CHAPTER 12

The Fundamental Ingredient for Success of Organizations

CHAPTER OBJECTIVES

After studying this chapter, you should be able to:

1. See that an organization can fail due to internal contradictions as also due to improper execution of its three point focus.
2. Success is a positive spiral that sets the organization overflowing with positives.
3. Failure is a negative spiral.
4. A leader can intervene to stimulate positives through excellence.

In this section so far we have been dealing with tasks in an organization and tasks of organizations. These relate to the role a suzerain has to play; it can be said that the suzerain needs to do the tasks well, so that the organizations can successfully achieve what they set out to do. However, on ground this is not as cut and dried as it seems. There is an important ingredient necessary for this ‘success’ to happen … . ‘Excellence’.

The Three Point Focus of Organizations

Organizations are of different kinds, they have great variety in composition and structure. Examples of organizations are companies, family, army, group of friends on an outing, government, a school, a car pool, a group of dacoits, a monastery, the institution of sanyasis and sanyasins, fellow passengers on a journey … they can exist for single or multiple agendas. They may have legal recognition or may merely have social recognition. They could be clearly defined or loosely defined and they could be either enduring or may exist for a brief period of time.

Organizations could have agendas that are constructive or destructive—as seen from the point of view of society and others wellbeing. If a few people have come together with the interests of ‘dacoity’ then that organization has a destructive agenda—with almost no good in it for society. Again, even if certain organizations have positive agendas, in the process of their operation they may throw up negatives. For example, on the positive side companies add to the wealth in society through production of goods and services. In pursuit of success, they innovate and this helps raise the general standard of living of all humans. By their existence companies participate in the economy of a nation and help build up prosperity—by providing jobs, vendor orders, taxes … but the working of a company may also involve doing irrevocable damage to the environment. Some others even harmfully influence society and culture through inappropriate advertisements. Hence, companies represent a mix of positive and negative factors. Likewise, all actual organizations in society can be seen in shades of grey. This further adds to the spectrum of organizations.

But despite the diversity there are some overall common characteristics. Analysing three of these overall characteristics leads us to an important conclusion in our study of organizations and suzerains.

When people come together to form a group, whether they get organized into some formal structure or not, broadly speaking, there are three factors they will be collectively interested in; and we have seen this in the previous chapter:

1. The organization’s societal role.
2. The interests of the organization’s integrity.
3. The interests of its stakeholders.

Take a company for instance, the following diagram gives an impression of its prime concerns.

The Pursuit of Success

The success of an organization would lie in its members successfully addressing the above mentioned three prime concerns.

1. Whatever be the agenda of the organization, as long as an organization is in existence, those who constitute it would be concerned with the achievement of the agenda and therefore will measure success by the successful prosecution of the agenda.
2. The second concern involves efforts of the organization to take care of its own self, its survival, its thriving, its maintenance, its adaptability to emerging changes and challenges … every organization faces challenges and threats from within and from outside and therefore attention needs to be paid to these in the interests of its own survival.
3. Finally, attention must be paid to the interests of the individuals who constitute the organizations. Their personal growth, their state of happiness, their satisfaction with work and rewards, their mutual relationships … . In a company there are owners, employees, external support (marketing, advertising, etc.) suppliers, and patrons/clients; all have their own interests in their participation in the company. The company must ensure that all those thus involved are suitably taken care of …

So, if there is an organization and if people are milling about in it doing some work or the other, then all the milling about that is being done there, in the interests of the organization, boils down to achieving success in these three basic things … . They are either taking care of the aim of the organization, they are doing something to keep the team together or they are addressing the needs of the stakeholders in the organization.

Success or failure of organizations depends on how they cater to these prime concerns. If one can see, the organization is being seen in the context of its environment as a living entity, alive and kicking in the present moment and responding to the challenges that are confronting it. But this living organism contains humans and it is this human element that plays a pivotal role in its responding of the day-to-day challenges.

The Chance of Failure

We can reckon two main ways by which an organization will tend towards failure. These are:

1. If the organization has internal contradictions.
2. If it is unable to address the three prime concerns effectively; given a reasonable external environment or setting.

If the Organization Has Internal Contradictions

Internal contradiction pertains to the cases like the group of dacoits. The agenda is to gain at the cost of ‘victims’; this happens to be the group’s societal role. It therefore thrives by injuring stake holders. Also, in the process of successfully executing this, the harm done to other humans leaves behind a negative residue even in those who commit harm. Humans being humans—‘social beings’ (spiritual beings, if one wishes to go that far) which they are, it goes contrary to their (the dacoits) essential natures and leaves them feeling like being lesser than human within themselves. This act as a great impediment to the dacoits complete flowering.

Now, the bad feeling can be offset by focusing on the little positives that come out of it (doing it for my wife and kids) or by devotion, offerings and prayer to dubious demigods; but this does not amount to much. Clearly, an agenda like this renders the organization week at the very inception.

Further the organization is also weak when seen from the perspective of ‘teams’. The group remains weak because the togetherness is based on hollow foundations; if the principles of togetherness are not sound organizations then it may find it difficult to set up meaningful interactions amongst its members. Bonny and Clyde (Bunty aur Babli) are imaginary; in real life even if such as these are not gruesomely eliminated, they tend to share a relationship that has misery written all over it. Organizations with aims that unjustly hurt other humans, do not truly endure … Nazism, Polpot, Idi Amin and a whole host of terror driven ideologies are historical proofs. And the reason they crumble is that they violate the human spirit. Some careful reflection into this will also show that this is the same cause which ensures that companies that indulge in unethical practices fall short of what it takes. As Mahatma Gandhi puts it, ‘It is the basic nature of man that he is peace loving; violence is an aberration.’—hurt and injury are alien to his nature. Therefore, laying out plans for organizations must be taken into consideration whether or not it is in harmony with essential human nature. If organizations have friction written all over them even at the conception stage, they won’t endure.

Improper Execution of the Three Basic Aims

This is the second possible cause. Even if the organization has no (or limited) internal contradictions, it can still fail if the three prime concerns are addressed. That is, if the goals of the organization are not properly prosecuted, if the integrity of the team is not attended to or if some or all of the stake holders are ignored, neglected or harmed in some other way or the other.

Success is a Positive Spiral

In contrast, an organization thrives if each of the prime concerns are successfully tackled. And the interesting part is that success in each concern facilitates the other two.

1. Having a great agenda and being successful in taking it forward (a) enthuses the members to continue (b) and reinforce the team and they end up having high spirits and are relatively contented (c) …
2. If the group stays together in a well-structured and healthy format (b) the chance of success in its societal role is increased (a) people tend to be relatively contented and satisfied with the outcomes (c) and live in a high (spirits).
3. If stake holders of an organization are being taken care of and are making the most of what is available (c) then productivity is up and it spells success in the organization goals (a) and the team tends to remain integrated (b).

Clearly, the three concerns complement each other and together they create an upward positive spiral. And the organization thrives …

An Organization Brimming with Positives

Wonderful things tend to emerge from a thriving organizations: the members cooperate better, relationships within the organization are at their pinkest, the chances of success becomes greater, duties are successfully handled, stakeholders benefit and the positive energy enthuses them to continue being a part of the success. In addition, when a team enjoys an environment of positive attitude then merits like fairness, righteousness, positive work culture, creativity etc. tend to get reinforced. Ultimately, it all sounds trivial—everyone feels good and performs well and organization does well.

Improper Execution Leads to a Negative Spiral

But simple though it seems, many organizations do not perform this way because somehow they end up failing to ensure this. Somewhere down the line they make faulty choices. There may be inner contradictions which they may fail to fix or adequately counter, so organizations end up being inherently weak. And/or they are not able to address the three prime concerns of the organization. As a result they get into negative spirals instead of positive ones, which results in hampering organizational success. It then arrives at the chicken-and-egg-which-came-first situation. Failure (a) leads to dampened spirits (c), leads to weak teams (b), leads to more failure …

Driving a Positive Spiral through Excellence

If an organization were to take to a positive attitude regardless, enthuse people to do better, get each individual to contribute to the various aspects of the organization, and take things forward by minimizing hassle and pain and by enhancing brilliance, enthusiasm and brotherhood, their success is imminent. Regardless of the external challenge/threat, if the members of the organization stop their chicken-egg story and if climbs on to a positive spiral, then that would give the best response to the challenges.

And for all this to happen, the personal qualities of the suzerains have a particularly vital role to play … ‘Leaders’ make a big difference here.

It can all be summed up in one word—excellence. It requires excellence to develop a vision for an organization with no internal contradiction. It requires excellence from all members of an organization if they must act in synchronization towards addressing the organization’s three primary concerns. Through excellence better goals are set and are constantly assessed for compatibility and symbiosis with the external environment. Through excellence it would make it difficult for negatives to seep into relationships; organizational functioning happens with minimal supervision and good communication.

In excellence, human dignity has high priority, there is dignity of labour, personnel receive quality service, and there is greater sympathy towards personnel and their welfare … The spiral becomes positive.

Excellence in suzerains leads them to exert leadership that has a never-say-die attitude. It brings forth an environment of positives; it brings the best out of a workforce—in terms of creativity, team work, enthusiasm, flexibility, adaptability … It is that which makes a workplace more than a work place … a place of worship in fact … a gaming zone … where the best of one’s productive juices flow and provides great fulfilment in one’s responsibilities …

The sum and substance is that excellence changes everything. It sets up a positive spiral governing the three aspects and through it an organization takes its best shot at thriving.

Case Studies

1. Use famous speeches of prominent leaders (e.g., Abraham Lincoln at Gettysburg) and analyse how they exhorted excellence from the people they addressed.
2. Use cases of infamous suzerains who lead their nations to doom. Case must contain their visions about dealing with ‘own’ people and ‘other’ people. Analyse for inner contradiction leading to weakening of teams.

Exercises

1. Facilitate a discussion between company culture and attrition rates.
2. With the assistance of the class create a list entitled ‘telltale characteristics of organizations working at excellence’.
3. Conduct a self-introspection correlating moments of great productivity to association with environments that had excellence.
4. Conduct a self-introspection to identify phases of excellence as contrasted with phases of complaint and dissatisfaction. (in a day, in a week, in life)
5. Analyse the role of suzerains in teams you may have participated in (culturals, sports, workplace, etc.) where the team did remarkable/outstanding work.