What’s Wrong With My Organization

More than ever, communications are broad, democratic and open to all. Digital media has opened the door to everyone and anyone having access to tools that can launch new ideas to the world. Half of that communications process, however, is made up by listeners. Are folks listening to all of these new ideas? And are all of the modalities equal?

200 year old church? Different or similar to perhaps one of your Madison Avenue clients or manufacturing?

It’s easy to become focused on the type of work we do—doesn’t everyone work in an office? We lose sight of the vast variety of workplaces—ranging from operating rooms to barns to ski slopes. Or, in this case, a church. Our consultants just stopped in to check up on a long-term client of theirs: a church in the northeastern US, founded in the 1780s. What types of organizational challenges have they been facing?

The proverb “clothes make the man” seems to go back to classical times. Yet a recent program in India seems to be revamping that idea to all new ends—instituting a new sort of school uniform to change the educational environment. How might this perspective offer substantive insight into your work. And perhaps a new tool for change management?

Olivia Newton John proclaimed “let’s get physical”. To misquote her, let’s get technical. Two years ago, as the pandemic opened up, our consultants gave solid technical recommendations to their clients—how do I adjust my organization? How do I need to adapt? So now we’ll go in for a technical recap from our experts: what’s been adopted, what hasn’t?

2021 has become the year of the Great Resignation. From Amazon to Zappos—from the corner shop to the biggest employers, this has been the year of challenges for keeping good staff. Or finding them. Let’s assume I’m a reasonably good place to work. What can I or should I be doing to compete, aside from offering money? What options do I have?

What’s going to be truly innovative in trying to solve this issue?

What do you see as the real motivator that staff are looking for, that will keep them loyal?

All-things-viral—that are not COVID. On the positive this week was the wonderful way Lego responded to the customer who’d bought a $350 kit that was defective: Lego’s charming on-brand response to fixing their own error got them you-can’t-pay-for-that PR. On the negative was the finance group that fired 900 people via a mass Zoom call. Are we really grasping the underlying messages behind when things go viral? Do we get the important message or do we just get swept up in the drama?

Have you ever turned the corner on the street and caught sight of a business and thought—wow, that’s still around? What made that lone Blockbuster Video hang on in Oregon, long after it had lost relevance? Today we’re looking at zombies of the business landscape

The last years have not been kind to many retail brands and you’ve come to expect to hear in the news that some other major business has failed. We’ve spent the last few years watching well-known brands—like Lord and Taylor—fail. And at the same time—on the far other end of the spectrum-- there seem to be these peculiar hold-outs. Oddball businesses that just keep going.

As we continue the discussion around what levers organizations have to steer their path, Org-ology will offer some ideas around missed opportunities. What can, and should, we as employers be thinking about that we’re not?

This is a rather unique time in our employment market. For the first time in decades staff are being selective. Regardless of what’s driving that shift, we as businesses will be asked to respond to it. Let’s jump in to consider some aspects.

In this episode we continue our examination of remote working with our resident business consultants Org-ology.

If it wasn’t bad enough having your supervisor looking over your shoulder every five minutes in the office, then what about asking you to keep zoom on all day while you’re working from home? Don’t they trust you?

On a personal level it’s all very Orwellian, but on a business level, is ‘surveillance-supervising’ even effective?

Welcome to our third episode. And today we’ll be introducing you to the art and science of organization design – kicking off with the somewhat mysterious topic of processes.

In last week’s cliffhanger ending Org-ology left us, with the idea that good processes are nearly invisible. I’d imagine that other small business owners like myself are somewhat baffled by that idea. So let’s jump back in and look at a bit more detail on processes.