Unity - The Organizational Imperative
by Alan Scheffer
In the landscape of today's working world, organizations are the fundamental and defining structures within which we work, produce, and get things done. Very few people now work outside of an organization. The pervasiveness of organizations is now so complete that we take them as a given and no longer question the rationale behind their existence.
Accepting organizational existence as such an unquestioned axiomatic reality, we forget or ignore the reason why organizations were formed in the first place. In doing so, we overlook the most important feature required for organizational success. Organizations were formed by people who, facing external demands, understood that two or more people, working in unity, can accomplish more that they could working separately and alone. Over time, however, organizations took on a life of their own. As organizations became the ordinary structure in which we work and conduct business we lost sight of their original purpose and central requirement: organizations were formed to facilitate and tap the power produced by the unity of human effort.
Organizational success is determined by far more than the skills, talents, and capacities of the individuals within it. An organization's ultimate success is a result of the degree to which people transcend their individual excellence to create interpersonal synergy and achieve collective excellence. An organization's success has more to do with how the people work in relationship with each other than with how effectively they function individually in their technical/professional roles.
Unity - that collective cohesiveness, empowering alignment, and fundamental sense of oneness that can permeate an organization - must be understood to be the beginning point, and the ultimate power behind, any organization's performance.
Organizations need unity. Many have survived without it. Many have been profitable without it. But none have come close to their full potential without it. To succeed at their highest levels by any measures, organizational unity must be adopted as a pragmatic requirement and a principal based imperative requiring our committed attention
A Pragmatic RequirementOrganizational unity is a pragmatic requirement for easily identified reasons. Bottom line, the lack of organizational unity coupled with frequent expressions of active disunity cost organizations tremendous amounts of money. Increasingly, what inhibit organizations from producing at their highest levels and generating their greatest revenues, are the dysfunctional dynamics that take place between the people within the organizations themselves. All organizations experience such common dynamics as varying levels of organizational politics, turf issues, silo building, reputation protecting, subtle and sometimes strident forms of interpersonal and interdepartmental competition, and many other forms of simple win-lose, ego driven behavior. These dynamics divert the energies and attention from organization's real purpose and reason for being - its vision, its mission, and the contribution it is attempting to make to its customers.
Without unity, organizational energies become focused on pursuing narrow and conflicting objectives, often strategically designed to promote personal gain, departmental control, and other self-centered interests within the organization itself. Without unity, dynamics between the people within the organization at best do not contribute to, often detract from, and at worst override the required commitments, concerns, and efforts that should be focused on the customer and other valid organizational objectives.
Disunity within organizations is rampant and debilitating. Yet its seriousness eludes our understanding and therefore evades our notice. It is essentially invisible to us. The dilemma is that disunity, in all its common and everyday manifestations, is so widespread, so pervasive, and so ubiquitous in organizational life, that it goes unnoticed and remains un-addressed. We now mistakenly accept human disunity as the given interpersonal background within which any other organizational activities and pursuits will take place. Its existence unquestioned and, therefore, unchallenged and un-corrected. Only when disunity's dynamics are severe enough, causing a clear, flagrant disruption of the organization's operation that it can no longer be ignored or overlooked, do organizations address it.
Most disunity, though, does not operate at that level of severity. Disunity normally demonstrates its existence in the daily interpersonal friction that commonly exist between people. It usually expresses itself through a host of "normal", often overlooked, dysfunctional organizational dynamics. It exists in the silos that are created and the subtle barriers that are erected between individuals and departments. It reveals itself in the frequent finger pointing, blaming, gossiping backbiting, and buck-passing that accompanies so much of modern organizational life. And it displays itself through subtle but destructive competition complete with its accompanying communication and support issues. Most organizations suffer from these and more common and pervasive forms of disunity. Management Associates has never worked with one that did not.
Pragmatically speaking, we as human beings must understand that markedly higher levels of quality, productivity, and profitability are within the reach of most organizations at no additional cost. However, we must also understand that to achieve that profitability we both can and must forge dramatically greater levels of human unity. We must understand there is a potential within an organization's grasp that can only be reached through a genuine and profound unification of all its people. As Deming suggested "If all the people within an organization are working as hard as they possibly can, it is not near enough. At that point, profound teamwork is required."
With this profound coming together in teamwork, this fundamental unification of the human element within organizations, that every organizations unrealized potential ultimately resides and their untapped resources lie hidden. Organizations must believe in, focus on, and forge their unity, if for no other reason than as an pragmatic assurance of their continued success and increased profitability.
A Principled ImperativeIn addition to these pragmatic reasons, however, in addition to the impact that forging unity would have on the bottom-line success of organization, unity must be established as a goal, and its achievement mandated, for more than just practical considerations. Beneath the clear economic benefits of people working together in a more aligned and unified effort lie considerations that are compelling in terms of simple human values and principles. At its heart, disunity, no matter how subtle, socially acceptable, and "normal" its expression may be, lie devastating dynamics that daily diminish the esteem, human dignity, and worth of the human beings involved.
Observing the common manifestations of organizational disunity it becomes clear that people draw interpersonal lines, choose " sides", establish boundaries, and are driven by a "we/they" mentality. Although we may call it by other names, under careful scrutiny, most of these actions are governed by the relatively destructive dynamics of classic conflict. This is important to understand.
In conflict, people lose objectivity and neutrality. We tend to become more dogmatic, more judgmental and critical, more fault finding and blaming. Even in the low grade conflict of disunity people diminish other people, see them as "less than", "not as good (smart, experienced, effective, committed, loyal, etc.., etc..) as", and wrong, uncommitted, selfish, disloyal, etc.. Once people draw lines, others can and are routinely seen as "them", open to being stereotyped, excluded, diminished, and finally, marginalized.
When organizations allow, even encourage seemingly "normal" organizational behaviors of competition, politics, turf protection, boundaries, etc., the destructive dynamics of conflict are triggered. Once engaged in conflict, even low grade, a tremendous amount of organizational energy is expended in sub-optimizing and marginalizing other human beings, not only along traditional lines including race and gender, but as individuals, departments, divisions, shifts, professions, pay grades within the same organization. It happens all the time.
It is easy to see why disunity is counterproductive at a practical level. But not only can we not afford to allow disunity for practical and economic reasons, we must understand that as disunity prevails, human beings within the organization are being diminished, and that human diminishment should compel our attention and our corrective action simply for no other reason than because it is the right and principled to do. We cannot and must not tolerate the marginalization of other human beings.
Creating organizational unity, combined with its complimentary effort of eliminating the root causes of disunity, must be raised to a point of principle and elevated to a be a primary focus of our collective effort. Organizations must forge those interpersonal bonds of trust and purpose that unite and commit people within them to a unified effort. We must craft those links of understanding and affection between people that cause us to work together, not only because we have to, for economic reasons, but because we seek to, and are committed to, for personal, ethical, and moral reasons.
The Key ParticipantsThe responsibility for addressing the imperative challenge of creating unity rests upon two different but overlapping groups.
First, it is essential that managers and supervisors, those people invested with formal organizational authority, commit themselves to forging the required unity, both between themselves and between the people that report to them.
The unity of management is a prerequisite to whole-system health and optimal performance. The disunity between people in management positions is where traditionally some of the greatest evidence of dysfunctional competition and conflict are consistently found. It is clearly destructive to overall performance and must be fearlessly addressed and corrected.
Second, it is important to recognize that creating unity is ultimately a human challenge facing everyone with in an organization, regardless of title or position. We all bring into our organizations notions and skills shaped in a competitive culture that encourage us to compete rather than to collaborate, contend rather than cooperate, to win rather than support. We all bring with us societal stereotypes, prejudices, convictions, and habitual responses destructive of creating a truly unified organization. . To succeed, 100% of the people within an organization must adopt unity as a personal goal.
The specific issues each face may vary and the specific challenges may differ, but none of us can safely say that we are untouched by the challenge of forging human unity in the workplace. Only as each of us raises the establishment and protection of human dignity within the organization to a point of principal, only when the creation of organizational unity becomes driven by convictions as well as economics, will we be equipped with the energy, and more importantly, the courage, to search for and root out those entrenched patterns of conflict and competition that too often define our organizational lives.
It is easy to spot the flaws in others. Only the combined force of practicality and conviction will effectively animate the sincerity of effort required to address perhaps the most difficult challenge of all - to recognize and eliminate those prejudices and stereotypes that distort our own thinking. Upon us all, managers and non-managers alike, rests the responsibility to search out and correct the ways we ourselves contribute to the lack of unity that may inadvertently sap the organization of its energy, divert its attention, and diminish both its potential and it people.
Motivated by both pragmatic, and economic concerns, as well as by requirements defined by ethical, moral, and principled considerations, developing organizational unity is an effort that it is now imperative we individually and collectively accept.
Back to publications page
© Copyright 1999 Management Associates. All rights reserved.
In the landscape of today's working world, organizations are the fundamental and defining structures within which we work, produce, and get things done. Very few people now work outside of an organization. The pervasiveness of organizations is now so complete that we take them as a given and no longer question the rationale behind their existence.
Accepting organizational existence as such an unquestioned axiomatic reality, we forget or ignore the reason why organizations were formed in the first place. In doing so, we overlook the most important feature required for organizational success. Organizations were formed by people who, facing external demands, understood that two or more people, working in unity, can accomplish more that they could working separately and alone. Over time, however, organizations took on a life of their own. As organizations became the ordinary structure in which we work and conduct business we lost sight of their original purpose and central requirement: organizations were formed to facilitate and tap the power produced by the unity of human effort.
Organizational success is determined by far more than the skills, talents, and capacities of the individuals within it. An organization's ultimate success is a result of the degree to which people transcend their individual excellence to create interpersonal synergy and achieve collective excellence. An organization's success has more to do with how the people work in relationship with each other than with how effectively they function individually in their technical/professional roles.
Unity - that collective cohesiveness, empowering alignment, and fundamental sense of oneness that can permeate an organization - must be understood to be the beginning point, and the ultimate power behind, any organization's performance.
Organizations need unity. Many have survived without it. Many have been profitable without it. But none have come close to their full potential without it. To succeed at their highest levels by any measures, organizational unity must be adopted as a pragmatic requirement and a principal based imperative requiring our committed attention
A Pragmatic RequirementOrganizational unity is a pragmatic requirement for easily identified reasons. Bottom line, the lack of organizational unity coupled with frequent expressions of active disunity cost organizations tremendous amounts of money. Increasingly, what inhibit organizations from producing at their highest levels and generating their greatest revenues, are the dysfunctional dynamics that take place between the people within the organizations themselves. All organizations experience such common dynamics as varying levels of organizational politics, turf issues, silo building, reputation protecting, subtle and sometimes strident forms of interpersonal and interdepartmental competition, and many other forms of simple win-lose, ego driven behavior. These dynamics divert the energies and attention from organization's real purpose and reason for being - its vision, its mission, and the contribution it is attempting to make to its customers.
Without unity, organizational energies become focused on pursuing narrow and conflicting objectives, often strategically designed to promote personal gain, departmental control, and other self-centered interests within the organization itself. Without unity, dynamics between the people within the organization at best do not contribute to, often detract from, and at worst override the required commitments, concerns, and efforts that should be focused on the customer and other valid organizational objectives.
Disunity within organizations is rampant and debilitating. Yet its seriousness eludes our understanding and therefore evades our notice. It is essentially invisible to us. The dilemma is that disunity, in all its common and everyday manifestations, is so widespread, so pervasive, and so ubiquitous in organizational life, that it goes unnoticed and remains un-addressed. We now mistakenly accept human disunity as the given interpersonal background within which any other organizational activities and pursuits will take place. Its existence unquestioned and, therefore, unchallenged and un-corrected. Only when disunity's dynamics are severe enough, causing a clear, flagrant disruption of the organization's operation that it can no longer be ignored or overlooked, do organizations address it.
Most disunity, though, does not operate at that level of severity. Disunity normally demonstrates its existence in the daily interpersonal friction that commonly exist between people. It usually expresses itself through a host of "normal", often overlooked, dysfunctional organizational dynamics. It exists in the silos that are created and the subtle barriers that are erected between individuals and departments. It reveals itself in the frequent finger pointing, blaming, gossiping backbiting, and buck-passing that accompanies so much of modern organizational life. And it displays itself through subtle but destructive competition complete with its accompanying communication and support issues. Most organizations suffer from these and more common and pervasive forms of disunity. Management Associates has never worked with one that did not.
Pragmatically speaking, we as human beings must understand that markedly higher levels of quality, productivity, and profitability are within the reach of most organizations at no additional cost. However, we must also understand that to achieve that profitability we both can and must forge dramatically greater levels of human unity. We must understand there is a potential within an organization's grasp that can only be reached through a genuine and profound unification of all its people. As Deming suggested "If all the people within an organization are working as hard as they possibly can, it is not near enough. At that point, profound teamwork is required."
With this profound coming together in teamwork, this fundamental unification of the human element within organizations, that every organizations unrealized potential ultimately resides and their untapped resources lie hidden. Organizations must believe in, focus on, and forge their unity, if for no other reason than as an pragmatic assurance of their continued success and increased profitability.
A Principled ImperativeIn addition to these pragmatic reasons, however, in addition to the impact that forging unity would have on the bottom-line success of organization, unity must be established as a goal, and its achievement mandated, for more than just practical considerations. Beneath the clear economic benefits of people working together in a more aligned and unified effort lie considerations that are compelling in terms of simple human values and principles. At its heart, disunity, no matter how subtle, socially acceptable, and "normal" its expression may be, lie devastating dynamics that daily diminish the esteem, human dignity, and worth of the human beings involved.
Observing the common manifestations of organizational disunity it becomes clear that people draw interpersonal lines, choose " sides", establish boundaries, and are driven by a "we/they" mentality. Although we may call it by other names, under careful scrutiny, most of these actions are governed by the relatively destructive dynamics of classic conflict. This is important to understand.
In conflict, people lose objectivity and neutrality. We tend to become more dogmatic, more judgmental and critical, more fault finding and blaming. Even in the low grade conflict of disunity people diminish other people, see them as "less than", "not as good (smart, experienced, effective, committed, loyal, etc.., etc..) as", and wrong, uncommitted, selfish, disloyal, etc.. Once people draw lines, others can and are routinely seen as "them", open to being stereotyped, excluded, diminished, and finally, marginalized.
When organizations allow, even encourage seemingly "normal" organizational behaviors of competition, politics, turf protection, boundaries, etc., the destructive dynamics of conflict are triggered. Once engaged in conflict, even low grade, a tremendous amount of organizational energy is expended in sub-optimizing and marginalizing other human beings, not only along traditional lines including race and gender, but as individuals, departments, divisions, shifts, professions, pay grades within the same organization. It happens all the time.
It is easy to see why disunity is counterproductive at a practical level. But not only can we not afford to allow disunity for practical and economic reasons, we must understand that as disunity prevails, human beings within the organization are being diminished, and that human diminishment should compel our attention and our corrective action simply for no other reason than because it is the right and principled to do. We cannot and must not tolerate the marginalization of other human beings.
Creating organizational unity, combined with its complimentary effort of eliminating the root causes of disunity, must be raised to a point of principle and elevated to a be a primary focus of our collective effort. Organizations must forge those interpersonal bonds of trust and purpose that unite and commit people within them to a unified effort. We must craft those links of understanding and affection between people that cause us to work together, not only because we have to, for economic reasons, but because we seek to, and are committed to, for personal, ethical, and moral reasons.
The Key ParticipantsThe responsibility for addressing the imperative challenge of creating unity rests upon two different but overlapping groups.
First, it is essential that managers and supervisors, those people invested with formal organizational authority, commit themselves to forging the required unity, both between themselves and between the people that report to them.
The unity of management is a prerequisite to whole-system health and optimal performance. The disunity between people in management positions is where traditionally some of the greatest evidence of dysfunctional competition and conflict are consistently found. It is clearly destructive to overall performance and must be fearlessly addressed and corrected.
Second, it is important to recognize that creating unity is ultimately a human challenge facing everyone with in an organization, regardless of title or position. We all bring into our organizations notions and skills shaped in a competitive culture that encourage us to compete rather than to collaborate, contend rather than cooperate, to win rather than support. We all bring with us societal stereotypes, prejudices, convictions, and habitual responses destructive of creating a truly unified organization. . To succeed, 100% of the people within an organization must adopt unity as a personal goal.
The specific issues each face may vary and the specific challenges may differ, but none of us can safely say that we are untouched by the challenge of forging human unity in the workplace. Only as each of us raises the establishment and protection of human dignity within the organization to a point of principal, only when the creation of organizational unity becomes driven by convictions as well as economics, will we be equipped with the energy, and more importantly, the courage, to search for and root out those entrenched patterns of conflict and competition that too often define our organizational lives.
It is easy to spot the flaws in others. Only the combined force of practicality and conviction will effectively animate the sincerity of effort required to address perhaps the most difficult challenge of all - to recognize and eliminate those prejudices and stereotypes that distort our own thinking. Upon us all, managers and non-managers alike, rests the responsibility to search out and correct the ways we ourselves contribute to the lack of unity that may inadvertently sap the organization of its energy, divert its attention, and diminish both its potential and it people.
Motivated by both pragmatic, and economic concerns, as well as by requirements defined by ethical, moral, and principled considerations, developing organizational unity is an effort that it is now imperative we individually and collectively accept.
Back to publications page
© Copyright 1999 Management Associates. All rights reserved.