MANY organisation analysts are of the opinion that an organisation at war with itself will not have the strength or focus to survive and thrive in today’s competitive environment.
For example, an American corporate turnaround specialist John Whitney has discovered the answers to the following problems in American companies:
What are the causes of bureaucratic creep?
Why do costs grow faster than revenues?
Why does it take so long to introduce and lock in even a simple change?
Why don’t people in product design, marketing sales and manufacturing talk – much less listen – to each other?
Why do project process managers strangle innovation and sub-optimise productivity and profits?
In short, what on earth has gone wrong with the way American companies are being run today?
The answer to all the above complaints, according to Whitney, is institutional mistrust – the internal blight that is strangling virtually every aspect of organisation vitality and profitability.
In fact, this factor contributes significantly to the high cost of running the organisation.
This negative human factor has proven beyond doubt that individual character and organisational culture pertaining to leadership and worker relationships are very important and can contribute to an organisation’s performance.
According to Whitney, there are a number of sources that develop this mistrust within an organisation. They are:
Misalignment of measurements and rewards – this pits people against one another and against the organisation
Incompetence or the presumption of incompetence of bosses, peers or subordinates
Imperfect understanding of systems, causing activity that diverts efforts from the organisation’s goals
Information that is biased, late, useless or wrong
Lack of integrity
We can learn a lesson from this and avoid the pitfalls if we want to be a competitive world
player.
The individual worker’s life perspective, character and the need to have good relations through teamwork have to be emphasised in developing our organisation.
The first major step our organisation needs to take is to determine its mission, vision and values and then conduct itself in a way that ensures a win-win relationship for everyone.
This requires the organisation to subscribe to noble management principles based on the humane idealism of religion.
Islam provides comprehensive guidelines to achieve this goal.
Firstly, it emphasises the need to develop a proper organisation and treat all workers fairly.
All workers should develop the feeling of togetherness in carrying out their duties.
An unclear mission and ill-treatment of workers can breed distrust and eventually contaminate positive work culture.
Secondly, the organisation leadership must be transparent to nurture an open, trusting environment that will facilitate learning on the job and the thirst for more knowledge to enhance a worker’s value to the organisation.
Creating an efficient organisation that has good management processes can lay the foundation for every worker to perform at his best.
This will lead to a congenial environment and make for a good working relationship.
Islam requires the leadership of any organisation to strive to be efficient in managing resources, which is certainly
not easy.
The effort to refine the organisational structure and management processes is an ongoing process and a religious struggle (jihad) for the good of the organisation and society at large.
Thirdly, an organisation must develop the inter-dependence of all components. It is human nature to want to create a conducive environment for developing individual independence and positive interdependence among all workers.
The ability to bring about this situation can lead workers to high creativity and productivity. Man by nature requires space to improve individually and co-operate with others towards higher achievements.
Fourthly, the organisation must continuously audit formal and informal measurements and controls.
Eliminate information that does not support the organisation’s mission which is to profitably design, build and sell a product or service. The organisation’s information system must serve to develop trust.
Islam disallows spreading of untruthful information. If allowed, it can create instability in the organisation.
Fifthly, those who fail to conduct themselves with integrity have to be removed immediately.
If this weakness is overlooked, trust will be endangered. Islam does not compromise on integrity.
Failing to take a decisive action against those who fail to subscribe to good ethical and moral values could destroy organisational performance.
Leaders are the first people who should be held responsible for abiding by moral and ethical laws.
Their failure to do so might lead to the failure of the organisation to practise ethical principles in management.
It is a case of “leadership by example.”