The global financial crisis has focused a lot of attention on the ability of different organizations to survive the economic downturn. Although the severity of the current situation is an aberration, it should not mask the fact that large organizations operate in a very challenging environment on a daily basis. They face constant competition from a rapidly evolving global economy, a product life cycle measured in months, a 4-generation workforce, and increasingly slim operating budgets. It is a highly challenging environment even in the best of times, but fortunately everyone in these organizations is on the same sheet of music working in concert to help their organization’s succeed. Right?
Wrong! Although organizations craft inspirational vision and mission statements and put an inordinate amount of energy into developing overarching strategic goals and objectives, the ugly truth is that these organizations are rarely fully aligned and working together as a single overarching team. Despite their best intentions most organizations are inherently dysfunctional.
Why are they dysfunctional? Think about your personal experiences working with, or within, large organizations. How have they operated? While everyone recognizes and sometimes laughs about internal politics, it is not a laughing matter. Inter-office rifts and conflict abound in the workplace. To a large degree they are the natural result of segregating people into teams that are focused on achieving goals and objectives that are not explicitly linked to each other. These conflicts seem to be amplified in larger and more mature organizations where the internal “stovepipes” have become more established. In extreme cases these internal goals and objectives can even run counter to the overall mission of the organization.