Hang on Ern, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

Colleagues,

MVP: Mis-alignment between people, purpose, structures, and resources creates stress

Note: This week’s messages are about leading in highly stressed organizations. I will be breaking my 300-word limit this week. Don’t feel compelled to read this week’s messages if they don’t apply to you. Look at the MVP and decide, and don’t feel guilty for not reading. Priorities, right?

Last week I had a conversation with a leader whose organization has undergone dramatic changes. They are understaffed and short on qualified applicants to fill vacancies. The scope of their work has been expanded, and the needs of the people they serve are at an all-time high.

And, this organization serves a function in which, if they fail at their mission, people’s lives are at stake.

As I begin thinking about how to support this leader, and the remarkable people working in the organization, I’m thinking about some principles to guide my work. I want to share them with you as they are relevant for many leaders at this time.

First, we need to understand what’s happening, and there are two frameworks critical to doing this.

The six dimensions of organizations describes organizations and leadership through an alignment lens. When the four organizational elements of people, purpose, structures, and resources are aligned, the internal forces (culture) are positive.

In contrast, misalignment creates friction and negatively impacts culture. 

In a worst-case scenario, people don’t have the skills they need, the organization is understaffed, there are rules, requirements, and policies in place which make it harder for people to do their work, and there is a disconnect between what people perceive their mission to be and what messages and policies are suggesting the purpose is.

In the situation I’m working on, external forces have increased the amount and intensity of need for the clients the organization serves. Concurrently, funding has been cut and the labor shortage is making it hard to hire qualified people.

In sum, there is a high degree of misalignment, creating difficult working conditions and a negative culture.

The first step to making things better is to understand what is happening and why it is happening.

Understanding the situation through the six dimensions framework allows us to begin untangling the multiple issues so we can tackle small pieces and begin looking at some incremental improvements.

More importantly, understanding how and why we are in the situation creates a mindset shift from trying to fix the organization and bring it back to normal, to understanding there is no going back, only going forward. This mindset shift moves us from regret, anger, and fixation to a place where we can begin to look for possibility and opportunity – not to make things glorious, but to make the situation “suck less.”

Not my normal daily email, but you read this far and I thank you. Hopefully it has your wheels turning.

Bonus: Let me know what movie today’s subject line is from by replying to this email. Yes, there is a prize.


Today’s intention: Think about the core idea that mis-alignment creates friction. Listen to people and search for friction in your work today, then work backwards to think about where the misalignment is.


Cheers,


Frederick
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PS: If you are a school or teacher-leader interested in helping teachers excel at developing strong classroom cultures, check out my free course on the Foundations of Classroom Culture. You will find a systematic integrated approach to building relationships, managing the classroom, and responding to safety events. Give yourself about five minutes to log into the course as there is a brief on-boarding process. There are five video lessons, each about 12 minutes long.