As businesses grow, their organizations become more complex. Responsibilities are divided to drive productivity and goal achievement. Department leaders become endowed with control, which they then strive to protect. The fear of losing control often causes these leaders to erect barriers.
Barriers promote bureaucracy, inefficiency, low morale and failure by shifting the focus away from the organization’s goals to a concentration on departmental needs. Full engagement with customers is hampered by competing priorities within the business that soon become evident to your customers.
Fear of loss is a powerful constraint. Fear of losing control of decision-making responsibility, of making a bad decision, of not achieving a goal, of not getting a bonus, of losing something important to you, causes paralysis. When leadership establishes competing goals within the company to improve organizational productivity, the resulting internal rivalry becomes the focus rather than producing value for customers.
The Sales department may be incented to ensure that product is always readily available while the Production team is motivated to empty the warehouse before the end of each month.
Remain alert for the development of fear and barriers within the organization.
- Engage your people to align everyone around the true Purpose of your business – Purpose drives profit.
- Use cross-functional authority to keep the organization as flat as possible so you receive direct feedback from customers, suppliers and all levels in the organization.
- Promote courageous behavior – specify what behavior you expect from managers and employees, and reward those who act accordingly.
Fear will always be present to some degree within an organization, but it can minimized as a growth constraint by operating your business in accordance with your Purpose and your guiding Principles. Focus on the future and what it takes to increase sales rather than fostering internal competition.
How many organizational growth barriers exist in your business?
How can you improve engagement and communication to reduce barriers and fear?
