6 key differences between dynamic and dysfunctional organizations
Over the past 25 years, I have had the fortune to work in a broad range of industries at leading companies in five countries around the globe. After a decade at top-ranked consulting, investment banking and private equity firms, I founded and led a successful technology start-up. As the Chief Executive Officer of redIQ, I assembled and led a high-performing team that nearly tripled subscription-based revenue each year (174% CAGR) from 2014 to 2017 and achieved a 60% market penetration in an extremely change-resistant industry.
I worked at large corporations and early-stage start-ups. I experienced both the thrill of being a part of a dynamic, cohesive, wildly productive team, as well as the frustration of working at a dysfunctional organization with unmotivated, distracted, and demoralized employees. These experiences gave me a unique understanding of the impact of culture and organizational structure on team member engagement and—ultimately—a company’s success.
It all starts at the top. In order to create a dynamic organization with motivated teams that consistently achieve the most ambitious goals, I learned to focus on the following six elements:
Storytelling - communicate a higher purpose (the “why?”) using simple, visually compelling language.
Urgency - set audacious goals and create a sense of urgency around achieving those goals.
Transparency - openly communicate all expectations and make the metrics by which they are measured readily accessible to every employee. Provide transparency around compensation and incentive structures, and provide quick and direct performance feedback. (There should be no secret blocs promoting hidden agendas.)
“Shared consciousness”* - foster a culture in which all information is shared across the entire company. (As Jeff Sutherland elegantly phrases it, “Doing your job in an information vacuum is tedious and uninspiring”.) Remove anyone who hoards information to ensure their own indispensability rather than sharing it with the organization.
Empowerment - define success in a concrete, actionable way and empower teams to make their own decisions about how they do their jobs. Ask probing questions, rather than telling them what to do, and remove any impediments that stand in their way.
Empathy - actively listen and strive to see things from other people’s perspective. The ability to demonstrate empathy is essential to creating a culture of trust.
As automation has eliminated the more monotonous jobs and the world has gotten more complex, the definition of leadership has changed. By focusing on these six components, a leader can create a winning culture where employees are happier, motivated, take ownership, and form more cohesive teams.
* The term "shared consciousness" was originally coined by General Stanley McChrystal in his book Team of Teams.