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Why People Do What They Do In Your Organization
And What You Can Do to Change Them
Three factors/forces determine people's
interactional style and behaviours in any organization, i.e., how and
why we function, feel and relate to each other as we do.
1. System - CEO
Determines how everybody tends to act and react all the time!
2. Situation - Manager
Determines how most people tend to act and react most of the time!
3. Individual - Temperament
Determines how each individual tends to act and react all the time!
1) The System - CEO:
Determines how everybody tends to act and react all the time!
Your organizational structure, the role that people are called upon to play, their attendant and requisite tasks in your system, is the most powerful determinant for behaviour in any company. The system embodies and permeates everything in your organization and beyond it, your purpose, strategies, your people, your management structure and your processes. Yet it also stands alone at the center, the primary driving force for how everyone tends to act and react all the time. The CEO is primarily responsible for the organizational system and everything in it, as is a "Football" coach who manages an entire organization with separate divisions, offence, defense and special teams. His/her emphasis is the organization and his/her key role is to 1) "Get The Plan Right".
In other words, systems tend to cause their own behavior. Why, because doing what the company systems requires is how people survive (get along, make money etc)! Systems reward, measure, encourage and promote requisite behaviours. In fact, when placed in the same system, people however different they may otherwise be, tend to act and function in a similar manner, the manner required by that role. For example, if the accountant who finds the salesperson so irritable and uncooperative was in sales, that accountant would eventually become just as individualistic, and thus irritable and uncooperative as the current sales person. The opposite is also true. The sales person would become fastidious and systematic as is the accountant because you need to be in order to do your job.
What Is A System?
A system is comprised of the specific principles, manner and methods an enterprise uses to organize its’ internal (operations) and external forces (the market) in order to forge, shape, reward, measure and promote the behaviours it deems necessary to achieve its’ primary objectives and ultimate goal (profit).
The Three-Prong Systemic Secret
There are three systems that companies unwittingly but consistently use to run their operations. These three systems shape, forge and determine everyone’s behaviour in your organization. The CEO who knows these three systems, when and how to use them, better than everyone else will have an enormous competitive advantage over those who don’t and get exquisite cooperation from his/her people.
2) The Situation - Manager:
Determines how most people tend to act and react most of the time!
The immediate supervisor or manager determines how most people, the team and everybody on it, tend to act and react most of the time. Like a "Basketball" coach who must 2) "Get The Process Right", i.e., make sure that the team is "organized and together". In other words, the manager's primary task is to ensure that each worker is productive, "feeling good and doing good". The manager does this by how he/she attends to each workers "situation", their developmental level, i.e., what your employees are doing and how they are feeling. People don't quit bad companies, they quit bad bosses. It is better to work in a bad company with a good manager than to work in a good company with a bad manager.
3) Each Person's (Hard Wired) Temperament:
Determines how each individual tends to act and react all the time!
The Green Circle, the smallest and least powerful but the most provocative determinant, represents the particular temperament of each individual, i.e., what she/he tends to be like all the time. The manager/leader who can read each person's intrinsic nature and respond specifically and accordingly, will find people to be unusually cooperative and productive. A good manager does this by not only understanding an employee's unique nature but by speaking their psychological language, i.e., interacting with employees in a way that not only communicates the message but advances and deepens the relationship at the same time. In effect, they take you where you would like them to go. This is like playing Baseball, where the basic or primary unit is the Player (The Individual). Each employee's initiative and skill is the determining factor for organizational performance! In other words, the manager must 3) "Get The Players Right" (their talents, attributes and skills). He/she then keeps encouraging them to be more of what they already are, and cheers them on from the dugout.
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Three Important Factors
1. The Three Circles Are Not All The Same Size
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The "System" (first) circle is the largest because it is the most dominant factor in determining peoples behaviour. The system is the means and methods the CEO uses to get things done.
The "Situation" is the second most dominant factor in determining peoples behaviour. The situation is the process a manager uses to help people to be productive.
The manager and how he/she handles people and their "Situation" tends to determine how most employees tend to act and react of the time!
People's individual "Personality" or "Temperament" circle is the third and smallest factor as to how well people function and get along individually or as a group.
In other words, a person's Temperament determines how he/she tends to act and react all the time!
Although very visceral and real, personality is still less powerful than the first two factors.
Good managers know how to work with human nature, in other words, to select people based on their talent and then help them do what they already are, yet to also help them change when necessary, without that worker even knowing or feeling that he/she has changed.
When the three forces are not properly and proactively managed, people's reactions tend to disintegrate into conflict, blaming, finding fault and finger pointing.
1) Circle One: Your Organizational System
(Football)
A system is the confluence of forces and methods a company uses to achieve it's primary objectives and its' ultimate goal, profit.
These forces are so interconnected that a change in one
part produces a change in the whole structure.
A system is not the reporting structure a shown on an organizational
chart but the host of forces and factors that control or influence behaviour
over time.
The organizational chart is merely a static representation of roles and authority. It does not portray the undercurrent of forces that ultimately determine your service performance and interactional behaviour.
Systems are the primary determinants of behaviour because they (knowingly or unknowingly) promote, reward and/or measure peoples performance and interaction.
A system is the overarching effect of, and interplay between organizational design, task interdependence, unspoken company rules, your culture, the manner in and basis upon which people are rewarded, values traditions, structure, and the CEO's attitude toward people.
These are the forces and factors that more than anything else that cause people to act in a certain way.
Why Is Your Company System So Important?
Because, the major reason people do what they do is predicated upon in the organizational structure and people's role within that structure.
Organizations get into difficulties when, for example, one person is expecting everyone will be working independently as on a Baseball team (sales), while the others are expecting everyone to function interdependently like members of a Basketball team (administration), or not doing what you are told to do as would be the case on a Football team (factory assembly line work).
Key Concept:
The primary component in any system is the managers or CEO's role in it.
To manage or change a system, if the leader alters or changes his/her thinking about the company culture and system and his/her behaviour in it, the system will naturally and automatically change.
See page 22 in "Getting To The Future Before The Future Gets To You!"
Because systems are living, breathing interconnected entities, if there is something you cannot change, change the part you can (your role and thinking in that system) and the "unchangeable" part, for instance really tough people problems, will (almost inexplicably) change as well!
2) Circle Two - Your Situation (Basketball)
The situation is based upon people's developmental level with reference to their job, i.e., their competence and confidence with respect to their primary tasks.
The key here is the extent to which their immediate supervisor is able to "Situationalize" (adapt) his/her management style to where people are in their development, i.e., their will and skill with respect to their role in the company.
A good manager must be able adapt and respond to what people do and how they feel on a continuous basis.
This scenario resembles a Basketball team, because to be effective the players must learn to coordinate themselves as a group, with the manager (the coach) acting as a catalyst, i.e., be spontaneous and cooperative.
3) Circle Three: Your Temperament (Baseball)
Each person's temperament is the third and smallest circle. It come last, but it is the one most people feel most keenly.
Temperament is the deepest "you".
It is what you are wherever you go.
It is your biological predisposition reacting to the sociological circumstances in and over the course of your life (what has happened to you).
It is how your neurons fire and how the synaptic connections in your brain interact. The way you really feel and want to be treated, no matter what.
If the company system or the specific situation in which you find yourself makes you feel that to survive you must act or be other than you really are, it will wear you out and make you a very unhappy camper.
And no matter what, other people will eventually become the brunt of your unhappiness and you will be the brunt of their personal unhappiness!
This third and smallest circle is analogous to a Baseball team, because to be successful the players need to use their individual initiative and skill, pretty much independently of each other and the manager (as in Baseball).
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2. The Circles Overlap.
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Note that the three circles in the diagram are not isolated from each other. They overlap.
They are drawn that way to indicate that the three determinants are interrelated.
They are separate yet at the same have a profound affect upon each other.
The three are 1) Sequential, 2) Systemic and 3) Confluential.
1) Sequential: The one gives rise to the next.
2) Systemic: As the four legs support a table, are equally necessary and must be the same strength; or if one leg is missing or weaker than the rest, the table will eventually collapse.
3) Confluential: A confluence is a stream flowing into a river at any given moment. At any point, one factor may be more salient, important, needing more attention than the others. Like three intertwining strands of a rope, the three work and interact simultaneously and continuously with and upon each other as one.
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3. The Circles Move In A Specified Direction (Downward)
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Note that the arrows point from the larger circle to the smaller
circle.
There is a specified direction to the three-part interactional and
behavioral process.
To truly effect lasting and positive change a wise and good manager will
need to address all three (simultaneously) but will make his/her priority and emphasis
in descending order, the “System”, The “Situation” and
lastly, his/her own and each employee’s individual “Temperament”.
However, addressing people's “Temperament”, the way
they really are, is where we can make our quickest and easiest gains
and is the most intriguing and provocative of the three circles to address.
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