Being smart and being healthy are two different things. Most organizations are doing pretty well in smarts - marketing, IT, HR processes, strategy, company products and services… all of these fall into the smart category. Organizational health is a whole different story. Health is all about how people engage with and treat each other – the interpersonal dynamics and ability to work effectively together to achieve results. Healthy organizations have high engagement, productivity and morale. They maximize their smarts, and rarely experience the politicking, game-playing and silos that are destructive.
The first discipline of organizational health is having a cohesive leadership team that consistently overcomes the five dysfunctions of teams. The second discipline is achieving intellectual alignment and clarity. Healthy organizations minimize the potential for confusion by clarifying six critical areas. Here’s how you know you’ve done so:
Leadership team members know, agree on and are passionate about the reason the organization exists
The team has clarified and embraced a small, specific set of behavioral values
Leaders are clear and aligned around a strategy that helps them define success and differentiate from competitors
The team has a clear, current goal around which they rally, feeling a collective sense of ownership for that goal
Members understand one another’s roles and responsibilities and are comfortable asking questions about each other’s work
The elements of the organization’s clarity are concisely summarized and regularly referenced and reviewed by the team
Achieving clarity in these six areas isn’t always easy, but it is profoundly simple. We can help you get there.
