Despite the widespread rhetoric about the need for organizational
speed and agility, too many corporations continue their
slow descent into underperformance because they are
unable to confront the painful gap between their strategies
and capabilities and the reality of their markets. They
fail because their leaders cannot engage key people
in a truthful conversation about strategic, organizational
and management problems that threaten their businesses.
Recently executives at Enron, Global Crossing and WorldCom
were replaced because key people were unable to tell
them the truth about management practices that would
lead to their and their firm's destruction. These problems
do not exist only in a few well-publicized corporate
failures. A survey of senior executives in Harvard Business
School's executive programs showed that speaking truthfully
to top management about important business and organizational
problems is virtually impossible in all but a few firms.
A decade long action research program has identified
what type of valuable information typically remains
hidden from senior managers and why. It has also revealed
five principles that senior teams at the corporate or
business unit level can utilize to ensure that truth
speaks to power about key business and organizational
factors - strategy, structure, culture, human
resources, management process, values and leadership
- that are blocking the business from achieving
strategic alignment and higher performance. When CEOs
and their senior teams have shown the will and skill
to apply these principles the results have been rapid
and dramatic transformation of the organization and
improved economic performance.
When utilized continuously over several years, the honest
organizational wide conversation has been found to function
as a "TQM" process targeted at improving the
quality of management not unlike Six Sigma and other
total quality processes enable continuous improvement
of operations. Transparency about leadership and organizational
effectiveness has provided top management in several
organizations in this study with a unique early warning
system about potential financial performance problems
just over the horizon. And, when top management openly
discussed with sub-unit managers what they have learned
from an honest organization wide conversation about
their own organization and leadership effectiveness
they can motivate leadership and organization development
that ensured the survival of their businesses and managers.
EMERITI
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