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The Flourishing Organisation L CULTURE
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The Flourishing Organisation
The Flourishing Organisation is characterised by individuals, teams and the organisation itself being ‘in-flow’ with the challenges faced. The Flourishing Organisation is not measured solely in terms of financial performance. Rather it describes a sense of: •Well-being. People, especially employees, feel good about the organisation and it becomes a magnet for talent, •Longevity. The organisation is seen, especially by investors, as having a pathway towards continued contribution and/or profitability, •Sustainability. Customers and suppliers rely on the organisation knowing that it will be able to honour commitments today and in the future. The Flourishing Organisation is also a framework to enable you to review your organisation.
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Culture Overview All organisations have a culture. Culture can be seen as ‘the way we do things around here’ and is summarised in written contracts and the unwritten ‘deals’ that are made. The Flourishing Organisation articulates its values and ensures that the espoused word is carried out in deed. It focuses on:
CULTURE
Positives – Most psychological theories and management practices focus on the negatives such as ill-health or poor performance. The powerful alternative is to focus on the strengths of people and their ability, given the right conditions, to act in positive, rational and trustful ways. Self Determination – People are responsible for themselves and their own feelings and decisions. This is ‘tough-love’ as it can be hard to accept that who we are and even how we feel is the result of our own decisions and actions. Embedding this belief - that we are the individual agents constructing our own lives through the choices that we make - ensures that organisations treat people as adults. Partnership – Whilst always holding to the idea of self-determination, the organisational culture is one of support and cooperation. Value Appreciation - Employment and all assessment and development work should have the underlying goal of creating economic value in mind. This is helped when organisations utilise a framework that articulates and appreciates the valueadding contribution of jobs at various levels in the organisation.
we actively manage all aspects
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Dynamic Link can help by providing the framework that builds a flourishing culture. ©Dynamic Link Limited
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Structure Overview Organisational structure is much more than the static charts showing reporting lines. Structure comprises the various flows within the organisation including the flow of power, information and communication. It is also the mechanism by which strategy is turned into operational effectiveness. The Flourishing Organisation keeps the following in focus:
Accountability – This is a more specific term than responsibility and relates to outputs. It defines the scope of the decisions and judgements that a job-holder is required to make. The golden rule is that accountability for decision- making should never be shared. Accountabilities as outputs need to be measurable. With clear and measurable accountabilities, people develop a sense of ownership and purpose. Spans-of-Control - This is the number of direct reports that can be efficiently managed by one person. Contrary to popular myth, there is no ideal span-of-control covering all jobs. However, there are principles that determine the ideal for specific jobs and these ensure that managers are neither over or underwhelmed by the scope of their people management responsibilities. Careers – Jobs are the building blocks of organisations. When jobs are clearly grouped into families with clear connections and clarity as to how a person can move from one to another, the resulting career structure builds a sense of being in control of one’s professional development.
we actively manage all aspects
there is work to be done here
this isn’t even on our radar
Dynamic Link can help by providing job profiling tools that ensure role clarity and provide the bases for organisation design, the identification of job families and development of career structures. ©Dynamic Link Limited
Strategy Overview A strategy effectively defines the scale of the challenge and sets the demand for the organisation including how it needs to differentiate itself from competitors and deliver user-benefits. More important than the strategy document, or the finely crafted vision and mission statements, are the processes that ensure that the strategy is alive and organic. The Flourishing Organisation focuses on the following:
Y G E T A R ST
Formulation – Strategy starts by being closely connected to the external context and developing a clear aim that propels the organisation forward. It also has to address the means of delivering the aim. Without the means of delivery, a strategic aim is really no strategy at all. Communication – People’s understanding of the strategy is aided by the development of clear vision and mission statements. These are powerful, high level, statements that provide direction. However, more important than these ‘nice to haves’ is the process that turns strategy into operational effectiveness. This proces is the clarification of accountabilities and the associated cascade throughout the organisation. Review – Sometimes strategy becomes stuck and doesn’t change even when the external environment or consumer demand has shifted. To keep the strategy alive the most important aspect is to maintain an environment where the ‘unthinkable’ can be voiced. When the strategy reflects the current reality and addresses the means for delivering this the foundations for an organisation to be ‘in-flow’ are laid.
we actively manage all aspects
there is work to be done here
this isn’t even on our radar
Dynamic Link can help you review and develop your people and organisational strategy. ©Dynamic Link Limited
Citizenship Overview Just like individuals, organisations are part of a community in which they have rights and responsibilities. The Flourishing Organisation recognises mutual dependency and they create a climate of:
CITIZENSHIP
Openness – This starts with the contracts that formalise transactions and relationships. They are written in a way that builds relationships, sets expectations and constructively manages shortfalls. Openness extends to providing sound information on which investors can make informed decisions.
Social Responsibility - Citizenship is about addressing the organisational responsibilities and seeking to remedy, or at least ameliorate as best it can, the fact that sometimes its activities create negative consequences that include, but are not limited to, environmental degradation. It also includes encouraging a positive impact on the community that it operates within through its activities on the environment, consumers, employees and other interested parties. Self-Regulation – Citizenship is about establishing the self-regulating mechanisms whereby an organisation can monitor and ensure its active compliance with the spirit of the law, ethical standards and international norms.
we actively manage all aspects
there is work to be done here
this isn’t even on our radar
Dynamic Link can help define the role of the Board, President and CEO in developing Corporate Citizenship. ©Dynamic Link Limited
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Effective – The processes actually do what they set out to do. As such they must be aligned with the value chains that deliver the key benefits of the organisations. Efficient – The processes do what they do with a minimum of cost and waste. Efficiency is maximised if decisions are taken at the lowest level in an organisation as possible. Any decision that needs to move away from the point of action and be referred up an organisational hierarchy is a potential limitation on efficiency. As such, any initiative that embraces process improvement has to have, as its central theme, the ability of people to take decisions and make judgements. People-Friendly – The unintended consequences of many people related processes is demoralisation. People-friendly processes ensure that there is genuine dialogue- that is a conversation that is uncluttered by practised responses that so often happen in interviews and management meetings.
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Overview All work is ‘chunked up’ into specialist areas and is part of a co-ordinated effort that aims to end with a delighted customer/recipient. The Flourishing Organisation ensures that the processes that deliver the required outputs are:
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Dynamic Link can help by reviewing and developing HR processes that form an integrated approach to managing people and organisations. ©Dynamic Link Limited
People
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Overview One of the most over-used phrases heard in recent years is ‘people are our most important asset’. The Flourishing Organisation knows that it is what people are enabled to do that is key to high performance. As such it focuses on:
Leadership – High performance organisations have high performance leaders - it is as simple as that. High performance leaders achieve the twin aim of efficiency and stakeholder involvement. They focus on strengths and build on what they have got. Engagement – This is the effort that someone makes to ensure that something happens a little better than what was planned. It is the choice to help a colleague or delight the customer or put a little of yourself into the work and risk making a mistake. It’s about the exercise of personal choice – not the job description or the processes that a person has to follow. This ‘discretionary effort’ is dependent upon the quality of the working relationships – the most of important of which is with the direct line manager. A manager can build engagement through creating a climate that engenders clarity, trust and purpose. Teamwork – Human beings are social creatures that have made extraordinary developments through the power of working together. Teamwork is one of the mandatory elements in successful organisations and requires members to embrace a sense of duty, respect and fairness. Matching People to Jobs – There is probably no more important managerial task that ensuring that people match the job required. However, this often goes badly wrong and costs soon mount from misfits and poor alignment. Matching the capability of people at all levels to the scope of the challenges faced is made easier when the organisation uses an integrated job and person profiling framework.
we actively manage all aspects
there is work to be done here
this isn’t even on our radar
Dynamic Link can help by providing the integrated framework and tools and methods that enable evidence based decisions to be made. ©Dynamic Link Limited
Financial
Overview People feel good about working for successful organisations. In the private sector the signal for success is profitable growth. Certainly, the life blood of all organisations is money. The Flourishing Organisation ensures that the financial blood-flow is healthy, pumped at the right rate and monitored. It has tight control of:
FINANCIAL
Debt – Debt may be necessary but to ensure that it doesn’t overburden an organisation and turn into ‘bad blood’ it needs to be carefully managed. Cash-Flow – Cash is King. Every effort needs to be made to preserve and generate cash. When people see how the leaders preserve cash and understand how their job impacts this critical factor they can take appropriate action. Performance Monitoring – People tend to deliver the targets that are asked. But beware of unintended consequences. Simply focusing on one target/measure such as relative share price movement or profit is inviting problems. Financial health needs constant monitoring and the wider the set of measurement instruments the better. Value-Appreciation - This is especially important now that more than half of many companies share-price is made from intangible assets including the skills, knowledge and expertise of its workforce. When an organisation appreciates all the factors that generate value- especially its human and social capital, it ensures that the strategic intent and the organisation’s capability to deliver are always aligned. Fair Reward - With value-appreciation at its core, an organisation can build fit-for-purpose remuneration systems, which properly reward jobholders for their contribution whether this be quality output, cost-savings, efficiency improvements, innovation or strategy formulation.
we actively manage all aspects
there is work to be done here
this isn’t even on our radar
Dynamic Link can help build human capital by introducing a Value-Appreciation framework. ©Dynamic Link Limited
Relationships
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Overview All organisations have to be in touch with the external world or they wither and die. The Flourishing Organisation ensures that they are not only in touch with the external world, they also influence it through: Customer Focus - Based on deep insight, the customer’s needs are articulated together with their hidden wants. Trust and Respect – This is built by always taking action consistent with the commitments made.
Stakeholder Involvement – The modern organisation is more than the sum total of its people and internal processes. The power of the organisation is in its relationships and conversations that happen with customers, suppliers and interested parties. In order to influence the bodies that impact on its ‘licence to operate’ such as regulators and interest groups, organisations need to encourage conversations and authentic relationships.
we actively manage all aspects
there is work to be done here
this isn’t even on our radar
Dynamic Link can help by defining the challenges of managing and shaping external relationships at various levels in the organisation. ©Dynamic Link Limited