SERIES: Part One of a Five-Part Article

Executive Summary: Blending systems and people for increased organizational success

Each day, managerial-leadership effectiveness starts from a perspective not taught in America’s leading business schools. A leader’s first objective is to create an environment conducive for success. This starts by recognizing that one’s attitude influences all actions and reactions one displays in business each day!

An effective leader has a heightened awareness of which obstacles impede success and accepts action plans to remove or eliminate them from a business environment.

American management icon Peter Drucker has long asserted that organizational success and effectiveness rest on two primary domains: systems and people. To attain a higher level of success, a leader should recognize that anything that can be done to improve the efficiencies of systems must be done. Leaders should also recognize what can be done to enhance the performance of people on the team.

The processes of conditioning both for success can be blended together through simple tactical action plans. Consider:

1. Incentive Wealth Sharing Program – Institute a program with real incentives to invite all members of an organization to share suggestions on how to either save money, make money or increase productivity. Offer a 10 percent incentive for anything that is accepted, acted upon or implemented and that can be measured!
2. Remove Frustration Items – Recognize the policies, procedures, programs, etc. that you would have complained about before you evolved into a leadership role. Now that you are in management, assume the role of authority, responsibility and accountability and review the relevance of them. If you cannot make a powerful case for maintaining them, remove them!
3. Environmental Plus-It – Determine all of the environmental resources, materials, equipment and trappings that work to create positive attitudes among individuals. When and where possible, add them to “plus” the environment!
4. Limit Exposure – Increase your awareness of the things and people that push people’s “hot buttons” and limit the exposure of your peak performers to these negative influences. Surround them with positive and encouraging factors that further condition the forward momentum of an organization.
5. Celebrate Regularly – Psychology reveals that our mind needs to see fulfillment and accomplishment for expanded energies, and when it does, it refuels itself. When individuals work on activities that do not generate immediate measurable results, people can become bored, burned out, complacent and disassociated. As a leader, it is your job to ensure that individuals and teams are acknowledged regularly for successes and that displays of celebration are allowed and encouraged!
6. Individualize Appropriately – Allow individuals to individualize their work space, within appropriate perimeters, with comfort items that feed their psychology a sense of belonging, ownership and pride. People will have a greater level of buy-in to their work space, work responsibilities and overall organization.

Creating environments for success and prosperity is directly linked to how a leader conditions an environment to be conducive for the daily planting of success seeds and the regular harvest of achievement.

 Tell us about the environments you created.