In Management by Motivation (1968), Saul Gellerman highlighted a gap in the effective use of personnel that echoes our Quote of the Week by Jay Forester. Where Forester put the effective use of personnel at only 10%, Gellerman qualitatively describes the opportunity to get much more and better results from personnel, calling it a “reservoir of untapped genius.”
These concepts may seem vague and academic, appropriate for books but hard to understand in the practical demands of a quickly transforming modern organization. Let me bridge the gap.
Image the typical modern organization operating like a coal power plant.
Each day the employees are shoveled into the furnace of the latest corporate initiative, to experience burnout and produce what small amount of energy they can from the blistering and difficult processes most organizations are both plagued with and begrudgingly tolerate.
Something gets done, but is it all that we could have accomplished from the raw talent and capability we began the day with? Gellerman and Forester agree the answer to that question is, “No!”
When your mental and operating model of your organization is of a coal plant, you resign yourself to burning people out, using them up, discarding them in tough times, and buying new talent when times improve. Most senior leaders I’ve met have never considered that there may be a better model of an organization that is actually practical, can operate at scale, and can produce wonderful, powerful results. “This is just the way it is,” they would say.
But does it have to be? The answer to that question is also, “No!” We can do so much better.
If you’re willing to look for alternative energy sources in your organization and if you’re open to applying fresh tactics to tap into and harness this energy, there is no limit to what you can achieve. Yet, even when you’re willing to look it can be hard to spot these energy sources and fresh tactics because they are hiding in plain sight.
An example, contrasted to our coal plant metaphor.
Image yourself sitting along the banks of a river that is flowing along with a strong current. The river flows every day on its course and every day, if you were to return to your spot along the bank, new water would be rush along again. This is a better picture of the potential energy in an organization.
Your people are the flowing water, every day renewed to begin again on their course to deliver a result on behalf of the organization.
The banks of the organizational system direct their flow, but often don’t harness their energy, instead it flows by.
Now, picture a hydroelectric dam spanning that river, channeling the potential energy in that flowing water toward spinning a turbine and making a new form of energy.
When leaders realize the renewable potential energy in their people and seek to harness it in a way where that natural energy flow through the initiatives and creates something new, they achieve wonderful, powerful, sustainable results.
Assessment of Consumption or Renewal
In Tactic 38 of Change Tactics, I cover the topic of From Consumption to Renewal and offer an assessment you can quickly perform to determine if you are running your organization or change initiatives more like a coal plant or a hydroelectric system. Here are a few of the contrasting assessment items.
- Signs of Consumption: We force conscripts to take part in new initiatives.
- Sign of Renewal: Volunteers fight to join initiatives and stay involved.
- Sign of Consumption: People blame each other for the things that are not going well.
- Sign of Renewal: People collaborate with each other to solve problems and plan next steps.
- Sign of Consumption: Team members are constrained by what we have always done.
- Sign of Renewal: Team members are continually looking for better ways to work and improve.
For the full assessment, purchase your copy of Change Tactics today. You’ll have a new resource and you’ll be doing a good deed too. All Engine-for-Change book proceeds go toward building Gully Crest Homestead, a rural retreat center for families with children with special needs.
