I view organizations like giant puzzles. There are many pieces involved, all uniquely shaped and designed to fit in a particular place. In order for the whole picture to look right, every piece has to be in place. With an organization, it won’t look – or function – right unless all of the pieces are in place.

Take an automotive engine. Consisting of many moving parts, each one which performs a different function. What happens if one of the parts is missing? Or is installed incorrectly? The engine won’t work. And neither will your organization. A crankshaft won’t do its job if it isn’t the right size, or isn’t designed to work with the engine. Which part of your organization is an incorrect crankshaft?

Nadler’s Congruence Model of Change is all about the fit:

This concept of fit is crucial to understanding the organizational model I’ve been describing. In systems the interaction of the components is more important than the components themselves. In terms of the organization, its overall effectiveness relies on the internal congruence, or fit, of its basic components. The tighter the fit, the greater the effectiveness.

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This, then, is the essence of the congruence model: the greater the congruence among the internal components, the more effective organizations will be in transforming their strategies into performance.

In my post about what an effective organization is, I mentioned the importance of delivering on processes and achieving stated goals. Nadler reinforces this message: if the parts of the organization don’t fit, you won’t be able to perform at the highest level – and thus, won’t be able to fully deliver on your processes.

Take a look at your organization. Does it resemble a puzzle after a 3 year old has gone through the box? Or like a haphazardly designed engine? Make sure the parts fit – don’t try to shove that square peg through the round hole.

Tonight I was reading the book What’s So Amazing About Grace? by Philip Yancey, and these words really jumped out at me:

Like city-dwellers who no longer notice the polluted air, we breathe in the atmosphere of grace unawares. As early as preschool and kindergarten we are tested and evaluated before being slotted into an “advanced”, “normal”, or “slow” track. From then on we receive grades denoting performance in math, science, reading, and even “social skills” and “citizenship”. Test papers come back with errors – not correct answers – highlighted. All this helps prepare us for the real world with its relentless ranking, a grown-up version of the playground game “king of the hill”.

Why is it that the focus is always on the wrong, or the bad, or the incorrect? Why not focus on the good? Why not focus on the strengths? I am a big believer in developing your strengths, and working to complement your weaknesses. Yet society forces upon us a mindset that we have to focus on the bad, and not think about the good. Wouldn’t a student feel better about themselves, especially those who are struggling to learn, if the paper came back with the correct answers highlighted? Wouldn’t that change their mindset to work on getting more right answers, and in the process, learning in a positive manner?

The same goes for individuals within organizations, and even for the organization themselves. I have been thinking the last few days about how to write a meaningful post on strengths, and how organizations and individuals should focus on the strengths and emphasize the good. During your last performance review, how much time was spent on what you do well, on your strengths, and how much time was spent talking about your weaknesses and what you did wrong? I am guessing the conversation focused on the negative.

It shouldn’t be this way. Let’s focus on the positives. Let’s look at the good that we do as individuals and organizations. Let’s develop a renewed focus on strengths. The world may try to stick us in pegs based on our weaknesses, but it is critical to fight back and not be put in pegs, or at least if we are lets base it on something positive. Focus on the good, work on your strengths, and let the goodness flow and positive effectiveness develop.

When someone talks about being effective, in essence it is really about getting things done. If you aren’t getting anything done, then are you being effective? No.

Let’s look at what is really takes to get things done. The word execution might come to mind – you have to execute on your processes in order to accomplish anything. But look deeper – what is being that execution? How do people know what to execute on? How do people know what the processes are, and what the important goals of the organization are?

One word: communication. It all comes down to communication, and if your organization isn’t effective at communicating, and if your leaders are unable to communicate in an effective manner, nothing will get done….at least not properly. In an organization, no matter what area you are looking at, the most important thing is communication. If people don’t talk to each other, if they don’t understand each other, or what is important, or what the organization is trying to accomplish, or how their role fits into the big picture – if none of that happens, the organization will not be effective.

And what drives all of that? Communication. And not just communication – effective, clear, precise, understandable communication. If the message isn’t being understood, if messages aren’t being delivered and received properly, it really isn’t communication. Its noise. And if there is too much noise, there cannot be communication.

Communication – yes, it is that important.

As most of you have heard, the governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, was arrested on fraud and corruption charges. While it is shocking in some ways, it isn’t necessarily unheard of in the state of Illinois. Four of their last six governors have been arrested for some crime or another.

While I completely disagree with what Blagojevich has done, there is something that I find more shocking. I was listening to “All Things Considered” on NPR last week and they had an interview with Pat Quinn, the lieutenant governor of Illinois. During that interview, he mentioned that the last time he had a meaningful conversation of more than a couple words was August 2, 2007. Yes, you heard that correctly. The governor and lieutenant governor haven’t spoken in nearly a year and a half. No wonder he is calling for his resignation or impeachment. I’d like to point out that I don’t think they’ve ever communicated or got along well – before the primaries in Illinois, the governor and lieutenant governor run separately, and then are put on the same ticket for the general election. Thus, you end up with the possibility of getting stuck with two people who don’t like or won’t talk to each other.

An organization cannot be effective unless there is free and open communication. How can an organization set expectations and goals, develop a culture, deliver on processes, and provide leadership if the guy at the top won’t talk to anyone? Blagojevich, through his isolation and ability to pretty much piss off everyone around, including the entire Illinois congress, has shown exactly how not to foster good communication in an organization.

Communication matters. Actually, it more than matters – it is critical to the success of an organization. Nothing will get done properly, efficiently, nor effectively if communication is lacking or non-existent. Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t also state that the type of communication also matters. Bribery, extortion and political trade-offs don’t really count as effective communication. That lesson was apparently never learned by Blagojevich.

In order to have a proper communication about effectiveness in organizations, it is critical to understand what an effective organization actually is. If you look at the definition of effective at the top of the page, you will see a few different definitions from dictionary.com:

• Producing the intended result, or adequate to accomplish the purpose
• functioning or in force
• producing a vivid or striking image

Wikipedia defines organizational effectiveness as:

the concept of how effective an organization is in achieving the outcomes the organization intends to produce.

It is my belief that an effective organization is one that has a competitive advantage by accomplishing its intended outcomes and achieving its stated goals through delivering on its processes.

There are many moving parts that all need to come together in order to be an effective organization. Some of these parts include:

• Having clearly defined goals and mass understanding of those goals
• Hiring and developing employees who are fully engaged in their work
• Creating processes that are easily repeatable and accomplish their intentions
• Understanding by employees of how they contribute to an organization reach its goals and how it relates to effectiveness
• Properly structuring and designing the organization so that it contributes positively to being efficient and effective

These topics, along with leadership, group dynamics, talent management, organizational change, employee motivation and corporate culture, all play a vital role in an organization reaching its full potential – i.e. being an effective organization.

Welcome to my new adventure in the blogosphere! This is my second go-around, having previously authored a blog called Disorganizational Behavior. After a hiatus to partake in raising my son and dive into my graduate studies, I am back with a renewed and exciting mission. The goal of this blog is to discuss topics concerning organization development and organizational behavior. Topics will range from leadership, motivation, group dynamics, process intervention, corporate culture and anything else that is related to the fields of organization development and behavior.I will also talk about another topic of interest of mine: learning and intelligence. It is my belief that all of these topics have a role in how effective organizations are developing, concerning not only the structure and processes of the organization but also the behavior and motivations of those within the organization.

My goal is to post three times a week, depending on my schedule and thought process. Thank you for joining me and I look foward to your comments and thoughts.

Travis