As a thought leader, author, educator, and change leadership practitioner, I write a weekly article that benefits leaders who want to improve their organizations significantly.
Over the last few months, the blog posts have focused on eighteen essential elements of creating an environment of success in achieving significant organizational transformation. While writing the content, I felt some key themes were common among the various recommendations I would make for each element. After reviewing them, I wanted to see what rose to the top as the key factors leaders should consider to create a culture that would embrace the change that would take an organization to a higher level of success.
As a reminder of the eighteen essential elements, I recommend that those desiring to make a significant transformation should embed the following into their organization:
1. Accountability – Create an environment where the workforce has proper resources with clear expectations for timely and successful completion of assignments.
2. Discipline – Train employees to obey the organization's code of conduct and assimilate into the organization's work culture.
3. Rewarding goal progress – Distribute proper benefits for successful work.
4. Recognition of goal achievement - Provide appropriate acknowledgment for accomplishing initiatives in their area of responsibility.
5. Clearly defined objectives and goals – Balance the need for autonomy, innovation, and creativity with the ability to provide clear expectations.
6. Accurate data – Build a robust information-gathering system that enhances the potential for project success based on facts.
7. Effective two-way, non-judgmental communication – Creating a culture that encourages supportive dialogue and appropriate input from all stakeholders.
8. Active and dynamic leadership – Regular and positive interaction at all company levels where leaders experience what those in all departments face while carrying out their assignments.
9. Policy deployment – Build a framework that efficiently and effectively links all organization members' work.
10. Proactive review of planned targets – Establish regular evaluation intervals to ensure transformation progress and the ability to respond to ongoing challenges.
11. Common knowledge of philosophy and mechanics of change management – Educate everyone on the various aspects of moving the organization from the current state to the future vision.
12. Clearly defined roles – Develop job descriptions aligning with organizational needs while eliminating gaps or duplications.
13. Attention to detail – Complete a mental checklist that walks through every project phase to ensure no surprises that add additional costs or time delays.
14. Heavy plan – Light do – Spend appropriate time developing implementation plans, leading to more favorable project outcomes.
15. Willingness to occasionally fail while taking calculated risks – Develop a culture that encourages intelligent risk-taking that understands that pushing the boundaries will lead to learning when experiencing less favorable outcomes but collectively enhances organizational capabilities.
16. Listen effectively to the voice of the customer – Spend time asking questions of the customer base in the actual environments where they use company products and services.
17. Commitment to the employees – Apply the humanist commitments from my Humanist Manufacturing book.
18. Active consideration of stakeholders – Again, apply the humanist perspectives to the betterment of all company partners.
The list is not all-inclusive but provides additional insight into the work needed to achieve the desired company vision.
While not a foolproof approach, I put the content from all eighteen blog posts into one document. I then searched to see how often a word occurs in the total content. I next combined like versions of a word to gain that total count. An example is achievement, recognition, rewards, accomplishments, and acknowledgment, resulting in a total count of 144. The next word combination was improvement, development, learning, and training at 122 uses. The combination of feedback, encouragement, motivation, and positivity with a sum of 114. The last group is employees and individuals, which totals 108.
The responsibility of a company is to serve the customer. The responsibility of leadership is to serve their people so that their people may better serve the customer. If leaders fail to serve their people first, both customer and company will suffer. - Simon Sinek
A focus on employees emerges in this first set of four-word combinations. Those who follow my work should not find this a surprise, as focusing on caring for employees is a recurring theme. My book Humanist Manufacturing: A Humanitarian Approach to Excellence in High-Impact Plant Operations emphasizes setting up employees in the best possible circumstances to be successful. One could argue that I have a bias that guided my writing. However, when writing each of the eighteen blog posts, I used ChatGPT to provide the initial content that I built my writing upon for each of the essential elements. Ultimately, if an organization wants to achieve significant organizational transformation, leadership must prioritize taking great care of its workforce.
A focus for the last eighteen blog posts was a set of essential elements for achieving success in a significant organizational transformation. The list is not all-inclusive but provides additional insight into the work needed to achieve the desired company vision. A review of the words in these blog posts led to the recommendation that leadership should prioritize care for their employees to accomplish a consequential change initiative successfully.
Leaders looking to maximize organizational success should evaluate their current state of employee engagement. Previous blog posts on prioritizing employees and squandering underutilized employee potential are reasonable first steps to determine if an environment for workforce success exists. I also recommend reading my book and watching the book launch video referenced below in the additional information section.
I continue to be grateful to the leadership of Freudenberg-NOK, who allowed us to do a lean manufacturing benchmarking tour of the plant in LaGrange, Georgia. During our visit, one of the executive team members shared that they had a list of essential elements that were the guidelines for their success in becoming an exemplary lean manufacturing facility. While the person did not share the list, it led to me developing the essential elements in this blog post.
Next week's blog will look at other outcomes of assessing the essential elements of running a business integral to becoming a humanist manufacturing organization.
To learn more about our work or read more blog posts, visit emmanuelstratgicsustainability.com.
I encourage you to read my book Humanist Manufacturing: A Humanitarian Approach to Excellence in High-Impact Plant Operations. The paperback and eBook versions are now available at Amazon and many other booksellers. You can also view the Humanist Manufacturing Book Launch to gain additional insight into the Humanist Manufacturing framework.
If you like what you have read, I invite you to connect with me on LinkedIn.
Contact me if you need help with the manufacturing support services of consulting, coaching, or training/reskilling in change leadership, strategy, tactical planning, and change management by calling me at 734-664-9076.
See my virtual TEDx videos at Reinventing the Prison Industrial Complex and Humanist Manufacturing.
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Cover Image Credit: Yan Krukau on Pexels
