We spoke with a manager who told us she had 8 different bosses over a three year period – this company was experiencing high employee turnover.
We spoke with a middle manager that told us that unless he hears a request from his boss at least three times, he will not respond. This company changes key initiatives frequently – both small initiatives (division level) and big initiatives (company level). The changes are not showing up in company growth.
We spoke with another middle manager that told us that the CEO is now hiring executives from outside the company and it’s destroying the culture – performance has not improved in this company and some of the newly hired executives were terminated or left in less than two years.
What do these three stories have in common? What they have in common is lack of consistency in the organization. These examples demonstrate a more insidious and harmful impact on the organization than the oft spoken “flavor of the month” behavior of some senior executives and CEOs’.
Employees like consistency. One reason – it provides for predictability. Another reason – it helps them develop influence that in turn helps them get work done more efficiently and effectively. Influence, however, develops in organizations over time and can only develop and take hold in an organization where there is management consistency.
Many managers foolishly believe that constant change is good: some change is; frequent change is not. Bring in a new manager and what’s one of the first things that they do – reorganize. Bring in enough new managers and the organization begins to feel it’s in a constant state of reorganization and de-stabilization. Whether as a senior executive you take issue with this and don’t believe, it doesn’t matter. What matters is how the employees perceive it because they act on their perceptions not on management’s statements. And what also matters is the metrics: revenue growth (supported by a strong and growing contribution margin) employee retention and other metrics that demonstrate strong performance results.
In this week’s Quick Tips we will provide examples and ideas on how to develop and communicate consistency in your organization.
Copyright 2010 Kubica and LaForest
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