as the greatest opportunity for improvement and competitive advantage. He flags the most common signals of organizational health as minimal corporate politics and confusion, a high degree of morale and productivity, and very low turnover among key employees. Most leaders focus on improvements in the classic areas of strategy, marketing, finance, and technology, because these are more familiar, comfortable, measurable, and data-driven. Lencioni observes that when comparing successful companies with mediocre ones, the big differences are usually in the area of organizational health rather than effective mastery of the classic business disciplines. Healthy organizations get smarter over time, because they learn from one another, identify critical issues, and recover quickly from mistakes. With minimal internal politics and confusion, they cope with problems more effectively and rally around solutions more quickly than rivals who are slowed by internal dissent and friction. "Most organizations exploit only a fraction of the knowledge, experience, and intellectual capital that is available to them. But the healthy ones tap into almost all of it." Almost anyone with working experience can relate to the hassles of working in an unhealthy organization, because corporate politics, dysfunction, bureaucracy and confusion create daily headaches. The financial impact is undeniable: wasted time and resources, muffled productivity, higher employee turnover, and customers heading for the exits. The first step according to Lencioni is for the organization's leadership team to make itself more cohesive, which requires a strategic decision to function as a team. That requires trust-building as well as changing compensation and rewards structures to recognize the importance of the team's achievements in addition to any one individual's performance. Along with greater trust comes adapting a management style where dissent and disagreement are embraced as an essential part of effective decision-making, and where peer-to-peer accountability is embedded in the behavior of the leadership team. Most people assume that the leader should be the primary source of accountability, but this is neither practical nor efficient. Leaders need to accept that their accountability includes confronting colleagues about performance issues which are not easily measurable, such as behavioral problems. It's of course much easier and more comfortable to rely on data-based performance metrics when giving feedback or doing appraisals; which is why most leaders would rather avoid dealing with the more difficult subject of behavioral problems. And yet, as Lencioni argues, these problems are often the direct cause of downturns in corporate performance and results, and must be included in the conversation. Lencioni's advice is divided into four core chapters in the book: Build a Cohesive Leadership Team; Create Clarity; Overcommunicate Clarity; Reinfornce Clarity. ‘Creating Clarity' is all about achieving alignment, which must begin with the leadership team. All too often, clarity and alignment are handled in a superficial manner, often with high-sounding buzz words and slogans, without answering important practical questions about what will be done, what is most important right now, who will do what, etc. ‘Overcommunicating Clarity' posits the view that great leaders see themselves as Chief Reminding Officers. Many leaders mistakenly assume that just because they made a good speech to their employees, the employees will then understand, digest, and embrace the intended message. ‘Reinforcing Clarity' restates the importance of tireless and repetitive internal communications, in an effort to institutionalize the organization's culture without bureaucratizing it. The beauty of Lencioni's latest book is that it shows us an obvious and intuitive way to dramatically improve our organizations, which most organizations and their leaders fail to embrace. This has application for organizations large and small, in the private as well as public sector. It would be a mistake, however, to confuse what's obvious with what's easy. While the improvement steps outlined in this book would undoubtedly be applicable to and effective in almost any organization, the degree of challenge for leaders to embrace them will vary considerably from one culture to another. Those with the will and determination to succeed are likely to accrue major benefits and obtain a powerful competitive edge. Another useful lesson from this book relates to career planning. Lencioni has built his very successful career around pursuing a topic he began paying attention to as a very young man, and eventually became passionate about. That interest began long before he had formal schooling or experience in management. Young people, take note. Great careers often revolve around something we become passionate about, and that may or may not arise from formal schooling. |