Smart vs Healthy Org’s — and Why Obtaining Healthy Support is Hard!

Content courtesy of Mr. Patrick Lencioni’s The Advantage.

Buy-in for organizational Healthy practices is not automatic. Three biases prevent leaders from understanding your Healthy mission. Adapt to the biases and the ‘leader light’ might turn green.

The Sophistication Bias

Let us put on our realistic hat. Organizational health does not require great sophistication or complex algorithms, just uncommon levels of discipline, courage, and what Reach says: thinking human beings — not human doings.

But common sense is not common practice.

What if the ‘keeping-up-with-the-Jones’’ mentality has led us to believe that competitive advantage and performance can be found only in complexity. I certainly used to think he with the biggest words wins. It could be difficult for leaders with years of experience and education to buy-into practices that have the raw ingredients of discipline, courage, and thinking human beings — not human doings.

After all, Jeff Bezos, Mr. Amazon, claims success from first principles — customer service will never go out of style.

I read ‘Fresh is Always Fresh’ on a napkin in Mucho Burrito the other day. Fresh food is always wanted. Authenticity never goes out of fashion either.

[first principles vs. complex algorithms]

The Adrenaline Bias

Mr. Lencioni says that many of the leaders he has worked with suffer from a chronic case of adrenaline addiction, hooked on their daily rush of activity and firefighting within their organizations. They may be afraid to slow down and deal with issues that are critical but don’t seem particularly urgent. Organizational health does take time. However, the awe and beauty of The Egyptian pyramids weren’t build overnight either. In addition, Eisenhower Box, utilize during vital decisions by President Dwight Eisenhower during WWII, tells us to spend more time in the important but non-urgent quadrant.

As they say in NASCAR, you have to slow down in order to go fast.

[pausing does not mean stopping, and eventually the track turns]

The Quantification Bias

Becoming a healthy organization is without a doubt difficult to accurately quantify, for those who are not already supportive of the notion of ‘doing the right thing.’ Mr. Lencioni mentions this is because organizational health permeates many aspects of a company that isolating any one variable and measuring its financial impact is almost impossible to do in a precise way — especially as a randomized controlled trial and not solely using observational methods. Surveys and focus groups are nice but be aware of the Hawthorne Effect.

A good place to start can be by focusing on what your client wants, not what you want. As Ray Dalio says, look for the true answer, not your answer. It is far better to have an approximate answer to the right question, than an exact answer to the wrong question.

[Health is an enabler — what it is enabling could be your evaluative metric of choice — example: more comment suggestions from front-line employees in regards to possible business improvements]

All in all, adapt to the biases and prepare yourself to move forward if the light turns green.

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Nathan Kolar, www.reachworldwide.ca