The 6 Silent Killers of Organizations
— Transforming Organizations, Revitalizing Communities and Developing Human Potential
The 6 Silent Killers of Organizations: “Everybody knows they exist, [they are] known but not discussable.”
Michael Beer, Professor Emeritus, Harvard Business School
To have regular honest conversations, an organization must be willing to “suspend hierarchy long enough to be in a partnership with the senior leaders about what is really going on,” Michael Beer asserts in his recent conversation with Steve Cady. During our Thought-Leader keynote webinar, Prof. Beer mentions the following usually undiscussable barriers to high commitment and high performance [@41:00 in the webinar recording] The challenge is that often there is awareness of these issues, but organizational silence keeps them from being brought in the open, which keeps them from being addressed. Adapted from Beer & Eisenstat (2000), they are:
Unclear strategy, values, and conflicting priorities.
An ineffective senior team.
Leadership behavior – top-down or laissez-faire (hands off).
Poor coordination across businesses, functions, or geographic regions.
Inadequate leadership/management skills and development in the organization.
Low capacity for honest, collective and public conversations about external and internal reality.
The final entry to this listing of silent organizational killers is at the core of Prof. Beer’s latest book: Fit to Compete: Why Honest Conversations About Your Company’s Capabilities are the Key to a Winning Strategy. Michael Beer is the Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration and Emeritus at Harvard Business School. The author of 11 books, numerous chapters, and articles; he is the co-founder & director of TruPoint Consulting and the Center for Higher Ambition Leadership - a not for profit organization dedicated to increasing the number of companies and leaders committed to creating economic and social value. Learn more at www.beermichael.com.
Check out NEXUS4change’s webinar series of 30-min. high-impact change tool talks. Check our events page [www.NEXUS4change.com/events] for more on the power of Design Teams, the Change Formula, Collaborative Roadmaps, Appreciative Benchmarking and more.