What makes organizations supremely effective?
This is a question that experts in organizational behavior and strategic management
have been grappling with in terms of multiple answers with less than optimal
solutions. From Hawthorne Experiments to Theory X and Y, and from Core
Competence to Competitive Strategy, leadership experts and management gurus
have been examining the triggers and levers for effective performance. These
theories and practices focus on facilitative behavioral processes such as
motivation and empowerment, controlling behavioral processes such as
responsibility and accountability, facilitative transactional processes such as
goal setting and strategy formulation, and controlling transactional processes
such as execution and moderating. With several extensions and nuances to these
typical processes, and with confluence of several disciplines, the whole gamut
of effective delivery by teams and organizations has become an increasingly
complex mosaic that is increasingly fascinating but tantalizingly imperfect.
The reason for the complex imperfection is rather simple.
Just as machines cannot replace people
(because people are required to design, make and deploy such people-replacing
machines) processes cannot replace people (because people are required to
prescribe, understand and implement processes). As organizations and
corporations are made up of several hundreds and even several thousands of
people, understanding people (and people dynamics) is the foundation of
organizational effectiveness. People can be understood through multiple
attributes but the essential enigma is that every person experiences all
through his or her life a very fundamental human paradox of wanting to be
independent and dependent simultaneously. From the time a baby is born, the
paradox of dependence and independence, whether it is called ‘dependent
independence’ or ‘independent dependence’ becomes explicit. With age, education
and experience, the paradox only becomes more complex with additional
attributes and emotions getting embedded in human and organizational behavior.
This blog post proposes a rather simple model to define organizational
effectiveness through four fundamental human dimensions. These are Loyalty,
Objectivity, Faith and Trust. Together, they constitute the LOFT Model of
Organizational Effectiveness.
Loyalty, the reality
From the days of royalty, loyalty has been
the core of leadership expectations and people behavior. Royalty is defined as
being supportive of, and attached to, a particular person or issue. The easiest
example is that of a typical king and his loyal subjects. However, what made a
good king a great king was when the king also felt loyal to his subjects, and
reciprocated their loyalty. As modern organizations took shape with greater
number of factors impacting organizational performance, loyalty has taken
multiple hues; for example, loyalty to ideology, loyalty to goals, loyalty to
nation or society, loyalty to values, besides loyalty to the leader. Loyalty,
in fact, is the fundamental factor that promotes a shared concern or alignment
between two or more individuals as a partnership, team or as an organization. Loyalty
has several other dimensions too. Loyalty leads to a sense of belongingness and
ownership. Loyalty, on the flip side, leads also to adulation and subordination
of logic to adulation. Loyalty rarely stays constant and consistent as
individuals and societies as well as products and services evolve. Loyalty gets
positively influenced and modified by objectivity.
Objectivity, for selectivity
Objectivity is the ability to take a view
based on data, evidence, logic, rationality and reasoning. Objectivity is the
elevated faculty of an educated and experienced human being that tests one’s
inescapable biases against the inputs that arise from facts and figures of
processes and outcomes, all of these analyzed with logic, rationality and
reasoning. Objectivity is at the core of shifting loyalties that occur in
organizations, marketplaces and societies. Companies which are loyal to motor
cycles, for example, change their views to also bet on scooters based on an
objective analysis of consumer preferences. Similarly, long standing brand loyalty
can be changed by objective analysis that arises from the factors of
objectivity related to product features and performance. Objectivity need not
always be based on proven processes or established results. Negative performance
can lead to an objective reevaluation of loyalty considerations and shift
allegiance based on hypotheses of future. In political campaigns or corporate
strategies, more often than not, objectivity and expectations act together
rather than only as total objectivity.
Faith, the foundation
Faith is one’s belief in a person’s ability
or knowledge; it is also a belief that a particular leader, mission, strategy,
ideology or organization would deliver. Despite, or arising from, loyalty and
benefitting from objectivity, one develops faith. As the old adage says, faith
moves mountains. Faith in technology makes engineers and scientists develop
products that consistently outperform the current generation of products. Faith
in leaders’ enables people to vote for them in democratic elections. While loyalty
to oneself is negative and discouraged, faith in oneself is positive and needs
to be encouraged. Faith that comes from knowledge and ability drives positive
change in organizations and nations. Faith becomes stronger as human traits of skepticism
and cynicism are dispelled by education and experience on one hand, and logic
and reason on the other. Faith in medical technology and practice is enabling
caretakers to invest their resources and efforts in extending life of even
those who are chronically sick. Faith in the capabilities and aspirations of people
of a nation motivate leaders to aim at developing economies into super-economies,
a development that is evident in the resurgent aspirations of India and its
leadership.
Trust, the bond
Trust is the belief that somebody and
something is good, sincere, honest and reliable. Trust has a strong emotional
element embedded in it. One may have a complete understanding of a team member’s
capabilities but unless one believes that the team member would put to use all
of his or her capabilities sincerely and transparently, the relationship would
not be marked by trust. Trust develops with experience of proven outcomes. Trust
develops with credibility. Constitution of a team in terms of its members and
the leader needs to be based on trust rather than expediency. Trust based teams
and organizations bond better and deliver better. Trust which is based on
loyalty, objectivity and faith becomes unshakeable. The leader understands that
he or she is placed in a position of trust, and team members believe that the
members and leaders trust each other. Amongst the four factors discussed, trust
is the team strength that is the most difficult to build and the easiest thing
to destroy. Trust tends to be vulnerable to emotions and actions that are both intended
and unintended. Objectivity to a large extent, and loyalty and faith to some
extent determine the durability of trust factor in teams, organizations,
societies and nations.
The LOFT model
Organizations need to understand the human
dynamics that determine an organization’s effectiveness. History teaches that even
under debilitating circumstances marked by heterogeneity and exploitation, the
LOFT model can deliver results. The success of India’s independence movement
under the leadership of Mahatma Gandhi is a classic example of the LOFT model
that transcends all hurdles and delivers success. Mahatma Gandhi’s preaching
and leadership reinforced loyalty of the people to Bharat Mata (Mother India)
and to the spirit of independence, overriding all fissiparous tendencies and
efforts. Although there were somewhat more aggressive and alternative
leadership models, people on the whole were objective in determining who could
be, and who would be, the real and enduring Jaati Pita (the Father of the Nation).
The people developed a faith not only on Mahatma Gandhi as the leader of
independence movement but also on themselves as capable of being the integral
part of the independence movement. Individual and community examples of
response to Mahatma’s calls, be it in the form of non-violent marches, fasts,
salt satyagraha, forsaking of foreign goods or khadi movement, have reinforced
trust in each other that all of the Indian population is prepared for
sacrifices that would obtain for the nation her independence.
At a micro level in organizations, the LOFT
model presents a winning combination of four simple human emotions that are
universally present in all individuals. The LOFT model represents a unique
resolution of the dependence-independence paradox of human behavior. People would
like to be dependent yet independent or independent yet dependent. The paradox
of ‘dependent independence’ or ‘independent dependence’ is resolved by these
four factors. Leaders need to treat loyalty as a two way process; as much as
they need, and revel on, team members’ loyalty, they must also earn loyalty
through their thoughts, expressions and actions. Loyalty must also occur on
multiple dimensions; to the leader, the organization and the goals. The organizational
ecosystem must be one that encourages objectivity that builds on positive
outcomes and rational analysis that arise out of education and experience. Loyalty
gets stronger with objectivity. The organizational ecosystem must focus on
developing a meritocracy that is marked by a belief in what one is capable of,
and what the team together is capable of. Faith is the single ingredient that
makes impossible possible. And finally, trust is the lofty and sublime emotion
that makes individuals, teams, organizations, societies and nations stay
together to achieve what they are capable of achieving. The aspiration to move
from good to great is fulfilled by the LOFT model, in any domain and on any
canvas.
Posted by Dr CB Rao on October 20, 2014
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