Consciousness

Aligning function, organisation, and culture.

“We don’t have enough resources” might be one of the most frustrating – and unfortunately – one of the most common arguments that leaders can hear.

Not only does it reflect the actual limits in the capacities or capabilities of their organisation, but it also brings them back to the challenge of conveying a vision, and the limits of their management practices.

If this argument is not necessarily ill-founded, “throwing resources at the problem”, confronting the bearer of bad news, or even reframing the issue, might not be enough.

Rising to the challenge requires aligning perspectives, goals, and expectations so that, trivially put, teams come up with a solution and not a problem.

“How can leaders achieve such alignment?”, asked the Mouse.

Achieving such alignment requires working at the cultural, organisational, and functional levels, in that order to ensure the sustainability of the response. 

Working at the cultural level consists of reflecting on what behaviours are considered ‘acceptable’ – e.g., how can dissenting opinions be expressed, and what degree of manoeuvre does one have –, and ‘fair’ – e.g., what negative feedback is considered normal.

Working at the organisational level consists of understanding what is ‘possible’, and what practices should be ‘enabled’. For any role, one can map out what needs to be accessed and how this can be achieved.

Working at the functional level is indeed a matter of resources, trying to understand which are ‘available’. When looking at it this way, it appears that the resource issue, while arguably important, is a most superficial one.

Still, whatever challenges this exploration will help surface cannot be “fixed” per se. They require leader’s awareness and application over time.

While addressing cultural issues does not cost anything, there are as many opportunities to address them as there are opportunities to miss the mark. In other words, building a culture requires consistency.

Clarity will benefit organisational design, for a structural mindset will help determine roles and responsibilities in a coherent way across the system.

Finally, convergence will help work at a functional level, to optimise resource allocation in a way that is considered both efficient and legitimate. Indeed, convergence-seeking leaders are the most “functional” of all, both in bilateral and multilateral settings.

Conscious leaders will likely find one step easier than the other depending on their strong suit. Yet, by working simultaneously at the cultural, organisational, and functional levels, they will at least be aware of the type of challenges they face and gain experience in navigating them. This alignment in management practices will benefit teams equally. In fact, perspective, goals, and expectations will subsume into purpose, commitment, and initiative.

Conscious leadership manifests in the decision-making process when leaders know when to push and when to let go, when to set direction, and when to seek advice. In that subtle ‘dance’, leaders don’t need to resort to storytelling, for they have a message to rally behind: 

And that message is clearly and consistently communicated. 

Baptiste Raymond - 04/2022.