DailyPost 2551
MANAGING ORGANISATIONAL MINEFIELD
Lots of studies and research have been conducted on organizations and every issue related to it. Organizations have been the main of focus of management, from the nimble ones, say a startup to trillion-dollar corporations to gigantic governments to MNCs operating in most countries in the world. Neither have theoretical abstractions, nor standard organizational philosophies held them together. For the few successful ones, we have dozens who have fallen by the wayside, at different stages. There are challenges outside and many of them monumental that have brought organizations to its knees or even decimated, but far more debilitating has been internal organizational minefield. A termite which eats up the organization slowly and steadily.
Managing organizational minefield in the biggest challenge of any organization. We can start with the most micro or you may call nano too. What percentage of the employees are happy with the appraisal process? While the management calls is totally objective or as near to it as possible, large number of employees find it otherwise. Building up your data or narrative to suit the appraisal structure / process is a time taking job and might not get you the expected results. At the super macro level, the decisions are taken singlehandedly, with no great scope for consultation or a free and frank discussion breaking things threadbare and then coming to a near unanimous decision based on commonality of findings.
The splitting of the business organizations to accommodate warring owners has its own repercussions. For the warring siblings or relatives in the fray, they are not bothered about the organization’s operational health and its likely growth trajectory, but what he gets as his share. The style of leadership changes from founding CEO to the next generation or if goes to the professional one. The aura is lost. Mergers and acquisitions are other great challenges of the day, the clash of cultures so to say. How fast and how well does the organizational cultures become one is known to all of us. How well you can navigate in your own organization is a barometer of the organizational minefield. Most find it too difficult to successfully conduct this mandatory task.
While communication seems to be an art mastered long ago in organizations, but the challenges are still huge of how to get across to people; superior, subordinate or even of the same level. Interpersonal relationships might still take a century to reach professional levels; if the parameter of it is being fully objective. Who can absolve any organization of favoritism? The stresses and strains which organizations create on its employees for a variety of reasons, which can be brought down considerably, is the biggest curse of the twenty first century. The killing ambitions of a few can make professional lives of large number awry and vitiate the atmosphere within organizations. Best place to work surveys and out of the world business case studies can barely tell half of the story. Rest is the enigma called organizational minefield.
IF YOU CAN MANAGE YOUR ORGANIZATION TO EXCELLENCE, YOU WILL NOT FIND ANY COMPETITION OUTSIDE.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.