More On Organizational Effectiveness
There are four stages of organizational effectiveness:
Stage I: Self-awareness. Help those in the organization understand the organization’s vision, mission, critical success factors and your own personal level of performance. However, self-awareness alone doesn’t mean a willingness to improve.
Stage II: Performance Improvement: Focus on which areas to improve: Do more of, do less of, start doing, stop doing, do differently. Goal: Ask how you can be more effective personally.
Stage III: Performance Breakthrough. Know what you and your group need to do to improve. Understand obstacles to success and how you will work to overcome those obstacles. Process improvement, customer driven analysis.
Stage IV: Transformation. The whole system is at a new level of performance. People understand that they operate in an interdependent system with profound understanding of how my actions impact others and the entire organization. Leaders understand how to become a guiding coalition and become visible leaders of the organization.
Why is organizational effectiveness important?
Organizational effectiveness is needed to do things excellently today and get ready for tomorrow. There are two reasons why organizational effectiveness is urgently needed in most organizations:
- Speed: The competitive marketplace, technology and competition are constantly changing. We just don’t have time anymore for 100% democracy where, faced with change, everyone in the organization is communicated with and involved in determining how to respond. Organizations need sufficient self-awareness to respond quickly. The cycle time between when an external issue is uncovered and a response is required is becoming shorter and shorter. There is not time to hand over problems to a team of analysts for a response.
- Involvement: How to get everyone behind the new effort, especially middle managers, when there is no time to meet with everyone or to cascade information? Here is where Vector Group’s “Declarative Change” process comes into play. We as
leaders must declare our response to a significant event in such a way that people feel a sense of identity and involvement.
Vector Group only gets involved with a client because change must be introduced. We then ask: “How equipped is the organization to make this change?” Are we ready to move forward? What’s working well that we can leverage? What’s not working that must be changed? The declarative change process can involve people in one of four places:
(1) Front end: Get people‘s involvement in determining WHAT we needed to do and HOW to get there from a strategic standpoint.
(2) As the leader, I decided WHAT to do but I need people’s help on HOW to do it.
(3) As the leader, I know WHAT to do and HOW to do it but I need people‘s help to IMPLEMENT it. I need to involve people to help develop the next level of detail: roles, structure, etc.
(4) After the fact: As the leader, I know WHAT to do HOW to do it and will IMPLEMENT it myself. I need people’s help in EVALUATING how it‘s going.
How does organizational effectiveness work in today’s environment of high employee turnover?
New employee orientation: Build a consistent and well understood culture so that when new people come in they can immediately be assimilated into the culture within 30 days.
Culture supports strategy and enables people to build the infrastructure.
How do we know Vector Group is a leader in organizational effectiveness? What is the proof?
(1) We develop long-term relationships with clients by doing the right things and doing things right.
(2) We take a systemic view of the organization vs. just looking at piece parts to be improved.
(3) We have documented, quantitative evidence from GM, Honeywell Bull and Group Insurance. ROI ranges from 5:1 to 17:1 (cost / benefit ratio). Also, Honeywell-Bull was 11th out of 12 in its marketplace when we started and was #1 when we left.
There are many factors that lead to success; look at Vector Group as a driving factor in bringing success.