T
here are two
ways to look at
organizational
performance.
You can start with a
strategy and work
your way toward a
plan with tactics,
by Dan Coughlin
then to a schedule
of activities, then to
execution of those activities and finally to
the behaviors of individuals within your
organization. The other perspective is to
focus on the behavior of the individuals in
the organization, then the activities they
select to do and how those activities can
work together in a focused manner to
improve results for the organization.
The truth is, all those components
are important. The question is what do
you emphasize first and foremost, the
organization's strategy or the individual's
behaviors?
In the past, I have stepped back to
look at the content of my work, which
involves keynote speaking, seminars,
executive coaching, writing books and
articles. What I found is that my focus
is primarily on impacting individual
behaviors. My belief is an organization
can achieve great long-term success if
each individual behaves in effective ways.
Of course, they have to be working on
activities that together will produce value
customers will pay for at a profitable
margin, but I believe success begins with
individual behaviors as opposed to beginning with a great strategic insight.
My experience has shown that really
good organizations develop effective strategies that evolve from the people in the
group rather than announcing a strategy
and then going out and finding the people
to support that strategy. It's one of the
reasons why it's very difficult to generate
long-term success purely through mergers
and acquisitions. Oftentimes after a
merger or acquisition, the strategy gets
developed by people in a boardroom who
are not only removed from the people in
the field, but who also don't know what
behaviors are effective in the field.
Two Essential Categories of
Individual Behavior
Of all your behaviors, there are two
categories of primary importance: your
strengths and your toxic habits. Your
strengths are the things you do better than
anything else and your toxic habits are the
things you do that ruin your performance
and/or the performance of a group. This
is true not only for you, but also for every
individual in your organization.
Take out a sheet of paper and on one
side write down what you believe to be
your strengths. On the other side write
down what you believe to be your toxic
habits. This is purely a starting point. As
time goes on, stay on the alert to gain a
better sense of what you do well and what
you do that hurts performance.
In my work as an executive coach, the
very first thing I do is to ask the person I'm
coaching what he or she sees as his or her
strengths and toxic habits. I then ask for
the names of 20 people who know him or
Continued on page 38
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