Organizations succeed because they're... organized!

It struck me as I saw the great precision of the teams of Olympic rowers that these micro-organizations had figured out something important. Cohesion, consistency and coordination are critical to their success; the same is true for complex organizations!

In organizational terms we talk about employee engagement, organizational alignment, management and leadership. But can we learn any valuable lessons about organization effectiveness from some a crew team? The answer is yes and here's my short list.

1. The point of employee engagement is organizational cohesion. This means that members care about the each other, the company's success and doing things right.
2. The point of organizational alignment is consistency. That is, making sure members are working toward the same goals and everyone is rowing in the same direction.
3. Managers' and leaders' major task is coordination. Manager's need to take care of day to day integration and cooperation; leaders need to understand the necessity for changes or adjustments and insure these happen smoothly.

Nothing about these lessons is particularly new or profound. The need it seems to me is to start at this basic level. In other words, what we should realize is that organizational effectiveness is as much about the "why" as it is about the "what" and "how" of the tasks being done or actions being taken. Here are three examples:

• Employee engagement does not happen because of "what" we do for them, but because of their understanding of "why" its being done. If an engagement survey is a simply a device for sending the message that the organization is concerned about it's members, then it is likely to be seen as an attempt at manipulation and not engage members. If on the other hand, the survey is seen to address real concerns such as organizational members satisfaction with co-workers, management and the work itself, the survey is much more likely to have the intended effect. Engagement is further enhanced by making a clear link between the survey results and subsequent changes in relevant areas.
• Standard policies and procedures, ERP,and other systems are very useful tools for making what and how tasks are accomplished clear and consistent. But are these tools aligned with one another and leading to consistent organizational outcomes? Are informal "work-arounds" unintentionally subverting organizational consistency? Does it even make sense that what and how tasks are accomplished needs to be standardized as long as results are consistent?
• The coxswain on a rowing team has two goals--keeping the crew safe and winning races. So typically the reason for his or her directives are clear; directives to do something dangerous or unfavorable are typically confusing. In complex organizations, the same reasoning should apply, so understanding leaders and managers rationale for directives is as critical as the capacity to carry it out. Effective organizations have leaders and managers that coordinate actions with organizational members who are collaborators or co-operators; ineffective ones have leaders that coordinate actions for organizational members who are followers.