How familiar are these circumstances to you?
The company adopted a new approach. While they were praising the change, many employees continued to resist the new direction, blaming and hoping the situation would return to how they were prior to
The team was an assortment of people who happened to be under the same person. Even though they were all performing their job well, the synergies, economies of scale, and innovation that were expected to result from their joining weren’t happening.
The management level was eliminated from an organization to allow the managers at the next level to make faster decisions, interact directly with their customers, and deliver better outcomes. But they weren’t quite into the new responsibilities as they waited for guidance and asked permission, exactly like they did in the previous structure.
Two functional heads, whose jobs required them to work closely, were at odds to the point that they attempted to avoid one another. When they had to collaborate, there was tension, which led to the inefficiency of their work and poor results.
Fingerpointing and conflict were a result of team members who were not aware of the precise limits of their respective roles, and they were likely to step across each other’s feet or fail to meet deadlines and targets altogether as it wasn’t clear who was responsible for their accomplishments.
Sound Familiar?
Do you encounter similar issues in your business? They can be a hassle and cause insomnia. Have you taken the time to think about what they’re actually costing you? The true cost is the result of business failures that, if not addressed front-to-front, can become permanent as it’s “just the way things work in this area’.
Typically, the knee-jerk response is to dismiss people or move them “sideways” and re-structure, or tell them that they need to put their act together, pray that they improve by complaining enough, place them on “special measures” during appraisal time or have”cards on the table meeting. These are all costly and risky but ultimately useless.
What isn’t often the case is that everyone involved in the matter gets together to discuss the issue through a series of face-to-face conversations where they examine in depth why things came to be this way and then agree on new behaviors and actions that can prevent the issue from returning. This method of creating fantastic productive teams, which produce results unlike the knee-jerk reaction, is cost-effective, extremely quick, and when done right, will always produce amazing long-term outcomes.
How does this approach work?
The method works because it establishes the need for a forum overseen by a facilitator in order to discover and address problems that were not previously discussed. If the forum to do this existed before, the issues of the organization would have been dealt with before or wouldn’t be a problem initially! The benefit of this method is the development of a sustainable process to deal with team problems anytime they occur in the future. It’s just the way we work around here”!
The reason this approach succeeds is that it’s built on research that is consistent, which shows that, with few exceptions, people can always deliver amazing results when equipped with the proper mindset and skills. If people don’t possess the required skills, organizations are familiar with the method of identifying and fixing the gaps in skills through education. However, many do not produce the results they’re capable of.
What is the secret to Success?
The secret to this approach’s effectiveness is the most difficult part to master: being honest. The expert facilitator encourages participants to expose and face the important, pertinent facts that can help unblock the group and allow it to move forward. It is possible that they will shy in the face of these concerns, which can leave them untouched and cause unacknowledged obstacles in the way of progress. The team is unable to accomplish this without the help of an external facilitator. It’s like performing the brain surgeon on your own!
You might or may not have the right strategy, the right product, the right appointment, or the right new system for computers; however, as a business leader, no matter what you offer your team to work, they must be given their full total commitment. This process reveals the obstacles that stand in the way of each person on the team who is providing this and provides the team with the ability to resolve problems quickly and effectively in the future.
