HR managers that concentrate on developing and marshalling total organizational poise and effective organizational synergy for sustainable high performance are positioning their businesses for long-term corporate growth, success and survival! Total organizational poise is the heart and bedrock of high-performance organizational systems. Fostering total organizational poise in your business is an enduring challenge but worthwhile overall. Doing this requires a different orientation in organizational development. It means total organizational development for effective organizational synergy and sustainable high performance.
Developing total organizational poise and synergy is the ultimate HR challenge for long-run corporate success and growth! It is to imaginatively foster the synergy of excellence of people's actualizing attributes and excellence in the facets and interfaces of organizational systems and subsystems for sustainable high performance.
When was the last time you did undertake an organization development project or an organization intervention program?
If you undertook an organization development project at least over 12 months ago, was the initial organization development program conceived around certain specific burning issues? What did you achieve six months after the conclusion of the program? How much of that did you get one year after? What are the challenges and issues seen as likely to result in, or determine the course of, any subsequent organization development project in, say, three years? What about in five years? How much of these were factored into the design of the initial organization development program? How did the organization development project address and position the organizational or business systems and their interfaces-their quality, functional interdependence, alignment, and synergy? Which explicit principles of sustainable organization development drive the project?
If you recently undertook an organization development project, say, less than 12 months ago consider these questions. What burning issues did you start with? How much effort did you put into getting commitment to drive the intervention program? What did you consider as the overall outcomes of the program? How much of them were you prepared for? What would you say is the proportion of foreseen outcomes (say, good ones) to the unforeseen outcomes (say, bad ones)?
How much consensus did you get on the impact of the intervention program considering the burning issues you started with? How did the organization development project address and position the organizational or systems and their interfaces-their quality, functional interdependence, alignment, and synergy? Which explicit principles of sustainable organization development drive the project?
Issues, and considerations, such as the foregoing inform the model, quality and thrust of organization development. They underpin total' organization development. Which translates to fostering effective synergy of people’s attributes and excellence of integrating systems and facets-together with their interfaces- for high performance? It means using insightful technology and processes to foster effective synergy of organizational systems and subsystems.
Total organizational development involves exploring and nurturing the total poise of all organizational systems and subsystems for ultimate high performance. It helps businesses position the drivers (e.g. attributes, attitudes, talents, and skills), vectors (e.g. mission, vision, values, ground rules and processes) and equilibrants (e.g. methods, technology and tools) operating in organizational or business systems and their interfaces for long-run high performance.
Keen watchers of corporate history and practices will marvel that not many top HR managers are heeding lessons of tokenism, resulting in limited corporate success. This for long arose from poor alignment and lack of effective organizational synergy.
When top managers tend to allow their organizations to remain in a state of partial poise- so long as they are attaining an already defined level of profitability or productivity- their businesses are not motivated to create a vision of long-term corporate excellence. Far too often, and for too long, we see an organization which tends to focus on certain systems to the detriment of others forgetting the interdependent nature of subsystems in an organization.
The ultimate challenge facing top HR managers in a pulsating business environment is how to achieve and maintain total organizational poise for breakthrough performance. When there is total poise in your organization, your people and integrating systems are positioned for high performance on a sustainable basis.
The truth is that the nature of today's competition is beyond technology, but what drives technology, creativity and innovations: the superior essence of the human mind and character. This is where the competition will be-and is being-won or lost!
Top HR managers need to explore and address total organizational poise development if they really care about their ultimate HR mandate. This mandate is simply, to foster effective organizational synergy, through total poise, to assure the future of their organizations in business.
Dr. O. Akin-Ogundeji, is based in Lagos, Nigeria. He holds Ph.D. of the University of London and leads OD Synergy, a team of strategic human resources and organizational development consultants in Africa. He also leads Better Poise (betterpoise. com), promoting people's capacity to be on top of their world and attain sustainable self-fulfillment.
The total organization development brief,
OD Synergy Digest (odsynergy. com/od-synergy-digest.html), gives you insight on developing total poise for sustainable high performance in your organization.
