Organisational health: How Healthy is Your Organisation?

Now you might rightly be mistaken in our current environment for thinking this will be an article focused on a safe working environment, health and safety, cleanliness etc. Well, you’d be wrong. In this and the supporting articles, I’m going to share with you what it takes to be a truly healthy organisation.

This article will guide you through what you need to do as a business owner to have highly engaged employees, customers who are raving fans,  great financial mastery and clarity on the future aspirations of the organisation.

What is organisational health about?

The first point to note is the difference between being a smart organisation and a healthy organisation. The vast majority of organisations will be smart, they will understand what it is they do and the information related to that, the challenge may come from the level of dysfunction.

For any organisation to be healthy there are 4 things you, as the owner, CEO or Chair, need to do.

Step 1: organisational health needs cohesive leadership

Your leadership team is behaviourally cohesive. That there is honesty, vulnerability and trustworthiness around the table. There is a good level of healthy conflict so that they are able to make decisions that everyone commits to.

Essentially they will do what they said around the table and not leave passively to then do something completely different. When something does go wrong that they actually hold each other accountable and they are collectively focused on the needs of the organisation and not their individual areas of responsibility.

Step 2: organisational health requires clarity in your business

This is where you need to have a think about the level of clarity in your organisation. This is achieved through asking and answering these 6 questions;

  1. Why do we exist as an organisation?
  2. How do we behave and treat one another?
  3. What business are we actually in?
  4. How will we become successful?
  5. What’s our most important priority?
  6. Who does what by when to achieve the priority?

Step 3: overcommunicate your answers to the questions above

The need to constantly remind people of the answers and in all likelihood more that you will feel comfortable doing.

Step 4: put enough structure to achieve organisational health

This is then reinforced throughout the organisation by putting in place just enough structure to internalise the answer to the questions without bureaucracy. This structure will be around how you have meetings, rewards and recognition, decision making, recruitment, management and moving people out of the organisation.

The trick here is that it is just enough structure to empower the team and embed how the organisation functions. look at the systematisation of 80% of what’s done and the humanisation of 20%.

What gets in the way of achieving it?

Reading through the 4 steps it would seem quite simple to achieve organisational health, I’m sure, in principle, you’d agree? So what holds many organisations from actually starting down the road to organisational health. In short, those in charge, are the owners, CEO or chairs. In my experience, there are 3 main objections:

1. The sophistication bias. This truly is you getting in the way. There must be more to achieving organisational health, it can’t be this simple. Now just reflect on decisions made in the past, have you convinced yourself that it can’t be that simple?

Essentially the point here is that it is the simplest things that great companies do and what great people do, it’s discipline around simple things!

2. The adrenaline bias. There must be something I can do right now, a system, a process, some software to achieve organisational health. Sadly these seemingly quick fixes often prove to be more challenging and take longer than anticipated and they may not have the desired results.

Achieving organisational health will take a little longer, although not as long as you might imagine. Within weeks and months, you’ll start to see differences. Those driven by adrenaline want the quick fix right now, to get this done and achieving organisational health can seem too slow or even too soft!

3. The quantification bias. This is where there must be a precise measurement of just how will organisational health impact. What will the impact be on the bottom line; save in cost; increase in expense; increased revenue and how do I justify this cost in the next 6 months?

Organisational health is so much more than a mere number of KPIs, it will impact every aspect of the organisation and everywhere it touches. Think for a moment of the impact on culture, riding the organisation of confusion, dysfunction, politics impacts everything. Think for a moment, you wouldn’t go to a relationship counsellor and ask what the net worth will be of my family when you’re done!

If you would like to find out more about the quantification bias, you can read about it here.

Making the commitment will get results

Organisational health is achievable it just requires the leaders to make a commitment to action, to believe that the transformation of their organisation is possible.

The question here is whether you want to work on your leadership team to achieve organisational health. That you can see the benefits which will be realised once you get underway.

If you are bought into this idea will your team buy-in? Ultimately as the leader, this is your primary responsibility. To be frank, why wouldn’t you? Maybe one of the biases is at play.

If you would like a free coaching session to discuss effective ways to increase organisational health in your business, you can book yourself onto a free session here.