During a Downturn, Don’t Forget to Maintain your Organizational Capital

As a follow up to our previous post about BNET’s cure for recession stress in the workplace, I thought it was a good idea to add a bit about assessing your organizational capital. Usually, you want to perform an Org Captial assessment as part  of the internal analysis included in your SWOT, but right now as everyone is scrambling to adjust to recession-pressure this is a great time to take stock.

To begin, answer the following questions:

• How does it feel to be on your bus? (How is your work environment?)
• Do you and your employees like coming to work?
• Is everyone getting along?
• Is someone driving the bus? (Who’s running the show?)
• What is your organizational culture like?

Organizations are made up of people, and the people determine what goes on at work. At the end of the day, every person is responsible for how the work gets done and how the organization functions.

Sizing Up Your Current Situation

Structure, teamwork, management, and leadership dictate how it feels to be working in your business environment. Evaluate your organizational capital by looking at the following areas:

• Structure: Structure does serve a purpose – to have an efficient flow of information for action and decision making. Normally, organizational charts look like a bunch of departments cobbled together because businesses grow and morph over time. Is your organization structured to allow everyone to operate effectively?
• Leadership: Leadership is the art of getting people to do what you want because they want to. Leadership comes in many styles and flavors, but the end result is the same. Leaders are responsible for setting the vision and the strategy. How is your leadership?
• Management: Managers are responsible for making sure that the work gets done and that employees are performing at their peak level. In your company, the lines between leaders and managers may be blurred. Your leaders may be managers and your managers may be leaders. Either way, both are just as important in keeping your bus moving down the road. Is your management team successfully getting the work done and helping your employees achieve their fullest potential?
• Teamwork: How do you build a great team? Numerous theories exist that can easily fill the rest of this book. But nothing gets done in business, except maybe answering the phone, without teamwork. For your evaluation, ask yourself if the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Are your people achieving more together than apart? Each of these areas has industries built around it. If you are looking to dig into improving one or more of them, look to an outside consulting firm or training course that focuses on the discipline specifically.

Example: Patagonia

Patagonia, an environmentally-conscious, highly innovative outdoor clothing company – is notorious for its enviable culture. Under founder Yvon Chouinard’s leadership, the company has reached $240 million in annual sales. The business continues to maintain a complete and total commitment to environmentalism as well as blending work and play. At times, profitability takes a lower priority than upholding the corporate values The corporate culture emanates from the top through Chouinard’s philosophy and leadership style. His thoughts are consistently supported by managers, teams, employee internship programs, and the company’s lack of cubicles. Surfing at lunchtime or taking major customers skiing is part of Patagonia’s business and its culture.

You may also be interested in:

• Culture Change & Organizational DNA
• Eight Errors That Prevent Needed Organizational Change
• How we’re cleaning up for the coming downturn

Topics in this post: Organizational Capital, Strategic Business Planning, SWOT |