The same goes for organizations. In order to become as effective as you can possibly be as an organization, everyone from the top down needs to be motivated. And it has to be genuine motivation – not some fake, ra-ra crap put on at a ‘corporate rally’. In organization development, it is said that change won’t occur unless there is a felt need. The same goes for achieving an optimal level of effectiveness – the organization has to realize that improvements can and should be made, and individuals are willing to commit to make these changes a reality. That is where the true motivation comes from. It is a result of commitment to change and improvement.

Being the best – whether it is being the top firm in your industry or reaching a maximum level of effectiveness (which very well may lead you to the top of the industry) – takes work. People, and organizations, rarely make it to the top by luck only. It takes hard work. It takes effort. It takes commitment. And it takes motivation to keep working towards the goal. Tiger Woods has a goal in mind, and dedicates himself to reaching that goal and motivating himself to achieve his goals. The same should go for you and your organization. Set goals to improve effectiveness and stay motivated to achieving success and reaping the rewards of achieving your goal.

1. The External Resource Approach is used to evaluate the organization’s ability to secure, manage and control scarce and valued skills and resources.
2. The Internal Systems Approach is used to evaluate the organization’s ability to be innovative and to function in a quick and responsive manner.
3. The Technical Approach is used to evaluate the organization’s ability to convert skills and resources into goods and services effectively.

I don’t necessarily believe that one approach is better than the other. In reality, an organization should utilize all three approaches, as they each have a different focus. For example, taking a strictly external resource approach could lead to too much focus on stock price and market share, and lead to inefficiencies and missed market opportunities that would have been discovered using a technical or internal systems approach.

Wrapped around all three approaches is the use of goal setting. Each approach and their measures used should have attached organization goals. For an external control approach, one goal might be to reach a market share of 30%, or reducing material costs by 10% for the year. An internal systems goal might be to bring a new product to market every 6 months, or to reduce the number of people required to make a major decision. A technical goal could be to increase the number of widgets made per day to 50, or to increase client satisfaction by 5%.

The key is to not let your organization measure effectiveness using one approach. A truly effective organization will utilize all three approaches, setting goals that fit into each category and measuring its performance against those set goals.

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.

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.

• 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.

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