In several of our recent engagements we have witnessed first-hand the enormous amount of pressure on CEOs to meet the stringent demands of both stakeholders and customers. One such demand that continues to be a top priority for executives is employee productivity. Our experience tells us that a decline in workforce performance and efficiency can put a major dent in an organization’s bottom line. Assembling an internal task force is a common knee-jerk approach to correct counterproductive practices in the workplace, however they usually fail to identify misaligned behaviors as the underlying problem.
Examples of non-productive behaviors we typically see include widespread silo mentality and “throw it over the fence” attitudes, which usually manifest into upstream activity, rework and even downstream work if not resolved at the point of execution. Our findings show that the majority of these root causes are people related, including lack of skills, not paying attention to detail, careless errors, and omissions and poor communication.
Changing Behavior
Top-to-bottom organizational change involves diving deep below the surface to pinpoint when and where the problems are occurring. It is imperative to understand why employees fail to execute critical tasks effectively. Once this is determined, the next step is to instill a new mindset across the entire organization–starting at the executive level on down. The idea is to create a new perspective on what it means to be successful at work and provide resources, such as management tools and training, that take the organization to the next level.
