Episode #76: How to Improve Organizational Health

Today, we’re diving into a vital topic that can determine the success of any organization: organizational health, inspired by the insights of best-selling author Patrick Lencioni.

If you’re a leader or aspiring to be one, prioritize these four steps in your organization:

1. Building a cohesive leadership team,
2. Creating clarity,
3. Overcommunicating that clarity, and
4. Embedding clarity in your organizational processes and meetings.

A healthy environment leads to higher morale and lower turnover rates, a win-win for everyone. 

Transcript

Episode #76: How to Improve Organizational Health

Welcome back to "The Career Accelerator," the podcast where corporate managers find tips and tools to deliver results through others.

I’m your host, Percy Cannon.

Today, we’re diving into a vital topic that can determine the success of any organization: organizational health, inspired by the insights of best-selling author Patrick Lencioni.

In our last three episodes, we covered the emotional intelligence model and the results of a poll on the top three challenges that leaders face today with their teams:

1.    Silos hindering collaboration,

2.    Engaging in productive conflict, and

3.    Reluctance to provide feedback.

We then used this information to develop clear tips on how emotional intelligence can help overcome these top three team challenges.

Now, moving to today's topic, in his book The Advantage, Lencioni argues that a healthy organization minimizes politics and confusion while maximizing productivity and morale. This is an essential truth: Even the most successful organizations in strategy, finance, marketing, or technology can struggle if they lack a healthy workplace environment.

So, how can we achieve this state of organizational health? To learn more about which of the four steps outlined by Lencioni is the top concern in the workplace today, we recently conducted a short poll on LinkedIn.

The results showed that the top concern is step one in Lencioni’s book: building a cohesive leadership team. Coincidentally, the level of concern decreased in a straight line through the other three steps.

Let me share the details of each of the four steps from Lencioni's book and the top concern results reported in the LinkedIn poll:

1. The first critical step is building a cohesive leadership team. When leaders work together effectively, it sets a positive tone for the entire organization. Conversely, dysfunctions at the top can ripple down, affecting everyone. It’s concerning that in our recent poll, more than half of the respondents, 53 percent, identified this as their top concern. This shows that many of you recognize the impact of behavioral alignment at the top level of the organization. If you're in a leadership position, this is a call to action: Invest time in developing strong, functional relationships with your fellow leaders. How?

In his best-selling book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Lencioni provides a roadmap for building a cohesive team:

• It starts with building vulnerability-based trust among team members.
• When trust is established, the team needs to engage in productive conflict, where every member participates in the constructive debate of ideas and addresses any potential "elephants in the room."
• When productive conflict is practiced, team members become clear on what they are committing to and are much more likely to buy into the decisions made as a group.
• When commitment is achieved, team members can hold each other accountable for both the agreed-upon activities and the behaviors displayed in them.
• Lastly, when trust, productive conflict, commitment, and peer accountability are practiced, the team is much more likely to focus on the collective results of the organization than their individual silos.

Working on these five behaviors should significantly improve the performance of the team.

2.  The second step is creating clarity. This means that leadership teams need to be intellectually aligned around a set of critical questions. Twenty percent of poll participants cited this as their biggest concern.

These critical questions call for alignment in the following areas:

• What is our purpose?
• What are our values?
• What is the specific line of business we are in?
• What are the top strategies that will propel our growth?
• What's most important right now? What should we focus on in the next 3 to 12 months?
• What are the specific roles and responsibilities of the team members?

Achieving intellectual clarity and alignment within the leadership team, on top of the five behaviors from step one, should significantly increase the competitiveness of the team.

3. Once intellectual clarity is established, the third step focuses on communication. In our poll, 16 percent of respondents expressed this as a top concern, highlighting the vital need for organizations to prioritize consistent communication. Lencioni emphasizes the importance of overcommunicating the intellectual clarity developed in step two.

This means sharing the answers to those crucial questions repeatedly, as details can easily get lost in the typical “firefighting” mode of daily operations in most organizations.

Leaders should ensure that communication updates are not only shared at regular work meetings but also represent a systematic part of everyone’s work environment, which reinforces those key messages.

In fact, this "overcommunication" of clarity should not only be achieved through repetition (Lencioni suggests at least seven times) but also in terms of:

• Message consistency: Team leaders must communicate the same message to their respective teams. If a decision was made by the leaders, that decision should be consistently communicated across the organization, without any alterations that may distort the official message.
• Range of channels used: Every available medium should be considered as part of the communication strategy. While in-person communication is usually the preferred method, it can be supplemented with emails, online video and audio platforms, and even word-of-mouth.

In summary, leaders must go way beyond the typical kick-off sessions at the beginning of the year to communicate clarity. Consider enhancing quantity, consistency, and variety in your messages.

 4. Finally, the fourth step is to embed clarity into organizational processes, including hiring, performance management, and meetings. This solidifies the foundation of clarity in daily operations. Although only 11 percent of poll participants cited this as a concern, it’s just as crucial to success as the previous three steps.

Ensure all processes align with your organizational goals, especially your corporate values. Doing this can streamline operations and create a more focused and consistent work environment. We’ll cover more on meetings in future podcasts.

As you consider these four steps, I encourage you to reflect on which area resonates most within your workplace. Understanding where your organizational health might be lacking is the first step toward improvement and, ultimately, a happier, more engaged workforce. Contact me for a free organizational health assessment.

In closing, if you’re a leader or aspiring to be one, prioritize these steps in your organization. Building a cohesive leadership team, creating clarity, overcommunicating that clarity, and embedding it in your organizational processes and meetings could be the game-changing decision your organization needs. A healthy environment leads to higher morale and lower turnover rates, a win-win for everyone.

Thank you for joining me in this episode of THE CAREER ACCELERATOR PODCAST. If you found today’s discussion helpful, please rate, subscribe, and share this podcast with your colleagues and friends. Together, we can inspire impactful leadership across organizations.

This is Percy Cannon, working to help you make the rest of your life…the best of your life®.