Healthy organizations intentionally strive to eliminate politics and confusion from their environments. When they do, productivity and morale rise, and good people almost never leave. In contrast, the smartest organizations in the world—those that have mastered strategy, finance, marketing, and technology—will eventually fail if they are unhealthy. I’ve seen it happen again and again. Organizational health is as tangible and practical as anything else a business does to succeed. I’m absolutely convinced of it.
Why, then, haven’t more companies embraced organizational health? For one, it’s hard. It requires work, discipline, and maintenance. It’s not sophisticated or sexy, which doesn’t excite leaders looking for a quick fix. It’s also hard to measure. It impacts so many disparate areas of an enterprise that it is virtually impossible to quantify its singular impact on the bottom line. It also requires steady courage. Consider these simple—but often difficult—steps in the journey to organizational health:
- Build a cohesive leadership team. If the people responsible for running an organization are behaving in dysfunctional ways, it inevitably will impact everyone else. Not every Leader will have the same style, but they must have the same overarching purpose and objectives.
- Create clarity. Be clear on everything. From why the organization exists to what the most important priority is in the next day, week, and months, be clear. Eliminate gaps in understanding so that people at every level have clarity on their role in making the organization successful.
- Over-communicate clarity. Leaders of a healthy organization constantly repeat and reinforce what is true and important. They err on the side of saying too much, rather than too little.
- Reinforce clarity using simple human systems. People processes—hiring, firing, performance management—should be custom-designed to support the uniqueness of the organization.
Healthy organizations must also continually get better at the one activity underpinning everything: meetings. Yes, meetings. A great meeting isn’t necessarily a short meeting. It’s one that begins with understanding what’s at stake and why it matters, and ends with a unified direction. Leaders summarize key decisions and assign accountability to ensure the team stays behaviorally aligned.
Can a healthy organization fail? Yes, but it almost never happens. Seriously. When politics, ambiguity, dysfunction, and confusion are minimized, people are empowered to design products, serve customers, solve problems, and help one another. Healthy organizations recover from setbacks, attract the best people, repel the others, and create opportunities—behaviors that naturally drive success.
Herb Kelleher and Colleen Barrett built Southwest Airlines on these principles. Decades later, through operational changes in the company and external pressures in the industry, Southwest Leaders still understand and leverage the strength of those cornerstone values.
XOXO
Pat
